Gerrit was awakened at 6 AM on Friday Jan 9 by a text from our solar panel vendor asking him to reset the solar system inverter. Which was in the garage. Which was inaccessible because the backup power which the garage door requires had failed due to their firmware update turning off its own internet access. Thus began a four hour ordeal: breaking into the garage, marching back and forth between the house and garage (which are separated by about 10 meters (yards) and a large boulder), stringing up extension cords, rebooting the inverter, until the system was finally operational again. The firmware update had started about 2 AM and got stuck in a failure loop, so the refrigerator, water pump, lights, etc, had been out for 8 hours altogether. This is our new more secure solar power system, more robust, providing extra backup, giving us some grid independence. How do you like it? We don't. Problems just keep cropping up with this thing and our overall electrical situation is more fragile now than it was before we installed it. We must get this thing under control. Bad company!
There is a thriving custom furniture fabrication industry in northern Portugal, notably in the town of
Wednesday Jan 14 was nice, mostly clear, and our gardeners were here for some more progress on the irrigation system. It's going to be very comprehensive and will take good care of the plants during the hot dry months. They had a good idea about re-routing some of the piping for better aesthetics too.
And vindication is almost as sweet as revenge, MWAH-HA-HA-HA! On Thursday Jan 15 Gerrit got a message from the solar panel vendors that, yes, in fact, the problems he has been screaming about for months are indeed problems and not the "perfectly normal" behavior they have been insisting on. They have been dragging their feet and denying all this time while Gerrit has spent hours and hours logging, documenting, pleading, explaining, and doing technician work, but finally it seems to have sunk in. They installed new firmware last Friday (the fiasco which is described above) which supposedly fixed the problems, but it has caused another which cropped up last Tuesday. At least they are admitting this one, and will release another firmware fix. So we are not out of the woods yet, but the vendors have at least admitted culpability and are on it.
Incidentally, no one has apologized or explained. They thought they could just slip a fix in with new firmware while we weren't looking. It reminds us of the Portuguese work culture we described here ("never apologize, the fix is the apology"), but these guys are Dutch! What is this, a pan-European trait? Frankly, it's probably just human nature.
Friday Jan 16 we heard from our shipping liaison that they can truck our Seattle goods to our home as early as the following Thursday, Jan 22! No word about whether duty or fees are owed, but we've asked about that and probably won't hear until Monday. Unfortunately we're busy on Jan 22 with something we can't get out of, but hopefully they can deliver shortly thereafter. Good company!
On Saturday Jan 17 our local furniture store had received bids on our beds, so we returned, went through all the details, and made our down payment on two custom storage beds and two nightstands. It may be up to two months before they're built, but we're not in a hurry. It's great to have this taken care of! The beds are very nice, and the extra storage will be a great place to stash some of the Seattle junk we have coming.
(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done. Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)