Sunday, February 28, 2010

February Solar generation

Generated another 630 kwh this month for a total of 2.66gwh. Surprisingly the maximum has also gone up, not only wouldn't I have expected that in February, but it went up to 7460 which is quite a bit above the 6.72 for which the system is rated. I'm not sure what that means, but I'm damned glad it's working as well as it is.

Friday, February 19, 2010

solaris NIC admin and named configuration

on new sun servers to administer nics
dladm show-dev

-----------
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/excerpt/dnsbindcook_ch05/

named-checkconf to check named configuration

named-checkzone to check a specific zone

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Contingency Planning.

A story:
Following the contingency plan was simple when the alarms went off. It was well written, concise and obvious. When I reached my assigned place I discovered the next stop was to read "Green Book Number 17". Green Book Number 17 was difficult to find at first because it was so small. Merely a thick paper cover and a single sheet of paper.

The single sheet of paper said only "Find box 17 on the lower shelf and follow instructions."

Box 17 was one of only a few boxes on the shelves and was about the size of a shoe box, only made of heavy metal locked with a combination lock. Likely the combination lock for the 6 digit number I'd been told to memorize last year.

The top of the box had a 3"x5" card on top that said "Open box while alone in locked room immediately." Simple enough, the room I was assigned for emergency use was just down the hall so I stepped in and locked the door. Everyone outside was going about their duties in an orderly fashion so no need for me to interfere.

Sure enough the number I had fit the box I had. Inside the box was quite a surprise, not what I'd expected at all. A box of syringes, a small mirror, a headlamp, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of sterile wipes, a 9 mm hand gun and 4 boxes of shells. Also a sealed red envelope with INSTRUCTIONS printed on it.

Inside the envelope was a set of simple instructions I found hard to grasp. Simple to list, difficult to execute.

"If you are following instructions which have led to opening this box, the base will be completely sealed in less than 10 minutes. Follow these instructions as quickly as you can, time is against you.
1. Look in the mirror. If the whites of your eyes have any bright yellow coloring find your next in command and give them this box. If not follow the rest of these instructions.
2. Inoculate yourself immediately.
3. Find your next in command and check their eyes. If no yellow is visible inoculate them immediately. If their eyes are yellow at all, shoot them in the head.
4. Repeat these steps for every person in your section of the building.

If in 4 hours no others have developed symptoms use the intercom to begin trying to contact Central Command.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Solar taxes.

One of the steps in this process that I've sort of doubted all along was the claimed tax refund from installing the solar. Well, I did my taxes and wow was I surprised. Not only did I get several thousand dollars back from my taxes for installing solar but I have an even larger hold over for next year because my deductions were too large. So I get a huge return this year (which is very good since it's going to save my ass) and next year I get a bigger than normal return.

At this point my total outlay for the installation is going to be about $13,500 for a 6.72Kwh system. Then I'll get another chunk back for it next year, probably dropping the total price to around somewhere around $11,000. I won't know for a while yet exactly what my payoff period will be for the system, but at the very least it's making it so that my hot tub increase in power use is offset. During the summer I expect to generate quite a bit more power than I use, even with the hot tub, and I intend to make the hot tub significantly more energy efficient before next winter.

So all in all, I would guess that I'll have this entire installation paid off in about 7 years, so then I should have about 13 years of profit from it before I have to replace it.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Power usage/generation Jan 2010

Ugh...I used 926 kwhs last month in addition to the 590 kwhs I generated. I've got to do something about the amount of power that hot tub is taking. It was a cold month, average temperature of 26, but still...that's a crazy amount of power.

Total so far: 2.03mwhs. Woohoo! December is definitely the low month, and that's likely to be true every year.