I messed up. Yesterday, while I was fine-tuning my Home Assistant YAML code, I had an idea for a quick change to the car charging protocol. Since I was already in Home Assistant, it just took a couple of clicks to get to the car charging code, make a simple one-line change, and get back to the Markdown problem. I did it so quickly that I pretty much forgot about it moments later. I didn’t test it. It was so simple, what could possibly go wrong?
When I eventually realized that the house battery state of charge was getting frighteningly low, I remembered the change and realized that it must have prevented the car charging from turning off when it needed to. I looked back at the code and the error in my logic was now obvious. I turned the car charging off manually and reverted my coding error. Fortunately, unless the weather changed dramatically, there was plenty of daylight left to get the batteries charged up again.
The weather changed. Dramatically. Clouds rolled in and we got ¾” of badly-needed rain. So, hooray for rain, but the battery charge was low. I didn’t feel like slogging through the rain to start the generator, so I convinced myself that we probably had enough power to get through the night. Had sunrise been at 4am, we might have made it. As it was, the sun didn’t rise until more like 6:30, and even then it was behind a thick cloud cover. At least it was light, and had stopped raining. We’d been out of power for a couple of hours, we have a freezer full of food, and I really wanted morning coffee. Hot morning coffee. I slogged down and started the generator.
One of our neighbors’ homes is actually closer to the generator than we are, and the thing is a noisy beast. They’ve assured me that the sound of the generator doesn’t bother them, but I’m not sure they felt the same way at 6:30 this morning. I’ve long wanted a sound-dampening enclosure for the generator, but haven’t found any on the island and when I once tried to order one from Zombiebox, they quoted the shipping at $275. Ouch.
I had the idea of getting a large doghouse that I could equip with sound-dampening material and improved ventilation and a through-wall exhaust extension kit. Amazon showed me dozens of doghouses that would work, but every single one was either “Currently unavailable” or at checkout said:
This item cannot be shipped to your selected delivery location. Please choose a different delivery location.
It’s pretty frustrating to go through many items and not find even one that was actually in stock and could be delivered here. I’d just write it off to island living, but I occasionally had the same thing happen when I lived on the mainland, and sometimes I had no idea why.
I checked with Costco, as they have been good about deliveries here, but they don’t have any doghouses. I checked with the local home improvement store and also with Lowe’s, but neither had any offerings. Finally, in desperation, I checked Walmart. I’ve only been in Walmart stores a couple of times, and I found the experience anxiety-provoking. I’d never shopped on their web site, and I didn’t really want to but I felt I had exhausted other options.
Walmart had a doghouse that seemed as though it would probably work well. It was only $90. They asked for my zip code, and they proclaimed “FREE shipping, arrives by Mon, Nov 10.” At checkout, though, they showed my $89.99 doghouse, “Free shipping,” but a $150.23 “Location surcharge.” So the “free” shipping on my $90 doghouse will actually cost $150. That’s some MAGA-level spin on the word “free” there.
—2p