And This Is Why It's Called Intermittent Energy -- August 11, 2015

An "intermittent energy" graph:

The Obama administration is reporting that a drop in average wind speeds in the western United States during early 2015 led to reduced generation from wind plants in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Lots of gobbledygook at the the link, but the graph pretty much tells me all I need to now.

But close reading of the article suggests that it's much more than just the wind speeds. One wonders about the state of these older wind farms.

Also, this is a chance for folks to re-acquaint themselves with "capacity factor," something I just blogged about a few days ago.

By the way, wind data has only been collected for a few years. I doubt anyone really knows the "normal wind" pattern in the western US. Perhaps this is normal, and the last five years have been a bit better vis a vis wind.

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Speaking of Wind -- From The Field Of Dreams

A reader gives an update of the new MDU wind farm going up in North Dakota, some data points:

• Thunder Spirit Wind, 43 turbines, 107.5 MW
• to be completed in December, 2015
• progress of project can be seen from US Highway 12, approximately two (2) miles east of Hettinger, ND
• blades and rotors were arriving on August 4 (2015)
• convoys of turbine towers headed toward this project on August 10 (2015)
• using only two small cranes; no tall cranes on this plateau; no tower assemblies erected

The reader thinks it unlikely the project will be completed on schedule. And, of course, the completion date is the beginning of North Dakota's infamous winters. Fortunately the "North Dakota winters" have been tamed by Algore Global Warming. 

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If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

The Apple Page

Macrumors is reporting:  RiteAid reverses course, will accept Apple Pay.

Rite Aid today announced that its 4,600 stores across the United States will begin accepting Apple Pay and Google Wallet starting August 15, nearly one year after the drugstore chain and CVS infamously disabled support for the iPhone-based mobile payments service nationwide. Rite Aid will also support Google's forthcoming Android Pay service when available. 

Rite Aid and CVS spurred a controversy last year after disabling Apple Pay and Google Wallet as payment methods last year, likely because both are members of the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) consortium, which has its own mobile payments service called CurrentC. MCX launched in August 2012 with a three-year exclusivity period for all members, which ends this month.

This tells me CurrentC is toast. CurrentC had a 3-year exclusivity period. I had completely forgotten about CurretnC. And that's why Apple doesn't worry one way or the other about the success/failure of the Apple Watch -- look at all the free advertising Apple got with that controversial launch.

And, as usual, the comments over at Macrumors are always the best, mostly from Apple haters.

Has CurrentC even been launched yet? Nope: in "the coming weeks," just when the three-year exclusivity pact ends, CurrentC will be launched. Some say "DOA." Others say,  "dead by January 1, 2016."

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The Literature Page

I'm re-reading Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno, c. 2014. If one is interested in JD Salinger this has to be one of the best biographies of him. The "stuff" he experienced before he was 30 years old is indescribable. Shields and Salerno went to the original sources to get the story.

His relationship with Jean Miller, whom he met when she was fourteen (14) years old is a must-read. One wonders about her parents. The story is told in three or four pages but is worth the price of the book, and well worth the time spent reading the book. It is incredible that another life-altering experience for Salinger was not even mentioned in the wiki post. One wonders if there is a reason that story is not there.

As usual, it took a English newspaper, The (London) Daily Mail to tell the story.

From the linked article:

Their 700-page Salinger biography has new information well beyond any possible posthumous fiction.

Nine years in the making and thoroughly documented, Salinger features many rare photographs and letters, unprecedented detail about the author's World War II years and brief first marriage, and a revelatory interview with the former teenage girl, Jean Miller, who inspired his classic story For Esme - With Love and Squalor.

It also has an account of how Salinger, who supposedly shunned Hollywood for much of his life, nearly agreed to allow Esme to be adapted into a feature film.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

In preparation for my wife returning to Texas from her summer vacation in southern California, I spent some time sprucing up the apartment. There are two "things" that show their age in an apartment: the carpet and the stove top drip pans. I can't do much about the carpet except vacuum; it's in great shape except for worn spots where most used.

The stove's drip pans get really bad over time. My daughter said a Brillo pad would work well, but I don't think so, and even if it did, it would have taken a lot of elbow grease and time. And they would not have looked all that new when all was said and done.

So ... off to Wal-Mart. I did not bring the old drip pans with me. I assumed they were all the same. Nope. At least four common types: Type A, Type B, Type C, and Type D, each with two different sizes.

Back home to bring the old drip pans in to compare. Type C.

Wal-Mart had the other three types but not Type C. But it makes sense. So ... off to Target.

Target had Type C, but just barely. I took the last set.

May has not yet noticed the "new" stove top. We'll see how long it takes.

But it was well worth it. Makes the apartment look new.

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Baltimore and Ferguson

Among all public high school students, Asian/Pacific Islander students had the highest graduation rate (93 percent), followed by Whites (85 percent), Hispanics (76 percent), and American Indians/Alaska Natives and Blacks (68 percent each).  -- google search