Who says they're "on hold"? With a bluetooth headset, or with the iPhone just plug in the earphones w/mic provided with the phone, and you can tap away while continuing the conversation. They certainly won't hear your fingers unless you're trying to bash a hole in the screen.

I never even thought about simultaneous voice/data, until I realized one day that was exactly what I was doing. Talking with a friend, some topic came up and I pulled up the browser to do a search. Sure, if I'm sitting in the office or at home, the computer might be handier but if I'm - say - waiting on someone at a restaurant or client site, the computer isn't convenient and wifi is normally not available. (Few have "free wifi" around here, if they have it at all they have it locked down.)

Now that I'm aware of it, I realized I use that "feature" all the time - it would be annoying not to have it.

Well, you *could* also pass data while in the "digital voice" mode, even alongside a voice conversation. Just at an abysmally slow data rate (~960 bps). So in theory you could "access the net" even with a VHF/UHF rig if the other end was set up appropriately.

I did this once, set up a PPP link between two ID-800s attached to Linux machines. Just for giggles - the data rate is so horribly slow you almost have time to think between keypresses! :)

Normally the data "side channel" is only used for position reporting like APRS, but there are some apps available that let you do a sort of text-messaging with it. Perhaps that's what has them up in arms, don't want to lose any lucrative text-messaging money from the phone company... (Although then again I'm under the impression France / Europe didn't have insane pricing for texting like we do in the US.)

I'm waiting for a couple of ID-1s to show up right now, be interesting to see what sort of range I'll get from 1.2GHz. Never used that band before...

A nifty trick I've seen electricians using on jobsites is to suck on one end of the conduit with a Shop-Vac, tie a piece of paper (or wad of electrical tape) to the end of the pull string, then feed into the other end of the conduit. With any luck, the vacuum will suck your string right on down to the other end in no time!

I was thinking the same thing.

I can't say I've had NONE fail, but the only piece I remember failing was an oddball Toshiba laptop memory card that they happily replaced years after the fact for free. That replacement worked just fine until the laptop was replaced.

More recently I've been buying Kingston USB drives and SDHC cards because they seemed to have the best balance of reviews on Newegg, so obviously not everyone there has had problems. So far all devices have been working just fine.

Now watch, I've probably jinxed myself - I have two Kingston 16GB SDHC cards arriving *today* for my Sheeva Plugs. They'll probably both die fiery deaths, taking the rest of the kit along with them! ;)

Are there actually cell phones out there that behave this way?!? (Just checked mine, it doesn't have anything like that that I could find.) Why in the world would there be a setting where the phone's response to dialing 911 would be such that you couldn't actually use it as a phone and communicate with the call-taker when they answered? That isn't a double-edged sword, that's just plain brain-dead.

You lost me with the far-fetched scenario after that...

I've never understood this argument. (At least as it applies to the US - perhaps other countries offer better deals - like maybe a tax rebate for donations?)

Why would I give just for a tax deduction? Let's say I'm in the 30% tax bracket. I'm going to give some established charity $1,000 to save myself $300 in taxes? How is coming out $700 poorer in that transaction a "win"? Most people I know who use this argument aren't anywhere near the 30% tax bracket either, so the numbers are even worse.

If I want to give for other reasons, that's a nice "benefit" from the govt, and perhaps it would help encourage me to donate a bit more. But as a sole reason to give?

Even worse were the people who got a home mortgage "for the deduction". A friend actually bought a house because his tax preparer said it would "help him on taxes"! At least with charitable giving some good (hopefully) comes of the money spent, instead of just making a bank that much wealthier...

This is exactly why I bought my laser printer. Most months I only print 2-3 pages. On rare occasion I'll print a manual or PDF book.

Bought a Brother HL-5040 for $220 back in October 2003, and I'm *still* using the original toner cartridge! :p Six years now, and I was lucky if inkjet cartridges would last six *months*.

If he wants the thing to run 24x7, he's also going to need a battery, charge controller to keep the battery from getting overcharged, and an inverter to power the PSU (or change out - if possible - to a DC fed PSU). Adding the battery means ongoing maintenance, at the very least replacement every few years.

Unless he's in a very expensive area for electricity, or where he gets huge rebates from the government (like southern California), electric rates are generally so cheap that you will *never* achieve payback on an off-grid solar system.

I know, because I have one! My intent was for power outages, to keep a few things going, so payback wasn't an issue to me. But I calculated it out anyway, and it would take in the neighborhood of 64 years for my system (bought and installed by me, so no labor costs, and catching pretty decent sales as well) to achieve financial payback. That's if *nothing* goes bad, and somehow I doubt the batteries will last that long...

Still a nifty and fun project, though. I now have 540W in solar panels, a 660AH 12V battery bank, and keep my ham shack off-grid along with the office desk (computer, light), cablemodem, router and VoIP adapter. In an outage, I can switch on the Big Inverter and run the fridge. I've had a couple short outages since getting it all put in, and only noticed because some other lights went off.

Or even a nicer one - I have the 1000HE (Atom processor, 160GB HDD) and it runs 10-12W with the screen on. Performs comparably to the Atom "fanless" desktop machine I also have (which won't run more than 1/2 hour without getting hot as a pistol thanks to the lousy chipset, so it now has a fan on the heatsink!) which pulls 25W at idle with NO screen. Both running Ubuntu 9.04. (Of course, the Eee pulls more when it needs to charge the battery - I don't remember what that tops out at.)

I use the Eee as a laptop, but have considered getting another to replace the desktop. It is a server, running on my off-grid solar system, so more than halving my 24x7 power consumption is a tempting idea...

The wattages above are actually DC measurements off my battery bank - the desktop has a DC PSU, the Eee was running through a small inverter.

When I bought the Eee, I thought it was interesting that the unit with solid-state disk listed a *shorter* battery life than the one with the 160GB HDD... I wanted the space anyway, so went with the HDD.

Hey, wow. I stumbled across the SciFi TV show version one night while sitting in a hotel room on a business trip, never saw it again but remember the story well. Didn't know it was based on a book, I'll have to get it now.

Sure the temperature means something. You don't get steam above 212F without increasing the pressure. So the temp tells you roughly the pressure. I did a quick search for a chart, and it says 400 degrees would be around 235 PSIG. In comparison, your 600 PSIG boiler ran about 489 degrees and the 1000 PSIG ran about 546 degrees.

http://www.indpipe.com/images/PDF/steam_temperature_pressure_table.pdf
(Just the first link I found.)

Actually, most solar systems being installed today are batteryless grid-tie systems. If the grid goes down, the owner still has no power! Baffles me... It does make the system cheaper and more efficient, though. Less maintenance too.

I put in an off-grid system to run my ham shack and a few other things, and contemplated doing just what you suggest. I could have gone for a grid-tied battery-backed system, but that was a lot of cost for not much benefit. So I looked into going on the electric company's time-of-use plan, and found that if I were to switch everything to run off the battery bank during the day and pull nothing from the grid, then recharge the battery bank at night (other than what the solar system was able to do) I would *just*barely* come out net positive over the course of a year.

Problem is, that didn't factor in maintenance. If I had to replace or repair a single item in my system, there went the savings. Payback is also basically nonexistant - on the order of 70-80 years with no failures!

And it meant no AC during the afternoon. Normally not a big issue, as I'm gone during the day, but my work day starts/ends early, so I'd get home a few hours before the end of peak rates. I would either have to pay the high rates to run the AC then, significantly subcool the house in the morning to ride-through the afternoon (seems wasteful too), or just sit and swelter a bit... I don't have enough room for a battery bank large enough to run the AC.

The tech is already available, though. And the cost factors are *almost* there to make it worthwhile. In some areas, like southern California, it may already be economically feasible, but here (Oklahoma is a net exporter of power) the per-kWh rates are just too low.

Keep in mind, however, that this is not an *energy* efficient way to do it. The only reason it is economical to use ice storage systems for HVAC is because off-peak rates for electricity are sufficiently lower than on-peak. The system actually winds up using more kWh to do the same cooling job than simply cooling the building directly. As a result, in the winter when the electric company doesn't charge peak-demand rates, the ice systems are left disabled and the buildings are cooled directly.

If your goal is just to smooth out consumption over time, and are willing to see increased total consumption, then it's fine. But many are hoping to get people to also reduce total consumption.

At least with the large building installations, the freeze cycle is not just an hour or two unless the chillers and associated equipment are grossly oversized for the building. Most of the systems I have worked on will start building ice minutes after peak-demand rates are switched off (8PM here), and will continue to run full-tilt all night long. The usual finish time is around 6-7AM.

Well, the bit about SAME didn't make much sense... Yeah, storm systems can often easily affect multiple counties, not just one. I was thinking about a specific event - tornado warnings. They are often quite small in area, frequently including just a small piece of any given county. But everyone in the county gets to hear the warning, and - even better - the municipalities then set off their sirens because the county is in an issued warning.

I've had clear blue skies where a tight, fast-moving storm has already passed over, with tornado sirens sounding because the very far corner of the county was included in a warning area! Unfortunately that makes a lot of people just ignore the sirens and warnings after a while...

NOAA transmitters are typical of heavy government, by time a weather event is verified enough to get into the update cycle, it has probably passed you. NOAA transmitters are pathetically weak and placed in locations where their line of sight coverage is abysmal. Cross any great lake and you're likely to pick up TV stations the whole way across but you won't pick up any NOAA station more than 10 miles offshore. (In my case not even this far because the nearest station was about 15 miles inland!) Try this, get one of those TV/weather radios (before tomorrow morning!) scan through the T.V. channels and if you are within 25 miles of a big city, you'll probably get some TV stations and if you hear a NOAA station at all, it will be very weak.

Damn. Obviously, different areas of the country are very different! Here in Oklahoma, the NOAA transmitters are in VERY good locations. From my house, I can pick up two or three indoors, on one of my ham radio antennas I can pick up seven or eight from across the state and even into Texas. Just the other day I was in my car listening to the one that is located in the OKC metro area while I was over 100 miles away.

And the updates seem to happen very quickly here. Indeed, I'll hear the NWS discussing something with the spotters over the radio, then within just a few minutes the weather radio goes off with the new updates. If I had any complaints, I wish they would make more fine-grain use of the SAME codes, our storms aren't usually large enough to affect an entire county at once, but even if their alert specifically says "northeast corner of Oklahoma county" I (on the far west side) still get the alert because they only break things down to county level with the codes.

I do agree about using TV during weather events. The one thing I really liked about the switch to DTV was two of the local stations (NBC and ABC) set up a secondary channel that was nothing but weather. They've ruined it a bit already, with advertising and insets and such, but for a while one of them just had a live feed of their radar up with NOAA weather radio audio. I usually just tune to someone who has radar up and turn the audio down, living here all my life I can read the radar about as well as they can for stuff that matters to me, so don't need the chatter.