Installed Haier Mini-split system with one outdoor unit and 3 heads inside. Two are 9000btu; one is 12000btu. Total cost with electrician to run the circuit was about $13,000. This was last summer. 2600sf house. We haven't used the oil burner all year except when we had family over the holidays and used our downstairs bedrooms where we didn't bother with mini-splits. They keep us plenty warm, but on that -20 day they used quite a bit of electricity. I'm thinking it might make sense to run the oil burner whenever it falls below -5 or so...depending on oil prices. The oil in my tank was purchased around September at $3.29.

So they did. I must've blown past it. They also said, "we’ve never had books in our library (or any other public spaces) since I’ve been here." But the web site says, "Resources include close to 500,000 print volumes." I'll take your word that the university accepts 400 out of 90,000, but the OP is really one in a million.

Dude, the OP said "ours [library websites] are [created and maintained] by students on work study, computer code, and recently some AI." Without knowing where the OP went to school, I asked if it was accredited based on his clearly inaccurate assertion about who manages the library web content. I have no doubt Northeastern is accredited and their library is above reproach. I'll bet the lives of my children that their website is not managed by work study students.

Unavailable pretty much anywhere in Bennington County unless, perhaps, if you live at the top of a mountain with line of sight to Troy.

Visit https://antennaweb.org to check your location.

Installed air-to-air mini-split heat pumps last summer. 3 indoor head units upstairs, but don't bother heating the lower level since nobody lives down there. They kept putting out heat last Saturday when the outdoor temp hit -17. They did, however, use a lot of kwh that day. I left my 25 year old oil burner and baseboard hydronic system in place as a backup, but I've not needed to run it yet this season. I fired it up last Friday and set the thermostat at 64 in case the mini-splits couldn't keep up, but they kept the indoor temp at 70 so the circulators never kicked on at all. Cost to install was about $12K including electrician. One 12K btu head unit and two 9K btu head units. A/C is a huge bonus, and the units are almost silent. I have a gasoline generator I can hook into my house panel which will run the oil burner and circulators in the event of a power failure. I got about $800 rebate from the state, and I think I'll be getting a nice federal rebate when I file my taxes this year. I'll probably be adding a solar system this summer to reduce cost of heating even more.

I worked in IT for a dozen years at two small Vermont colleges. I don't accept your guarantee. At both colleges, the librarians were deeply involved in the maintenance of and responsibility for the library websites. They worked collaboratively with IT for the technical aspects, but had full authority over the content.

You seem quite self-sufficient. And, frankly, quite self-absorbed. While you may be very adept at learning skills on your own, it seems you're oblivious to the fact that everyone learns differently. Northeastern seems to have a robust library system, and it doesn't appear to be closing. In fact, their calendar of events includes workshops on using library resources. Imagine that. A library teaching people how to do research. People are not going to pay tuition for websites written by work-studies and AI. You started this thread saying it would be an unpopular take. I think, intuitively, you knew why that would be the case.

EDITED for typo

>no college student needs help researching information online.

As somebody who worked over a decade in higher ed and now works in a high school, I can assure you you're wrong here.

Is your school even accredited?

Who do you think creates and maintains university websites?

You may be right about physical books, but not about libraries and librarians. Students don't intuitively know how access scholarly databases and do research. Librarians provide guidance on doing academic research and libraries are where that happens. If you think local public libraries are an adequate substitute for a college campus library, you're clueless. For one thing, they're unlikely to have pertinent resources for the subject matter taught at the college. They're also often far from campus and, more importantly, their hours are extremely limited and unlikely to be open evenings and weekends when students need them most.

So far so good. Zero degrees in Dorset, and my three Haier units are keeping the house at 70 with no issue. Installed this past summer. I turned on the oil burner this morning and set its thermostat at 64 as a fallback, but the circulators have not needed to come on at all. House is about 2600sf, but about a third of that is a basement room which I'm not heating. It's dropped to 51 down there today. 3 sides of the basement are below grade, so it's fairly stable down there.

While much of what's proposed here is just fantasy and not feasible, you're wrong about the current Amtrak service in Vermont. It's heavily used. In fact, the trains typically sell out on peak travel days. As of right now (Tuesday), the southbound Ethan Allen Express for this Friday is 70% full. With very modest improvements like adding a second daily run to the Ethan Allen and Vermonter lines, ridership would soar because added flexibility in travel times would make rail more practical for day trips and connecting to other long distance lines. Extending the Vermonter to Montreal might double ridership on at least some segments of the line. These upgrades would not cost billions because the lines already exist.

Commuter rail in Vermont isn't likely to work in most of the state, but running Budd RDCs between Montpelier, Barre, BTV, and Essex Jct. would surely attract more than 40 people. Even a Rutland-BTV shuttle to augment the Ethan Allen would be a winner because it would make day trips possible.

Kudos to Vermont for having the vision to preserve these lines. I grew up in North Jersey where so much irreplaceable row is lost forever and sorely needed now.

I am as pro-rail as they get, but some of these lines are just not feasible. Bennington to Brattleboro includes two very substantial mountains. I lived on VT 9 in Woodford for a while, and I can tell you trains aren't going over that mountain. And tunneling would dwarf the nearby Hoosac Tunnel which is less that five miles long and took 135 lives during construction. Getting a line through Killington would be similarly challenging.

A more practical line which is absent from your map would run from WRJ through Keene and Winchendon using an abandoned right of way (push that rail-trail to the side) where it could connect to existing MBTA rail in Fitchburg. That gets you the Montreal to Boston connection along with Rutland to Boston. (Sorry, Cape Air.)

Living in Dorset, I'd love to see passenger trains come through Manchester, but some serious infrastructure work would be needed. For example, the line runs through the middle of the r k Miles lumber yard with trucks and fork lifts crossing the line all day. Unless you want passenger trains running at 10mph you're going to need some new grade-separated crossings along the line.

Thanks so much for this idea. I'm doing that as soon as I get home from work today.

Put in mini-split heat pumps last summer. Haven't needed to fire up the oil burner yet this season, but it hasn't been below 15 degrees yet. This weekend will be a real test. My electric bill has been $320 for the past two months. In October without heat or AC, it was $165. So heat is costing about $155/month right now. I think oil would have been double that.

This summer, I'm considering adding a solar system and possibly a heat pump water heater to replace my electric water heater. House is 2500 sf, but we don't heat the lower level which is mostly below grade and stays around 55 degrees.

The mini-splits are made by Haier. I like them, but the thermistor on two of the three head units are wildly inaccurate, so it's been difficult to regulate the temperature. The contractor has been slow to get the thermistors replaced.

I live in Southern Vermont and only got up to BTV back when my daughter was going to UVM, so I'm not a guru or anything, but why has nobody mentioned Our House Bistro in Winooski? The Sugar Shack Mac is what dreams are made of.

The guy from Moonraker?

Haven't seen the show, but Burlington does indeed have an active Amtrak station now. The Ethan Allen Express was extended from Rutland to Burlington this past July.