We had a smooth flight from SJC to Atlanta and an easy connection there. But our second flight from Atlanta to Hartford has been, um, interesting.

They predicted bad weather, so the flight attendants had to stay seated until over an hour into the flight. Passengers were ignoring the seat belt sign, of course, mostly because there wasn’t any noticeable turbulence.

Eventually, the captain turned off the seat belt sign for, maybe, 30 minutes – then he put it back on because of expected bumpy air. The flight attendants took their seats immediately and didn’t even do the usual trash pickup. The descent was smooth, as was the landing.

And then the fun really started; they couldn’t get the jet bridge to dock with the plane. We waited for a while for a tech, then another tech, and as I wrote this, we’re being moved to another gate!

Here’s hoping….

It took another 10 minutes to get to the new gate and get that jet bridge attached to the plane, but they finally did it. Fortunately, we hadn’t checked any luggage, and we’re staying at the Sheraton Bradley Airport, right in the terminal; they were ready for us and we’re in our room for the evening!

I used yesterday’s story as the basis of my speech at the Silver Tongued Cats this morning; it went over pretty well, but I think I’m finished telling it.

This afternoon, the installer came out to provision and commission the solar system. It took a while and several firmware updates, but after a couple of hours, we were running the house on solar power instead of drawing from the grid. The system also had enough oomph to completely charge the batteries and send excess power off to PG&E (as a donation to their stockholders).

The town Building Inspector came out, and I was not surprised that he didn’t approve of the battery installation – it was, perhaps, 18 inches from the nearest window, and the code requires 3 feet for safety. So the installer spent the afternoon moving the batteries to the other side of the garage; he ran out of time and energy before he was able to reconnect them to the system, but that will happen in a day or two, and then the inspector will approve the installation and then, in the fullness of time, PG&E will give us “permission to operate” and we’ll start receiving credits for our excess production.

So much paperwork….