solarbird | noisy homes and quiet data

I believe Ben Bernanke has bet wrong by betting on stable energy prices, not that he has a lot of options available in his toolkit. Here's one reason why, as Mexico's offshore oil production giant field enters a decline which may realistically be precipitous - and which is the kind being seen far too often in offshore fields. For those playing along in the home game, that's bad, for more than one reason given how completely non-responsive American (and, really, global) society has been to this issue to date.

Saturday's token: 0.4 miles
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1189.7
Miles out of Rivendell: 724.7
Miles out of Lothlórien: 269.7
Miles to Rauros Falls: 139.3

In other news, I did another assload of work on the front porch and front stairs today, getting all the post tops cut down as needed, getting paint and sealant and such put on, and getting the new caps on and in place and all the cleanup managed. Most of the paint needs a second coat, but I did as much as materials timing would allow today - which was a lot, it pretty much looks finished. Of course, that means, "looks like it used to, with no more flaking paint, only with caps on the posts," so if you didn't see it scraped and didn't notice all the paint coming off, it mostly looks like I spent 20 minutes putting caps on things, so pictures won't exactly knock anyone's socks off. There are three different kinds of caps, but they're in different locations which are serving different purposes, so I think they make sense. (One set for the balcony, one set for the main stairs (the minimalist ones, the only ones that'll fit in that location), and one set for the side stair going down towards the garage, where I didn't want to use glass as I felt they might be too likely to get jostled.)

Oh well, at least the day was pleasant. I want a hammock for the front porch now. ^_^

And does anybody know of any common household chemicals that'll patina copper quickly? I want to see what the simple copper caps will look like oxidised.