What Is On Your Mind?

Very true, however I like a little organization here and there.

 

I have a little organization, but it could do with some more. Buuuuuuuuuut I'm too lazy to do that.

 

Welp, after 2 hours, that's done...now time to shower

 

Strongly considering signing up for Big Brothers Big Sisters.

I wanted to a couple years ago while I was going to school, but my schedule just didn't allow for it.

 

Bluuuh.

I have until thursday to complete my last uni assignment before christmas break. I haven't even started yet. It involves writing programming for GPS satellites to transmit information as accurately and efficiently as possible, and then create alternate versions and write 1500 words about them.

I'm screwed.

 

Eww, sounds like a pain in the butt. Not the good kind either.

 

Holy damn that sounds quite complicated indeed

 

Ugh man.

 

Got laid off again. Twice in one year! The middle east is flooding the market with cheap light crude and now nobody really wants western Canada's heavy crude. Thus, myself and a bunch of other people in the oilfield are now out of work, at least until prices per barrel come back up. Cheap gas is good for consumers, but not so good for employers and workers.

Maybe we should, as a whole, start focusing on a source of energy that isn't oil and is renewable or available in a much greater abundance without causing so much environmental harm (wind, solar, hydro, hydrogen, better nuclear power)?

 

Oh no! Sorry to hear that you got laid off :<
If anything I would say push for better Solar energy, I mean the fucking sun's gonna be here for at least 5-10 billion more years, it's probably the most abundant source of energy.

 

unless there are clouds. then you're fucked.

 

Yay for solar energy.

 

The problem is politics. Oil is a tradeable commodity and makes the world go round. Politicians have their careers built on it and entire nations have their economies built on the stuff and some are feeling the crunch with this nosedive that crude has taken. Sunlight requires no mining, no refining, no personal or mechanical touch to get into a useable state. All you need is a solar panel and a battery to store the energy.

An interesting development is that Elon Musk is making utility companies start to shit themselves with his gigfactory opening up soon. In addition to supplying batteries for Tesla vehicles, they will also be sold to companies who manufacture solar home kits. As they stand now the smaller kits are capable of powering a home during night-time hours with light usage. With more robust batteries they could make the transition from grid power to solar power totally viable. Utilizing a larger full-roof collection of solar panels and more effecient batteries, you could make a home fully off the grid, even during peak daylight usage.

Solar energy is quickly catching up. Panels and batteries are more efficient than ever and making advances very quickly. Big oil will soon be feeling the crunch in a big way as people begin to discard ICE transportation en mass in favor of alternative fuel or all-electric vehicles.

 

It sucks boyfriend, I'm glad you're in a region where work is abundant though, you're going to be okay ^^

And yes, I am 100% behind any energy resource that isn't based on exploding ancient plant matter.

 

I'm sure most energy companies are gonna hold out until prices go back up again. in current economic terms oil is cheap, easy to transport and store, and the infrastructure for it already exists and any damage it does environmentally (greenhouse, water pollution, air pollution, etc.) are externalities the energy corporations don't have to pay plus they have a massive lobby set up already. we covered a lot of this stuff in my climate change class just a few weeks ago. The main problem with going all solar or all wind is sunlight and wind can be sporadic, plus there's no way to really store the energy you produce if you can somehow manage to generate a surplus. A lot of people are still iffy on solar panels because even with newer efficient ones a large array can take 20 years of electricity production to break even on the initial installation costs, minus costs of repairs due to vandalism/breakage and maintenance. as for electric cars, they're great for short distance city driving or long distance light travel but horrible for hauling freight, even so you end up shifting fossil fuels from use in the vehicles themselves to power plants so you can produce enough electricity to charge those thousands of electric vehicles, not even factoring in the ecological damage from increased mining of rare earth metals for the batteries. long term it's going to take a mix of different energy sources in areas where they are best suited for use to get anywhere near a sustainable level economically and ecologically. my bet on sustainable energy would be a mixed strategy of bio diesel from waste materials, in city micro wind arrays, solar rooftops and small scale LFTRs for urban usage. the more we modify the environment of our cities and wild spaces the more we'll need to adapt our technology to match those changes (IE: increased wind currents around and over tall buildings and putting small stable vertical/horizontal wind turbines on high wind stress areas)



tl;dr
energy is a complicated issue and every source of energy has some hidden or not so hidden costs

 

Yup, no such thing as a free lunch.

 

Yeah, not exactly a great time to be a North American oil worker. Hope you can find employment or otherwise get by for the next little bit.

Go nuclear energy!

 

Another thing I've learned during my recent 5760x1080 quest: Nvidia Surround + Display Fusion is pretty freaking broken. I run my monitors with my taskbars at the top which causes a weird bug. If I minimize any fullscreen window then maximize it again the top bar of the window will be under the taskbar meaning I can't move it without right clicking the icon on a Display Fusion taskbar and moving it to the next monitor. Currently I've found 2 programs that don't do this: Firefox and Chrome. Also fullscreening any video (youtube, windows media player, VLC) will cause my two side monitors to be completely black and unusable, while the video only plays on the middle one at glorious 1080p.

And if you are running multiple monitors without multiple taskbars. Display Fusion is for you.

 

I am banana.

 

I understand the reference but I refuse to perpetuate the barrage of quotes that will come now.