i take back a little of what i said a few days ago about clouds and solar power. although i still believe clouds are the number one enemy of solar panels, i've discovered that they also indirectly help production. i've noticed that on partially cloudy days the panels get these power spikes that i don't see when it's a cloud-free day. sometimes these power spikes can be pretty high, like in the case of jan. 14 when at 9:30am there was a spike of nearly 6kW when the typical amount is usually around 5kW. my theory is when there are clouds, sometimes depending on their type and position, they can actually reflect back even more sunlight than on a cloudless day alone. but given the choice, i rather not see any clouds.

under a crystal blue clear sky, we set another record today with 33.48kWh, just a bit more than yesterday's 33.09kWh. it was almost a perfect match compared to yesterday's graph line. the bell curve was flawless with no bumps. it will be used as the new standard until something better comes along. tomorrow's forecast calls for mostly sunny during the morning but then partly cloudy in the afternoon. my prediction is we'll still get at least 20kWh of production. it's also good to bear in mind that despite all the kWh of energy we're generating, it's still just dollars and pennies. 33kWh of electricity sold back to the belmont municipal light grid at 11¢/kWh is only $3.63. also because we didn't have any rolling energy credit to begin the month (as it's a new installation), we're still using more electricity than we're producing. of course we won't know for sure until my parents get their first electricity bill post-solar.

i'd planned on going to haymarket with my mother today but she backed out because it was too cold. i told her i'd go by myself tomorrow morning to get her some more oranges and beets. i was tempted to go this afternoon, riding the commuter rail from porter square to north station (just 10 minutes), but if i take the bike tomorrow it'll be for free and i can get some exercise as well. the temperature tomorrow will be nicer too, possibly in the 50's.

it must've snowed in shanghai a few days ago because i was seeing a lot of snow photos on qq and wechat. it doesn't snow very often there, and almost never enough to play with, but enough fell that i saw a lot of creative snowmen. unlike the snowmen we build here, they were all fairly small, but people got very creative decorating them with sticks and food and flower petals.

the xiaomi mi band 2 fitness tracker i got for my mother back at the end of december finally arrived today (ordered from gearbest for $19.99). i was starting to get worried that either i got scammed or the package was lost in the mail. instead of china however, the package was from baku, azerbaijan. i didn't open the box, will wait to give it to my mother tomorrow.

i spent some time today playing with chartjs, tweaking the tooltips callback so it'll display the times properly. the next thing i want to do is make the charts interactive, so i can toggle graph lines.

the menu for this week has been an omelette for lunch then hot dogs for dinner. not very creative, but filling nevertheless.