Even an expert would have to look twice at this phishing URL I received (claiming to be from EBay):

http://signin.ebay.com.ws.eBayISAPI.dll.UsingSSL.Yes.SignIn.siteid.pageType.
copartnerid.aK5Z8dY21qSoLRwOAwX7ejfXWHh71P87nEUrhS1bcPXHQ.wildcat5.com/
~truehome/data/module.dll.php?SignIn=1&co_partnerId=2&siteid=0&ru=&
pp=pass&pageType=708XeMWZllWXS3AlBX&customerid=%TO_EMAIL&VShqAhQRfhgTDrf=
https://signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SignIn&UsingSSL=1&pUserId=&
co_partnerId=2&siteid=0&ru=&pp=&pageType=708&MfcISAPICommand=
ConfirmRegistration&708XeMWZllWXS3AlBXVShqAhQRfhgTDrfQRfhgTDrfA

How can you tell whether this is a legitimate link or not?  A Web site URL has the form:

http://[site-specific-stuff].[domain].com/[site-specific-stuff]

Check the domain carefully, it’s the clue to the true owner of the web site.  Even if it looks good visually you might want to check twice, e.g. http://MICROSOFT.COM and http://MICR0S0FT.COM are not the same (notice the sneaky switch from O’s to zeroes?) It’s always best to retype the URL to make sure you’re going where you think you are.

Stripping out all the officially-cryptic obfuscation from the above link, you can reduce it to:

http://wildcat5.com/~truehome/data/

Does that look like an official EBay URL?  If you don’t immediately reject it, you will find that this URL brings you to a fake EBay front-end, asking for your logon details, and I’m sure later on for your credit card number.

I used Internet Explorer 7’s Phishing reporting system on this link, and the link it redirects to, for the first time, and can recommend it!  You click on the phishing icon, say you’d like to report the site, and you’re taken to a Microsoft site where you can say "I think this site is a Phishing site."  Input a visual/aural code which prevents the phishing filter itself from being spammed, and the data will contribute to the community knowledge base, soon (one hopes) automatically flagging the site as a phisher for users unsavvy enough to have clicked on the link without close examination.

Still working slowly through my summer photo backlog.  Today I was going over some August photos taken during an amazing couple of evenings camping in Washoe Valley between Tahoe Rim Trail segments.  Amazing skies - and as usual the photos are a poor substitute for being there, but a few capture some fraction of the drama of a desert thunderstorm.  See the whole set here.

I spent a day in Hong Kong earlier this year, a 12 hour layover on my way to visit Sanjiva and WSO2 for an in-depth look.  I’m just now getting around to posting them.  Better late than never I suppose!

[Written Aug 17th, 2006 10:30 AM, Hong Kong time.]

I’m sitting on top of Victoria Peak, over 1200 feet above Hong Kong’s dense glass-and-steel pongees. It’s 10:30 in the morning, but already a break in the shade, with a little breeze to combat the humidity, sounds great. Hong Kong is a vertical city, almost right from the waterfront, and when I arrived in Central Hong Kong this morning at about 7AM, I inevitably started climbing hills. I wandered a bit among the dim and still quiet canyons between the high-rises, at last finding my way to the Zoological and Botanical Gardens, themselves a terrace of manicured gardens with a few bird and monkey cages scattered throughout. A jaguar cage too, but they seemed to be hiding out at this early hour.

The gardens are full, not surprisingly, with middle-aged folks performing a variety of exercises, most of which appear to be a form of Tai Chi, but a few are jogging or doing a strange exaggerated walk resembling the swimsuit portion of a beauty pageant. Not actually a very pretty thought for these middle-aged housewives…

It took me a while to find the tortuous series of footpaths the few blocks to the start of the Peak Tram, although the roads are marked on the map, they often don’t have sidewalks, or the sidewalks are a separate path going over, under, and along other roads. I ended up on the wrong side of a gate of a church at one point and had to hop the fence to proceed.

The Peak Tram is a funicular, pulled by a single cable to a saddle and gleaming shopping mall at the top of the hill. It is so steep, that as you go up, as much as you try to compensate your perspective for the tilt, the skyscrapers appear to lean precariously. The north side of Hong Kong Island crowds below, and across a fairly narrow channel plied by junks, ferries, and all kinds of cargo vessels, Kowloon continues the urban density, quickly climbing into it’s own boundary hills.

I walked along the roads winding around the summit, admiring not only the views but the extraordinary measures taken to combat erosion. The roads are narrow, with steep, overhanging walls on the downhill, and spray-on concrete covering the upside. The concrete has small accommodations for trees to grow, and they seem fairly happy with the situation. Although there appear to be a few private residences up here, many of the buildings clinging to the mountaintop are multi-unit dwellings, some over a dozen stories high. Ever seen a skyscraper on the top of a mountain? Weird. But the real estate prices here must be simply crazy - my guidebook tells of a house nearby (which I couldn’t locate) which was completed in 1997 and the builder turned down an offer of $900 million HK ($120 million US) for it. But then the market crashed and it’s probably not worth even $50 million anymore.

I plan to descend the mountain using the old Peak Trail path, find some good Chinese for lunch, and take a Ferry to see the city from the waterfront.

[5:30PM]

The winding path down was steep enough in places to force me into little voluntary 5-step mini-switchbacks. And in the jungle, the air was still enough to bring the sweat out. Getting used to the humidity takes some doing - I’ve drunk about 4 liters of liquids today, and am still a little thirsty. I tended west at the bottom of the path, and managed to find the series of escalators that ferry pedestrians up the hills from the downtown/waterfront level, to the "Middle Levels". Of course, I was heading downhill, so I was still doing steps.

I started looking for a lunch place, but the area called "SoHo" for "South of Hollywood Road" is so international that local fare isn’t readily detectable among the multitude of interesting eateries. But after a few blocks I reached Gage Street, which looks just like San Francisco’s Chinatown, squared. Between the many fruit, herb, seafood, and meat vendors, I found a tiny place upscale enough to have air conditioning, and ordered the local special - Beef Brisket Noodle Soup. It came with a delightful iced Black Frothy Milk Tea with Tapioca Pearls that was so refreshing I ordered and downed another!

After wandering the streets for a while, enjoying the strangeness of a few of the items spread out under the colorful awnings, such as a bright fushia fruit shaped like an elongated kohlrabi named "dragon fruit", and the Durien which tends to catch your nose unawares with a tropical open sewer smell, I exhausted my interest and headed for the Star Ferry terminal.

I paid the $2.2HK (30 cents) you get the upper, premium deck, and the 10 minute ride gives you a fresh breeze, a great view of the Hong Kong skyline, and a closer look at some of the watercraft plying the waters. Upon arriving in Kowloon I found my way into an air conditioned mall which went on for about 10 blocks before depositing me next to Kowloon Park, where I rested in the Chinese Garden near a McDonald’s branded ice cream stand. A knock-off? Or a local adaptation?

I walked some of the "Golden Mile" which is supposed to be hopping, especially at night, but it was just store after store of the same westernized merchandise. I followed a parade for a bit, drums, cymbals, gongs, oboe-like horns and those little funky cellos made from a gourd. What a racket! A last panorama from the "Kowloon Western Promenade" which was a semi deserted car park in between undeveloped fields reclaimed from the bay, and I collapsed into the train back to the airport. Still thirsty, I ordered a drink of Sago (Coconut) with Tapioca Pearls and Mango jello slivers - another great combo!

In all Hong Kong is an interesting place. It does seem dense, and vertical, but not as huge or crowded as I’d expected. It is not intimidating, and fun to wander in, and I’ll look forward to my next visit.

[Entire photoset here.]

[Written 10/7 3PM; completed photoset here.]

Aloha from Aloha Lake!  I’m sitting in the sun at water’s edge squinting into the high altitude sun, which warms my front and compliments the cool east wind at my back.  My bubbling pot holds Ramen spiked with chinese sausage.  It’ll be ready in a moment, but my exhaustion mingles with the sun and with memories of these fourteen days, bringing the meaning of my trail experience into focus.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  First thing to tell you, in case it isn’t obvious by now, is that I survived the night!  In fact, I was nowhere near cold, and even through I kept my jacket and cap nearby, I slept comfortably through the night.  Well, comfortably if you don’t count waking up a dozen times with different kinds of muscle soreness and stiffness from the hard ground.  But comfortably if you count 8+ hours of actual sleep.

As the dawn brightened and the clock approached 7AM, I deemed it light enough to peek out, and a wonderland awaited me.  My tent was covered in a fur of frost, as were the surrounding bushes and rocks, but the sun was just coming up over Middle Velma, backlighting the mist rising from the calm, reflective surface.  Clouds clung to the surrounding peaks and hills, patterning the hills with light and shadow, and I scrambled around for half an hour or more taking pictures.

[Testing the Ramen, it's now cooked but still a little too hot to gobble down.]

Although we wanted an early start, to put some mileage and elevation behind us, by the time I stopped ooohing and ahhhing, scraped the frost off my tent and packed, it was nearly 8AM, later than I would have liked with over 17 rugged miles ahead of us.

Rather than take the trail through for a mile through forest, we skirted cross-country around the scenic edges of Middle and Upper Velma and climbed the long 45 degree granite sluice down which the overflow of Fontanillis cascades.  At the top is of course Fontanillis Lake, one of the most beautiful of the Sierra alpine lakes, wedged in between granite cliffs on both sides and backed by scree and snowfields sweeping up to Dick’s peak, still shrouded in cloud.

As we rejoined the trail and started around the lake, some fool started whooping and though we tried to ignore him and continue our way, it turned out not to be a fool at all, but none other than Coy, come in last night from Emerald Bay to cater our breakfast!  Actually it was originally the plan to meet him somewhere in the Velma Basin the first night and do part of the remaining trail together, but the forecast had frightened him off.  Or so I thought.  A sparkling morning in the valley had caused a rethink, hurried packing, and a few messages on cell phones, but we were (and still are) out of cell range to pick up his message and thus missed him last night.

In lieu of radio communication, he had reverted to Boy Scout, and neatly blocked off the trail with a pile rocks and the word "Coy" formed from twigs.  Unfortunately we had cleverly bypassed that part of the trail with our cross-country route.  We did pass by close enough for him to hear us chatting and he alertly came to investigate.

After introductions, we went back to his camp, carefully chosen in a grassy, willowy nook between granite massifs looking south over the length of Fontanillis, surely one of the most beautiful spots in the world at this precise moment, and he piled out over-ample breakfast provisions - bagels with cream cheese & lox, chips & fresh salsa, hot drinks.  Having postponed breakfast to await of a warmer spot, I did a credible job of helping lighten his return load!  We convinced Coy to come as far as Dick’s Pass with us, and began again to grunt and plod under our packs while he strolled along, packless, sipping from an oversize coffee mug.  Coy knows how to enjoy the wilderness!

Due to the further, albeit quite welcome, delay of breakfast, we didn’t reach Dick’s Pass until noon.  The view south from Dick’s pass is absolutely one of the most amazing spectacles one can experience in one’s lifetime.  Surrounded by jutting, ragged 10K+ peaks are nearly a dozen lakes, most directly Half Moon Lake (shaped as you would expect, so steeply below us that we can look right into the green depths), Susie Lake (surrounded by crumbling red cliffs), and in the distance silvery Aloha Lake backed by the equally silvery Pyramid peak.  The clouds were breaking up but continued to blow by, tracing shadows across the cliffs and spotlighting new amazements we were to overwhelmed to even notice on first look.  Even the rocky outcropping we stood on was fantastically painted in lichen, and nearby stood clumps of ancient junipers, stunted and weatherworn.  Such a sight is fitting as our final summit of the Tahoe Rim Trail.

But we still have a ways to go, and we wave goodbye to Coy far too soon and pick up our pace on the downward traverse.  We pass Gilmore Lake, Susie Lake, and Heather Lake in perpetual motion.  I think I once calculated the TRT was about half a million steps…

[The Ramen's now perfect - I must turn my attention to that for a moment.]

[3:30]

The Ramen is finished, the sun is starting to get alarmingly low on the horizon even though it’s not even 4PM.  This whole section has felt like impending twilight, with the October sun never settling in overhead were it sat so naturally just a few weeks ago.  Shadows remain long even in midday, and the slanting sunlight backlights the browning grasses and yellow and red leaves of fall.  But these colors are not all filled with sadness.  It seems to me that the high country is not just resigned to, but preparing and even primping for the pure thick blanket of snow that will visit soon.

If I don’t get going soon the last probably agonizing miles will be cloaked in darkness.  Yet still I tarry, though Art is now far ahead, to savor these last few hours of my sojourn in this amazing landscape.  Lake Aloha is a fitting place for the final installment of this journey.  The landscape is barren, a wilderness, yet the air is sparklingly clear; just as I have become emptied, yet more transparent to myself.  Aloha means hello, but also goodbye.  I feel this is where I bid the trail "aloha."

This trail is not easy.  The landscape it traverses is ever varied, with mountaintop views and sheer cliffs, dotted with lakes and streams, covered in a profusion of life simultaneously hearty and delicate.  It’s an unending, genius, detailed, majestic, peaceful, manic, Japanese garden.  The trail has it’s ups and downs, it’s steep gains of elevation and level stretches.  The trail winds ever through this landscape, and in time it winds through your being.

The trail places demands on you.  It demands you bring yourself as unadorned with baggage as you can manage.  It demands your persistence.  It demands your attention and energy, which investment is returned with compounded interest.  The trail demands your complacency, which it keeps and never returns (although you can regrow it if you’re not careful).  It demands your time, and the patience of those who have laid claim to it, and it gives you back timeless experiences.  It demands your spontaneity and your flexibility as much as it demands organization and preparation.  It demands your sweat, your skin (generally on your feet), and at times the very breath of your lungs.  The trail isn’t mean, neither is it unforgiving - it just is.

Maybe this is just my own journey.  I can’t know what the trail will take from you or give back to you until you’ve finished it.  Maybe for you the trail will only take away a little body fat and give you blisters in return.  Maybe you will quit after the trail has demanded a price but before it turns generous again.  But I do believe that if you approach the trail open, ready for the exchange, and stick it out till the end, that the trail will give much more than it takes.  Approach the trail with a heart filled with wonder, gratitude, humility.  Through this inner landscape, calling you to leave what’s ready to be left behind, to strive for what’s ahead, you will find the trail running.

The shadows lengthen even further across the boulders of Aloha.  It’s time to hit it, with renewed energy, for one last stretch of trail in the waning autumn sun.  This amazing, treacherous, inspiring trail.  This trail through through the wilderness.  This Tahoe Rim Trail.

[Mileage: 174.5 | 17.5]

[Written Oct 6, 7PM. Picture here.]

This is it!  I’ve embarked on the final section of the Tahoe Rim Trail at last.  Interruptions from weather, shifting jobs, and various scheduling conflicts have made getting back on the final section of trail difficult.  Maybe I’m being selfish reserving a couple of days against a multitude of competing activities.  Maybe my ego is stroked by being able to say I’ve done the TRT.  But maybe I still have a little to learn about the trail, and about myself.  Maybe I won’t really know why I need to finish it, or whether it was unimportant, until the trail is complete.  In any case, I reserved a block of time, a minimal two days, and held it inviolable against all worthy demands.

Besides holding firm on a block of time, I also had to make sure that nothing, and no-one, could prevent me from moving forward.  I needed a support crew, especially for a car shuttle, one as motivated as I was to make this happen.  A few interested parties considered, but ultimately rejected, the prospect.

Fortunately, a support crew found me.  Art Clark, a fellow TRT aspirant with, like me, only this final longest section remaining, found my TRT photos on Flickr and contacted me about coordinating our attempts, allowing us the mutual support of car shuttling, company, and safety in numbers.  He was fortunately flexible enough on the dates to match mine, and as motivated to finish as I.

That persistence was good because the weather was unsettled enough to scare off the undermotivated.  Forecasts called for scattered show showers and thunderstorms, sub-freezing nights (~25°), and daytime highs not much above freezing.  A couple of inches of snow at higher elevations the day before made these forecasts credible.  Friday night, and possibly a good chunk of the day, looked decidedly unpleasant.

Art, however, was as undeterred (desperate?) as I was, and we agreed to attempt the section, meeting at 7AM at Echo Lake to drop off a car and make our way to the Barker Pass trailhead.

By the time we got to Barker Pass, and on the trail, it was about 8:30 and the sun was shining brightly from a spotless sky over the Tahoe Basin.  As we began our hike, steam rose into the chilly air from the frost-covered brown shreds of the mule ears, quite different from the profuse bloom when I was here last - now almost two months ago.

The sun warmed us quickly and we didn’t need more than a single layer to keep warm as we descended gradually through forest scattered with cold grey granite boulders and yellowing ferns, arriving at Richardson Lake at about 11.  Richardson Lake was surrounded by stands of aspen just forgoing their late summer green for yellow, and the shores are choked with meadows of willow and alder also well into their fall costumes.  By now dramatic clouds were appearing.  Sunbreaks tracked across the meadows and hills around the lake, and I became so engaged in trying to capture this uncapturable moment, that as we circumnavigated the lake we missed the turn-off to the trail.  We continued on a worn and tortured logging road, following the GPS back towards the trail.  Eventually we did a brief cross-country stint and got back on track.

Pleasant chatter carried us along, at times swiftly and at times (uphills) painstakingly slow and gulping the thin air.  By about 12:30 we had passed the boundary of Desolation Wilderness and the granite expanse of the Rubicon Valley stretched out below us to the west.  We ate lunch looking down the glacial-polished slope scattered with boulders and a few hardy trees growing in cracks towards Rockbound Lake.

The cloud cover increased, providing some dramatic views of the nearing peaks of Desolation, and the temperature began to drop.  At about 3PM we passed through a rather dense fir grove just as little plates of ice began to fall.  Thunder rolled down the granite valleys and soon a shower of pea-sized snowballs began.  We took shelter under some trees, thinking the shower would be over shortly, but after about 10 minutes a layer of white covered the unexposed ground with no sign of an early letup.

Strangely, I had a sense that this shower had gone on long enough for our amusement - any more would have led to concern rather than wonderment - and I stated "That’s enough of that."  It wasn’t a demand or even an observation, but within seconds the shower ceased.  I knew intuitively that it wasn’t a false break, and hoisted pack and moved on, under dry skies.

Even though the shower was brief it turned out to be widespread, and for the next five or more miles the ground was dusted with fallen snow.  We were both pretty cold and exhausted as we picked our way down the trail to Middle Velma Lake, and when we gladly found a number of test spots slightly damp but otherwise untouched by the snow, we gratefully lowered our packs to the ground.

Velma was stunning.  From the shore we watched sunbreaks trace along the still water and small islands of Middle Velma and dance in the surrounding hills for a while, but soon darkness began to fall and we turned to pitching camp and cooking dinner.

Art and I are now gratefully tucked into our tents and muffled in down, and expecting a long, quiet, and quite chilly, night.  I threw a novel in my pack as I left this morning, and it will keep me company after signing off here.  If all goes well, I’ll stay warm, sleep deeply, and be refreshed by dawn for the exciting culmination of my TRT quest.

[Mileage: 157.0 | 15.0]

CNet: WSO2 hires mash-up master from Microsoft.

Yes, that’s where I’m landing.  I’ve known and admired Sanjiva since early in the XSL Working Group, and his year-old startup WSO2 is sure to be a rewarding place to work.  WSO2 is developing products around the Axis2 open-source Web Service Stack, and while Axis2 itself is open source, WSO2 plans to provide support and service to corporations making Axis2 a critical part of their infrastructure.  It’s a model that has worked well for MySQL and Red Hat.

My title is Director of Architecture, Mashup Technologies, and I’ll be working on ways to make the consumption of Web Services as trivial as possible, and the deployment of Web Services just as simple.  This is a perfect overlap for me - I’ve been working on Web Services, especially the Enterprise-level, back-office, strongly-typed variety for a long time, but my background and affinities are with the script-friendly, quick-and-easy, dynamically-typed web hackers.  If I’m successful, Web Services will become a more important part of the grass-roots Web toolbox.

Working at WSO2 will in some ways be completely different than working at Microsoft:

• Open Source Software versus Commercial Software (I know commercial isn’t quite right, as there is commerce in Open Source, but calling it Closed Source or Proprietary Software has a negative connotation that I don’t think is justified.  Neither model is inherently bad, they are just different.  In any case I’m looking forward to understanding the Open Source business and development models better.)
• Diplomacy versus Design (While I’ll continue to work on standards, the majority of my time will be devoted to designing new ways to make Web Services accessible to the grass-roots of Web developers.)
• Unstructured versus Bureaucratic (An organization the size of Microsoft requires a level of rigor, process, fixed roles, and yes even bureaucracy that I won’t miss all that much.  You can often get more done faster flying by the seat of your pants.  And you can have more fun doing it.)
• Time zones (I’ll continue to work at home in Auburn, but I’ll no longer be in the same time zone as the main office.  In fact, I’ll be 11 1/2 hours off.  That’s the only part of the new job that scares me!)

And in other ways it’ll be just the same:

• Web Services (I’ll be building on my recent experience rather than taking up something completely new like lion taming.)
• WS Description Working Group (I’ll continue to co-chair the WG, and in fact hope to be even more involved in proving implementation experience to move the specs out of Candidate Recommendation stage.)
• International travel (While I hope to reduce my travel somewhat, I still look forward to meeting my colleagues in exotic locations.  Now Sri Lanka will be on my repeat destination list!)

I’m very excited about this move, and it feels like it’s happening at just the right time for me.  Well, a few weeks later than I’d hoped, but now at last I’ve cleared the road and am ready to hit the gas.  Starting on Monday when I leave for the Apache conference in Austin.  If you’re in the area, let’s do tea!

Well, I can’t believe it’s been almost a decade since I joined Microsoft in May 1997.  I thought when I joined that I’d be lucky to last the 4 years of my initial stock option vesting.  Here I am well past that (and without the golden nose ring of steadily increasing stock values) and just now finding the fields irresistibly greener elsewhere.  As of tonight, I’ve turned in my badge, though it will probably be quite a while before I don’t feel part of the family.

It’s amazing how much software has changed in that decade.  Remember in 1997 Windows ‘95 was just getting traction as a usable GUI OS?  With rough parity with Mac OS at last, the final knell for DOS applications sounded and the GUI was ubiquitous.  Desktop publishing was still one of the killer apps, and Netscape was still the revolutionary darling of the stock market.  Then think about where we’re at today and the amazing new capabilities for Internet applications, rich yet connected clients, media everywhere every time, real-time communication and collaboration, the device ecosystem, unsurpassed processing power devoted solely to the user interface, video and computer games surpassing movies in gross revenue, Internet advertising profits surpassing other channels - I could go on and on - and 10 years seems like an eternity in software development.  Microsoft clearly has been central in many aspects of that continuing revolution.

Contrast that exponential pace to the glacial pace of standardization efforts, where I’ve focused for several years.  Back in 1997 XML was just becoming a standard, and since then we’ve slowly fleshed out XML-related technologies pretty well, with technologies to manipulate, display, and message XML.  Each of these fairly simple ideas was years in the conception, community-building, and standardization process.  WSDL alone has been under standardization for 5 years, not even counting the original development time for WSDL 1.1, and completion (let alone success) is still not assured.  Standards isn’t a career path for those seeking quick rewards on their energy investment.

However, what working in standards lacks in a rapid pace it often makes up in broad influence.  I have been involved in a number of technologies that have proven invaluable to the industry, such as XML 1.0, XSLT 1.0 and XPath 1.0, the XML Information Set, WS-Addressing 1.0, the WS-I Basic Profile.  I’ve pushed a few that haven’t been all that popular (to my bafflement) such as XInclude, the XPointer Framework and associated XPointer schemes, and xml:id.  And a number that are flops: XLink, XML 1.1 and XML Namespaces 1.1.  In hindsight I’m fortunate there weren’t more flops on my resume!

But beyond the contributions Microsoft has allowed me to pursue in these efforts, I’ve found one of the highlights of my job is the Microsofties I work with.  Some of them have had a lasting effect on developing my capabilities, and changing the way I look at the world, such as:

• Adam Bosworth (no matter how much you like abstract architecture, keep getting your hands dirty)
• Jean Paoli (keep your perspective on what’s important, and what’s not)
• Andrew Layman (keep your eye on the big idea, and big ideas take time)
• Paul Cotton (yes it is possible to juggle 1000 balls at a time)
• Jeffrey Schlimmer (don’t tell someone the answer, help them find it themselves)
• Asir Vedamuthu (you can’t be overprepared)

Being able to associate with the likes of these guys is worth sticking around for almost a decade - thanks guys!

You’ll get an earful about my new endeavors later, I’m pretty excited about them too…

This summer marked a permanent reduction in our power bills, with the joyful completion of a 7.6 kW solar array!  I’ve wanted to invest in solar for years, but shopping for a reasonably priced yet competent installer always ended up on the back burner.  Despite the desire to do good by the environment and participate in an emerging distributed grid of clean energy, the costs are quite substantial, and is has proven quite difficult to determine what the payback on such an investment would be.  Between state rebates, federal and state tax credits, depreciation, choices of flat or time-of-use metering, a stack of rates based on consumption, which change seasonally and will probably increase in the future, figuring out the payback required too many assumptions to give me confidence in the resulting numbers.

My enthusiasm to figure this all out was renewed on a visit to the Horton Iris Farm, where they have a new 3+kW roof-top system.  The installer, Coy Ware of Coy Solar, has been a friend of the Hortons for a long time, and has a long history of general contracting, electronics, and eco-friendly technologies, so it didn’t take long for us to analyze our usage, figure out the parameters of the system, and get underway.  We calculated the payback at somewhere between 4.5 and 9 years - a pretty wide range but that was the best we could do.  At either end, I was willing to invest though.  Coy devised clever ways to move materials and equipment around the site since it isn’t very accessible by machinery.  It took about 6 weeks of steady and at times heavy manual labor to construct and install the system on the hillside below our pool, especially to Coy’s standards of excellence!

We switched it on about 6 weeks ago.  The system is a grid-tie, meaning that there are no batteries or other storage mechanism.  Excess power is pumped back into the grid, making the meter spin backwards - what a sight!

A new digital meter courtesy of the power company, and the System Lifetime readout on the solar has helped me keep track of how much I’ve saved - not a trivial proposition given the rate schedule involving baseline rates and increasingly expensive rates the higher over the baseline you go (the exact opposite of volume discounts).  I put together a rather complex spreadsheet simulating a virtual power bill and the resulting savings of $519.75 for the first 47 days.  Not factoring in the tax savings, a straight-line estimate at that rate puts the payback at around 8 years.  I hope to see that period shorten as rates rise (as they no doubt will within the timeframe), and the actual tax savings can be measured more accurately.  Over the life of the system, it should pay for itself many times over.

And the air is just a little clearer than it otherwise would have been. Those benefits will accrue for years as well.