Quick Update

I think I'm going to skip transcribing most of the Doble notes about the boiler, as many of them just seem to be little more than insignificant details about the unit, and only a few of them discuss things like modifications to the boilers, performance, or other information that one would really need to build one.

Brief Update

I did win the eBay auction on the Stanley book (Yay me!). Of course, shortly after I won the auction, I discovered that I could find it cheaper somewhere else. Not a [i]lot[/i] cheaper, but still a few bucks. Ah well, live and learn, I suppose. Now, I'm going to get back to transcribing more of the Doble notes. With luck, I'll have them all done and posted by the end of next month.

Stanley Steamer Manual on eBay

Given that I'm planning on cribbing from their automotive engine design, I figure that this is worth bidding on. (No, I'm not going to link to the auction. I don't want anyone who reads this to outbid me. ;)

A Little Good News, A Little Bad News

I don't even really know how to begin this entry, so I'll just start with the basic facts of the matter. My landlord, who is, in all respects, a great guy, hasn't been exactly happy with the Chrysler sitting in front of my place, so I've had a "for sale" sign on the car for about a year now. In that time, I've gotten a grand total of three people expressing interest in the car, until today. Today, I had a guy offer me nearly as much for the car as I paid for it, even though it hasn't ran in over a year, and the transmission was shot.

One of the problems I've had with this project is that I just haven't had the money to do much of anything. I couldn't even really afford to promote it to raise more money, much less buy the things that I needed to actually build anything. So, I had to make a choice: Keep the car, and maybe never get anything done, or sell the car, use the money for promotion and supplies, and then buy another car when I'm far enough along that I can do the work in a relatively short period of time. Given that the car was in rough shape, and that they're fairly cheap on eBay, I figured that it made more sense to sell the car and use the money for promotion and supplies. Cold comfort, I'll admit.

Still, I'm not giving up on this idea. I'd much rather drive a giant luxoboat than a Mini Cooper.

So there you have it. I could have kept my mouth shut about this, and most folks would probably never known that I sold the car. Maybe I'll benefit from my honesty, maybe not.

More Drilling Not Really Possible, It Seems

I'm laid up with an eye infection (please forgive any spelling errors, as I can barely see to type), so I've been catching up on podcasts that I've missed. One of which mentioned a New York Times article which says:

As President Bush calls for repealing a ban on drilling off most of the coast of the United States, a shortage of ships used for deep-water offshore drilling promises to impede any rapid turnaround in oil exploration and supply.

In recent years, this global shortage of drill-ships has created a critical bottleneck, frustrating energy company executives and constraining their ability to exploit known reserves or find new ones. Slow growth in oil supplies, at a time of soaring demand, has been a major factor in the spike of oil and gasoline prices.

In short, even if we were to open up ANWAR and other places for drilling, the oil companies wouldn't be able to take advantage of them. Current estimates have it taking something like 5+ years to get a well up and running, one can only assume that with the shortage of equipment, it'd take even longer to get the oil out of the ground.