Thanks @Zonker for the kind words. I have also stalled a bit while waiting for the Particle Cloud HA network to be active.
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I think my Mesh Hello World program got local Mesh publish/subscribe working quite well. Even if the mesh devices got broken into pods each pod of devices communicated fine, but I haven't used it for a while.
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I recently had a long talk with @will, and I am back to being more of a team player. He reminded me that the pre-order people should be able to use 10 gateways and up to 100 devices for testing. Which takes a lot of pressure off my concerns about my teaching with 15 Argons and 31 devices having a monthly cost. (Only for pre-order people unfortunately).
I did mention my concerns about the Particle Cloud Border Router and @will mentioned perhaps a local Particle Border Router (Linux machine) might be something in the future. That sounds really interesting, with lots of positives, but that might not be for a while, if ever.
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So that is my update, instead of stressing about the Mesh devices I think I will buy this puppy. 
the kids are on board, just have to confirm things with my wife. 