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Today I gritted my teeth for cold-calling a utility customer service line, expecting massive chat-bot runaround and frustration. You see, I recently received the first PG&E bill that has my "solar billing" and, having reviewed my billing for the year and taking note of the point when my system came online, I had some confusion about exactly what I was being charged for.

Of course, untangling solar power billing comes with complications, since the amount of power used and the amount of power generated fluctuate by the seasons. And the monthly statement I get from the solar monitoring company (which is different from my solar energy provider) goes by calendar month, while my PG&E billing period starts mid-month.

But it only took me one repetition of "give me a human being" (at normal tone of voice) and about a minute on hold to talk to a knowledgeable human being. She was patient when I wanted to explain the detailed chronology of my solar installation (which turned out to be directly relevant to some of my questions). I got answers to all the questions that PG&E were relevant for and the answers were satisfactory.

One of the mystifying aspects was that, during August and September, and to a lesser extent, October, the solar report says I was putting more energy into the grid than I was consuming. And yet PG&E was charging me for energy -- less than my previous consumption, but not a negative amount. Turns out this is because my solar system shouldn't have been connected "live" to the grid at all until the final approval in November. (You may recall me posting about all the delays in getting the final inspection done.) So I shouldn't have been getting any advantage at all. I'm guessing that I was being billed for consumption during the part of the day when I wasn't generating, but that during the hours when my panels were keeping up with consumption, the PG&E meter registered it as "no consumption."

I really hope that PG&E was, in fact, monitoring calls for quality, because I gave the representative a long thank you, explaining in detail how satisfied I was with the experience.

This morning's inspection was by the solar company's QA guy, checking on whether the installation folks had done the job properly. He was my favorite type of engineer: someone who loves explaining what he's doing and why. He found a couple things that needed improvement (mostly tightening connections) and one item they overlooked that needs installing (a more obviously robust grounding set-up -- he said it's quite possible that I already have a sufficiently robust set-up somewhere under the foundation, but it's required to be somewhere that an inspector can actually see and confirm it, so they'll install one).

Still no word from my electrician about retrospectively pulling a permit for the panel work, so I need to ping him. But nothing else is going to move forward until I get back from New Zealand in any case.

Despite all the chaos around the various inspections, I'm being favorably impressed by the attention to detail and layers of checks that are part of the installation process. Also impressed that the solar company's attitude is "Since we touched the system last, it's our responsibility to make sure everything will pass code."

I worked on some fiction this morning. Nothing new, but I'm doing light revisions on my skinsinger stories so I can self-publish a collection (with one new story). I completed story #1 (of 7) today, mostly fixing some consistency and continuity issues of the sort that arise when you write seven related stories over the course of twenty years and had no overall plan at the beginning.

Yesterday I did a Berkeley Bowl grocery run and met up with former co-workers for lunch. Yesterday was also the start of the Rodent Mitigation in my crawlspace and attic. They were supposed to do more of it today but were having issues with the Giant Rodent Dropping Vacuum that needed to get sorted out. Unfortunately, this meant I hung around the house all day waiting for them to maybe show up and didn't get the final "not until tomorrow" until 4pm.

I finally got around to looking into the gym membership thing I get with my Kaiser Medicare Advantage. One of the member gyms is the Planet Fitness that I used for a while pre-Covid through Bayer's fitness plan, but there are a couple other possibilities within a similar distance. Biking is good for cardio, but I'd like to get back to some weight training too.

I've been promising folks a video tour of all the yard and landscaping projects I've been talking about. If you don't mind my rambling ad hoc narration, here it is on YouTube. The video is "unlisted" so you need the link to find it.

Left to my own devices, I'm a binge-and-bust housekeeper. I'll ignore the clutter (and let the clutter impeded cleaning) until I get the intersection of time and frustration, then it's Clean! All! The! Things! (Also: I do one complete top-to-bottom cleaning on New Year's Day, just because.)

Back in the Oakland house, I finally came up with a chore management system. I identified all the individual routine (or not so routine) cleaning chores for each room, assigned each a frequency, then set them up in a repeating-chore app so I could check them off each time I performed one. I also did time estimates and set my schedule so that I spent no more than 15 minutes a day on housekeeping.

Then  I moved. And I had a long commute that ate away at my time+energy on work days. And I had an entirely different house layout that required a different approach to chores. And I figured I'd just sort of float for a while while I figured out a new system that worked. Ten years later...

Working from home has not only meant having a bit more free time, but it's meant that fitting small tasks in around the work day is not only easy, but it's good ergonomics. However it took me most of the year to get around to applying this fact in a systematic function. Setting up the Roomba after my New Year's cleaning this year was the trigger for finally getting around to systematizing the rest of the tasks.

You see: it isn't even a matter of knowing what needs to be done, or of having the time and energy to do it. The big problem is the mental work of keeping track of what the specific task is that I should do *now*. This is what task checklists are ideal for. Plus: the physical joy of checking things off.

So I once again sat down and systematically identified all the routine tasks for each room, assigned each a frequency (weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, or annual), and drew up a matrix on a poster-sized post-it. My routine now is that at the end of each work day, I glance at the list and pick one task that hasn't been done yet for the current cycle and do it. Often I end up doing more. (The efficiency of doing all the similar tasks in all the rooms they apply to -- like wet-mopping floors--overwhelms the one-task-at-a-time theory.) If I wanted to, I could do all the tasks at the beginning of a cycle and get it over with, but I mostly stick to the idea that I should never do more than 15 minutes of housework on any given day.

Having set it up on a paper system this time (which works a lot better for triggering choosing a task than an app does) I now find I've identified additional tasks that need to be added, so I'll have to draw up a new matrix at some point. (The original draft covers 9 months and I don't want to wait that long to update it.)

It really *is* easy for me, in my current WFH status, to keep the place in a continuously presentable state by this method. But that doesn't mean I should beat myself up for not organizing this sooner, because the creative work of identifying and organizing the task list is nothing to sneeze at. And three factors are big contributors to the success. WFH means that the "15 minutes a day" is not a massive percentage of my at-home time on a workday. Having set up the Roomba, the need to keep the floors clear for it work is a big incentive for avoiding clutter. And having the Roomba take care of the basic vacuum+sweep aspect is a bit weight off the schedule. It also doesn't hurt that I'm the only person I'm responsible to for the results, so I can tailor my system to what works for my psychology. My sympathies to all those who have to coordinate housekeeping among multiple people with different psychologies and different tolerance levels. (I don't always clean to my own tolerance level, but at least there's no one to resent but me.)

 The online Nebula Conference was amazing. Ok, so the lack of face-to-face meant that some things were odd or different, but other things were actually better than a "regular" convention. The tech backbone of the convention was run on Zoom, with panels and major events broadcast as a live feed (that is also available to replay after the fact), with a live chat stream for watchers (not available after-the-fact). The social side was also run on zoom as a single chat with several dozen "breakout rooms" which were were everything actually happened. On entry and membership confirmation, everyone was given a "portkey" (i.e., made a co-host) so that they could navigate between the breakout rooms at will. You could see who was in which breakout room, so you could join specific people, or group sizes. The breakout rooms were also used for "hey, let's continue the discussion after this panel" groups. And there were quiet rooms where you could just go park your account so you didn't have to ask for re-entry when you activated again. It was an amazing set-up. There was also a Slack for the conference which was very active.

While there were two "book room" functions (one to order books directly through an online bookshop, one for people to post links to their books) I don't know how much activity they saw. I don't think the Nebulas usually as a dealers' room (there wasn't anything equivalent set up) so it would be interesting to hear how the other recent online conventions did on that front.

I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about how online Worldcon will come off (as well as definitely committing to contributing time on the volunteer side, since there's a lot of behind the scenes action to keep things running smoothly).

One aspect that was better-than-in-person for me was that the breakout-room socializing offered the best aspects of a bar-con without the high ambient noise levels that normally drive me away within an hour or two. I also found there was an unexpected democratizing effect of the zoom platform. Dropping into a breakout room is an on/off thing, so there isn't that thing where you hang out on the fringes of a group hoping someone will catch your eye and invite you in. You're in, and you have equal visual weight with the other participants. There is something of a size limit above which conversational dynamics get weird. And the functionality of zoom (and similar apps) means that a constant, high-overlap talker can not only behaviorally monopolize a room, but can acoustically monopolize the system. (I confess that I took note of a small set of names that I started avoiding in the rooms because they tended to monopolize even in small groups.) The chat function (including private messages to specific people) balance that to some extent because you can't get "talked over" in chat.

A couple other aspects that are better-than-in-person. Greater control over your meals, both in content and timing. (I had food delivered for the two dinners, and had pre-prepared salads for lunches.) People were encouraged to meet up in breakout rooms to share meals, though I didn't really find people doing that as a deliberate thing. No travel fatigue! A very short distance from the programming/parties to your bed. (One could, in theory, continue in the chat rooms after going to bed...)

Convention exhaustion was about the same, with the benefits of being able to step away easily if necessary being balanced out by the extra drain of zoom interactions. The geographic accessibility of the online venue was balanced out by many participants being many time zones off from the official schedule. (You could set your time zone in the log-on so that programming would be displayed with your local time.) The greater accessibility was noticeable, meaning that many people could attend where it not only would have been a time+money burden to travel to the conference, but travel restrictions and currency conversion rates would have made attending functionally impossible in the Before Times. There was evidently a significant contingent logging in from India, though time zones were a burden.

Time zones won't be too awful for me for Worldcon, I think. I'm only 5 hours ahead (minus a whole day) of New Zealand, so if I can train myself to stay up a bit past midnight for the week, it'll be manageable. On the other hand, Europe will be more or less flipped in terms of night/day. (I've been running this fantasy in my head about Worldcon becoming a permanently online convention. It would democratize a lot of aspects. But rotating through time zones would be necessary to make things fair overall.)

One aspect I thought about that didn't affect me directly is that I think it would be hard to be an award finalist for an online convention. Somehow sitting there alone in your home office and experiencing it only through a screen doesn't feel like it would be the same. (On the other hand, not all finalists are able to attend awards ceremonies, so ... shrug.)

In any event, lots of thinky thoughts and very excited to see how this new flavor of convention develops as a Thing.

* * *

In non-convention updates, my garden has burst into productivity. The berries are going full speed. I'm just about to harvest my tart's worth of cherries. There are two (at least) apricots ripening. And while my back was turned, the tomatoes are setting and demanding that I set up supports, and I have zucchinis! Amazing! WIthout even trying, I have zucchinis this year. Also I seem to have figure the trick to not having the basil bolt. (Lots of water and shade at least half the day. The eggplants are thinking strongly about flowering and may be similarly productive.

The new home office feels like it's going to work. The weather cooled off just as I was setting it up last week, and I found that I could manage excellent temperature control simply by leaving the window open and setting up the large fan in the doorway (which also served to remind the cats to keep out until I picked up a baby-gate to serve the function). That seems to work as long as the temperature doesn't get higher than around 80F This week it's warming up again so I can test it better. Today the high was in the mid-90s. I started out with the window open and no fan. After my mid-morning break, I turned on the fan and closed half the curtain to keep the direct sunlight out. Before heading out for my bike ride, I closed the window entirely and closed the door. After lunch, I turned on the fan but kept the window closed. Mid-afternoon, I closed the door and turned on the AC. That schedule keep me comfortable all day. For 100+ days, I'd need to shut the window earlier and would probably start the AC when I left on my bike ride. It'll be hard to judge how much electricity load the AC pulls because working from home is already increasing consumption significantly. (Though the cost difference is still much less than what I'm not spending on gas.)

I did some more measuring and graphing and have determined that a serious rearrangement of bedroom furniture is out (since I'm not willing to have the bed snugged up against two walls). So the wardrobe will simply go where the cedar chest used to be. This means I'll need some other place to toss the clothes that I've worn but aren't ready to go in the laundry yet, but so far the rail at the foot of the bed is serving.

The cats have been bemused by all the furniture moving. They were intrigued at the possibility of exploring the office but since I want to keep it cat-free for its guestroom function, they've been discouraged. (See reference to baby gate. Also, the door would only be open when I'm in there.)

And though it should not need to be said, yet this is the world we live in: Black Lives Matter.

 Let's see...last posted on the 23rd, so...

No sooner had my vacation started than a heat wave moved in, though it backed off from the original prediction of 5 days over 90F (including 2 over 100F), to 4 days over 90F (including 1 over 100F). Evidently this is to be followed by a weather system that shifts in prediction from day to day: maybe rain, maybe wind, maybe thunderstorms. I could do with thunderstorms, as long as they don't start any fires.

The heat has meant that my grand plans for doing all sorts of projects this week have melted into a puddle. I've done a fair amount of yardwork, and gone on a couple longer-than-usual bike rides. But mostly I've been sitting doing sewing and needlework, watching movies, misting myself regularly to go with the fan, and drinking large amounts of iced drinks. There are a few hours of good temperature in the morning if I get up early enough, but I decided to forego productivity for relaxation.

This afternoon I had an inspiration, based on the prospect of trying to do day-job work in this temperature. It would take entirely too much effort to get the house AC up to snuff. (Better house insulation, possibly a new AC unit, etc. etc.) But it might be manageable to cool off one room with one of those portable AC units, if I kept the room in question closed while running it. So here's the plan: I set up the computer desk in the spare bedroom and keep that room cooled. (In addition to space logistics, it's ideal for cooling because it has a north-east window that gets shaded in the afternoon.) But this requires a whole chain of steps.

1. The spare bedroom currently has the fiction bookshelves, a convertible couch-bed (twin size), and a large IKEA wardrobe. The wardrobe and closet contain my SCA/historic costumes, which I probably need to sort through anyway. I also currently have the harp in there. The natural place to put the computer desk and assorted accessories is where the wardrobe is. While I might at some point consider getting rid of the wardrobe, I rather like it as a piece of furniture. But where to put it?

2. The only really feasible place currently is in the master bedroom where the cedar chest is. (The two have a similar footprint, although the height of the wardrobe will make the room more crowded.) That means the cedar chest needs to go somewhere else.

3. The convertible couch-bed doesn't really work well in the office configuration (for one thing, because the AC unit will need to go near the window, and that's the only place the bed works in that room). But if the couch-bed moves out of the office (let's start calling it that), then the cedar chest might be able to go under the window. Maybe.

4. That means the couch-bed would need to move out into the living room and mostly serve as a couch. There's space for it. It could work. But it does mean that I'd no longer have a "spare bedroom" I could offer guests. There would be sleeping space aplenty, but in the living room, not in a private space. This could be an issue, but I haven't used it as a guest bedroom very often, in overall terms.

5. Let's toss another factor into the mix. I've been meaning to shampoo the carpets during the summer season. To do a thorough job in the master bedroom, that means doing it before I move the wardrobe in. (Ideally, I'd temporarily move the dresser out and the under-bed storage drawers, so I'd only have the bed frame to move around as I worked.

6. But this means I'm not going to get the whole project done during my vacation week, since the last 3 days of it will be spent participating in Nebula Conference events. But at the same time, it would be nice to have the office set up for those events. So...

A. Move the couch-bed and wardrobe out of the office-to-be (but not the wardrobe into the master bedroom yet).
B. Move the computer desk set-up into the office. Confirm whether the AC unit and cedar chest work in the available space. (Assume they do.)
C. Temporarily move the dresser and under-bed drawers out of the master bedroom. Shampoo the carpets.
D. Return the master bedroom furniture and add the wardrobe. Maybe re-organize things just for fun? (Probably not. There are limited logistical possibilities.)
E. Shampoo the carpets in the library (not done the last time I shampooed).
F. Shampoo the carpets in the hallway and living room (which the cats will then promptly vomit on again, like they did the last time I shampooed).
G. Probably move the remaining bankers boxes into the current location of the computer desk which will get them a little more out of the way, though I still need to deal with the contents permanently. (Mostly papers and such.)

It all looks very tidy laid out like that. My plan is to complete parts A & B tomorrow.

The Nebula Conference will be my first serious online convention. There was a preliminary event this past Sunday (the presentation of the nominees and a test-run of the social zoom-room system) which took the edge off my anxiety about how it will all work. I'm on one panel Friday morning (about being part of small press publishing) so I won't have that looming over me when I explore and enjoy the rest of the event.

After breakfast and the obligatory writing session at the coffee shop, I swung by Home Depot to acquire my very own electric pole chainsaw and then accomplished the following:

* Finished pruning the ornamental plum in the front yard. (I think I have it in me to do serious pruning on one or two trees a year. Must remember to rotate appropriately.)
* Took off the several limbs from the other front-yard shade tree that were seriously menacing the sidewalk.
* Did some desultory hacking at major overhanging limbs from trees along the front west property line.
* Dragged the results of all this carnage into the side of the driveway to await hauling and/or shredding depending on what option comes cheapest.
* Mowed the front lawn.
* Failed to damage my ankle in the hidden pit-fall.[*]
* Pruned the dead wood out of the apple tree that I hadn't gotten to in last year's pruning.
* Took off the seriously leaning limbs on the lilac and tidied it up.
* Chopped a bunch of other shrubbery off at the fence line in the back west corner of the yard.
* Did some basic pruning of the backyard plum tree: took some height off, took the main limbs back to a length that can support the weight of the fruit, removed any limbs likely to overhand the neighbor's yard.
* Asked the neighbor if I could go in their back yard to clean up the pruned branches. SUggested I might prune the olive tree from their side while I was at it. Have earned brownie points with neighbors.
* Cut the grape vine (why yes, I have a volunteer grapevine -- no fruit that I've seen yet) back to something I might be able to stake to the fence ... assuming I remember to do so.
* Dragged all the backyard trimmings into the side yard but failed to get as far as adding them to the pile in the driveway. (Since I have a 3-car-wide driveway, none of this will interfere with getting the car in and out.)
* Probably succeeded in not scratching my cornea with a flailing olive branch but it's still a bit sore.
* Hot shower, chicken slow-roasting in the oven with acorn squash, stiff drink, and that silly football game is still going on evidently.

When I was at Home Depot I contemplated picking up some 4" lavenders and rosemarys to put in the gaps in the parking strip but I bethought myself on my rule of thumb that plants should go in the ground the day I buy them and correctly predicted that I'd run out of steam before that could happen.

[*] Whoever removed several dead trees from my yard at some point before I bought it seems to have been enamored of some sort of enzymatic stump-disintegrator process. It works exceedingly well. Eventually, where there had once been a ground-level stump and underground root system, there is a thoroughly digested spongy mass under the illusion of soil. At some point, when you step on this location, your foot will sink through the sponge. This will be very disconcerting.

... in multiple senses. I finally turned the heat on today. I was going to wait until after I'd gotten around to having the HVAC check-up, but dammit it's cold. So I even figured out how to do the multi-task programming on the thermostat so that, in theory, it will pre-heat the house before I get up on work days, then idle more or less until I get home in the evening. Weekends are set separately and are set assuming I get to sleep later.

Today I got the bookcases in the library set in place and cross-braced together. IKEA provides hardware for fastening side-by-side cases together, so that got all the sets of two turned into single units. Then I used galvanized framing plates of various shapes and sizes to fasten sets of pairs back-to-back and to attach the resulting sets of four (that stick out into the room) to the cases against the walls (which are fastened to the wall). Easier to sketch than to describe. At any rate, they're all ready for books to be added (after I get the double-check from the foundation people). The shelves are all allotted to each case. The library curtains are up.

The guest/SCA bedroom still needs a lot of work. I one more bookcase in there for the fiction, but I'm also planning to do double stacking with the back row up on a riser to make the most efficient use of the cases, and I haven't figured out what to do for risers yet. The old dresser that used to have SCA stuff in it (along with some other misc. stuff) is now redundant and needs to be disposed of in some fashion. (I feel oddly sentimental about getting rid of it -- it's one my Dad used to use quite some time ago that's been passed around in the family a bit. Not an antique or anything like that, but still.) The guest/SCA room is also where odd boxes and things that haven't found their permanent home keep getting shoved.

But in terms of getting the place ready for the housewarming party next Sunday, all it really needs is tidying and regular light housecleaning. Then I can feel all totally moved in and relax ... just in time for holiday travel and everything. Which reminds me, I still need to line up someone to feed the cat over Thanksgiving.

Somewhere in my house or garage is a can of high-temperature black paint. Amend that: somewhere in my house or garage are two cans of high-temperature black paint ... only one of which I know the precise location of.

It's been another weekend of repeatedly dashing out to buy that one key item needed to move the next project forward. But the projects are moving forward. I've rigged up a tentative solution for the spice storage (racks on the backs of the cabinet doors to the left of the stove) but it's a bit cobbled together because I wanted to make sure it fits my workflow before screwing things to the doors permanently. I decided on an arrangement for the 6 alleged CD towers (only 2 of which have ever been used for CDs): 5 in a sort of U against the short central wall on the kitchen/dining side filled with the international/historic doll collection and the antique doll china, and 1 in the library closet to store assorted small peripherals. So both of those are set up, affixed to walls, and filled with their intended contents.

I started setting up to hang pictures (including a run to the store to get hardware) but decided a higher priority was getting the camping fire box in shape for the cooking class I'm doing in two weeks. You see, back when I bought the fire box a year ago July, I knew that the unfinished steel would last better (and be far less messy to cart around) if I gave it a coat of stove blacking to fend off rust. But when I got it home from WATW, it needed cleaning, and I didn't have a good storage place for it so it sat out in the back yard, so of course it got damp and a little rusty ... and as these things go, the longer I waited to work on it, the more work it needed, and the more trouble I had finding time to work on it. At any rate, to day I pulled out the power tools and stripped off the rust. Did a couple of minor modifications that make it easier to set up. And then discovered that I have no idea where I put the can of stove blacking that I bought for the job back when I first planned it. So ... one more trip to Home Depot. But it has the first coat on the first side.

I unboxed and put away a couple more boxes of stuff. There are now no boxes left to be dealt with in the kitchen, dining room, master bedroom, or either bathroom. The living room still has two boxes of cassette tapes to be dealt with (need to sort thing and figure out which of them I want to keep, given that I never listen to cassettes any more). The craft room still has one box of assorted office supplies that belong in the secretary desk. And then there's the library and guest/SCA room. No progress there except for picking up some free hardware from IKEA to help with fastening the library bookcases together. (I tried to pay for them -- after all, it isn't that it was missing from the original packages, I just needed more of the fasteners for what I wanted to do. But they didn't have any system set up for selling the items independently of kits, so I had to take them for free.) It may be a good thing that some of the last bits of organization are on hold until they come up in the funding queue since it gives me the push to work on the smaller tasks. But I do so want everything to be organized and in order.