Cleanup on Aisle B!

The refinery out in the barn, getting clean.

Since it is summer and the weather is warm, and since I’m planning to be away for about 10 days I figured the time was right to do a “summer cleanup” in the BioDiesel refinery. This is easier said than done, as shutting down is a difficult process. From start to finish BioDiesel takes several weeks to make. Cleaning any part of the system requires that it be offline and empty for the cleanup. So over the past several weeks I’ve been doing a sort of ‘rolling shut-down” of the system. I started at the beginning – the settling tanks. This is where waste oil goes into two large barrels to sit and settle out. Water and food particles settle to the bottom. The barrels are inverted and have twin drains, one set flush with the bottom of the barrel, the other extended up about 6 inches or so above the bottom. One at a time I emptied them out (making BD all the way) and cleaned them when done. I actually took the opportunity to swap in a new barrel for my oldest setting tank. I used to have a 30 gallon poly barrel, now it has been replaced by a 55 gallon olive oil barrel. You can see it at the back, it is the blue one on the right. I fill from the left side via a large funnel, and the barrels self-level between themselves. Next I dismantled the wash and dry tanks and cleaned them up a bit. Neither were in bad shape, unlike the settling tanks. Finally I Drained the MeOH recovery system and am in the process of transforming it from a prototype to a finished and refined item. This means relocating it to a position near enough to the processor to plumb it directly downstream from it. This will clean up the process a lot. That will have to wait until I get back though.

What I’ve done recently though is wash down the whole area. Due to veggie oil spills the area where I work was filthy. You could literally no longer see concrete on the floor, it was one big stain, combined with a lot of ground-in dirt and oil-absorbent that I’ve used to clean up spills. I pressure-washed, which did a fair job. But the miracle trick was taking a bit of the Potassium Hydroxide (KoH) used in the BioDiesel process and spreading it on the wet floor. KoH is a cleaning agent used in brewing and wine-making. It does an AMAZING job of breaking up the oil in the surface of the concrete and allowing it to be washed away. I used probably less than a cup of the stuff, just lightly sprinkling it around the wet floor and sitting overnight. Gently hosing it off in the morning, followed by a second application where I missed the first time. After a few days I went back and pressure-washed again. Look how clean it is:

Clean Concrete!

I’ve started re-filling the settling tanks, with the goal of being able to start refining again upon my return. Of course what did I do to my nice clean floor already? Spilled some veggie oil of course! sigh.

Car Photo of the Day: The Bugatti in the Living Room.

This photo was taken in 2008 at the Classic Motorcar Rally. We had a rest stop at the home, and collection, of a rather… shall we say eccentric… car lover. Living on Marrowstone Island, at the north end of Puget Sound, this gentleman has literally built his house around his car collection, the centerpiece of which is this Bugatti.

2009 West Coast Round Trip Father-Son Roadtrip: Prep work

After dinner tonight I spent some time in the barn playing “Ultimate Tetris”, that is trying to make the most of the Jaguar’s miniscule boot. Normally I have a tools & spares kit that I just toss into an old leather vintage suitcase and put it in the boot. This works great for weekend rallies such as the one my father & I did a few weeks ago, but for a ~10 day drive where we’ll need as much luggage space as possible it just won’t cut it. Takes up too much precious boot space. Tonight I unpacked the big tool & spares suitcase and distributed it between the spare tire well under the boot and a smaller vintage suitcase I have. The latter will ride on the luggage rack, along with our tent (we’ll be camping occasionally) and a few other items. The boot will hold our actual luggage.

I was planning to leave on Tuesday of next week. This date was chosen to give me time to wrap up a big project I’ve been working on at work. This project has taken up a lot of my time for more than a year as it involves a huge change in one of our most important systems and services. My role has been research and vendor negotiations, as well as planning. I managed to get my part wrapped up earlier this week, so I’m thinking of moving my road trip schedule up a few days and leaving on Sunday. We could tag along with the Seattle Jaguar Club’s Mt. Rainier Tour to start the day, and then head to Portland and try to meet up with the Reyns’ who are there for the vintage races. We’ll shoot for visiting the Evergreen Air Museum next, likely Monday morning. Then south. Stay tuned for more!

Car Photo of the Day: Another Interior

Along the same lines as the last CPotD, here’s an Interior that should be fun for the carspotters. Once again, I’ve blanked out one spot with a blaring car company logo, but otherwise it is untouched. Of course guessing the marque on this one won’t be too hard, the model however might take more depth.

Good luck!

In other news, I posted another review of a classic car, the XK 120, which can be read here.

2009 Classic Motorcar Rally: Final results & trip home.

Apologies for not posting this in a timely fashion. As usual my arrival home triggers a complete change in priorities and the wrap ups get postponed.

On the Sunday morning after the rally finished we gathered in the ballroom for the results and a nice brunch. To our eternal surprise Dad & I finished 4th in class, and 5th overall, which means that we actually improved over last year’s 6th place finish. This despite having blown an entire morning’s worth of checkpoints on Day 1! We accumulated 49 penalty points over the course of the rally, but only 11 of those were on-course, meaning that had we managed to stay on-course on Day 1 we’d likely finished in the top three cars. There is no way we could have won 1st place, as the Chockie-Slavich team in the little red Alfa managed to only accumulate THREE points the entire rally. The Beckers in the old Pontiac came in 2nd with 8 points, and the Olsens in the BMW CS came in 3rd with 18 points. The Swansons driving the BMW Z3 accumulated 22 points to win the Modern class and capture 4th overall.

We were awarded trophies for our performance, which in typical Doug Breithaupt style are model cars. Ours are BMW 503 roadsters, plus my car received a trophy for the best-finishing British car, which is a model of a Series 3 E-type.

Dad & I packed the car and headed up to Swartz Bay to catch a BC Ferry over to the mainland. We arrived within 20 minutes of a sailing to Tsawassen and were loaded aboard the big boat.

loaded on Deck 5

We left the car and found a comfy spot on one of the passenger decks. I occasionally wandered outside to fire off a few photos to capture the atmosphere of the ride for you:

Leaving Swartz Bay. Portland Island on the left, Vancouver Island on the right

I call this on the BOOM FERRY as it is obviously set aside for flammable & explosive loads they don't want on the big boats.

Exiting Active Pass, which is a narrow passage separating Mayne Island and Galiano Island, and looking north-east across the Georgia Strait to the Lower Mainland. You can just see Point Roberts (a geopolitical oddity) in the US at the right edge of the horizon.

A similar size BC ferry passed us going southbound through Active Pass, which was quite a sight. Two big ferries simultaneously crossing a very narrow, twisting channel:






After we made landfall at Tsawassen we drove north(a tad unintuitive) then east to get to the US border. The status sign on Highway 99 said the Peace Arch Crossing had a 90 minute wait, and the truck crossing queue was 60 minutes. I declined both and continued east to the next crossing just north of Lynden, WA. There the wait was measured in less than 5 cars. We zoomed through and headed home down I-5, arriving home mid-afternoon. We celebrated our excellent standing with a dinner at La Hacienda with the entire family.

Robert McNamara and Lessons (un)Learned

While it was hard to catch in the never ending stream of supposed “news” coverage of some dead singing weirdo, one of the 20th century’s most important figures died this week: Robert S. McNamara. Best known as Kennedy & LBJ’s Secretary of Defense, essentially the man responsible for the US’ involvement in the Vietnam war, McNamara was also an executive at the Ford Motor Company. At Ford he is credited with the Falcon, and therefore virtually all of Ford’s subsequent small cars. McNamara also served in the USAAF in WW2, as well as a stint at the World Bank, seemingly the traditional home of disgraced members of the Executive branch.

To me he was always portrayed as a villian in history, both in the White House and at Ford. My eyes were opened to a new perspective when I viewed the Oscar-winning documentary “The Fog of War” a few years ago. It is literally a conversation with the man himself, and in it he reveals and reviews his errors, and draws lessons from them. It is truly wisdom passed on from an elder, and digestion of it should be required for anyone who find themselves in a position of leadership. McNamara breaks down his experience into eleven life lessons:

R.S. McNamara’s eleven life lessons
1. Empathize with your enemy
2. Rationality will not save us
3. There’s something beyond one’s self
4. Maximize efficiency
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war
6. Get the data
7. Belief and seeing are often both wrong
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil
10. Never say never
11. You can’t change human nature

These lessons were foremost in his mind as not long before the documentary was made, McNamara wrote a book which applied many of these lessons unlearned had failed us in Vietnam:

Eleven lessons from the Vietnam War

1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
4. Our judgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces, and doctrine.
6. We failed, as well, to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
8. After the action got under way, and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening, and why we were doing what we did.
9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgement of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.
Underlying many of these errors lay our failure to organize the top echelons of the executive branch to deal effectively with the extraordinarily complex range of political and military issues.

In reality these lessons do not really limit themselves to the conflict in southeast Asia in the 1960s ad 1970s, in fact they apply to virtually any conflict between nation-states. Substitute the word ‘Iraq’ into any of these lessons and you will find that they apply. It is a shame that this level of review was not considered in 2002/2003. The human and monetary capital saved would have been astounding.

Isn’t the life and lessons of this man far more important to our country than a dead drug-addled, gender/race-confused, singing-dancing, whack-job? Why is the media so obsessed with the latter, and ignoring the former? Do any of you wonder why I don’t watch television anymore? If so your answer is found in this situation.

Instead of watching the 24hr news cycle’s circle jerk over “MJ”, pull up a chair and watch The Fog of War right here. (Or go rent the DVD if image quality and sync issues drive you crazy.) There are many, many moments within it that are profoundly thought-provoking – such as at the 42 minute mark. The depth and impact of these words about and on humanity truly put the meaninglessness of the gloved one in perspective.

Your brain will thank you for it.