……..the saga continues.

As expected, the massive recent show of airborne force and over-the-top stupid bureaucracy has wafted away into the ether of office work. I am sure there are meetings being held somewhere and paper is being shuffled to and fro from office to office, from desk to desk. There are committees being formed, of course. Meetings.  Some of the paper is sitting on desks, of course, ‘because Madge is on holiday’ and ‘Bill is on sick leave’.  But the process is on. The wheels of justice, intimidation and due process grind slowly and expensively.  And, not in the least, mind-numbingly ineffectively.  But it is all slowly grinding, I am sure.

With luck, the main perpetrator will pass away before anything further happens.

And given that he is unwell, insane, in his sixties and walking amongst the domestic equivalent of IEDs and bear-traps that he calls home, such a statement is only a bit exaggerated.

There’s a book in it.  There really is.

On other matters, I am now attending to a little dog called Yacky, Yappy, Zappy, Zippy or something ‘appy’ or ‘affy’ like that.  Doesn’t matter, he doesn’t respond to any of it anyway. A pair of neighbours asked Sal to care for their dog while they were away.  Sal, of course, enthusiastically agreed.  “Oooooh, look!  A puppy!”  And then she left for the weekend to go see her sister.  So, it is just me and Daffy.

There’s a book in that, too.  There really is.

Prior to her most recent escape, Sal and I have been shingling our way through some battery-bank work.  I have some new ones coming soon but the old bank will have to do for now and they were simply not holding up their end of the deal.  Going a bit lame, they were.

Which is odd……?

I know they are old geezers.  I get that.  I can even relate.  I am sympathetic.  Empathetic, even.  But it seemed like they were fading a bit too fast even if they had the lead-acid equivalent of Shingles (which is called ‘sulphation’, by the way).  So, what the hell…..?

We took eight of the twelve off line, separated them into two groups of four and left them for a day.  We tested them when they came off-line and one in the first group was bad so I put it on a separate charger.  The other three in that group seemed OK so we just noted their state of charge (SOC to the battery hip).  The second group had a bunch of differing readings so we left them for the day to see how they ‘settled out’.

By the next day, the good three of group one were the same (one down a smidge) and the bad one – even with the charge – was still bad.  So, that told me I had a weak link in that first group.  The second group had two that dropped a moderate amount but two that stayed up.  So, after finding the best four, we put the system back together with eight batteries instead of twelve.

I now have one bad one, two OK ones and a moderately good one sitting on the bench. Almost 600 pounds of do-nothing.

Satisfyingly, the eight are working very good.  Of course, they are working better than the twelve had because the ‘dead’ guy is now out of the loop.  One dead guy requires two healthy guys to carry him.  So, it makes sense, really.  But none of my guys are young and healthy. They may be healthy for their age but they are old.  For lots of energy, it is best to go with young guys and my new recruits are on order and should be here within the month. In the meantime, we are paying special attention to our old guys.

Well, I am.  Sal is away.

Oh?  The Shingles….. you want to know about the Shingles?  Well, it’s boring but since you ask…… mostly gone. Some weird nerve pain here and there (I feel my appendix scar from almost 50 years ago!).  A few lingering symptoms.  Nothing horrendous. Diminished sex appeal it seems, being the most cruel and obvious.  A guy could get lonely with only batteries and a dog called Dippy for company.

I can’t wait to get cute again.