kerryoneal.com

I forwarded some of the homebrew information for making your own biodiesel to my brother who is a chemical engineer. This is what I got back this morning…too funny not to post:

“Hi Kerry,

It pisses me off that competent, prudent people can be sued and lose their life savings when they did everything right, and then you see wackos manufacturing biodiesel in their living rooms and promoting the practice! First of all, I don’t know much about biodiesel, but here is my quickie assessment:

Regarding performance claims - I find it hard to believe that a homemade product with variable quality can “make your diesel motor run better, last longer, and run cleaner.” I’m sure a refinery engineer would beg to differ in opinion. By the way, it’s an engine, not a motor.

Regarding the economics – I can’t understand how one can take ingredients costing over $1.00/gal, blend them up, generate a 20% waste stream, use lots of energy for heat and mixing, and end up with a product that costs $0.60/gal. I guess the oil is considered free (though here in Houston, spent cooking oils are sold for around $1/gal and recycled as low grade lube oils such as chain lube). Also, I guess these environmentalist-types are dumping the 20% glycerine stream and the 100% vol/vol wash water emulsion down their kitchen drains.

Regarding the legal aspects – it appears the home-based manufacturers of biodiesel don’t intend to pay fuel taxes. This could be the single reason the economics work – but it could get them in trouble.

Regarding the technical aspects – biodiesel may be common in the future, but I WOULD NOT be manufacturing it anywhere around my house. Think of it as a modern day moonshine still. Find some remote mountain land and make it there. It scares me that this article claims to be disclosing all the safety requirements you need to know, then they script a procedure that involves heating methanol mixtures. Holy Cow! Methanol has a flash point of 50F and is poisonous. It is one of the most dangerous chemicals I sell and all equipment around it must be explosionproof – no arcing light switches, blenders and the like.

Regarding the practicality – who has 2 days of manufacturing and 3 weeks of “drying” time on their hands? Obviously, you’ll need several batch reactor vessels and a storage tank – unless of course this is just a curiosity.

Regarding one last nit-pick – the following quote surprised me: “Still, for every gallon of vegetable oil you use, that’s one gallon of fossil-fuel saved, and that much less carbon in the atmosphere.” Either the author doesn’t realize that SVO contains hydrocarbons, or he is smarter than I think and he expects your vehicle to be stranded on the side of the road – which might just be one step toward saving this planet.

Later.”

I sent him some more biodiesel info and can’t wait for the next response.

Last biodiesel article…

The future of housing may lie in prefabricated structures, but I believe significant business logic will need to be applied to get there.

The latest edition of Dwell magazine focuses on the future of prefab possibilities. One of the more interesting articles showcases the FlatPak House idea of Charlie Lazor. The design is very impressive, but I was disappointed to see the $200 per foot estimated cost for building the system in my area. That cost includes many things right down to appliances, but does not include site work, permits, utilities, survey, or of course, the land.

Caught an interesting investment program this weekend. Mad Money with Jim Cramer. This guy runs around on stage setting off sound effects and ranting stock market advice. Rumor has it he knows what he’s talking about, and the floorshow is quite entertaining.

*update - He has an email service on his website, TheStreet.com, that allows you to follow his own stock purchases on a minute-by-minute basis. I tried to sign up for the 14-day trial, but they still wanted my credit card. I was afraid of forgetting to cancel and purchasing something I’d never use.

I love playing “what if” scenarios with money. I can entertain myself for sometime with a simple loan calculator, which is why I was very excited to find Calculators at Dinkytown.net. They have some great calculators that help you make descisions about insurance, finances, and life. Plus almost all of the calculators have graphics to help display their results.

I now know I have a life expectancy of 82 years. Now I can use that figure in some of my other calculation fun.

I’ve always dreaded paying my phone bill every month. Not that it’s outrageously high, or anything. It’s more about the components of it.

I understand my basic service. I’m getting a service and I must pay for it. Very simple. What I don’t understand are the:

• federal excise tax
• franchise fee
• 911 access fee

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I am a huge fan of the IBM ThinkPad laptops. I keep a little X40 connected to me most hours of the day. So I was more than a little concerned when the news came out regarding IBM selling its PC business to a Chinese company. I assumed, much like the newspaper headlines, that this was the end.

Well, that’s been a few months ago. Since then we’ve had to send some IBM computers in for standard warranty work and there seems to be no change in the type or quality of service. This morning I jumped on the IBM website to look at purchasing some of their cool new fingerprint authentication hardware for my notebook, and ran across this article putting most of my fears to rest. So now I’m really confused about what the change does mean.

Oh, well. While I was there I also ran across a pretty cool series called “Legends of Thinkpad” where you can watch movies about a ThinkPad being burned, run over by a truck, and left under a tree for a year. Pretty cool.

I just don’t get the whole “Wal-Mart = Evil” paradigm. They’ll soon be breaking ground on a new Super Wal-Mart in my town and I couldn’t be more excited. But to hear the protests and absolute cries of outrage, you’d think it was the coming of the Antichrist.

Ok. I understand that Wal-Mart has some challenges. There are charges of unsatisfactory managment principles and employee mistreatment, but can we not expect that? I mean ,1.5 million employees, people. They’re basically running their own nation spread around nine countries.

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One of the great new uses for technology I’ve found is the download and management of digital audio books. Audible.com, iTunes.com, and now even Walmart.com are getting into this space. I download to a little Creative Muvo 256MB I picked up at Wal-Mart for less than $100, and now I’m never without six audio books where ever I go.

One of my favorite recent listens is a free posting from Audible.com from the Library of Congress lecture series on “Digital Future”. The first in the series is David Weinberger talking about the Web, blogging, and new forms of data management are changing the ways we access information and interact with each other.

David Weinberger is a contributing author to the Cluetrain Manifesto where a lot of these ideas are discussed in more detail.

So I’m only hours into running WordPress as my software of choice, and I can honestly say I’m impressed. In the past, I’ve run PostNuke, PHPNuke, Geeklog, and others, but the simplicity (and dare I say elegance) of WordPress is quite nice.

It may not have all of the features and whiz-bang gizmos that the others possess, but for what I want to accomplish it’s perfect.

Is biodiesel the answer to our fossil fuel woes. Rising gas prices have some saying “yes.”

OK. So it’s not quite as cool as running your vehicle on hydrogen or electricity, but as a non-fossil fuel alternative, biodiesel is not bad. And I especially like the fact it pairs environmentalists with diesel vehicles.

I was first interested in biodiesel when I ran across a backfile to a website under construction by The Big Farm in Portland, OR. The site was for the Ecologic Fuel Company and it was nicely styled. It sounded like they could be an interesting investment opportunity, but now I can’t find any reference to the company on the web. As anyone who has made recent investments in oil stocks, I’ve made good returns. However, as oil prices continue to rise, the market has to be looking hard for alternatives. I site the recent sales in hybrid autos as an example.

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