As others have pointed out, you have two big problems with this competition: 1) what does the utility company consider to be similar homes and 2) premature optimization. 1) NStar in the Northeast has a similar program, and there is also a website you can visit to see a historical record and submit more information about your house and inhabitants to get a more accurate comparison to similar homes. You have young twin children, which I suspect few of your neighbors do. 2) PG&E probably also offers free energy efficiency audits. I did one for the last place I rented in Boston and the number one thing we could do was insulate the walls better. I can't do much about that as a renter, but your bulbs and shower head are probably only small gains at best. Even in California, your heating and cooling system, insulation, and air sealing are probably the big ones. The auditor will tell you for sure. Bonus points if they do a door blower test.

It's like you bought a Macbook without actually buying a Macbook. :-) My 11" Macbook Air is by far the best laptop I have ever had. I love that little thing. I do wish for better battery or screen angles on occasion (which is where the 13" and Asus come in), but not enough to want to pay to upgrade when I can get a tablet with an IPS display and ten hour run time for less than $400. These days I do all my development on a server anyway, so even on a tablet, a Bluetooth keyboard and a decent SSH client let me get things done. If you can live in a terminal, the post PC future is already here. Tablets are fantastic thin clients.

They all sound identical on my cell phone speaker on the subway.

@sqlrob: The answer to your point is in the middle of the article, and nowhere near as prominent as it should be. "you should demand access to the underlying source code for your stack" Emphasis mine. Certainly for learning languages there is no substitute for expert guidance, whether it's through books, classes, etc. But for any libraries that your code depends on, you will at some point wish you had the source code, even if it's a mess. The more critical a particular library or service becomes, the more important being able to see the details of its operation becomes.

Hashing isn't just used for security. Everything you've said here is really only for cryptographic hash functions (SSL, password storage, document authentication, etc.). It is certainly acceptable to roll your own generic hash functions, as used in what is probably the most popular data structure, hash tables. I will almost always know more about my data set than a generic hash function designer (e.g. java.lang.String.hashCode). For this usage, security isn't a concern, only speed and reducing the possibility of collision within my data set. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function

I'm surprised you like the back button, but not the recent apps button, given how much you talk about multi-tasking on your iPhone being frustrating.

Shouldn't all of those drives have been under warranty when they failed? I have a 64 GB Patriot SSD that's three years old and still going strong. It came with a ten year warranty which seems pretty incredible. I wonder what their replacement strategy is in nine years. Anyway, now I am paranoid and off to double check my backups.

I don't do media playback on my home server but then it's a 66 MHZ NAS I installed Debian on for media sharing, torrents, and home automation. I recently set up a dual core atom bare bones mini PC for a friend and I think it's way more PC than she needs and plenty for a media server. It's a Zotac ZBox; it draws 15 W max and it's only fault is that it's not a fanless design œl(and her house is super dusty). Case and power supply and all for about $400, including a nice 500 GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid SSD/HDD.

I actually have a 1993 IBM Model M stashed under my desk now. I don't use it because it's way too loud. I get complaints about the sound of my typing even with a membrane keyboard because I mash the keys pretty hard when I touch type, and I touch type pretty quick. I'd feel as if the neighbors could hear me. Maybe I should check into the Das Keyboard Pro Silent model. I did use the Model M at my last job where I had my own private office. Since I kept my door open and the programmer pit wasn't that far from me, they still commented on the sound. Handily, the Model M has a steel backplate that also doubles as a bullet shield and offensive weapon should the need arise.

"If this seems like a lot of jibba-jabba" - actually, it sounds like a *lot* less jibba-jabba than I just sat through in my software engineering class in my Master's program in Computer Science at a top-tier university. The main things I learned from that class are that colleges can't teach software engineering, the type and size of process needed varies wildly among projects, and I now have a list of buzzwords to listen for during interviews, upon the hearing of which I shall run screaming from the room. This article was fantastic and well-timed. I'm programming alone on a research project, and I've felt many of the issues you've pointed out (on top of which I'm a novice programmer, as these things go: only three years of actual experience and that with a giant pile of legacy code). Some of this isn't exactly what I wanted to hear: I like the idea of working remotely, but I don't think I'm ready for it. I need more experience working on good and bad teams (hopefully more good than bad) first.

I love that illustration! I can't stop chuckling over the "ejector seat" switch. Thanks for the reading list suggestion.