Michael Graves

Open Live Writer: Goldilocks and the Three Bears

This blog has been in existence for some 19 years. For most of that time the various posts have been written in Open Live Writer. OLW is the open source successor to Windows Live Writer, which was a free Microsoft app. Last time I wrote about it was ten years ago when the Dot Net Foundation assumed the project and cast it into open source. As in many things, I am anomalous. I still use it routinely.

I was reminded of how anomalous I am when I recently had a problem posting to my site. This has happened periodically. Lightningbase, my long-time host, has various protections in place to keep people from doing nefarious things with the XML-RPC process that OLW relies upon to access WordPress. Occasionally, I have to ask them to tweak the host protections to allow me continued access from OLW.

Instrumentation Options for a Portable Generator

In various online forums, people are routinely asking for help when faced with a generator that’s being overloaded. This may be in the context of a food truck, mobile pet salon or delivering whole house backup power.

It’s believed that management guru Peter Drucker once said, “You cannot manage what you cannot measure.” I have been making a lot of use of that quote when offering answers to such questions. If you are placing a significant load on the generator, you need to monitor the load to know when you are nearing overload. Allowing it to overload is disruptive, time consuming and potentially dangerous. Without hard data to inform your decisions, you’re only guessing about how to address the problem.

Option #1: Built-in Load Monitoring

If you don’t yet have a generator, you might well consider instrumentation in making that choice. For example, my Harbor Freight Predator 9500 was one of the first of a new crop of high-power inverter models that became available in 2021. It does not have any built-in instrumentation. So, it was incumbent upon me to provide such capability externally.

In contrast, a bit over a year or two later a neighbor bought a Pulsar PGD95BISCO from Home Depot. This Pulsar if effectively a cousin to my Predator. They’re both made in China by Chongqing DK power machinery Co.,LTD. The Pulsar model was introduced later in February of 2023. To be competitive it has a few more features that the Predator. One of the nicer features is a built-in load meter.

The built-in LCD shows the output voltage, frequency and aggregate load on the generator in real-time. This is very handy. I wish my Predator had this feature.

Oh, bother. Where art thou? Base Power

I first wrote about Base Power back in May 2024. Inspired by Doug Lewin’s Energy Capital podcast, I signed up for the companies mailing list, in the hope of learning when they Austin-based company would be offering service in Houston. In fact, I’ve signed up twice!

We’ve received literally nothing from the company. Putting our address into a page on their web site they report “Great news! Base is coming to Houston soon! We’ll be installing in your area later this year.”

EVs & Corporate Branding

July 18, 2025
Michael Graves
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Back in February of 2019 we bought a new furnace…in a hurry. Our furnace went out during a cold snap. The old furnace died at about 5pm. I called my then favorite HVAC contractor. He hustled over to investigate, delivering a prognosis by 7pm. He rightly noted that the 25 year old Kenmore furnace had given its last gasp. It could be repaired, but getting the parts would take days. The wise choice was to replace it outright.

I was thinking ahead to a new AC unit, so I wanted a top-end American Standard natural gas furnace with a variable speed blower. That would allow us to install a high-efficiency, variable speed air conditioner in the future.

It happened that he had exactly what we wanted on stock. It was sitting in a warehouse, ready to be installed in his own home, which was a new build. His crew installed that furnace in our house the very next morning. By 10am the heat was back on. It all happened so fast. While I doubt we got a bargain, he certainly earned our gratitude.

Backup Power: Quarterly Testing and Being Neighborly

July 16, 2025
Michael Graves
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As we are now well into Hurricane Season 2025, I’m thinking about out backup power arrangement. We’re mostly in good shape.

Quarterly Testing

Last week I exercised the Predator 9500 inverter. It needs to run for about 30 minutes every 90 days, just to keep it limber. I typically put a few ounces of gas in the tank and let it run connected to the garage until it runs dry. While I always add stabilizer to the fuel I intend to use in the generator, I’m very careful to always run it dry. I never want to leave any gas in the tank, or worse in the carburetor.

T-Mobile 5G: An Experiment with Fixed Wireless Internet Access

t-mobile-gateway-v4-front In the next few weeks we’ll crest the first anniversary of Hurricane Beryl, which had quite an impact hereabouts. In the storm we lost power for a less than two days. However, our Comcast/Xfinity internet access was out for a week. As someone who works full-time from a home office, that was a problem for me. As a contract IT worker, no internet access means no money. No buénno.

My laptop, a Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen7 from 2019, has the optional 4G mobile data access module. It’s part of our Mint Mobile family plan. So, at some level I can be online with just the laptop. That provides a minimal level of productivity.

Similarly, I can tether my desktop and perhaps one or two small devices to my mobile phone. That’s ok for an afternoon, but not a good solution for a week or more.

The 4G speed test on the laptop screen reflects 4G LTE access, not 5G. Also, Mint Mobile data rates are often lower than T-Mobile’s own clients. Even though T-Mobile now owns Mint, the MVNO customers are given lower priority on the network.

Then it occurred to me that all the mobile carriers had been promoting fixed wireless service in the neighborhood. In post-Beryl Houston, power was out at our home, but not too far away there was a T-Mobile store that was open for business as usual. They had a 5G fixed wireless devices for $0 with $60/month and no contract term. It seemed like potentially a good solution. At least, there was little to risk in trying it on for size.