Mission accomplished! A couple of weeks ago, my aging version of WordPress (2.61 I think) just sorta flaked out. Specifically I couldn’t save edits to either posts or pages either new or existing entries. I found similar forum entries over the last month from folks on the WordPress site – everything working fine for the last 10-12 months then suddenly bam! the online editor is unable to save changes. Very strange… and the only constructive feedback was to upgrade. I’m not a timid guy but I just haven’t felt the need to upgrade. And I have made some fairly significant mods to the dowloaded theme – The Morning After ( I love this theme! kudos to Arun Kale for the theme design and folks like Nick Bohle providing support). Once this hangup occurred I started to panic about losing my (admittedly tiny) content.
Anywhooooo… I choked down the fear and learned a few things about backing up MySQL databases and WordPress files. Bottom line – the upgrade directions were straightforward and the “operation” went off without a hitch. I haven’t even found a need for any theme-level tweaks… yet. And the editor now works so I’ve lost any excuse for not posting.
Just saw that ground has been broken in New Mexico for the first Spaceport America facility.
“British tycoon Richard Branson’s space tours firm, Virgin Galactic,
will use the facility to propel tourists into suborbital space at a
cost of $200,000 a ride.” Reuters 19,June 2009
How cool is this? The full Reuters article.
Just getting caught up on some articles I clipped from the Sunday Boston Globe over the last few weeks… There’s an intriguing story about Massachusetts supporting affordable leases for residential solar panels. I’ve always been interested in the idea of solar power but the upfront investment was always w-a-y too steep – $25,000+ The idea of leasing might just be the thing that makes this viable for a much larger market. The online article does not include a nice chart that was in the paper.
Buy vs. Lease Buy Lease
24 panels $39K $1K upfront
Mthly Lease 0 $77
Mthly Elec Bill $46 $46
Yrs to recoup 11 3
Given my present under-employed status, I will probably hold off on this but I may investigate the potential for the big south-facing roof on our barn. I can see some liability in the long-term leasing and possibly in the business model of fixing an energy price for 20 years. But if you really can save $20 – $30 dollars a month, the payback is 3-4 years. Now if they could combine solar electric and solar water heating in this package…
SunRun Inc. owns all the hardware and partners with local companies like Alteris Renewables, groSolar to handle the installation and maintenance.
