Livin' in the Runner

With a Midea "u" AC, tanks, fuel, oil, cables and a little storage shed came well under $1k all in for a pretty comfy setup (ordered while trying to sleep in the car during the last outage). Would definitely go whole house generator and/or batteries+solar if I was more settled in with a family, but going out in the rain to set it up only took a few minutes.

 

For running AC off generator, you need to be able to start it (spike current) without overloading generator. One way of doing it this is get soft start module.

https://www.eltwin.com/hyper/

 

If you find ethanol-free gas and put fuel stabilizer it can easily last 2+ years in a sealed container.

What makes gasoline go bad is ethanol content, it separates, then absorbs water, then you have acidic environment develop at the bottom of your gas tank.

You can also easily test gasoline for ethanol content - take a beaker, add gasoline to known line, then add water and stir. If level changes (water absorbs ethanol resulting in visually less gas and more clear liquid), there is ethanol in the gasoline.

 

From the man who brought us the term “Enshittification” comes “Too Big to Care!”

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/

It’s a Google-oriented piece but applies to any semblance of a monopoly/duopoly/etc. AT&T’s data breach is terrible (and includes MVNO’s) but do I want to shell out for Verizon or go to famously insecure T-Mobile?

I’m personally waiting to try out 5G home internet to buoy wired internet price increases since the couple years (total) I’ve spent in Texas (North Dallas area) we’ve had more outages (duration and frequency) both power and AT&T than a decade plus in northern and central Virginia.

It sucks that we feel we have to shell out for individual power solutions to compensate for Texas’ grid, but I guess that’s just the price of Freedom Electricity™ (/s)

 

Not needed for an inverter type AC since they are inherently "soft start"; I ran it off a small bluetti for a while just out of curiosity. Ramps up slowly to draw around 400w in normal mode. For a window unit the thing is decent looking, surprisingly quiet and cools really well in our brutal humidity.