Official, V10, This time next week
On Wednesday evening Bryan stopped back at the house for me to sign the documents for the solar installation. It was a lot of paperwork, requiring not only the contract with them, the loan paperwork, and the connection agreements with the electric company. I did actually take the time to read the documents I was signing. Doing so caught a few things that were not as they should be which I had him notate and fix. Bryan told me that they would have a guy out the NEXT morning to do a site survey, wow.
I met the guy at home Thursday. We walked the yard while he measured distances with his wheel. He said the 48 panels will go on one massive rack that is 65 feet wide. The panels will be mounted in landscape fashion and will have four rows of 12 panels each. It will be quite the structure. It is going to get installed on the higher ground in the back yard, behind the chicken coop. The cable run to the house will be a very lengthy 250 feet but the guy said they would just up the wire size to accommodate the distance. He marked the corners of where the structure would go with some spray paint. After taking a few pictures of the yard, electric meter and breaker box he was good to go.
The speed that the install happens seems to be completely governed by how long it takes for the permitting process to occur. Hopefully the delay is minimal. Cindy and I are both excited about the prospect of installing a self sustaining energy solution. Hopefully it lives up to our expectations. Yesterday I handled the one requirement I had, securing a one million dollar umbrella liability policy which is a requirement by the electric company to hook up to the grid with a “tier 2” system like mine. Originally I was scared this was going to be a massive expense. It turned out to be less than $300 a year.
Earlier in the week I made a video complaining about how the much anticipated Version 10 software update for my Tesla was not getting installed on my car. The full self driving cars such as mine were supposed to be at the front of the line to receive the update. Twice the car said it downloaded the update and twice it failed to install for some odd reason. Yesterday I took the step of contacting Tesla support to see what they could do. Through some back end magic they were able to force the update down to the car which I installed last night.
This morning it was like mini-Christmas as I dug through the tons of new features with the release. One of the cool things is now my car, which did not have streaming music as part of it’s options package, now does. I have three different streaming services, the web browser, YouTube, and Netflix apps. Now of course you can’t watch movies while driving, at least not yet, but it is something to pass the time if you are on the road hooked up to a supercharger. There are tweaks to auto pilot and the long awaited release of enhanced summon, a feature that I thought I already had when I bought the car.
Enhanced summon allows your car to come to you in a parking lot. Basically you activate it on your phone app and the car will intelligently navigate it’s way to you, avoiding obstacles along the way. Already the internet has been flooded by idiots using the feature in unsafe situations and documenting how it can be potentially dangerous. The car does not have the ability to see another drivers eyes to ascertain if they see you or not so it is a feature best used in open, lightly traveled lots. To be quite honest it is a feature that I will likely never use in a practical manner, to me it is just a cool card trick that will be fun to show to others. The only real viable use I could see is if I was in the middle of a torrential rainstorm and had a choice between running a couple hundred feet to the car in a deluge or having it drive to me. Yes that would be cool indeed. Otherwise I am quite fine walking my ass to the car as usual.
I shot another video this morning on the way to work documenting some of the features. I expect to be shooting a couple more over the weekend diving deeper into the stuff that interests me the most.
It’s hard to believe but by this time next week Cindy and I may be driving to the east coast to depart on Cindy’s short four day birthday cruise. I always have anxiety about leaving the animals and the household in general. However we will be back Monday, a much more manageable absence than when we go on 10-14 day road trips. Cindy is very excited about the trip.
This weekend has lots to do including more Tesla testing, upgrades on the Segway Mini-Pro, getting out to the see the Joker movie, and much, much more.
Does it seem to anyone else like Trump is actually trying to get impeached at this point? I said to my buddy Matt yesterday that it’s almost like Donald finally woke up and realized that it is more fun just being filthy rich than being the laughing stock of the rest of the world. It’s a good scenario for him, he gets pushed out but he can lay all the blame on treasonous Democrats and the fake news losers.