Diary of a Mad Scientist

We packed the house for the Milwaukee class, and the students included
everyone from contractors to welders to a firefighter to a bunch of high
school teachers to members of the local biodiesel distribution co-op and
several local homebrewers with experience and even one bad batch to
contribute. There were a couple of SVO cars in the parking lot to look at.

The contingent of teachers were from Bloom High School in Chicago, and
some of them got a grant from BP a while back to include biodiesel in
their curriculum (two were chem teachers and one was a biology teacher).

Here’s a link to a story about the grant and one of the teachers:
http://www.wbez.org/CityRoom_Story.aspx?storyID=12669

The teachers brought half their own lab- it was funny opening the trunk
of their Jetta to discover a jug of sulfuric acid, a big pile of
burettes (fragile) kinda clanking around loose on the back seat among
with their camping equipment and sleeping bags, and a huge array of
other biodiesel supplies. They had everything but the kitchen sink in
there. One of them , Barry Latham, brought a sample of a home-built
filter column for doing experiments with zeolite (he was testing 4A
zeolite to remove water from finished biodiesel, with very good results)

An amusing aside is that as has happened before, the science teachers
ended up talking “over me” during the class more than any of the other
students- for which we made fun of them mercilessly (they teach high
school, where you’d think they’d get the same treatment from their own
kids). I have seen this in class before- amusingly, the other example
was a high school shop teacher with biofuels experience who sat in the
back, talked to his other teacher friends during my lecture, and made
what ended out to be the worst fuel in the room during the lab.

The teacher contingent ended up conducting some slightly more advanced
experiments during the labs (soap water neutralization with their
sulfuric acid and my bromophenol blue), and of course everyone wanted to
be in their ‘lab group’. We had a fairly long period of “open lab” at
the end with everyone enthusiastically trying out different things, so I
think a lot of folks got to see a variety of techniques and experiments.
Some people ended up going home with the experiments, and some supplies
to finish washing and 3/27 testing them to see the outcome of the
experiments. We made and broke an amazing emulsion (of fuel that passed
the 3/27 test, incidentally, so we got to see how to troubleshoot the
causes of emulsions and narrow it down to glycerine contamination in
this case).

Jill Krysinski, the biology teacher from Bloom High School science club
ended up putting together a powerpoint of her notes and photos- which I
think is really useful. It doesn’t show every single step of the
process- no drying tests or cold tests or quality control stuff, but has
a lot of info as she captured it (there’s one or two very minor
mis-interpretations as with any note-taking 1) amberlite is not
molecular sieve, and it’s used for soap removal in commercial biodiesel
plants, not water removal 2) the photo of what she thought was finished
fuel ready to dry was actually a ‘first wash’ that someone brought in,
but this point wasn’t made very clear by me and 3) I don’t think I said
anything about color of finished biodiesel meaning that the fuel is bad,
but one particular batch she photographed in class was poor conversion
AND happened to be really dark- people shouldn’t interpret her comments
as saying that ‘dark’ is a sign of poor conversion as it could just as
easily be a sign of onions being fried in the oil or other sources of
dark color). The class covered more info than just this basic process,
incidentally- but she mostly put the ‘basics’ into the powerpoint. She
has a lot of my info in there that I dont normally see covered on the
forums- things about BOD of wash water, for instance.

Here is a link to Jill’s Powerpoint about making biodiesel- most of
these photos came from the class
http://www.bloomhs.org/apps/classes/show_assignment.jsp?REC_ID=170187&rn=475519

Incidentally, I told this class to use 8 g/liter for KOH rather than
the usual 7 g/liter because I was ’rounding up’ a bit from compensating
for a 90% purity KOH. I’m starting to think that KOH is often less pure
than the assay states, and that using ‘a bit more’ is a good idea. It
seems to me that people who switch from NaOH to KOH experience
conversion problems sometimes, and the explanation is either that the
KOH isn’t as concentrated as the manufacturer says, or that the user
allows large buckets of KOH to deteriorate from frequent opening
(whereas they still sometimes buy NaOH in small containers at Lowes
hardware stores under the Roebic brand so it doesn’t have as much of a
chance to carbonize)

We tried to get everyone thinking about how to set up experiments well-
things like not changing more than one variable when you do test
batches. We had a good example from one of the hosts of a ‘bad batch’-
NaOH biodiesel glop that he has 50 gallons of- so people really got the
idea of what can go wrong and how to avoid it. He was able to make a
perfectly usable batch of fuel from the same bad oil, using KOH, and I
think it made it fairly obvious to everyone that they shouldn’t even
bother working with NaOH due to this and other risks.

I think everyone got a lot out of the whole thing and of course we’re
trying to get them onto the local Wisconsin/Illinois email list ( to
join send an email to biodiesel-subscribe@v2b.org ) so they stay in
touch. I’ll probably teach this class again and also do an advanced
topics class either here or in Michigan sometime in the early spring, so
as to be able to catch the farmers before they get busy. Last year I
taught this class in Michigan in early March and I’ll probably aim for
the same sort of timing this spring- early March was the latest that the
farmers were really available up there so I’ll come around in late
Febuary or early March.

Big thanks to the Milwaukee biodiesel co-op, the folks who do the
Biodiesel@v2b.org Chicagoland email list, Swee of Future Green, and Kyle
Capizzi for hosting this class!

Links:
Chicago/Wisconsin/Illinois mailing list for those interested in
biodiesel and SVO: no web page currently, to join send an email to
biodiesel-subscribe@v2b.org
Milwaukee biodiesel co-op, selling commercially produced ASTM biodiesel:
http://www.mkebio.org/
Future Green, a green/fair trade products store that helped sponsor us
and found us the good site to have the class: www.futuregreen.net
Biodiesel schoolteacher email list for others who integrate biodiesel
into elementary or high school curriculum:
www.groups.yahoo.com/group/biodiesel_in_schools

Mark

>

The Milwaukee biodiesel class is at an enormous warehouse space, so there’s room for any last-minute attendees. If you wish to come and haven’t already registered, please bring your own folding chair as that’s the only limitation on attendance here.

Biodiesel Homebrewing Workshop:

10-5 Saturday and Sunday Aug 25-26

Barry Trucking
120 National Ave,
Milwaukee, WI 53204

(corner of 1st & National)

$120 no one turned away for lack of funds

Bring your own folding chair if you have not pre-registered- this class is in a huge warehouse facility but we only have chairs for those we already know are coming.

Bring a drinking water bottle and wear ‘work clothes’, the facility is a former truck repair shop and may be oily/dusty in places.

Other info:
It’ll be my usual two day, hands-on biodiesel homebrewing class, which has
evolved a bit since the last Wisconsin classes I taught in 2004. classregistration@girlmark.com

At the end of the class, we will be building a few processors for students who wish to buy themselves a b100supply.com kit of processor
parts- this is completely optional, and you can help the others build their processors even if you don’t get your own kit parts.

More info is below:

Approximate schedule:
Saturday and Sunday, August 25-26, 10-4ish (probably 4:30 on Sunday, realistically)

register at www.girlmark.com/tour or just show up (with your own chair if you couldn’t pre-register!) and pay “at the door”

****************************************
some suggested reading:

Please take a look through www.biodieselcommunity.org for some info (and
photos) of what the process looks like.

www.b100supply.com also has a GREAT ‘biodiesel library’ with a lot of good
articles in it.

I’ll have copies of Biodiesel Homebrew Guide for sale at the class:
www.localb100.com/book.html and I"ll also have a few copies of Jennifer
Radtke’s book ‘Not a Gas Station’, which is about starting the Biofuel
Oasis commercial fueling station. Each of these is $15.

****************************************
Saturday:
10-noon- lecture: general biofuels introduction, SVO conversions and
diesel blending (ie DSE, etc) discussions, cold weather issues,
emissions, discussion of early biofuels research that has gotten us
where we are today with biodiesel, potential mechanical problems,
explanation of biodiesel chemistry and the basic process

noon-12:30 demonstration of the basic process

12:30-1:15 lunch

1:15-4 : students practice titration and make 1-liter batches.

During the basic practice you’ll practice oil water content testing,
blank titration, titration with a burette as well as cheaper equipment,
phenol red and turmeric titrations, really nasty oil as well as normal
oil, 5% glycerine remix prewash and two-stage process, along with
intentionally making mistakes for Sunday’s class.

If we get through the basic 1-liter batches quickly enough, I"ll start
the next day’s topics and demonstrations on Saturday afternoon.

Sunday:
10-12:30 lecture and demo: washing, biodiesel equipment, quality control
and quality testing discussion and demonstration, and a more detailed
discussion of quality problems that can affect vehicles.

12:30-1:15 lunch

1:15-2:15 -students do ‘open lab’ practice, with help from some
experienced biodieselers who are coming to visit- you can perform
quality tests, wash your test batches from the day before, make more
test batches with different oil and different variables if you wish, do
ethanol-based biodiesel, attempt to fix some of the ‘mistakes’ we’ll
intentionally make (ie emulsion and ‘glop’), and more . You can also
start on your processor if you wish to instead. Intermittent lecturing
will take place during the lab, on topics such as ethanol-based
biodiesel and alternative lab techniques

2:15-4 plumbing/techniques demo and processor building (and continuation
of open lab, with help available for either lab or processor build- you
can filter back and forth between activities).

We’ve been talking at biodieselnow.com about having a Michigan biodiesel
get-together on one of the evenings after my class in Saginaw this weekend.

Eric Klammer (mtushmoo on various biodiesel forums) graciously agreed to
host a barbeque on the evening of the 17th (this Friday) at his place in
Saginaw. The discussion of where to go and so forth is here at biodieselnow:

http://www.biodieselnow.com/forums/thread/132738.aspx

If he doesn’t post his address on the forum thread or you miss it, one
way to connect with us is to come to the SVSU classroom where the class
is held, at the end of class at 4 pm on Friday, and caravan over to
Eric’s (and the grocery/beer store along the way) with the rest of us:

Directions to SVSU
Campus map:

Meet for caravanning over to Eric’s at the end of class at 4 pm, in Pioneer Hall, room 119 (building 32 on the
map- see approximate center of map).

For the barbeque: bring grillables and BYOB, bring photos of your
reactor and equipment, bring your SVO vehicle, and any other
stories/stuff to share with the local greasers!

Also, there’s talk of starting up a Michigan biodiesel/SVO yahoogroup.
Please email me if you’re interested in starting this list and
co-moderating with a few other folks.

classregistration@girlmark.com
Mark

I was distraught last week over the fact that I was too busy with trip prep to be a good Lyme activist. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to draw attention to Lyme Disease issues had just come up- it was announced in the papers that President Bush had had Lyme Disease a year ago

A few issues that came up:
a. Lots of us patients wonder if he’d had it in the past, thus explaining the deterioration in his public speaking over the years- it’s not a disease that you develop immunity to after exposure, and it seems that some folks get over it the first time, suffer from symptoms such as mental deterioration, and then develop more obvious physical symptoms such as the erythemia migrans “bullseye rash” only the second time around).

b. We’re all suspicious about the fact that ‘they’ took a year to announce that he’d been treated (which is really unusual for politicians’ health issues)- which makes me think he’d had ongoing problems clearing the symptoms or had been treated for an extended period of time. The same articles discussing the presidential Lyme also went to great lengths to come up with an explanation for his recent vertigo/confusion (which are classic Lyme symptoms, totally consistent with what you’d go through a year after initial treatment)- which they claimed were due to something left over from a head cold months ago.

c. There are some terrible political issues in the US around the treatment of Lyme patients- there’s been an ongoing antitrust investigation by the Connecticut Attorney General of the medical society (the IDSA, mentioned below) that set the prevailing short treatment course guidelines for Lyme- and there’s been a huge recent backlash in the media (a couple of really inaccurate articles in forbes in particular) which seems to be driven by that medical society’s press releases.

Meanwhile this disease is the #1 vector-borne (ie insect-borne) disease in the US, now found in 49 states- and the cost to society of the fact that doctors tend to undertreat patients is eventually going to be enormous. We’re at a stage in Lyme treatment politics that’s similar to what AIDS patients went through in the early 80’s. Having the President come down with this heavily politicized disease right at the time when there’s raging debate over proper treatment is a huge opportunity. I’m sorry that I"m missing the chance to harrass my local media about it.

Here’s an opinion piece that covers some of the US medical politics about Lyme treatment- unfortunately, written over in Britain at the Guardian’s commentary blog (and yes, it’s commentary and opinion, but the info they’re listing is valid regardless of your political affiliation). Incidentally, I think that the president’s health report DID list a three-week treatment course, so the premise of this opinion piece is wrong [edit- I’m wrong- actually , they only listed ‘a standard course of antibiotics’ which means it was probably longer than three weeks or whatever]- but there’s a lot of debate about why oh why did they not reveal the info to the public for a year (which makes us all think it was a much longer treatment than three weeks, that and the stigma of a President getting a disease that can make you stupid…)

I’m linking this article because it describes all the political issues with Lyme treatment and insurer issues fairly concisely.

If you click on the original article you get all the links to the relevant info:

*****************************
Bush and Lyme disease: what’s the secret?
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dean_baker_and_helene_jorgensen_/2007/08/bush_and_lyme_disease_whats_th.html
The White House won’t reveal the length of the president’s antibiotics course. Are they protecting the insurance industry?
Dean Baker and Helene Jorgensen

August 13, 2007 4:10 PM | Printable version

The White House reported last week that President Bush was treated for Lyme disease last summer after he discovered the bull’s eye rash associated with the disease on his leg. According to the spokesperson, Bush’s doctors determined that he had fully recovered from the disease in his annual physical earlier this summer. However, the spokesperson refused to disclose the treatment that Bush had received, citing doctor-patient privilege.

While Bush has the right to keep details of his medical treatments private, this is certainly a sharp contrast with how the White House dealt with Bush’s recent surgery. The public got the play-by-play on the operation in which several polyps were removed from the presidential colon. By comparison, the course of treatment for Lyme would appear to be G-rated.

Some background on the controversies surrounding Lyme disease could explain this peculiar turn to secrecy. The standard course of treatment recommended by the medical establishment is two weeks of antibiotics. This is supposed to be sufficient to kill the bacteria and cure the patient.

However, there are tens of thousands of people in the United States who developed Lyme and did not fully recover after receiving this treatment. Instead they experienced increasingly severe symptoms, which include joint and nerve pain, headaches, cognitive problems, and fatigue. In some cases the symptoms are debilitating, preventing the patient from working or carrying on a normal life.

International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS), a group of doctors specialising in tick-borne diseases, recommends treating people with chronic Lyme with extended courses of antibiotics. ILADS recommends treatment until the symptoms go away, as is done with syphilis and some other diseases. This can take years and be fairly expensive.

Insurers often refuse to pay for the extended course of treatment advocated by ILADS, forcing chronic Lyme patients to pay for treatment themselves. This is an especially severe hardship for people with chronic Lyme, since many cannot work. Getting turned down by the insurer often means financial ruin.

Lately the battle with insurers has heated up as the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Academy of Neurology, the main bodies of the medical establishment that deal with Lyme patients, both issued new guidelines strongly endorsing the two-week treatment path. This will provide powerful ammunition for insurers who don’t want to pay the bills of people with chronic Lyme disease.

This is why Bush’s course of treatment for Lyme is a matter of public interest. If his doctors thought it was appropriate that the president get treated for a period of time that is longer than the standard two-week course, and if this fact became public knowledge, it might call the two-week standard into question. Lyme sufferers and their doctors would be able to point out that the president’s doctors (presumably not quacks) thought that a longer course of treatment was beneficial.

This could help to prompt more serious research on treating chronic Lyme and make it more difficult for insurers to cut off treatment for chronic Lyme victims.

Given the controversy around the disease it is difficult to see why Bush would not disclose his treatment, unless he was in fact treated for more than the standard two weeks. After all, what would be the issue if his spokesperson told the press that Bush got two weeks of antibiotic treatment?

If our suspicions are true, this is yet another disgusting episode of this administration’s hypocrisy. He personally has benefited from a course of treatment that through his silence he would deny to tens of thousands of others. Thank you, Mr President.

I’m really amused. I’ve been talking to Will Aultman of the http://www.msbiofuels.com Mississippi class about an early October date for a class there. They’ve got an active group, he’s really enthusiastic, etc.

The members of the group just informed him that most of them couldn’t attend the date we’d originally chosen, because of a conflict with a big NASCAR race nearby that everyone’s going to. It’s amusing compared to the kinds of enviro hippie commie pinko folks who come to the Berkeley classes, for instance, proving my point that biodiesel appeals to everybody.

Really cheap fuel pre-empted by really fast cars…

Mark

ps we’re now talking about the class being in early November, near Hattiesburg, at this point.

Well, I missed my deadline for leaving for my cross-country drive, and am now flying out for the first two classes. I thought I was having a horrible Lyme relapse- I’d been fighting it with all the pharmaceuticals and herbs at my disposal, pleading and begging and cajoling with my health, telling myself it’s ‘all in my head’, etc- all to no avail.

The feeling of my Lyme, by the way, is exactly the same as having the flu, but without the sinus/sore throat symptoms- extreme exhaustion, visual distortions where I get something like mild tunnel vision , cognitive problems, sore eyes etc. Oddly I also had major lymph node swelling, which used to be a Lyme symptom years ago and worried me a lot as I hadn’t experienced it in a while. Of course that’s a flu symptom as well.

I’d had a bad Lyme relapse right before the Aug 4 System Tricks class and had beaten it back with some new and more extreme herbs (poke root, incidentally, a poison), and it was surprising that I couldn’t get it to have the same effect this time. I was especially mystified as to how I could be getting worse while on antibiotics.

Last night I finally made the decision to ‘just’ fly out for my first two classes (I can teach without the trailer system, though there are a couple of processors to use in the Michigan class, and I’m going to UPS myself the Turk burner!)- then to come back to SF and do the cross-country drive after Labor Day (I had already had plans to drive out for two weeks, then fly home for Labor Day regardless of this setback).

I’m ready to leave now, but didn’t want to do the three or four-day drive while feeling like this. Turns out that Tom can come with me after Labor Day- I’ll be headed to Pennsylvania, where he used to live, so it’ll be a lot more fun than rushing to Michigan right now with the trailer by myself. But it felt like a defeat to get so close to packed and gone and juggle such an insanely complex series of preparations, and then have my body and my drugs not co-operate.

I came home to Tom’s late last night, started getting a runny nose and grumbling stomach. He mentioned the same thing- and I realized that we were both simply getting sick- with the flu. Hooray!

It’s not the first time this year that I didn’t realize I’m getting ‘that kind of sick’. Because of the combo of things I’m taking (andrographis and boneset being two of the herbs, which are major flu/cold fighters), and the weird Lyme autoimmune weirdness, I just never recognize the symptoms of an oncoming cold or flu till I finally get the sore throat/runny nose, which seems to take forever now. I tend to half-fight-off the flu for two weeks, not knowing what’s going on, before it gets the better of me. Of course that’s what the lymph node stuff was all about this time.

Ironic, but I was really grateful for the flu virus this time around. It’s a ‘Congratulations- That’s Terrible’ sort of moment.

I"m taking the System Tricks class on the road- teaching a two-day version of it at Frankie Lind’s farm-scale plant in Maryland, not far from Baltimore/Washington DC. We’re planning the following:

Friday, Sept 28: optional beginners’ biodiesel class taught by Frankie Lind (sorry, I don’t know the cost of this yet)
Saturday-Sunday Sept 29 and 30: two-day System Tricks advanced beginners class

free (rough) camping is available, and we’re planning a bonfire/barbeque/social on Saturday night open to anyone from the local biodiesel community as well as the campers

For info and to register, please see www.girlmark.com/tour
$120 for weekend class, with a $10 discount for anyone subscribing to Frankie’s BiodieselSmarter magazine

***********************

The below syllabus is from my July class, the DC one will be similar:

Start a batch of fuel in Appleseed homebrew processor.
Discuss safe heating, tank fires, use of hydronic heating methods, and heat exchangers. Demonstrate heat exchanger-based Appleseed.
Discuss some electrical safety interconnects proposed for heating element control in ‘regular’ electric heaters.
Discuss tricks for measuring lye safely
Discuss tricks for measuring methanol safely
Discuss pumps for pumping methanol safely
Demonstrate air-powered pumps and discuss air compressor requirements and electrical consumption if using air pumps for reactor mixing.
Discuss materials compatibility with various fuel processes and chemicals used, and discuss where inappropriate plastics can still be used with fewer consequences.
Discuss sight tubes and sight glass sources, ways of using them, ways of installing them, what to look for in industrial parts catalogs
Demonstrate use of powered methanol/lye mixers that are not just passive carboy method. Discuss pros and cons of both types of systems.
Discuss methanol vapor release to atmosphere.
Discuss fire safety issues.

drain a batch of glycerine in another Appleseed and discuss how to avoid methanol vapor exposure during this process
discuss/demonstrate how to separate glycerine from biodiesel to minimize emulsions. Most beginner mistakes having to do with emulsion are actually a separation issue where the person inadvertently contaminates their wash tank with extra soap because they haven’t separated the glycerine from the biodiesel completely. There are some tests to ensure this is actually done.
Discuss standpipe separating tanks, and demonstrate several ways of designing them.
Discuss ways to minimize contamination with unwanted material.
Discuss various kinds of quick-connects and other ways to deal with the messes caused by hoses. Most spills and other hazards are probably due to homebrewers relying on hose rather than pipe.
Demonstrate the use of hard plumbing and ways of managing multiple valves
Demonstrate different methods of labeling the process and the steps, and demonstrate one system using a ‘protocol checklist’ to minimize confusion when operating multiple valves.

Transfer finished fuel from processor trailer to wash tanks and discuss washing equipment
Demonstrate several types of washing nozzles and important considerations
Discuss closed versus open wash tanks
Discuss venting and air displacement
Demonstrate use of non-siphoning overflow mistwash tank plumbing
Demonstrate use of sump pump to move water to a drain
Demonstrate soap test titration
Discuss emulsions (I will make one for us to play with)
Break emulsion with various ways
Discuss wash tank heating methods
Discuss water disposal and ways of separating oils and water and what happens when it is done with various methods
Discuss/demonstrate water neutralizing

Drain wash water from first wash and discuss “how you know when you’re finished with washing”
Go into more detail on emulsions and water retention
Demonstrate separation of water and biodiesel using various kinds of tanks
Discuss “white stuff” that isn’t emulsion
Discuss materials compatibility and water hardness issues with regards to washing
Discuss three different drying methods for getting water out of washed biodiesel
Discuss tests for dryness of finished biodiesel

Test some finished biodiesel for quality in various ways

When the batch that we’re making is finished processing, we can perform an 80%/20% two-stage base-base process and demonstrate various equipment methods required to make it easier
We will follow it with a 5% water prewash for minimizing soap in wash. There are many ways of handling this complex process (80/20 followed by 5%) and we’ll demonstrate and discuss several possible solutions to the unwanted complexity

We will burn some glycerine in a homemade glycerine burner and demonstrate ways of moving the heat safely to heat a batch of oil for another batch of biodiesel.

I’ll briefly discuss filtration though this isn’t terribly complex
We’ll discuss different hosing material and tricks for handling/wrangling lots of hose

We’ll demonstrate a ‘cubee handling’ system for minimizing the hassle involved in processing oil that comes in 5 gallon cubes
We’ll demonstrate straining of oil
We’ll discuss, possibly only theoretically as it cant be shown in a one-day class, the ‘heat and let settle’ method of dewatering wet oil
We’ll discuss fire safety if you choose to dewater oil using boiling temperatures.

Registration info and other classes info is at www.girlmark.com/tour

Mark

oh no, oh no, I’ve turned into one of THOSE people. The ones who preach biodiesel but don’t find time to get onto the biodiesel forums to stay in touch, keep current, or receive feedback. I’ve sneered at this phenomenon for years.

I’ve given Lyle a hard time over the past Piedmont Biofuels tendency to ‘push designs out to the web’- a one-way street whereby info heads out just to their site but not to a forum, which means that there’s no feedback, which means that a couple of years ago they put some photos of a methanol recovery pot still- heated by 190F coolant only, which means that there’s no way it actually worked as described.

Lyle sorta shrugged that they had worse problems to address at the time. I took my haranguing message to Matt, who was officially responsible for the quality of the “homebrewing side” of their machine. Matt listened, and I think things got vetted a bit better, though that’s mostly because of their increasing experience/good techniques rather than anything I said.

I took a long, long break from the forums at some point when my health fell apart this winter (after the Advanced Topics class in Febuary I believe). It’s been an interesting 6 months or so- I finally got to see what it’s like to not be 100% immersed in the hobby. I started off trying to just stay off the computer completely- trying to break my Internet addiction. I sorta think that Internet can be as bad as TV, the content is just a bit more interactive but the effect on timesuck is the same . I’ll never get those hours back that I’ve wasted reading the Battles of the SVO Wingnuts over at Infopop last winter.

Of course the effect was that I stayed off the computer for two weeks and then found myself timewasting on health forums before realizing what was happening. More recently I’ve managed to kick that habit (mostly because of being too damn busy) and am working my way through books when I have the time, mostly 5 minutes each night in bed just prior to collapsing from exhaustion. Last month’s reading was economics. Yawn. Economics is pretty good ‘puts-you-to-sleep’ material. (incidentally, even in the books I’m reading, the authors are fighting. I can’t get away from trolling and rants and such. I just read the inspirational book The End of Poverty by UN economist Jeffery Sachs and am now wading through a nasty, ranting, negative rebuttal by World Bank economist William Easterly in a book called White Mans’ Burden, which focuses mostly on proving Sachs wrong, and which I unfortunately find myself agreeing with.

I was supposed to get back onto the biodiesel forums in July, in preparation for my trip. No Dice. I’ve never worked so hard in my life as I have the past few weeks in physical preparations. I barely have time to check email. I’m not just deleting it outright anymore like I was for a while but I still dont’ have time to respond to anything. Ugh.

I spent part of March working on the Tankenstein system and making fuel in our janky temporary half-assed tripping-over-hoses setup that I’m embarrassed about, threw some outrageous amount of energy into the process trying to get us out of the dark ages, huffing paint fumes while welding things onto salvaged Harbor Freight parts painted, no doubt, with the finest of Chinese lead paint. We’re in one of those classic homebrew co-op dilemmas of needing to upgrade our system but being unable to keep up with the incoming oil. We’ve created an immense amount of trouble for ourselves by having to work around our incoming liquids without having the materials handling plumbing under control. Did I ever say how much I hate hoses? Almost as much as I hate extension cords.

March was the last “Big Push” to get things welded up and ready- during which Tom came down with a bad case of malaria- and last month was the next round of plumbing it all up- during which Tom came down with a really weird injury that hobbled him from helping for most of the month. At the last minute we welded and plumbed and threw together the nicest big reactor ever.