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Closure on Projects

It does do a blogger some good to mouth-off on the internet. After doing so -- about the great vice of putting tools down in such a reckless way that you can't find them three minutes later -- it helped me go on a massive cleanup campaign. 

It is not in front of me at the moment but I think that Thomas Edison visualized his thoughts and inventions as an excrudescence (?) from his head, somewhat like dandruff. I smiled thinking of tools and materials flying off my person, in random directions.

But today brings another issue: closure for a project, its difficulty, and whether it is objective or subjective. It's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that a project's end is fixed, absolute, and objective, when in fact much of it depends on us saying, 'Enough!'

There certainly is a disconsolate phase in the natural history of any project when we are like a hiker who is fooled again and again by false summits. The hiker keeps climbing, keeps making demonstrable progress, but the top keeps receding. This almost always happens on a convex surface.

So too the "end" of a project keeps walking away from us, as we walk towards it. It helped me to start moving in to the new trailer because working on an abode and living in it at the same time are difficult. It just naturally applies the "brakes" to a project. Otherwise you keep dreaming up improvements, or you become endlessly perfectionist and start re-doing some things.

It also helped cheer me up to finally receive the solar panels. Retro-grouch or not, I enthusiastically endorse true progress in the form of MC4 cables and connectors that they use these days. It used to be so slow to wire up solar panels by going in to the junction box, struggling to make a solid connection, and looking for grommets, etc.

And there they finally are: 480 Watts of solar panels. Wiring them up was fun, thanks to the MC-4 connectors. I am happy with the elastomeric white roof paint, too. Can a fellow really live without a supplementary generator? I am going to try.

Comments

Teri said…
I don't like generators, so I am hoping that you can live successfully without one - that will give me hope to get my next RV without one.
As long as AC is not needed/wanted solar is all I have had to use for the last three years.
Anonymous said…
Looking good.....now if only I could get my hubby to organize his tools.
Anonymous said…
I can't live with ongoing frustration gnawing at me, so I don't stop on projects until I can live with the result - without griping. On solar panels, short of running a solar fridge, you should find that you get along very well on your setup. I'm running a big desktop with multiple drives during the day, and viewing DVDs in the evening on 390 watts of panels pushing 420Ah of batteries. Rarely get below 25% discharge. I've got 3 independent systems, but that's the only one I really pound to any degree. A 300-watt pure sine inverter is my largest. I do watch what I use, and when, monitoring voltage. In sustained overcast, I can patch in a third 195W panel if I like (just by rearranging those MC4s) to aid the office pack. I've never had to consider buying and feeding a generator, and unless you love power tools and microwaves in the outback, I doubt you'll think you need one. Welcome to silent power (again)!
edlfrey said…
With no A/C I think you will be able to live just fine without a generator. You are back into a boondock location when?
It's all about weather and shade, isn't it? Remember that I have a refrigerator that runs on 12 Volt DC, not propane. That's about 90% of my daily energy budget.

Solar panels cost a lot less than they used to. I paid $1.33 per watt for these. So the economics has shifted away from the generator and towards solar. Still, I DO like camping underneath trees!
I should take off in 7--10 days. Notice I did not say "done".
Boonie

Take her up to 75MPH ...just to be sure your panels are attached right, if they are gone - then they flew back to China waiting for the next CT guy to place his order.
John V said…
Nice 480W solar array. Of course, 800W would have been better. Then you almost approach the big boy soalr array category. :-)
edlfrey said…
Of course 800W would be better IF he needed it. But if he does NOT NEED 800W then it is simply obsessive consumption for no purpose other than adhere to the American Standard that bigger is better.
Since I have 2,100 watts of solar and now there is a guy who has 3,000 watts of solar it's very hard for me to see how you would not use 800 watts.
Yes, Ed, John V and OverTheTop are in violation of the Prime Directive of this blog: seeking the beauty and rationality of living at the the point of Diminishing Returns. (Damn their souls! grin)

Of course, just as we do with sports fans (short for 'fanatic'), we smile good-naturedly (and condescendingly) at what is just fun and therapy from their point of view.