January 19, 2008 - Today was a full day. I started things out by joining my boss at Red Lobster for an IEEE seminar on Solar Electric for Residential Applications. There were a lot of interesting people there with solar experience, but unfortunately there was a faction of people from an environmental group that wanted to turn it into a political discussion, whereas all the IEEE people want to talk technical details. I ended up not learning more than I had already found on the internet, other than one guy information about a company he partially owns in California that is developing some new solar cells. Apparently they are capable of generating in the same space as a typical solar panel, 3,000 to 5,000 watts of power. A normal panel produces about 120 watts. He also claimed that these have an efficiency of greater than 100%. The funniest part of the seminar was when the guy in charge said "I have a problem with that". I rushed home after the seminar to get ready for a trip to Orlando. Anna and Chuck came over, and Ellie and I crammed into my car with them, and we drove to our hotel near Disney. We're staying in a 3 bedroom 3 bathroom condo with Casey and Jamie. We unloaded the car and then went to Downtown Disney to meet up with Jamie and Casey. They timed their drive from Universal Studios perfectly, and got to Downtown Disney within minutes of us. We went to Planet Hollywood for dinner. It started raining and getting really cold while we were eating, and when we went outside it was not very pleasant. I convinced everyone to get dessert at Ghirardelli. Ellie and I split a brownie sundae. Then we all headed back in the rain to our condo.