A Motley Fool financial advisory email arrived in my email box this week which caught my eye with a subject line reading “The death of diesel.” While this seems to predict dire news for those of use who are advocates for compression ignition engines, I’ll paraphrase Mark Twain and say that announcement of diesels death may have been greatly exaggerated.
Dear Fellow Investor,
Take a look at The New York Times from Monday, April 22. The front-page article begins…
“The natural gas boom has already upended the American power industry, displacing coal and bringing consumers cheaper electricity…
Now the trucking industry, with its millions of 18-wheelers moving products like potato chips, underarm deodorant and copy paper around the country, is taking a leap forward…”
Internal combustion engines are under pressure with advances in Hybrid, EVs and alternatively fueled or at least assisted propulsion, but really it just means fuel options are expanding, hardly “the death of.” As suggested by the article, natural gas may eventually replace some of the petroleum oil based fuels that power North America’s fleet vehicles and present opportunities in companies that convert engines and vehicles (aka: WPRT), but that hardly brings about “the death of diesel.” New technology and the cheaper and more abundant natural gas is a good thing and means petroleum and bio-forms of diesel “fuel” will have to compete which in turn is an overall positive for our lifestyle and economy. Petroleum will still be available and will still be a very attractive fuel … besides, even with the natural gas boom and improving technologies, diesel is still the most available, portable and efficient fuel available. Try lugging batteries or natural gas capable of powering a vehicle 500+ miles without refueling … and for those of us using diesel, alternatives should keep fuel prices more competitive. The prediction of “the death of diesel” is a bit premature.
Just saying “married” and seeing these photos is making me feel old!
I’m posting a couple brother-sister photos from our family trip to Montana back in 1999 and this past weekend. That day was about Taylor so we purposely didn’t mention Katelyn’s upcoming birthday.
This year, I won’t be seeing Katelyn for her birthday, but will still wish her one by email, blog post and probably a phone call tonight – boy are we ever connected nowadays! I don’t feel too bad for her as I know someone who loves her just as much do will make her birthday special.
EDIT:Still working the bugs out of the WordPress plug-in Postie (missing the text?) when it comes to including images and video via email from my iPhone and iPad. The above is a short test video demonstrating shutting down an idling 1982 Mercedes Benz 300DT 5-cylinder diesel using the manual shutoff under the hood.
We proudly celebrated my son Taylor’s Miami University’s college graduation this weekend at Yager Stadium in Oxford Ohio and later with more family downtown Cincinnati for dinner. Brenda and I enjoyed seeing our son and his fellow college graduates in their caps and gowns enter the stadium, even if the weather was on the cooler side – it would have been perfect for a late autumn football game.
President Hodge’s address to the graduating class was great and the writer and author Will Haygood the commencement speaker was exceptional. He was an excellent invite and his personal story as a 1976 Miami University graduate struck a chord since his major was in Urban and Regional Planning (one of Taylor’s two majors). He also shared how life after Miami took a turn, as it does for many of us, and his education opened doors and passions in other directions. He became a reporter for several newspapers and eventually covered major stories for The Washington Post. One recent front page story was about the long time butler Eugene Allen who served as the Whitehouse butler for eight presidents and became the subject of a movie that will be release in the fall – The Butler (trailer). He left the graduates inspired and hopeful … and I expect as just as like those 174 years of Miami graduates in the past, they will make the most of their college degrees. It was particularly nice to have Taylor’s Grandpa Corbett with us and I know he enjoyed the day very much. The newlyweds, Drew and Katelyn were with us as well, although I wonder how these two hospital residents juggle their schedules and get enough sleep? Katelyn had just finished a 24 hour rotation and came with an hours sleep … she was dragging by the end of dinner.
Speaking of dinner, since Taylor has spent much of this year working on his urban planning senior capstone project in the Over-The-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati, we opted (his choice) to have graduation dinner downtown at the Mayberry Gasto Pub. Brenda’s sisters family joined us for the celebration and pretty much took over the small restaurant for much of the early evening. All in all it was a great day and we had a great time. Congratulations Taylor … you continue to make your parents proud everyday.
Including a slide show below viewable by those who are in my G+ circles. Ask me and I’ll add you to a circle as I’m trying to use this as a way to make some photos viewable but limited — we’ll see how it work?
Google has change their embedded slideshow option, but here’s the link.
After almost throwing away my older version of the Blue Snowball microphone, I decided to plug the USB mic into my new iMac running OSX 10.8.3 … and to my surprise it worked great for a couple VOIP connections. For those of you familiar with this original USB mic, it was not supported with firmware updates or updateable beyond an old XP gain control patch. It didn’t work well on my older early Intel based Mac Mini or any of my Windows 7 installs, but only ran on Windows XP.
Now I haven’t testing it on all of the programs on the iMac or my Parallels install running Windows 7, but it is nice to have an external microphone for those times when the internal mic on the iMac picks up too much intercom sound. The Blue Snowball isn’t perfect, but it might help isolate extraneous background noise when all that is wanted is a persons voice.
An article in Thursday’s WSJ highlighted airline loyalty programs and just how easy it was to book a frequent flyer seat. The data collected by Switchfly Inc, looked for 2 seats on 14 round trip dates between June and October. The regular survey determined which airline made it the easiest to get the seat when flyers wanted.
No surprise, but the bigger airlines like US Airways, Delta Air Lines and American finished at or near the bottom (United the exception). Virgin Australia, AirTran (now Southwest owned) and JetBlue were near the top with Southwest Airlines flyers able to book 100% of all of the requested seats. Well done Southwest.
I was up late Tuesday night taking apart the well crusted rear brakes on the new to me 31 year old Mercedes Benz 300D Turbodiesel. It was a slower than usual process as the quality brakes were nearly down to metal to metal contact and so will require new rotor/drums as well as hoses and pads. No big complication, except that getting the assemblies apart took time. I took it slow to be able to reuse the pins and springs and used a little more liquid wrench and wire brushing rather than brute force. What is nice though is that all the parts are higher quality than I’m use too and they can be cleaned up to last another 30 years … not sure about the cylinder seals, but the are not leaking at the moment.
While I had the rear tires off, I gave the aluminum wheels a soak and scrub brushing. They are cleaning up nicely but show the same scrapes and scuffs that our previous MB 560SEL had back in the 1990s. I’m not sure if it is worth the time and effort to sand them smooth in order to repaint?
One minor detail is that one of the rear lug bolts had been previously stripped out of the hub and tacked in place with some caulk/sealant. Hmm, at least I have the lug bolt. Now to decide if a Helicoil is going to work for a lug bolt or if I should weld and re-tap?
Hmm … it looks like some kind of ancient diesel is parking in my garage? It has been a long time since I’ve looked at one of these beastly relics. (our last was an ‘87 MB 560SEL) The overall condition looks pretty good considering the old Mercedes Benz 300D Turbodiesel is over 30 years old and still lumbers down the road, although a in laid-back cruise mode. The odometer is just shy of 200K (middle age for a MB diesel) and everything is solid. I haven’t spotted much rust and beside some plastic crazing, the finish is good. One weak link is a no-go on the air conditioning. Mechanically, I’m hoping there is just a vacuum adjustments to be made for the hard shifting transmission. All in all, it is exciting to work on a diesel again.
I’ve posted a few Van Session links in the past and figured why not at a SiriusXM Jam_ON session recording a “Little Too Late.” It has been fun watching the Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers expand their audience last year as they toured the country. The “cream rises the top” and it is great to see talent recognized.
Dear Fellow Investor,
The overall condition looks pretty good considering the 