[drboom]

Random thoughts:

If you have the space, I’ve seen amorphous silicon panels (Kaneka) for less than $1/watt. They’re inefficient (6% or so), so you need a lot of room for a given amount of power. But they do better in cloudy weather than mono- or poly-crystalline cells.

A friend of mine put in a solar heater for his pool and loves it. It takes up a huge amount of space, but he has an otherwise unusable east-facing slope right next to his pool so it worked out great. He changed out the pump motor for something more efficient, and that helped keep the power consumption down.

The same friend put a 4kW system up a couple of years ago, and he had a long-running fight with the (well known) contractor over the actual vs. promised performance of the system. If you do one of these, make sure the contractor gets the engineering right and puts the design numbers in writing.

If you don’t use a lot of power, the payback for solar can be lengthy or non-existent. Don’t forget to factor in the time value of money when doing your calculations (unless you’re a serious gold bug who thinks the dollar will be worthless in a few years anyway).

Mandatory Time Of Use (TOU) metering could change solar economics, and it may be coming soon. My neighborhood is scheduled for smart meter rollout in December, but I haven’t heard anything about tariff revisions that mandate residential TOU. SDG&E has a voluntary SES TOU (“Net Electric Metering” in their jargon) program, but UCAN has serious questions about whether the program works for most people. I wouldn’t depend on it helping the consumer.

[drboom]

Random thoughts:

If you have the space, I’ve seen amorphous silicon panels (Kaneka) for less than $1/watt. They’re inefficient (6% or so), so you need a lot of room for a given amount of power. But they do better in cloudy weather than mono- or poly-crystalline cells.

A friend of mine put in a solar heater for his pool and loves it. It takes up a huge amount of space, but he has an otherwise unusable east-facing slope right next to his pool so it worked out great. He changed out the pump motor for something more efficient, and that helped keep the power consumption down.

The same friend put a 4kW system up a couple of years ago, and he had a long-running fight with the (well known) contractor over the actual vs. promised performance of the system. If you do one of these, make sure the contractor gets the engineering right and puts the design numbers in writing.

If you don’t use a lot of power, the payback for solar can be lengthy or non-existent. Don’t forget to factor in the time value of money when doing your calculations (unless you’re a serious gold bug who thinks the dollar will be worthless in a few years anyway).

Mandatory Time Of Use (TOU) metering could change solar economics, and it may be coming soon. My neighborhood is scheduled for smart meter rollout in December, but I haven’t heard anything about tariff revisions that mandate residential TOU. SDG&E has a voluntary SES TOU (“Net Electric Metering” in their jargon) program, but UCAN has serious questions about whether the program works for most people. I wouldn’t depend on it helping the consumer.

[drboom]

Indeed, Rich, thanks for the analysis and the community.

You, along with some of the great people who post here, helped my wife and I navigate the real estate market as we pursued the purchase of our first house. We’re newly minted homedebtors, and we owe another debt to all of you.

We will naturally sue you (along with Messrs. Case and Schiller) if the value of our house goes down–I mean, the graphs are pointing up, right? 😛

[drboom]

Indeed, Rich, thanks for the analysis and the community.

You, along with some of the great people who post here, helped my wife and I navigate the real estate market as we pursued the purchase of our first house. We’re newly minted homedebtors, and we owe another debt to all of you.

We will naturally sue you (along with Messrs. Case and Schiller) if the value of our house goes down–I mean, the graphs are pointing up, right? 😛

[drboom]

Indeed, Rich, thanks for the analysis and the community.

You, along with some of the great people who post here, helped my wife and I navigate the real estate market as we pursued the purchase of our first house. We’re newly minted homedebtors, and we owe another debt to all of you.

We will naturally sue you (along with Messrs. Case and Schiller) if the value of our house goes down–I mean, the graphs are pointing up, right? 😛

[drboom]

Indeed, Rich, thanks for the analysis and the community.

You, along with some of the great people who post here, helped my wife and I navigate the real estate market as we pursued the purchase of our first house. We’re newly minted homedebtors, and we owe another debt to all of you.

We will naturally sue you (along with Messrs. Case and Schiller) if the value of our house goes down–I mean, the graphs are pointing up, right? 😛

[drboom]

Indeed, Rich, thanks for the analysis and the community.

You, along with some of the great people who post here, helped my wife and I navigate the real estate market as we pursued the purchase of our first house. We’re newly minted homedebtors, and we owe another debt to all of you.

We will naturally sue you (along with Messrs. Case and Schiller) if the value of our house goes down–I mean, the graphs are pointing up, right? 😛

[drboom]

[quote=meadandale]

Coke! Pepsi!

Seriously…emacs? It slices! It dices! It changes your sheets, cleans the bathroom, reads your email, edits your files, borks your wife! It does it all!!

Meh…I want to edit text not take over the world. Vi/Vim works great. I did all my college programming assignments in vi over a telnet session to the university.[/quote]

As the old saying goes: “Unix is a nice operating system, but I prefer emacs.” I only use 0.00000000001% of emacs’ capabilities, but it’s nice to know I could fire up nethack if I wanted to go on a dungeon crawl.

I think it’s a matter of what you’re used to. I never could get past vi’s modal interface, but I started with TRS-80s (no full screen editor until the Model III, IIRC) so I’m hardwired to just type stuff in.

I’m doing the homemaker thing right now (in the middle of baking c. 40 dozen Xmas cookies as I write this), but I do almost everything with ssh and emacs when I’m working on something. It’s a nice way to work–everything is snappy, even on a loaded network across the country, and I just just need to toss php-mode.el and a copy of my .emacs file on a box to make it just like home.

The same is obviously true of vi and friends, though vi is installed on practically every *nix box ever shipped so it’s even easier.

The poor bastards running Windows/VNC spend half their time waiting to connect and the other half waiting for screen refreshes. I would feel sorry for them, but I’m too busy getting stuff done. 🙂

————

Josh, you will note that your job ad is still near the top. 😉

[drboom]

[quote=meadandale]

Coke! Pepsi!

Seriously…emacs? It slices! It dices! It changes your sheets, cleans the bathroom, reads your email, edits your files, borks your wife! It does it all!!

Meh…I want to edit text not take over the world. Vi/Vim works great. I did all my college programming assignments in vi over a telnet session to the university.[/quote]

As the old saying goes: “Unix is a nice operating system, but I prefer emacs.” I only use 0.00000000001% of emacs’ capabilities, but it’s nice to know I could fire up nethack if I wanted to go on a dungeon crawl.

I think it’s a matter of what you’re used to. I never could get past vi’s modal interface, but I started with TRS-80s (no full screen editor until the Model III, IIRC) so I’m hardwired to just type stuff in.

I’m doing the homemaker thing right now (in the middle of baking c. 40 dozen Xmas cookies as I write this), but I do almost everything with ssh and emacs when I’m working on something. It’s a nice way to work–everything is snappy, even on a loaded network across the country, and I just just need to toss php-mode.el and a copy of my .emacs file on a box to make it just like home.

The same is obviously true of vi and friends, though vi is installed on practically every *nix box ever shipped so it’s even easier.

The poor bastards running Windows/VNC spend half their time waiting to connect and the other half waiting for screen refreshes. I would feel sorry for them, but I’m too busy getting stuff done. 🙂

————

Josh, you will note that your job ad is still near the top. 😉

[drboom]

[quote=meadandale]

Coke! Pepsi!

Seriously…emacs? It slices! It dices! It changes your sheets, cleans the bathroom, reads your email, edits your files, borks your wife! It does it all!!

Meh…I want to edit text not take over the world. Vi/Vim works great. I did all my college programming assignments in vi over a telnet session to the university.[/quote]

As the old saying goes: “Unix is a nice operating system, but I prefer emacs.” I only use 0.00000000001% of emacs’ capabilities, but it’s nice to know I could fire up nethack if I wanted to go on a dungeon crawl.

I think it’s a matter of what you’re used to. I never could get past vi’s modal interface, but I started with TRS-80s (no full screen editor until the Model III, IIRC) so I’m hardwired to just type stuff in.

I’m doing the homemaker thing right now (in the middle of baking c. 40 dozen Xmas cookies as I write this), but I do almost everything with ssh and emacs when I’m working on something. It’s a nice way to work–everything is snappy, even on a loaded network across the country, and I just just need to toss php-mode.el and a copy of my .emacs file on a box to make it just like home.

The same is obviously true of vi and friends, though vi is installed on practically every *nix box ever shipped so it’s even easier.

The poor bastards running Windows/VNC spend half their time waiting to connect and the other half waiting for screen refreshes. I would feel sorry for them, but I’m too busy getting stuff done. 🙂

————

Josh, you will note that your job ad is still near the top. 😉

[drboom]

[quote=meadandale]

Coke! Pepsi!

Seriously…emacs? It slices! It dices! It changes your sheets, cleans the bathroom, reads your email, edits your files, borks your wife! It does it all!!

Meh…I want to edit text not take over the world. Vi/Vim works great. I did all my college programming assignments in vi over a telnet session to the university.[/quote]

As the old saying goes: “Unix is a nice operating system, but I prefer emacs.” I only use 0.00000000001% of emacs’ capabilities, but it’s nice to know I could fire up nethack if I wanted to go on a dungeon crawl.

I think it’s a matter of what you’re used to. I never could get past vi’s modal interface, but I started with TRS-80s (no full screen editor until the Model III, IIRC) so I’m hardwired to just type stuff in.

I’m doing the homemaker thing right now (in the middle of baking c. 40 dozen Xmas cookies as I write this), but I do almost everything with ssh and emacs when I’m working on something. It’s a nice way to work–everything is snappy, even on a loaded network across the country, and I just just need to toss php-mode.el and a copy of my .emacs file on a box to make it just like home.

The same is obviously true of vi and friends, though vi is installed on practically every *nix box ever shipped so it’s even easier.

The poor bastards running Windows/VNC spend half their time waiting to connect and the other half waiting for screen refreshes. I would feel sorry for them, but I’m too busy getting stuff done. 🙂

————

Josh, you will note that your job ad is still near the top. 😉

[drboom]

[quote=meadandale]

Coke! Pepsi!

Seriously…emacs? It slices! It dices! It changes your sheets, cleans the bathroom, reads your email, edits your files, borks your wife! It does it all!!

Meh…I want to edit text not take over the world. Vi/Vim works great. I did all my college programming assignments in vi over a telnet session to the university.[/quote]

As the old saying goes: “Unix is a nice operating system, but I prefer emacs.” I only use 0.00000000001% of emacs’ capabilities, but it’s nice to know I could fire up nethack if I wanted to go on a dungeon crawl.

I think it’s a matter of what you’re used to. I never could get past vi’s modal interface, but I started with TRS-80s (no full screen editor until the Model III, IIRC) so I’m hardwired to just type stuff in.

I’m doing the homemaker thing right now (in the middle of baking c. 40 dozen Xmas cookies as I write this), but I do almost everything with ssh and emacs when I’m working on something. It’s a nice way to work–everything is snappy, even on a loaded network across the country, and I just just need to toss php-mode.el and a copy of my .emacs file on a box to make it just like home.

The same is obviously true of vi and friends, though vi is installed on practically every *nix box ever shipped so it’s even easier.

The poor bastards running Windows/VNC spend half their time waiting to connect and the other half waiting for screen refreshes. I would feel sorry for them, but I’m too busy getting stuff done. 🙂

————

Josh, you will note that your job ad is still near the top. 😉

[drboom]

[quote=barnaby33]Well so much for a thread about my company and its trend bucking hiring…[/quote]

Are you kidding? We’ve kept this thread at or near the top of the active forum topics list since you posted it.

[quote=gandalf]… and sift through matching pages with vim.[/quote]

Vim?!?!?!

And you name yourself after a wizard? Everybody knows that real wizards use emacs like God and rms intended.

[quote=afx114]
I read Piggington with Lynx.[/quote]

Lynx does a lousy job with three column sites like this one (I tried). Try elinks instead–it handles tables and frames fairly gracefully for a textmode browser.

[drboom]

[quote=barnaby33]Well so much for a thread about my company and its trend bucking hiring…[/quote]

Are you kidding? We’ve kept this thread at or near the top of the active forum topics list since you posted it.

[quote=gandalf]… and sift through matching pages with vim.[/quote]

Vim?!?!?!

And you name yourself after a wizard? Everybody knows that real wizards use emacs like God and rms intended.

[quote=afx114]
I read Piggington with Lynx.[/quote]

Lynx does a lousy job with three column sites like this one (I tried). Try elinks instead–it handles tables and frames fairly gracefully for a textmode browser.

[drboom]

[quote=barnaby33]Well so much for a thread about my company and its trend bucking hiring…[/quote]

Are you kidding? We’ve kept this thread at or near the top of the active forum topics list since you posted it.

[quote=gandalf]… and sift through matching pages with vim.[/quote]

Vim?!?!?!

And you name yourself after a wizard? Everybody knows that real wizards use emacs like God and rms intended.

[quote=afx114]
I read Piggington with Lynx.[/quote]

Lynx does a lousy job with three column sites like this one (I tried). Try elinks instead–it handles tables and frames fairly gracefully for a textmode browser.

[Author]

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