Toddler Lock is good when the child doesn't yet understand the meaning of the home or back buttons:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=marcone.toddlerlock

At around 18 months, our toddler figured out an exploit in Ice Cream Sandwich that got him back to the main desktop. Amazingly, on his own, he figured out how to swipe desktops and run his favorite kid apps! (Fortunately, he didn't go shopping for any new ones.) At this point, we switched over to Kid's Place:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiddoware.kidsplace

This is a fully sandboxed kid-friendly desktop environment that offers your child all the apps you deem fit to allow. It enables airplane mode, disables the Google Play market, and so on. Our (now) 23-month-old knows how to navigate in and out of all his favorite apps with no trouble. There's also a separate Kid's Place Video Player app (accessed from inside Kid's Place) that they can use to play their favorite videos.

Disclaimer: I haven't evaluated other toddler desktop environments; this one worked well for us so we stuck with it.

As for all the tablet haters in here, it has been simply incredible how quickly our toddler is improving is cognitive capabilities. There are things that app can teach in a very intuitive way (memory match games, connect the dots, letter/number and counting games with fun rewards, shape puzzles with several dozen variants) that are difficult, impractical, or impossible to teach with physical toys.

And guess what? When he gets bored of his tablet, he puts it down and goes and plays with his other toys. Imagine that.

This is out of your remodel budget, but it's a possibility for future new construction. Consider room-by-room zoning:

http://www.getemme.com/room-by-room/index.php

This system places a small, discrete wireless thermostat in every room, which provides two advantages:

* Each room can respond separately to room-specific demands, eliminating hot and cold spots in the house.
* Different rooms can have different temperature programs.

We have the older version of this system (MyTemp) and we love it. It's not cheap, but I only paid the difference between the builder's standard 2-zone system and this system. Some highlights from our own use:

* To simplify scheduling, you can group rooms together to form named zones. For example, we group the master bedroom/bathroom/closet into "Master Suite". Most of the downstairs is grouped into "Living Space".

* We set our toddler's room to more moderate temperatures than our room, since we like it very cold at night.

* Guests can set the guest bedroom to whatever they like. When the room is not used, we simply press the button on the wall controller to put it into "Saver" mode. This runs the room on an alternate program you define with wider temperature swings.

* Any room can be put into/out of Saver mode at any time.

* The temperature of any room can be overridden temporary with arrow buttons on the wall controller. Just came in from mowing the lawn and you're hot and sweaty? Crank the temperature down in the family room and kick back! It changes the temperature of that room only, leaving other rooms in the house/zone undisturbed.

* Each room/zone is completely programmable. For example, our bedroom is on a 7-day schedule (it's always relaxed during the day), but the toddler's room is on a 5/2-day schedule (relaxed during weekdays because he's at daycare, conditioned during weekend days because he takes naps).

* I work from home. My home office always ran hot due to the two computers. With this system, it now directs air conditioning to the office as needed, which has been fantastic. No more fiddling with vents!

* You can bring up temperature graphs for each room that allow you to see the temperature history and heat/AC calls from the room. I can actually see the air-conditioning demand follow the sun on a room-by-room basis as the sun swings around from the east to the south to the west. All rooms stay perfectly comfortable, regardless of whether the blinds are opened or closed, etc.

* For special rooms like dedicated home theater rooms or workout rooms, this system is a huge advantage. Anyone with a home theater can tell you how warm they can get after two hours with the projector, A/V equipment, and a bunch of dead bodies. With Emme, the room will demand as much air-conditioning as it needs. If you don't use the room often, put it in Saver mode as you walk out to save a few bucks.

* House-sized HVAC units have minimum airflow requirements. When only one or a few rooms are calling, the system conditions as many additional rooms as needed to meet the minimum airflow requirements of your HVAC unit, using a pressure sensor in the plenum to account for any flow differences from room to room. It's smart enough to choose the rooms that are furthest from their comfort points, which would have been the rooms that would have called next anyway.

* To save energy, the system can circulate air instead of running your heating/cooling. This is possible because it knows the temperature of every room. For example, in the summer, it can circulate air from your cooler rooms on your first floor to warmer rooms on your second floor, without kicking on the AC compressor.

This may all sound complicated, but it's not. The complexity is hidden from you. You simply create your zones and program temperatures over time, and the system does the rest. The best advertising for this system is the user manual:

http://www.getemme.com/pdf/Emme-Room-by-Room-User-Manual-WEB-4.5.pdf

Feel free to ask me any questions; I'd be happy to share our experiences.

I found it pretty terrible too. After uninstalling it, I came across Avidemux which is much easier (for me) to use. I've been using that since.

http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

Ahh, but Blu-ray figured this out already. Digital output is all the same? Easy, just make the player operating system so inefficient and slow that people pay extra to play an inserted movie in less than a minute!

I'm a Netflix customer. I'm much happier about the greatly improved streaming options, and could care less about a 4-week delay of new releases. I've got several dozen unwatched movies on my list at any given time anyway. In my mind, Netflix pulled a fast one on Warner on behalf of the customer. Good move, Netflix.

I think you're thinking of area. When the resolution in two dimensions doubles, the area quadruples. 640x480 becomes 1280x960 - twice the resolution (measured in linear dots-per-inch in each dimension) but the area quadruples.

...simply enough money for the team to figure all this out themselves? As far as government grants go, that amount is the equivalent of "You boys go out and play, and be home by dinner!"

And nothing of value was posted.

...it was game over. I was a staunch believer in VHDL and its many features (generics, records, operator overloading, strong type checking). But once Verilog implemented proper signed arithmetic which didn't require tedious manual sign extension in the code, then I never looked back. SystemVerilog continues to push Verilog forward. gwait (179005) had the right idea - start with Verilog, and if you ever need to work with VHDL, you will have a much better idea of what aspects of the VHDL language you do and don't need to learn.

You're worried about nighttime light pollution from white roofs reflecting more sunlight? (I doubt moonlight would be significant enough to be a factor.)

*slaps forehead*

Only marketing weenies would play up such an oxymoron.

Another vote for Foxit.

I don't have the system up and running long enough yet to have good kWh measurements. I bought a Conserv ELF 3234 panel meter. It's a great value for the money, but the manual is absolutely terrible. The company is Indian and I suspect the manual author is not a native English speaker.

While I don't have monthly kWh values yet, I can share kW readings. With resistance heat running (I can force this with the thermostat's emergency heat setting, or by forcing a stage 2 heat call at low outdoor temperatures), the entire system consumes about 9kW. Depending on the outdoor temperature and the call from the thermostat, the system runs in four different modes:

Code:

M1 - Single cylinder primary compressor
M2 - Two cylinders primary compressor
M3 - Primary and booster compressors
M4 - Primary and booster compressors with 1st stage auxiliary heat

Heating Call at Thermostat

exterior temperature stage 1 stage 2
BIN A: ODT<-30 W1 W1
BIN B: -30<ODT<15 M3 M4
BIN C: 15<ODT<25 M2 M3
BIN D: 25<ODT<34 M2 M2+W1
BIN E: 34<ODT<41 M2 M2
BIN F: 41<ODT<62 M1 M2
BIN G: 62<ODT M1 M1

Sorry about the formatting, I can't get PRE tags to work here.

Normally the thermostat calls for stage 1 heating or cooling. If it senses the set point cannot be held with stage 1, it will step up to a stage 2 call. The Hallowell thermostat (just an off-the-shelf White Rodgers 'stat) has a feature which proactively ramps up the set point ahead of time. Since I have the temperature set lower at night to make sleeping comfortable, this ensures the morning ramp-up to 66F stays stays in a stage 1 call even when exterior temperatures are cold.

Using the ELF 3234, the power consumptions of the modes are about as follows:

M1 - 1350 watts
M2 - 1650 watts
M3 - 2900 watts
M4 - 8900 watts

- Chris

Side note to the OP, the phrase "geothermal" to most homeowners does mean ground-source heat pump technology, not the stuff they use in Greenland.

I have a modest 2000sqft home in northeastern PA (Poconos area, I'm 8 miles south of Camelback ski resort). I had two contractors out to quote ground-source DX (direct exchange) systems, and both quotes were in the mid-$20k range. Too rich for my blood.

I went with a Hallowell cold-weather heat pump for pleasantly less than half that. The Hallowell is mostly sold in Canada and upper New England, but it's been slowly working its way south. When I called them to ask about my application, the guy laughed and said "Man, you're in the tropics!"

It's only been running for a few weeks now, but I've been very impressed so far. It hit -3F two nights ago and the heat pump still ran entirely off the first compressors in stage 1 (stage 2 was still not needed). The air coming out of the vents was warm to the touch. In fact, the system has yet to resort to resistance heat down to -3F exterior temperatures. We keep our house set to 66F. I've been able to kick the heating oil furnace and storage tank to the curb. No more timing oil pre-buys against market prices, no more noisy power venters, no more oil storage tank taking up basement space, no more yearly burner tuneups and vent pipe cleanouts. I even get nice 18 SEER air conditioning to replace my builder-grade central air conditioning unit.

Pictures of the complete home renovation are at:

my house renovation

The entire system is on a dedicated subpanel, and I've put a subpanel meter on it to measure total kWh usage. This will allow me to directly measure operational cost each month.

Another factor that steered me away from ground-source is balancing the break-even time versus the system lifetime. If it takes me 20 years to break even on the ground-source and the system needs replaced not too long after, I haven't really gained anything. If the Hallowell takes me 7 years to break even and the system lasts 2-3 times longer than that, I've saved quite a bit of money. Break-even isn't everything; it has to be balanced against the expected lifetime of the system. Plus, I'd have to factor in the cost of repairing the yard after the loops were dug and installed. They claim that just a 3' circle of ground is disturbed to drill the loops, but one of the guys eventually admitted the machines rip up the yard pretty bad as they drive around the hole to drill the loops at different angles.

I found the guys at Hallowell to be very helpful to talk to. I don't work for them and I have nothing to gain. I simply speak as a satisfied customer. For new construction, rolling a ground-source system into the mortgage would be the way to go. For my existing construction with an established yard, simply setting the Hallowell on an outdoor pad was an excellent path forward for me.

- Chris