Yes, I have a tire guage

Hey people. If you click the title up there, you'll be directed toward the blog of my friend Patrick. He works for the channel 6 news in Tulsa, OK. I really wanted him to show me the studio, but he's a busy man ;-). Anyways in this post he has some ideas on using up half-charged batteries, and wanted my opinion (and yours, because you know better than I do ;-)). If you'd like for the rest of this post to make sense, you should probably go read his first, because, well, I'm lazy, and that's that.

Alright, Patrick, you engaged me, but there's no way I'm just going to comment on the battery thing. One at a time, then ...

Let me start with: Frankly, I was a little annoyed with Obama's tire gauge comment. I know how to take care of my car. I own several tire gauges, and Obama instructing me to go out and check my tire pressure to save on gas was just a little bit insulting to me. Dude, you are running for public office--not lead mechanic. Don't tell me how to look after my car. Granted, the comment probably wasn't intended for folks like me who understand that low pressure in tires is no good for many reasons. But actually, I *do* expected everyone to have a tire gauge and check their tires when they look a little low. To not do that is irresponsible and dangerous. That should be part of the driving test. What pressure should your tires be filled to?

And sure, they ignored the rest of Obama's energy policy after that, but that's what they do! McCain's energy policy is grossly overshadowed by the fact that he wants to expand domestic oil exploration ... maybe they should read the rest of his energy plan as well.

I agree that the gas 'crisis' is more of an inconvenience. But I'm not making minimum wage and raising a family, etc. It might be a crisis for those families--I couldn't say ...

And then there's recycling. Yay, recycling!! I also love it. I'm thinking about getting my restaurant to let me recycle their old ketchup bottles, because right now, they just throw them away :-( I'm also pretty terrible at taking my own recycling to the site (we don't have a pickup program in Norman), so it usually just sits in my apartment for awhile and annoys my roommate. I should move that actually ...

Patrick has an idea to use up the often wasted half-charge batteries channel 6 throws away by making a big old circuit board dealy and plugging in the used batteries and sending the power back into the grid, or whatever.

I want to say that no, the idea does not really sound plausible. Sorry, man. The voltage is really low (only 1.5 V in your standard battery), and they all have varying amounts of charge left which could royally screw things up, and I don't know enough about electrical engineering to try to devise a way to do it. I've gotten solar power to work, but you can adjust the voltage on those things, and I was in a group, and I'm not sure I could do it again on my own ... I'm thinking about it, and I'm not actually sure I know any electrical engineers. I know a computer science dude that had to take a few EE classes, but I think that's about it. Hey guys, did I forget someone? (Mike D, you're the closest to an EE who actually reads my blog ... what do you think?)

Patrick, I think the easiest solution to this problem would be to use rechargeable batteries instead, but that would take some work convincing your higher-ups, and rechargeables don't work forever . . .

Update: an inverter? Would that help? Me and electricity do not mix. It just seems like such a small amount of power ... I'm not sure, but I would guess the power it takes to run the studio lights/cameras/televisions/computer/whatever is orders and orders of magnitude greater than the little battery you just plugged in, thus making it insignificant ...