Big news for the Mittster, as he stomped Sanatorium in AZ (as expected), and squeaked past poor little Ricky by about 3%. And so, yet another Republican hopeful is now being declared all but dead because of his pandering to the most radical parts of the GOP base. Of course, since they’re all running against Romney, expect somebody else to make some noise in the next round.
In other news, Apple has scheduled a big announcement on March 7th, to announce that a new iPad 3 will be released. It promises to be a revolutionary new device, ripe with features that have already been available on Android-based tablets. I predict that it will produce record sales.
Speaking of iPads, I’ve going back and forth with a company named Sungevity about installing solar panels on my house. Not to buy them (which is too expensive; it would actually cost me about $3,000 more over 20 years than I’d save in electricity costs), but to lease them.
The quote I got was for a no money down lease for the installation of a system that would do 40% of my current usage. They would guarantee at least 95% output for what they quote. Payments would start out at $45 a month, and increase by 2.9% per year (they predict a $41 per saving in the first year – in other words, I’d be down about $48 – and lease payments wouldn’t equal savings until year 8). Over 20 years, the payments would average $59 a month, and they predict a saving of $551 (total, over 20 years – which is, what, less than $28 a year average).
In order to achieve those rather paltry savings, they used an estimated 4% per year increase in electricity prices. I don’t think that’s got any basis in the historical record (but it’s hard to research. All I could find was that the company got a 12% increase over 4 years back in 2003, and that they hadn’t got an increase since 1993, but I don’t know if they have some sort of automatic increase based on production costs or something).
Anyhow, if I do all that, I get an iPad2 with their monitoring app.
As much as I’d like to go for it, I just can’t see getting locked into a 20 year lease for what amounts to no gains. If technology improves, prices drop and/or efficiency increases in, say, five or ten years, I’d be stuck with what I’ve got.
So, I think I’ll have to pass on it. Now, if they were offering a Transformer Prime TF-201 in champagne gold with the keyboard docking station….
We have been talking about solar panels for years. Home Depot has frequent classes about buying and installing them. According to them there are substantial gummint subsidies that make it worthwhile. One of these days we’ll manage to get to one of those classes and learn what they offer.
Yeah, there are NY State rebates and federal tax credits. The system I was looking at is 6.84 kW (36 panels), estimated to produce 5,953 kWh.
To buy it, the total overall cost would be $39,658. There are state and local rebates of $8,867. That means I’d have to come up with $30,791 out of pocket. Then there’s a federal tax credit applied on that year’s taxes, of $9,237. So the final cost would be $21,554.
The life expectancy of the inverter is 15 years. That would cost $3,078. Including that expense, projected energy savings over 20 years is $14,790.
In other words, not only not saving anything, but losing money. Of course, if you pay a lot more for electricity, you may save money.
As for me, I don’t have the $21,000 to shell out (let alone the $30,000) so that I can lose $350 a year for 20 years.
Glad to see you, Vernon.
So, has anybody been watching “Luck” on HBO. It has some good people in it, but I watched the first one and it really didn’t do much for me. I have the rest of them recorded, but haven’t really been motivated to watch them.
Just wondering if I didn’t give it a fair chance and it turns out to be good.
My friends and I finally started watching last week. I think that they were with you after the first epi but I thought it was OK. We watched epi 2 and they seemed to get more into it. I was reminding them that there was a lot of character introduction and development in the early epis of The Wire before we got hooked. The main problem I was having was being able to hear because they kept the volume down and there was an array of accents and mumblers. I haven’t heard anything about continuing but I’ll pick up on it when I get the chance.
Davy Jones, 1945-2012
By Kent Jones – Wed Feb 29, 2012 1:42 PM EST
🙁 :gate: :blues:
Only 66. Sad. I used to love the Monkees show.
My sister just called to revel in the great legislative accomplishment in RVa approving the ultra sound before abortion requirement and the repeal of the limits on the sale of handguns.
Then she reminded me that I used to make fun of her liking The Monkees and her heart throb Davy. The words ‘bullying’ and ‘scarred for life’ were used. Yeah, a while after they came out I looked at The Monkees as something of a contrived teeny bopper thing. What a snob! In intervening years I came to appreciate them much more. The show was produced by very talented people, the musicians that worked on their recordings were top notch, and their material was taken from some of our greatest songwriters of the era.
It’s Marcia Brady I feel bad for.