i watched a car get towed this morning. usually these things happen because of street cleaning, but this time it was because a car had broken down. instead of the usual tow truck, they sent a flatbed truck to take away the SUV. a skinny woman in old school glasses was trying to get the car onto the flatbed, while the owner chatted nearby on the phone, not bothering to help. it took her a while but she finally managed to drag the car with chains and load it onto her truck.

this morning i tried to get in touch with solaredge regarding the unreporting revenue grade meter. i was 5th in line on the live chat but it automatically logged me out before it got to my turn. when i tried logging back in, the website page would hang and then give me a timeout error. so i ended up calling, which was much faster and i got a live person (morgan) right away. she wasn't a tech person herself, but after i described the problem to her, she directed me to a tech person. they seemed busy because the automated voice message said the wait time was 40+ minutes, with no option to leave my name and number and have them call me back.

i then tried massachusetts clean energy center (massCEC), who are in charge of collecting production data for the SREC programs. i called but there was no one there so i left my name, number, and message. i tried wrote them an e-mail repeating what i'd said over the phone.

massCEC actually wrote back around 12:30pm. the e-mail said in order to process the meter swap, they needed 5 things from me: make and model of the new meter, last reading on the old meter, meter swap date, initial reading on the new meter, and the new meter's end of month reading. some of that info i could find, but how was i supposed to know the reading on the old meter when it's already dismantled and gone? while i was puzzling over the requirements, massCEC actually called me. i spoke with aryane who was very helpful, said she contacted solaredge as well and they should have these numbers since they're the ones in charge of our automated production reporting.

in the afternoon i biked down to the porter square star market looking for corned beef on sale. i saw them at the mt.auburn star market on memorial day and wanted to get some but didn't. ever since then i've been hankering for some slow-cooked brisket. if the porter square store didn't have it, i was ready to ride down to the mt.auburn star. fortunately they did carry them, though not as abundant as the mt.auburn store. i got a 4 lbs. flat cut brisket for around $10.

i went to the cafe around 2pm to drop off a ham radio catalog that came in the mail yesterday along with an SMA male-to-male barrel adapter. my father made some white fungus soup (銀耳湯) which i sampled a bowl. just so happens he also needed my help to move some furniture in the 2nd floor apartment (some chairs from the backyard shed and a desk for the small bedroom).

with some floor lights the place looked pretty decent, i almost want to live there. they were using the cool white LED bulbs which i always thought felt cold and artificial, but they actually work well with the white walls and gave off a more neutral color. i did notice that when my father and sister put the venetian blinds, they got the wrong size and had to install them on the outside of the window frames instead of inside. it wasn't something i noticed yesterday but once i saw them i thought it looked off even though the tenants probably wouldn't even notice. someone is coming to stay in the small bedroom come friday and it still had a wet paint smell (most likely the polyurethane from the floor). my sister has an ozone ionizer which we're always asking to use but she hoards it like gold, so we ended up just putting in a window fan to air out the room a bit.

i finally left a bit after 4pm. my plans of fixing up the cargo bike and cleaning the house were all dashed. they will have to wait until tomorrow and friday.

massCEC wrote back again around 5pm with an e-mail thread between massCEC, solaredge, and united solar. it seems that phung had sent massCEC the necessary numbers, and aryane wrote to tell me all production data had been updated and we were now up-to-date. later phung wrote me back, i don't think she realized i was CC'ed on the e-mail chain, told me that everything was all set and the meter should automatically report during the next reporting window (end of june). the automated production reporting box in the solaredge monitoring portal still says "no supported meters" and has the wrong lifetime energy numbers, but phung assured me that was incidental and it would show accurately next month. i also went to the massCEC production website and checked our account, indeed data for may had already been entered.

we made a credit of $20.51 for the month of may. this is less than half of the credit we made last may, which was $48.06. like april, this month has been exceptionally wet and cloudy. so far this month (with just 2 more days left) we've only produced 849kWh; last may we generated 1120kWh, so about a 25% reduction. hopefully june will be sunnier. with our more powerful 10kW inverter, we're looking to bank at least a few more kWh per day during peak hours versus last year.

i had a chicken sausage english muffin sandwich with sauerkraut for lunch today, but apparently it wasn't enough. i did weigh myself afterwards, i'm down to 146 lbs and some change, the lowest i've weighed all year. my dream is to get down into the 130's. anyway, i started getting hungry, so i decided to have dinner early, before 6pm. my mother packed up a container of beef stew and rice, which i microwaved and added some sichuan paocai that'd been sitting in my fridge. i also finished off a plate of navel orange slices. the red sox game was at 6pm (NESN) and the bruins game at 8pm (NBCSN). youtube tv has been a boon for my sports watching as now i'm able to get all the local sports channels i wasn't able to get before, even using my parents' verizon FIOS account (NBCSN yes, but not NESN). in the end both the red sox and bruins lost tonight.

something is seriously wrong with my grow closet. after 2 months my seedlings all look stunted and near death. not sure if it's a combination of lack of sunlight, not enough water, something else, or a combination of everything. my personal theory is the potting soil i used doesn't have any fertilizing beads. i usually get miracle-gro potting soil which does include fertilizer. but i've also used different soils in the past and never had the problems i've had this season. maybe it's because i was running the fans during the first few weeks of growth, which might've added too much stress to the seedlings. my only option now is to move them outdoors as soon as possible, hopefully natural sunlight will give them enough energy to finally start growing.