Ahh. Your program works differently from ours. We got a loan from the power company against ten years' projected SREC production. At the time, SRECs were trading at over $600. It looked on paper like we were getting hosed when we locked in at $425/SREC, but we knew that NJ was about to cross some magic amount of renewable energy production, which would eliminate a whole class of fees the utilities had to pay to the state. The line was crossed a couple months after we went online, and now SRECs are trading at less than $100 but we're still earning $425 each against the loan. Oh, and we're also producing more than the projections, so we're paying the loan off faster, too.

Also, someone asked whether this would have worked without taxpayer dollars. The answer is yes, but it would have taken a good bit longer to get in the black. The state tax credit program expired before we built. We did, however, get a 30% federal tax credit. That's the only taxpayer money involved, since we got the loan from the (private) utility company, and paid the rest out of pocket.

Honestly, though, our thinking was that even if it ddn't entirely pay for itself, we'd rather spend money on renewables than send it to Saudi Arabia.

Ours were fine, even though the wind took out nine trees.

The problem with any battery backup system is maintenance. Even the best batteries have to be replaced every 4-5 years.

What was your SREC lock-in price?

We have 35 panels on our roof. We lost nine trees during Sandy, but there was no damage to the solar panels. We also have solar canopies and things like that all over town, and I only saw minor damage in one installation. Our only real vulnerability is if a tree falls on the panels themselves.

Porn. Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

There's a definite difference between helping my kids with their homework, and doing it for them. Like what happened a couple weeks ago: "Dad, I'm stuck on this math problem."

I take a look at it, and sure enough, it's ugly. Yet it's not. I say, "One word: parentheses." It took him a couple more minutes but he got it and saw why it wasn't nearly as ugly as it looked.

Did I do his homework for him?

ObTopic: Yes, I've been known to suggest search terms that would be more effective than the ones he was going to use.

I want to get a T-shirt that says, "Asperger's is hereditary--you get it from your kids."

You and I and a bunch of other adults I know have all been through that scene where the doctor describes the traits of our kids' newly-diagnosed AS, and we realize that the doctor is telling OUR life story.

C|N>K

That's why, when the drives (or surrounding technology) get old, but before they die, you copy them to more modern media. Just for fun, I might try reading data off one of my old ST-506 drives, but I stopped depending on them for data integrity almost 25 years ago. At some point I'll do the same with data on my current SATA drives.

I stand corrected.

Sidebar: A friend of mine used to work with both armored car companies and the people who processed tollbooth coins in very large volumes, and it was amazing what people got away with tossing in the toll baskets.

What really happened was that when NYC considered a new city income tax law that disproportionately hurt NJ commuters, NJ threatened to make Garden State Parkway tokens (worth 33 cents) identical to the NYC subway tokens ($1.25 IIRC) of the time.

Well, there is the old Hong Kong 1 cent note (worth about $0.0013 US). It was about the size of a small Post-It, only printed on one side, and was legal tender only for amounts less than HK$1, which meant you couldn't pay your rent using a wheelbarrow full of them.

Most vending machines these days take dollar coins. The reason the vending machine industry wants to keep the dollar bill is that it's a lot easier to get a slug past the coin mech than it is to get a counterfeit $1 past the bill acceptor.

More memory is usually just a matter of switching out a chip for a different chip of the same form factor. To double the battery life, you have to double the battery's volume. Inside a tablet there isn't a cubic millimeter that isn't accounted for, which means that the only way to put in a bigger battery is to build a different case, which has a cascading effect throughout the entire parts list. Much harder.

Plus, if you double the battery, some people are bound to complain about the longer charging time, which means they'll have to design around that, too.