Some Blog Site

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). It wasn’t run because I didn’t actually write a full blog post for Jon, I just sent him an outline of ideas. But I decided to fill it out and present it to you today.

The number one biggest fear that people have is public speaking. That’s not mine though.

Mine is that I’ll e called up to the front of the church to demonstrate the motions to a song, mainly because I don’t like doing the motions but also because I probably don’t know them very well.

This is not so much of a problem now, as grown-up hymns don’t have motions like the kids’ songs do. But you never know when they might break out “Deep and Wide” on a Sunday morning.

And if they did, anyone up front will be immortalized, as the services are streamed and recorded, so the whole world can watch your motions on the internet for as long as the internet exists, in theory.

It’s not a comforting thought.

In case you’re wondering, “Deep and Wide” is a perennial favorite of the leaders of the kids’ program. Because then, the third time around, after people have started to develop muscle memory, they change the words to “Wide and Deep” and try to catch people off guard.

And I haven’t sung this song in decades, but it stuck with me: “Father Abraham”. Even as a kid, this seemed a rather worthless song as far as lyrics went. It was obvious the point of this song was to make kids exercise.

Anyway, I did my time. Now I’m old enough I think I don’t need to worry about it – I get to take my kids to the kids’ program and watch them have fun with the motions. Carry on the tradition.

Today is going to be a discussion of heating and heat transfer, in the context of what heating systems make sense for buildings

First off, let’s start with some basics.  Things, in general, are either good conductors of heat or bad conductors of heat.  Bad conductors are good insulators.  What are some good insulators?  People normally think of fiberglass insulation.  A nice thick sweater is also a good insulator.  There’s also that expanding foam stuff.  They all have in common that they hold air.  All the fluffiness is there to have a bunch of air pockets.  Ideally, the best insulator would a vacuum (no air), but since that’s impractical for most things, we go with the next best thing which is air.  

So air is a good insulator and therefore bad conductor of heat.  

Next, let’s go with air movement.  

What is windchill?  I’m hoping you all know the answer already, but just for completeness I’ll say here that is it the feeling that moving air imparts to people.  The faster the air moves, the lower the temperature feels.  So blowing air brings a cooling effect.  Nothing new there, I hope.  

Now let’s combine those two principles.  Let’s say, in theory, we wanted to design the worst possible system for heating a place where people are.  What would we do?  First, we’d start by using a bad conductor of heat as our heat-delivery medium.  Right?  Let’s heat up something that doesn’t hold heat well, and send that around to distribute heat.  Next, we’d use something that would make things feel cooler, rather than warmer – make sure windchill is involved.  

Put it all together, and you get standard forced-air systems that are in just about every house built these days.  

For those of you familiar with thermodynamics, please tell me how you could make a worse system for delivering heat to make people feel warm.  From both an efficiency standpoint and comfort standpoint.  

The only reason it’s popular is that it is cheap to install and maintain.  It can be done shoddily and people won’t notice if there’s a small leak in the ductwork.  

The other thing that’s bad about it is the vents are annoying.  We have one in the kitchen floor right where a chair is and I can’t always scoot the chair where I want because the leg catches on the lip of the vent.  

In case you’re wondering, I’m a proponent of radiant heating.  It uses water, something that conducts heat well, and it doesn’t blow on you.  And it’s quiet.  And you can put furniture anywhere you want, without worrying about blocking anything.  

On the other hand, it does make sense to use air for cooling.  You want windchill, to help you feel cooler.  

Bacon, lettuce, and tomato make a good combination, especially with the unnamed-yet-standard accompaniment mayonnaise.

We had BLTs, then later in the week had chicken sandwiches, which I happened to top with lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise.

That got me thinking. What other meat goes well as a sandwich with lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise?

After I listed off a few I could think of, I decided the easier question is what meat does not go well with lettuce and tomato? An XLT, with X being any given meat.

Bacon? Good.

Chicken patty? Good.

Leftover Thanksgiving turkey? Good.

Fish patty? Also good.

Hamburger? I prefer ketchup, but with mayonnaise is still good.

Pulled pork? Not sure.

Poached egg? Maybe, but that goes best with ham and a slice of cheese on an English muffin.

I’m not going to consider crab, lobster, or shrimp, because those are not meant to be consumed by humans.

Rough week over here. Tune in next time.

We try to keep our freezer stocked with enough ice cream so that we don’t run out. It would not be as big as tragedy as if we ran out of milk, but it’s close.

As part of that, we try various flavors of ice cream. One of the recent flavors was Waffle Cone, by Breyers. One of the things that helped put Breyers on the map was their commitment to quality ingredients.

So it came as no surprise that their waffle cone ice cream did not contain any fake waffle cone pieces.

At first, I thought Waffle Cone might be trademarked, but I could see no trademark indication.

Then I looked at the ingredients, and for the waffle cone pieces section it contained things you’d expect – flour and such.

Now I am curious as to how one makes a fake waffle cone.

Or maybe the 100% real part is supposed to apply to the fudge?

Also note: this was not actually ice cream. See how it says FROZEN DAIRY DESSERT near the bottom of the container? That is Breyers admitting it’s not real ice cream. Maybe that’s why they promote the REAL WAFFLE CONE PIECES, so as to distract you from the low-quality ice cream.

At first, all of their ice cream was real ice cream. Now it seems that most of their offerings are frozen dairy desserts and not many are actual ice cream anymore.

To celebrate Reformation Day, we carved pumpkins and put their innards to good use as a tasty snack (and the rest as compost (not shown)).

Not much commentary for this, as it’s mostly self-explanatory.

I find I like the pumpkin seeds better if they’re overcooked slightly.

Delta’s teacher had the students in the class evaluate themselves for their strengths and weaknesses, academically.

It turns out that Delta has some strong feelings about some subjects.

His scale is not linear, but he certainly was able to convey how he felt about math and writing.