Loose Parts by Dave Blazek for July 12, 2024

They couldn’t fit the wind turbine in there.

Good one…

In Arizona, that would be called partly cloudy.

There will be an increase in the number of deaths on cloudy days.

This is how the term: “CLEAR” was developed. It means the sky is clear enough to generate enough power to defibrillate the patient.

In case you are wondering what it feels like to have 100 joules of electricity applied to your chest, I’ve had the experience.

I had a bout of atrial fibrillation a couple of years back. So we called 911 and they hooked me up. I then went into ventricular fibrillation. The team asked if they could zap me. I thought about it: life expectancy now measured in minutes or get zapped. I chose door number 2.

It’s like getting hit in the chest with a sledge hammer, but the pain only lasts a fraction of a second. My first reaction was to laugh as I looked at the ceiling through my outstretched legs. By the time I landed back in the seat, I had normal sinus rhythm, and I was feeling energized and ready to go. I told the medics, thanks for the jump start, but next time I’ll call AAA.

The next day I had a cardiac catheterization. The doctor went in looking for trouble. When he couldn’t find any, he tried to cause it. I don’t know how fast he got my ticker going, but it recovered perfectly every time. Mechanically, there is nothing wrong with my heart. It is healthy for a man of ANY age. Nice to know.

They put in a pacemaker / defibrillator anyway. In case this once in a lifetime event should ever happen again, I don’t have to worry about it. Also, it makes doing a cardiac stress test easy. I don’t have to don sneakers and get on a treadmill. They just put their device up to my device and rev it up to 140 beats a minute (a bit more than twice my resting rate). I don’t even break a sweat.

P.S. I did not have the classic symptoms. One of the symptoms is lightheadedness. Mine was extreme dizziness. I did not have chest pain or tightness or shortness of breath or any of the other “usual” symptoms. Don’t blow off symptoms like these. I knew SOMETHING was wrong. My wife took my blood pressure and pulse: low and 168 (about 2.5 times normal). That’s when we called in the “A” Team.

Otherwise, this could be cirrus.

Too bad in 20 years they’ll have to recycle that thing

Cute, but of course such a unit would have batteries and a capacitor bank. Even a standard 220v line would be unable to produce the near instantaneous jolt needed. The system could operate just as well on a properly sized solar array as on standard line power. With the small array shown, you get one jolt per day then it needs to charge for a day; cloud cover at the moment of need would have no effect at all.

I’ll say it again-you are one weird puppy, Dave! I love it!!

When it’s cloudy, it becomes defibril-later.

I can see clearly now the (chest) pain is gone…

Hilarious!

I laughed heartily at this one.

A friend of mine was in his self defense class when one student went into Cardiac Arrest, my friend is trained to do CPR (LEO) so he went right to it, it took the paramedics 5 plus minutes to get there he said, nobody else knew CPR so my friend kept going. The guy lived.