The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.

Farce.

My wife and I threw the wedding we both wanted. We planned the whole thing together. It was her second marriage but my first (and hopefully only). It was huge and expensive. The food was fantastic. We invited everyone we wanted to be there. We're huge jazz nerds and we had an eighteen-piece big band. Our parents planned nothing (it was our money, after all). We're still paying for it two years later.

We loved every moment. Neither one of us would change a single thing.

We do not operate under the assumption that every day is going to be like our wedding day. We do not suffer fairy-tale delusions. Marriage is work. We're parents now. It's more work.

Don't kid yourself. People have been disagreeing with you right and left. That's the general equivalent to being downmodded.

...agreed.

Please, stop speaking for all geeks.

Erm, geek bride or no, most women have been planning their wedding since childhood. My lovely geek bride had no problem at all with "a day of attention seeking" as you put it. And she's plenty smart ;)

You probably mean flair. Flare would not be a desirable characteristic of a wedding invitation.

Better question: does Greedo shoot?

Nobody in this thread suggested that it be a wholesale replacement for current energy sources. Supplementing generation capacity with alternative methods is a good idea.

"Stop innovating! It'll never work!"

The amount of anti-progress rhetoric on this topic is really staggering. I don't really understand. Why isn't it exciting that the technology exists? Why shouldn't we use it while it's getting better?

I'm fairly sure he meant that the additional panels would be added to his home. Brian, care to clarify?

And you're right. Doing this probably won't shut down a coal plant, but it's likely to prevent as many firings of a gas generator at that plant. Since coal generation is more or less fixed capacity, the utility company periodically has to turn on natural gas burners to keep up with spikes in demand. I have a lot of experience in financial power markets and these sorts of transactions are very common.

So, by installing additional panels on his home, he's prevented some additional fossil fuels from being consumed.

So what's the downside? Why not do this?

This is wrong. The senator was attempting to return to Washington. The Senate is in session today at 2 PM. The Constitution is quite clear here.

Of course it does.

The panels he's adding to his roof for the car? They'll be putting energy back into the grid during the day. Money in his pocket.

High rise building? What the hell else should a building manager be using that gigantic, flat roof for? (Other than leasing space to a cell-phone antenna, of course) You don't have direct control over this, so I suggest looking for it as a feature the next time you move, if it's that important to you.

Why is it that people think that alternative energy sources can only be used if they're the only things being used? Use both. It's a good idea.

In Texas, when I buy wind power from my retail electric provider, they are required to turn around and use my dollars to buy physical wind power generation. They don't have to send it to my house. Hell, they don't even have to keep it. They can resell it on the open market to try and make a profit. What I've done by purchasing it is created demand for power generated by wind. This forces electric utility companies to invest money in wind so they can effectively generate and deliver it.

This is a good thing. You should be doing something like this even if the power coming to your house was generated by different means.

I'm one of the people that won't allow it. Democracy. It's a bitch.