Join us for the very first Hourlings Podcast!
Hope you enjoyed it! Keep writing my friends!
Edit 2020-12-09: Updated the link to the video to point to our official Finely Structured channel: Channel 137.
Melk, Austria, is a small, monastery town in North-Central Austria. I visited there in ten years ago today, in 2010, on a trip across Austria. Melk was our first stop as we left for there right after landing in Wien.
2010 was kind of a melancholy year for me since I decided to become a Vegetarian for just that year. I wasn’t ready so reverted back to meat in 2011, but a couple years ago I stopped liking the taste of meat so I went back to vegetarianism. The sad thing was that here I was in Austria and I couldn’t eat authentic Wiener Schnitzel.
The sky was clear that day, perhaps too clear, and the buildings of the abbey shown beautify. I wish the photo could give it justice but the iPhone 3G back then was just not up to snuff.
That said, the Chapel was lovely and I did like how that photo turned out. I love Austria and hope to return someday. Grüß Gott!
EDIT 2020-12-12: Forgot to post this on the day in question. It was originally scheduled for posting on Thursday, 22 October, 2020. Sorry for the delay.
Can you help my friend Paul to electrify American classic cars to make them run on clean, domestic energy? Please help fund Paul Littell‘s GoFundMe for this.
Today is the last day you can leave comments for the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy with respect to an electric car rebate for both new and used Electric Vehicles. If you do wish to leave comments, please try to watch the video attached to the comments form.
For the record, here is my testimony:
Thank you Delegate Reid for proposing HB717. I am sorry it’s taken so long for me to add my testimony but what I want to say is to add, as I said in my committee testimony, that providing Rebates on new and used Electric Cars has long-term CO₂ benefits. Considering first when someone is interested in buying their first vehicle. If we put a rebate on that first vehicle, new or used, then the buyer will be more inclined to stick with electric for the second, third, and fourth car. What’s more, it makes her family more likely to continue the tradition of an electric car family.
Secondly, some of the most polluting vehicles in our Commonwealth are owned by those Virginians of lesser means. The problem for them is that electric cars are too expensive, even used electrics. We need a rebate that puts the $5,000 LEAF into the hands of those folks who now drive the most polluting ICE vehicles of all. This would give us the biggest bang for the buck. They are also usually the least fuel efficient vehicles, and thus moving them to use fuel generated right here in the Commonwealth would greatly reduce our local fuel imports.
That is why we need a rebate of the maximum amount for both the cheapest of vehicles and for first time car buyers.
This is also why it must be a Rebate at the dealership. It shouldn’t be like Maryland where the application is submitted and the buyer has to wait for money allocated in the General Fund. The Virginia bill should be based on a fuel tax, in this case, I think a tax should be passed on all coal and natural gas (CH₄, methane) plants which generate power for the electric car. That would have the dual benefit of pushing Dominion to move more of its generation to renewable. Since electric cars will be generating more revenue for the Power Utilities, using a tax on Dominion to pay for more revenue for Dominion seems very apropos. What’s more, this will get us out of the trap of waiting for more money from the General Fund when many used vehicle drivers can’t afford to wait that long. Indeed, ideally, if the dealership could apply the rebate and then file it with the Commonwealth to be reimbursed, then this would be idea for first time electric car buyers. If that can’t be done, having the dealership file the paperwork and send the check to the buyer would be acceptable.
Beyond that, please consider not the MSRP of a vehicle when setting the cap on the Rebate, but rather the value used to generate property tax. None of the feature add-ons like Tesla Autopilot should put a vehicle outside of the price cap. AutoPilot is a feature that makes electric cars safer, and pricing it out of the rebate could result in fewer cars with that feature and thus less safe vehicles.
I think the Maryland cap of $60,000 is good for Virginia as we are similar states. I would also accept $50,000, which is still available to the base model Tesla if Autopilot is ignored. But the top of the cap should be graded, such that, if the cap is $50,000, a $49,000 vehicle gets a maximum of $1,000, a $48,000 gets $2,000 max, until the price goes down to a point where the full cap can be realized. That would alleviate any shock by the price going up astronomically at $50,001.
As for how to scale the rebate, I would like our goal to be based on the total number of vehicle registrations in the Commonwealth. Ideally, we should target total registrations, like 1% of all vehicles registered in Virginia be the goal for full funding, and 2% of all registrations be 66% of the rebate, and 3% of all registrations grant 33% of the rebate. I don’t think those are necessarily the best drawdown numbers, but I think the drawdown should be in those terms.
Finally, as I said, first and cheapest cars should get the biggest rebate, regardless. But for vehicles not in those categories, that still fall under the price caps, I’d like a sliding scale based on the battery pack size. Any battery rated at least 10kWh or more would qualify for the full rebate, but each kWh less removes 10% from the rebate. Thus, a 5kWh battery gets 50% of the rebate.
Thank you for reading my comments and I look forward to the final report.
Testimony by Jeffrey C. Jacobs to the Virginia DMME
I’m quite fond of the sliding scales in terms of tapering rather than full cutoff for the rebate and the reduced payout for smaller electric car batteries. I didn’t mention the poverty rate and left it vague in those terms, letting others fill in those details. I also spelled Delegate Reid’s name incorrectly, though it is fixed here.
The DMME plans to have its final report ready around October so it’ll be interesting if they incorporate any of my ideas into the final bill. I wish I could have attended the original public session but the news got to me too late. This is all I could do.
I miss cruising upon a cloud these days, but I hope this passes so more can enjoy the pleasure!
Join me to find out how I like my new job, the exciting plans I have for the upcoming year, and so I can give a personal thanks for your personal friendship!
Please note, the official start time is 20:00 because I want to make sure not to start it before I finish my first full day of work at the new job. If I finish sooner, I will open the room earlier. This is, after all, an exciting time for me. My first new job in 18 years, and the first of four steps on the route to make me a better man, and much, much happier!
This event is opened to everyone who claims to know me! All of my software colleagues, all of my fellow authors, fellow science readers, fellow Doctor Who fans, fellow cosplayers, fellow Electric Car drivers and enthusiasts, all of my Equal Rights Amendment sisters and brothers in arms, all of my National Popular Vote Interstate Compact supporters, all of my avid gaming friends, all of my friends abroad except those in Europe—have your kip, mates—all of my fellow Toastmasters, all of my fellow aviators, all of my fellow musicians, tous mes amis qui parle français oder Deutsch или по-русский o italiano, my acting friends and my friends who eschew meat!
The only thing I ask is you be respectful, kind, and know that I hope you all consider any friend of mine a potential friend of yours!
There is a password to this event. It’s not hard to guess if you know me but if you want to know, and you are reading this on from Twitter, message me, on Tumblr, message me, on LinkedIn, again, message me, or join me via the Facebook event. Or, just comment on this blog, with your email address, and I will mail it to you.
See you all next Wednesday!
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Today I tendered my official resignation with the Naval Research Laboratory. I worked at the Laboratory for 18 years, under three Presidents and many Congresses. In that time, I pushed for at work EV Charging in the FAST Act, I started the NRL EV Group (link accessible within NRL), I sang with Polly and the Saccharides (no link available), and I even gave some Toastmasters speeches (NRL Link).
I very much enjoyed my time there and really am sad to go but I have been having so many problems paying for #CO2Fre and its maintenance that I have no choice but to accept a new job in the private sector. My only other solace—besides finally getting to write code again—is that I can finally use a part of my McGill degree that I’ve not been able to exercise beyond writing fiction.
Thus, it’s not so much an end, but a new beginning. And who knows what the future may bring! After all, I would like to return to Federal Service on day and accrue at least two more years to get my FERS to 1.1%. The only thing for sure is I’m a lot less available as a coder now.
Finally!
TeslaFi had been spamming me with news about TeslaOS 2020.16 for a while and I’ve been itching to see what, after giving us the amazing stop at a stop sign in the last minor update.
Turns out, not much. I am mostly unimpressed by Tesla with this update, though nonetheless very appreciative. Autoformatting a DashCam drive—I wonder if it supports 2TB yet—and a better layout for Easter Eggs are, after all, improvements, even if the Easter Eggs aren’t really hidden gems anymore.
The coolest new feature, though, is the new SuperCharger filter, allowing the driver to only see Version 3 stations and filter out all the slower ones. I love the fact that I have free, lifetime SuperCharging, and one of these days, I’m gonna cross the continents with that perk.
Overall, I’m not disappointed despite being underwhelmed. And one rumor is that this, or a soon to be released version will add V2G to the Tesla. I can’t wait until that rolls out as the Tesla Battery Pack may make for a new, mobile Powerwall. Mind you, even if #CO2Fre could do V2G, my house isn’t equipped for it anyway. So, even if it doesn’t have V2G, it’s still a cool update!
Gentle reader, if you have been keeping up with me since 11 February of this year, you know that I have been posting once a day since then. As such, today marks a hundred days of a hundred daily posting. Through that, I’ve shared with you exciting electric car news, updated to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, my struggles to get the Equal Rights Amendment to be our Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, written about my many works of fiction, and the many books of nonfiction I voraciously read to be a better scientist. I’ve shared with you my cosplay adventures, and my love of Doctor Who, my love of games, and a bit of my speaking in tongues as well as delivering speeches and singing to my heart’s content. I’ve talked about international travel and how I love to fly there in my own plane, discussed my acting and my dietary needs. And most of all I’ve told you I’m an excellent coder who is always keen for new work. Thanks for riding with me as we cruise upon the cloud to another one hundred posts!
The sun went down the sky. Way up high, the clouds told me that they knew.
Harrison, George, “Tired of Midnight Blue”, Extra Texture: Read All About It, 1975 LP.
Today was one of those days that could have gone better, but with so many people asking for interviews, it was hard to focus on my TED Talk for an interview. I had anticipated how difficult it would be to give an extemporaneous speech with so little time to plan it, but so be it. I tried to keep the entire morning free, but one interview moved from Wednesday to Tuesday, squeezing me ever further.
In the end, I failed, and I accept that. I don’t know what turned my interviewers off, but I have other job opportunities I’ve just this evening so I’m just going to move on and forget about all the effort I put into that position. After all, I did just sign two memo to accept a pending offer so it’s not like I have nothing to fall back on. And, who knows, maybe they wouldn’t offer me enough money anyway.
I’m just tired. Tired of sleepless nights, of midnight blue. And as I love that obscure George Harrison song, from the obscure solo album Extra Texture: Read All About It, I could think of no more appropriate way to express my mood. The song is deep and sorrowful, steeped with lament to a almost jazzy-blues beat.
The sun came into view. As I sat with the tears in my eyes.
Harrison, George, “Tired of Midnight Blue”, Extra Texture: Read All About It, 1975 LP.
Tomorrow will be a new day, and who knows what it will bring. Sometimes, I think about the pain the Hypochondriac causes me. The hours I had to spend, insult after insult, belittlement and cruel advice. How I long to be with someone who appreciated me and all I try to do. Because, in the end, I’m Tired of Midnight Blue.
Thanks for reading and next time won’t you sing along with me?
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