tldr;

He was a prick back then, and he's still a prick.

(yes, I knew him 'back then').

Yeah, but it 'doesn't work'

Take, for example, the latest hurricanes on the east coast. Or better 'snow on the trees' of 2012 fame.
Lots of trees came down. Fell on power lines, cut power to my neighbourhood for a week. Hurricane sandy was 2-to-3-weeks for most in my area.

One assumes they lost a shedload of business during that period, but until $lost-for-not-providing-power > the cost of *burying the damn power lines* it won't happen.
They beg and whine and moan at the state for money to perform the stupidly obvious action that they should be taking upon themselves.

Hell, my country ( Britain) started burying the power lines after WW2 (when bombs did it for them). The USA still puts them on poles and makes houses out of sticks. Didnt y'all learn from the three little pigs?

Moronic.

Exactly this. yes.

He lives in England where they practice common law y'know.
Where - if I want to change my name - all I have to do is say : My name is now 'Humpert Merrywinkle'. If enough people know me as 'Humpert Merrrywinkle' then I am that person.

And I should know - My passport and my birth certificate contain different names. I never 'legally' changed my name anywhere. Ie: I never submitted a 'name change form'. It just works like that. 'merikans can't seem to figure this out.

So - yeah. PIN Number is right, On account of an imperial arseload of people say it. And that's a whole lot bigger than a metric buttload.

I have exactly the opposite experience.

I *always* turn up to court for my summons. I've gotten 'off' every single one (counting 10 so far). Some deservedly so, some because I argued succinctly and sagely. And others because I was charged for the 'wrong infraction'.

I've been to court in PA, NJ and DE.

I've found judges ( at least in the NorthEast) to be quite welcoming of the 'defend yourself if you're smart' and the ones in NJ are particularly harsh with the burden of proof on the cops.

I recall one particularly lenient judge 'let me off' not having : A license (my international license had expired), registration (I had been out of the country a while), and from dint of not having a valid license my insurance was also invalid (although paid). He took a look at my documentation, rolled his eyes, said : I'mma let you off this time, get yerself sorted out, lad. And that was it. $60 court costs and a slap on the wrist...

Course, if I had done this in say.. South Carolina I would have simply been shot where I stood.

Actually *this* is not true.

Although I've never had a speed-camera-related-speeding-ticket I have been to court and fought 10 traffic related incidents over the course of my lifetime.
I have a 10 out of 10 win ratio, and if you win you obviously you don't pay the ticket, and you can get the related charges (court costs etc) thrown out.

I've actually even been 'deficient' in my summons - one for failure to provide details of insurance (I had it, just not on me. Daz papier!!! ). One for a rear side indicator which wasn't functioning ( it was wet and shorted out ). Ironically the cop pulled me over for 'failure to indicate' - a charge which carried points, even after I showed him how the front one turned on, and the back didn't, which he could clearly see when he pulled me over. That got thrown out because the cop insisted on continuing with the charge that I didn't *attempt* to indicate, rather than the lesser (no-point) $fine for broken. Judge agreed with me...

I always... *always* turn up to court for my tickets, regardless of wether I'm in the wrong or not. I suppose that could 'cost me' - but only in time, and here in NJ they're very nice and hold traffic court after work hours - just bring a book / comfy cushion / iThing to play with while the 60 odd other people get their speak-time too!

Rather tragically - When I was a kid my 'sport' in school was shooting. Rifle range... every day. For a couple of hours at a time.

I was advised to 'close my other eye' when sighting, but I found it tiring and I didn't. I was an excellent shot and my team won many competitions.
My vision at the time was excellent. I had a nickname of 'eagle eye' for my ability to see things at a distance, or spot things lost in grass, or pick things out of a wreck of a bedroom...

Later on in life though, I have found that my vision is impaired. I have better eyesight in one eye than the other and it's been attributed to the exercise one eye got while shooting, and the corresponding lack of exercise that the other got by not being able to sight on the same thing.

It stymied my wish to be an airline pilot 'when I grow up'. Fortunately I got into computers instead...
But seriously - kids: if you do this, wear an eyepatch or something!

Solomon would be more likely to say :

I'm going to put your mother to death instead - because she birthed a criminal.

The innocent is more likely to complain than the guilty. And you've then got your criminal.

I find your opinions interesting and should like to sign up for your newsletter... :)

I'm curious about 'state of New Jersey' but just about every other corporation you list (and most states) I am *also* boycotting. Hell, I've been boycotting Amazon since the late 90's (and all they sold were books) when they up and turned around saying 'We're gonna sell your data, wot we said we were never gonna sell, to third parties'. I boycotted Borders when they joined ranks with Amazon - evil by association - I'm confident that I killed them and still snicker when I pass their nearest store to me and look upon a women's shoe warehouse...

Oh, and you forgot Disney - for blatant plagiarism of public domain stories / pictures / music and THEN having the balls to sell it ( back to the public who owned it in the first place) and copyright them.

So - NJ?
 

I guess I'm one of those wierd ones. I have :

Landline for reliability and I hate Comcast. ($17)
Vonage - for free calls to the UK ( $35 ish)
Comcast Voip - because it reduced the cost I had for intarnets + telly. ( free-ish )

Of those I use :

Landline is hooked up to security system - It has the ability to break into the line if the phone is 'busy' due to a burglar calling it to prevent *it* from calling out
Vonage - because it's free, and I talk to the parental units for 4-5 hour periods every so often. Also for my home office (which is my workplace now)
Comcast - the wife has started using this to call her family, or just generally because she doesn't have to worry if they're out of state or anything. We used to share my vonage phone, but if I was working (on it) and she wanted to call she'd have to wait.
Cell phone - which work pays for.

The wife refuses to get rid of the landline, and I somewhat agree. We get frequent outages of comcast here. They say stupid things like : Visit our web site to post your troubles (if my intarwebs are out, then I CAN'T VISIT YOUR DAMN WEBSITE). Likewise, if my intarwebs are out I can't use your crappy voip to even call you.

I guess we're luddites. I have an old push-button phone that I can hook up to the landline and make calls if I need. And, get this, I *did* need during hurricane Sandy. All the cells were broken, the cable had obviously gone out but.. the landline still worked! Bonus, the push-button phone has buttons that light up enough to read by if you ignore the constant beeping of the open line!

I would ditch the Comcast phone before I ditched the Landline...

S.

O' contraire!

My panels suffered no damage. The damage I suffered was the two 100' trees hitting (the other end of ) my house. Trees I never thought would come down, tbh. I had 8 trees fall in total... Not a single panel died though and my entire 40' south-facing-garage roof is covered with 'em.

>Who lives in a house that long?

I do.
I've lived in my house 12 years. 5 years ago we got solar panels put on it (they were much more expensive then). They cost me $45k (with 40k being paid by the state under rebate).

I calculate an ROI of six years. Plus or minus some for the price of the SREC's that you sell for 'generating green electricity'. I figure I'll actually see a return starting in 10 years. But I'm also then producing all my own leccy, and have a whole-house-battery-backup along with it.

And the panels *do* increase the value of the house. Not by as much as they cost, certainly. But an adjuster valued mine at $20k above if they weren't there.
On the other hand, I don't plan on selling either, so that's not so much an issue for me.

They're pretty damn heavy, actually. I know wind can pick up cars and toss them around, but just an 'ordinary hurricane' once a year for about three years in a row hasn't budged a single one of my 50-ish panels on my garage roof. They're fixed down pretty good (on rails) and rated to withstand stuff hitting them ( like hail) short of what I basically interpreted as a small meteorite..

They have withstood all that Sandy threw at them, snow, hail and also a hammer.. once.

$85k plz... :P

My inverters (2) are ties to a Sunny Island (1) which takes care of shoving energy into my batteries (4) when there's no grid and keeping my house up.
Of my $85k outlay, $6k of that went into the battery backup system. When the grid is up, I feed onto the grid, when it's down it powers my house and keeps the batteries charged.