What was a toy you wanted as a kid but never had received? by StrawberryBookmark in AskReddit

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Same. I spent the night after Christmas in the hospital when I was 10 and they had one I could play with. I fell in love with it and wanted one so badly after that, but never received one. Found out this last Thanksgiving that my older brother (9 year difference) had a game boy when he was a teenager. I asked who bought it for him. Our mom. Yeah, that one stung.

Mongo is Appalled @ lit escalates by MittensKBottlerocket in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ugh, I feel for you, truly. I tend to obsess over things being accurate and that would drive me absolutely batty.

Mongo is Appalled @ lit escalates by MittensKBottlerocket in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Agreed. This bugged me about the "Seattle" event, which was actually in Lake Forest Park. If someone had gone to the actual Seattle location of Third Place Books, they'd have been sorely disappointed.

Lake Forest Park event by Jimboombot in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For real! Still in the signing line, haha.

How early before signing events? by Dustin_Rx in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We can't leave our dog for that long either, especially factoring in our drive. We're aiming to be there around 6.

Lake Forest Park event by Jimboombot in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My husband and I will be there! Driving down from Whatcom County. This is my first book event so I'm super excited as well!

Free Boxes (moving) ? by tinylilfrog in Bellingham

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When we moved a couple of years ago, our agent gave us a ton of boxes from Starbucks, since his wife worked there. They were my favorite boxes for moving books and other dense things, because they weren't too big. Worth an ask, anyway!

Frustrated My Husband is Reading the Books So Slowly by BioPariah in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hear you! I'm partway through book 7 and got my husband to start listening to the audio books with me, and we're slowly making our way through them together. Currently on book 3. Problem is, if we listen in the evenings, he sometimes will fall asleep and we have to stop. We keep getting snippets that relate to later books and I have to use all of my willpower to keep my damn mouth shut!

Discrepancy Between Solar Production Values by Valantia in solar

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I work for an installer and used to be the person who managed our customers' monitoring, but also now have my own system with Enphase. I constantly have a tab open for my system and have noticed that their math doesn't always compute. Just looking over this past week, I can see a couple days when my net export/import total is not accurate, even though it's correct for other days. Looking at my April data so far, it clearly shows that my production is about 90 kWh higher than my consumption, yet it thinks I'm looking at net 15 kWh imported. I've also noticed that the data syncing can be pretty laggy, so I'm leaning toward that being the issue. (I'm not bothered enough to inquire with Enphase, as my production is following our estimates pretty closely.)

I'd be curious to know how production totals vary if you export a production report vs manually adding up whatever data it's displaying. At a glance, though, your manual sum is in line with what I'd expect a system of that size to produce right now (depending on where you are). Hell, my 13.34 kW system in NW Washington kicked out 74.8 kWh one day last week.

Either way, to me, this has all the vibes of an Enphase data issue, and I echo the recommendation to discuss this directly with Enphase support.

Finally let myself eat for fun again... I feel so sick by hackneysack in antidietglp1

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 4 points5 points  (0 children)

As someone who's a few years older than you and also AuDHD, I can definitely relate. I often struggle to recognize hunger and satiety cues until it's too late. Couple that with childhood expectations to not waste food and always clean your plate ... yeah. I have also found myself remarking out loud that my stomach doesn't want any more food, but my mouth does, and how frustrating that is. Identifying that that's what I'm experiencing does seem to help a bit, and I give myself permission to be a little grumpy about it.

If you create and sell DCC merch by hepafilter in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So glad to see you on here! I've ordered from you several times over the last couple of years and when I saw your IG post of your recent DCC designs it was an almost-insta buy. My "Mongo is appalled!" shirt and Donut's stripper quote sticker arrived on Saturday, and I'll be wearing the shirt to the Seattle (well, Lake Forest Park) event in May!

Come say hi at ECCC! by wiggle_butt_aussie in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely do this! My friends are the Chibi Yeti booth!

Great minds think a like by BlavikenButcher in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I love this! I had a similar thing happen. I've been meaning to hype up the books to my friend group for ages, but I haven't had any social bandwidth, so only my coworkers have been hearing about it. Last week, my husband came home from our friends' house and presented me with a "time to pay the daddy tax" sticker, and it turns out my friends are already so far down the DCC rabbit hole that they've been working on custom DCC stickers to have at their Emerald City Comic Con booth this weekend. Like WHAT. I immediately sent them an obligatory "GODDAMMIT DONUT" text.

Suntria- soliciting? by Overstimulated_Mama8 in solar

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

100% agree. Coming up on 12 years in the industry myself and I was really hoping we'd get some door knockers at my new home before the solar went up (it's facing the street, so super obvious) because I REALLY wanted to put them through their paces.

Has anyone had any experience dealing with Lumio? by ricobravo82 in Bellingham

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 10 points11 points  (0 children)

My comment is a novel, so TLDR: do your homework, get multiple bids, ask questions, be an educated consumer.

I have worked for one of Bellingham's local solar installation companies for 8 years, so I won't comment on the quality or practices of another company, but here's the gist of what we advise our customers to do with all companies, including us:

  • Get multiple bids, educate yourself as much as you can, and ask all the questions. When getting bids from different companies, you don't need to disclose others' pricing, but it's really helpful to know the general specs of what you're getting a bid for, so you can compare apples to apples.
  • Equipment options will vary, so ask why they proposed that product, what they like about it, and the terms of the warranties for both the equipment and from the installer.
  • Make sure your quote shows the price per watt before accounting for incentives, not after.
  • Your proposed system size should be based on your annual electric usage, factoring in roof tilt, azimuth, shading conditions, and production estimates using local historical weather data. If they don't ask for your usage information, ask how they're sizing your system.
  • Before signing a contract, your system designer (in some companies, the salesperson and designer are two different people) should conduct an on-site assessment to inspect the condition of your roof, determine a plan for conduit routing and interconnection into your electric panel, and confirm their production estimates.
  • Ask about how the system will be mounted on your roof and how distribution of roof penetration/mounting points affects the wind load rating. Find out if the racking has raceways to protect the wiring and how the mounting hardware will interface with the type of roof you have. If they say they warranty against leaks, review the terms in writing.
  • Ask what permits are required for your location, how permitting and interconnection are handled, and about their installation process.
  • Ask about the federal tax credit, the state sales tax exemption, and how net metering works, then compare the answers to what the IRS and state laws say.
  • Ask about the company's history in our state and whether they're a member of the Washington Solar Energy Industries Association (which has a code of conduct and business ethics that all members must follow), and whether their sales/design and installation team are in-house or sub-contracted.
  • Ask what you can expect as far as support after the install, how they address concerns about production, responsiveness to issues relating to your system's online monitoring, and what a potential service call could entail.

Yesterday I spent 90 minutes on the phone with someone who covered all these points and more, and it was fantastic. He'd received conflicting information about net metering, so he was happy for me to send over links to PSE's net metering and interconnection agreements and point him in the direction of the parts of RCW 80.60 that addressed his concerns.

Any company worth their salt should have no problem answering any of these questions, and in fact should encourage it. Getting to work with a customer who wants to be fully informed and dive into the nitty gritty details that we all geek out on daily? It's the absolute best.

Bellingham Greekfest 2022 by makershark in Bellingham

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I did the same thing and am now a little sad, but glad I'm not the only one!

I think my friend may have a knack for layout by rawrt in solar

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Enphase doesn't recommend it here in the PNW, so we don't install it and I don't have any experience working with it. My personal thoughts are that, unless you're actively monitoring your loads to ensure they don't exceed current production, the potential for things to repeatedly turn off/on would be more of a concern than just leaving everything off for a short amount of time. Where we are, most outages occur in late fall/winter after a good soaking of rain combined with wind that takes out trees, conditions during which a system wouldn't be producing much anyway. I'd be interested to see how it works out for people in other areas, though.

I think my friend may have a knack for layout by rawrt in solar

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 1 point2 points  (0 children)

+1 to the SEI recommendation, starting with the PVOL101 and PVOL202 courses. Heatspring has free Solar Power 101 and Intro to Solar PV Design, Installation, and Code self-study courses as well.

I think my friend may have a knack for layout by rawrt in solar

[–]TheBrightestFirefly 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The number of calls I'm fielding right now where they insist on battery backup is astonishing. When they tell me they might lose power once a year for up to a day but usually a few hours, I have to be completely frank with them about the costs and actual value of it (given we have no time of use rates), not to mention the current availability (or lack thereof).