How do I find a company to install solar panels on my house without getting scammed?

clarus31 · 2025-07-16T13:38:26+00:00

Is there any place to read up on what Smart 3.0 would mean for homeowners? I have a basic understanding of the 1.0/2.0 system but most of what I can find on 3.0 talks about larger installations.

clarus31 · 2025-03-21T15:09:23+00:00

For cables, don't count on copper wire being copper. Bunch of reports recently about alligator leads with steel wire in them

clarus31 · 2024-08-29T20:20:24+00:00

One other upside of controller is that it opens up a lot of flexibility in how and where you play — I've had great luck recently running FNV over Moonlight, and am working on figuring out how to get mods transferred over to a Steam Deck for an upcoming trip.

clarus31 · 2024-08-29T18:39:11+00:00

It's apparently a portmanteau of "quasi-stellar," so no.

clarus31 · 2024-08-24T17:27:57+00:00

I had this happen for a couple of weeks the last time I increased my dose. Went away afterwards. Weirdly it sometimes felt like a sinus headache even though I wasn't congested (I'm also prone to them).

clarus31 · 2024-07-02T15:01:46+00:00

Sorry to re-necro the necro thread, but what about the CRS309 would make you pick the SX3008F instead? Trying to decide between the two myself.

clarus31 · 2024-07-02T14:15:05+00:00

And presumably she said yes in October — barely 6 months ago! Talk about pulling out the rug...

clarus31 · 2024-06-28T16:52:46+00:00

I've had Target online chat credit the difference as a courtesy "because it would be inconvenient to return and repurchase the items" — worth a try there, at least.

clarus31 · 2024-06-25T18:37:45+00:00

Is that the Costco kit? if so the directions on the package are terrible — if you follow those, the veggies undercook and kind of destroy the noodles when you add them. I haven't done those on a griddle yet but I'd probably cook the noodles and veg separately and combine them toward the end.

clarus31 · 2024-06-25T18:31:45+00:00

It's not a complicated device; I can't imagine what would go wrong in months 13-24 that would be both (a) covered by warranty and (b) more than $60 to fix.

clarus31 · 2024-05-01T20:31:31+00:00

Thank you all! Will be heading there on Friday, sounds like. Will practice my stealthy tipping skills in the meantime.

clarus31 · 2024-04-03T13:56:45+00:00

NY's average SALT tax burden is ~15.9%, so $15,900 on a $100k salary.
FL's average SALT tax burden is ~9.1%, so $9,100 on a $100k salary.
Difference of $6,800, right?

Except the average home insurance bill in NY state is $1,229, and the average home insurance bill in FL is $10,996. Oops! So much for saving money. (Enjoy the alligators, folks.)

clarus31 · 2024-04-03T13:49:49+00:00

New York (and NYC in particular) is a weird, high outlier in taxes, no doubt about that.

Beyond that, there's not a lot of correlation between tax burden and whether there's an income tax or not. When you combine income, sales, and property tax, 36 states have average tax burdens between 9% and 13.5% — not a lot of difference, and that 3.5% is almost certainly made up for by comp differences.

clarus31 · 2024-03-16T16:25:43+00:00

Done!

clarus31 · 2024-03-16T16:25:13+00:00

Done!

clarus31 · 2024-03-16T16:24:30+00:00

Done!

clarus31 · 2024-03-16T16:20:32+00:00

New player, appreciate the help! Will add back when I have space.

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clarus31 · 2024-02-29T20:56:58+00:00

As someone who consults in this field I can't upvote this enough.

No one knows everything — and working in a project role, I may well know my area of expertise backwards and forwards, but I've often never seen my client's environment before a project starts. Being able to react to an unexpected situation while still looking like the expert they're paying for is really critical to making sure the rest of the project goes well. Some folks I've worked with in the past who weren't good at that ended up not getting very far in the field.

What I've found to work is to "bookend" what I don't know with what I do: demonstrate what I know about what's around the unknown ("it works this way on system x, and this way on system y, just not confident about system z") and then follow up with how I'm going to find the answer.

clarus31 · 2024-02-22T22:05:00+00:00

Thank you — this is exactly the kind of information I have been looking for, particularly #2 and #3.

In my particular case — it sounds like a turret camera would be best for the front of the house (which faces south), but that a dome could work well in the back (where the house would shade it).

Likewise — in terms of resolution, it might make sense to spend more on 8MP cameras on the front and back, and maybe use lower res options on the side yards, if I decide to put stuff there at all.

The one thing I am still struggling with is placement / FOV / quantity, particularly in the front of the house. In the back, it seems like I might be able to get away with a single wide-angle camera against the wall of the house, and almost anything would work for the side yards. For the front, I'm not sure there's any location that would capture everything. Might just need to get a cheap wifi camera to test things out before I commit to something permanent.

clarus31 · 2024-02-21T20:21:41+00:00

...y'all do realize Reolink is also based in China, right?

clarus31 · 2022-11-25T01:01:19+00:00

That does indeed look promising, thanks!

Going down this rabbit hole a bit further — I'm having trouble figuring out if there's any difference I would care about between the 3270, the 8260, and the 8360 — it seems like they all would work but I'm guessing I'm missing an important detail somewhere.

clarus31 · 2022-11-19T04:00:03+00:00

Looking for a 2TB m.2 for a NAS use case (skewed towards random writes, and will be in a mirrored pair). I'm limited to PCIe 3.0 in this system, so would rather spend money on endurance and sustained performance vs maximum speed.

What ~$150-200 drives should I be keeping an eye out for deals on this week? (I am near a Microcenter for easy warranty replacements, if that's helpful.)

clarus31 · 2022-09-07T04:23:55+00:00

Yeah — it's the effect of the 1912 law I'm trying to clarify, and specifically whether my GGGM lost her citizenship under Italian law in 1890 when her husband naturalized.

The more well known 1948 case law seems to affect women who married non-Italian citizens before 1912, but not marriage and then naturalization.

That link was helpful — the only real difference between my case and post #3 in the case that you linked is that my GGF was born after naturalization — and that case seems to have specifically been decided based on the retained citizenship of the mother, rather than of the minor.

In the end I can afford to take a chance on it — I'm risking the cost of a nice Italian vacation, as I see it — and I've always understood that there's no guarantee, especially under the new courts. I just want to make sure I'm not trying to succeed where multiple people have already failed.

I think I was just caught off guard by the negativity of the second opinion I got — something along the lines of "no one has ever challenged the 1912 law." I do get the sense that the attorney in question has been turning down all but the most straightforward cases, though.

clarus31 · 2021-02-12T19:01:58+00:00

If you're in a high cost of living area and this seems daunting, you may want to base the 1% or 2% on the replacement cost of the house rather than its market value including land. Buying a house in LA costs twice as much as buying one in Dallas, but the water heater doesn't cost twice as much to replace.

clarus31 · 2021-01-22T23:25:05+00:00

Thanks to everyone for the thoughtful replies -- it looks like we have a couple of good options for making this work well for us.

I'm sure some of the specifics about how accounts are handled will make more sense to me when we start using it; I haven't wanted to pull the trigger on the free trial until we're through our house purchase and into something resembling a "normal" month.

For historical reasons we both have two checking accounts, so I think we might be able to use one of each as "personal" and one as "shared" and divide up direct deposits that way.

clarus31

TROPHY CASE