jc blog - tales of a modern-day nomadic hunter-gatherer

Follow jcomeau_ictx on Twitter This is the weblog of Intrepid Wanderer. You never know what you might find here; graphic descriptions of bodily functions, computer programming secrets, proselytizing for the antichrist, miscellaneous ranting and kvetching, valuable information on living off the land... if you don't share my rather weird interests you may want to try slashdot instead.

You can consider my Del.icio.us links an extension to my blog, as are my LifeTango goals and my other to-do items. My to-buy list is also public, but only for sharing any useful ideas that might be there; I'm not requesting charity, neither do I offer it.

You can find me easily in google searches, as jcomeau, jcomeau_ictx, or jcomeauictx. There are lots of other jcomeaus, but AFAIK I'm the only jcomeau_ictx out there so far.

If you want to comment on anything you see here, try the new Facebook comments, reachable by clicking the "[comment]" link at the end of each post. If for some reason that isn't working, go ahead and email me, jc.unternet.net. You know what to do with the first dot. Make the 'subject' line something reasonably intelligent-looking or it goes plunk! into the spambasket unread.

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2023-02-12-1209Z

Yesterday, at my workshop, I needed to check the voltage at the sprinkler relay input. The battery in the (digital) meter was dead. Opened it up, it was a carbon-zinc 9V, quite possibly the one that came with the meter; if so, it lasted about 10 years. Anyway, I didn't have a spare, and hate buying batteries anyway because they're predestined to be toxic garbage. So I tried zapping it (forward polarity) with the full 36-or-so volts from my solar panel for a few seconds. It worked! Who knows, I might get a few more years of life out of it with this trick. [comment]

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