Wrong way, Close Call, Trimming load
So as I have been dealing with the BP one thing had been bugging me. As I reexamined the timeline I realized that the first appearance of symptoms, which I didn’t know at the time was the altered taste of my food two Fridays ago. That was the day after I had the stitches removed from my head from my MOHS skin cancer . The fact that the facial nerve for the right side originates on the left side of the brain (stitches on left) just made me wonder if there could be any sort of connection. So I left a message at my dermatologists office. He called me back on my way home from work last night.
I told him how I developed Bell’s Palsy right after the stitches removal and I just wanted to let him know and find out if he thought if there could be any connection to the surgery. He reiterated a lot of what I already read, that Bell’s Palsy is mostly a mystery as far as why it comes on with there being tons of different possible causes. He said that although the facial nerve for the right side does start on the left side of the brain, the pathway for it goes through your head and comes out near the right ear. He said that when you do a MOHS surgery there is always possibility of nerves getting affected but in this case any affect would be localized to the immediate surgical area. With my other surgeries I have experienced localized numbness which is normal.
The doctor was thorough in his explanation and seemed genuine in his concern for me developing BP. He suggested I follow up with a neurologist just to make sure I am doing whatever I can to ensure a full recovery. I thanked him for the call back and hung up feeling a little bit better that at least I explored that avenue. It would be nice to be able to put a very clear dot on the exact cause of this condition but I just don’t know if it’s possible.
My drive home also had a very angry 5 seconds when a woman missed the Prius by inches when she veered into my lane without looking. The dash cam captured the excitement which you can see below.
So when I got home last night I went out to the coop to hook up some load to my new solar power system. The box was sitting at 100% charge since it had nothing hooked up to it. Once I switched stuff over the power output jumped up into the 90 watt range. When I installed the system on Sunday I noticed a similar power draw which is higher than what I noticed when I did my original testing with the Kill-A-Watt meter. So anyway some very simple math reveals that I simply can not run that amount of draw off of a 1000WH battery all night long, the box would be out of juice before the sun has a chance to start recharging it. It made me think I should have went for the next size up on the Yeti which is a 1400WH battery. You always need to leave yourself some wiggle room.
I disconnected the floor fan from the Yeti and instead plugged it into the utility power. It was consuming close to half of the load so throwing that onto regular power made sense. With that switch the output number fell into the 50’s which should have allowed for more battery only run time. So once it was dark outside I did one more spot check of the Yeti and saw the load had now increased into the 70-75 watt range, wtf?? Well the onset of darkness meant that the LED christmas lights came on which draw a little bit of power but I think the bigger culprit was all of the infrared lights on the eight security cameras activating once darkness sets in, something I gave no thought about.
According to the display on the Yeti I still should have enough juice to make it through the night but it is cutting it too close for comfort. Of course this morning it is overcast and raining so until it clears solar regeneration is going to be minimal. As of 8AM the box said it still had about 2.5 hours of run time remaining. Of course I can’t go day to day with solar anxiety so I am going to have to redistribute the solar only load so that it has more margin for error. I can also see me getting another larger generator down the road for the coop so everything can be sun powered. I still have not had a chance to see how much current flows into the system in mid-day full sun conditions.. The dual 160 watt panels should be able to completely charge the box in those conditions. One of the cool features you can get with the higher end Yeti’s is wifi connectivity so you can see what the box is doing at all times via your phone.
Last night I edited the video from the solar project which is pretty funny, especially the end when I unexpectedly dash into the chicken area to swat Daelin off the back of one of the hens. I have a backlog of footage I still need to edit from Sunday’s EUC ride and I have close to 10 other video ideas written down that I need to make the time to shoot, edit and upload.