[Sca-cooks] Dude, like what's up with the power?

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Thu Jul 20 14:32:39 PDT 2006


On Jul 20, 2006, at 4:26 PM, Stephanie Ross wrote:

>
>> You cannot compare Russian peasants to
>> medieval surf peasants.
>
> Now you've gone and done it. I'll be thinking about non-armigerous
> coastal Caidans and Westerners all day... totally, doodette...
>
> Adamantius, with computer operating with sickening cheerfulness in an
> otherwise almost complete local power outage for the past four days...
>
>
> Oh man, my tummy hurts from laughing so hard. I guess you can tell I
> misspelled that, huh *blush*. Serf, it was supposed to be serf!!  I  
> reread
> and edited it three times too ::sigh::. NYC is having power outages  
> still?
> For four days? I thought Niagara Falls produced enough energy for  
> the whole
> east coast and then some. Is the electric company just messing with  
> people
> because it can? Wouldn't be the first time. Enron doesn't own your  
> power
> company, does it?

The deal is that we had an unusual hot spell beginning on Monday,  
and, of course, New Yorkers were asked to conserve power. Living as I  
do in the general part of Queens where the MacMansion originated not  
that far away, and residents often have large bank accounts and small  
brains and senses of social accountability, obviously the first thing  
to do is to turn up your A.C. Well, okay, I didn't, because we've had  
stonemasons working on our building for the past month or more, and  
they generate a lot of dust, so we've been using the Infernal Devices  
too much anyway, and a nice $300 electric bill earlier this month for  
our pains.

So, throughout Monday night and into Tuesday, after Con Edison of New  
York (the second stupidest utility company on earth, after Brooklyn  
Union Gas) begged us all, and also begged the Transit authority to  
reduce service on the local subway trains, we lost three of four  
conduit cables feeding power into northwestern Queens. We still have  
some kind of rudimentary power, presumably 25% or thereabouts. Most  
of the rest of the city is unaffected, but probably close to a  
quarter million people are affected here, and then there are people  
north and west of here affected by the storm that hit us on Tuesday  
night, maybe another hundred thousand or more in mainland New York  
and New Jersey. We were already sitting by candlelight on our balcony  
when the storm arrived, and for us it was time to enjoy the sudden  
temperature drop and the rain, but there were apparently some deaths,  
flooding, etc.

It appears that we do have some power, but it appears that it's only  
flowing through certain breakers -- some outlets are working and some  
not, and it has nothing to do with the breakers themselves. I wonder  
if something was done to the electrical supply for our apartment  
building so most people could have at least some power for  
refrigerators, medical equipment, etc.

So, there seems to be no power at all in my son's bedroom, not enough  
juice to run an air conditioner for any period of time, even if we  
wanted to; there seems, at the moment to be enough flow for fans to  
run (sort of), cordless phone service, the main fridge is more or  
less okay, as are modem and router, my lady wife's computer and mine.  
The big freezer is overworking itself a bit, but we've only opened it  
once since the weekend, the television seems to work at night, but  
we're not stupid enough to waste anybody's CPAP power (or whatever)  
with that additional strain. Lighting is dim, flickering, or  
nonexistent unless battery powered. Luckily the stove is gas-powered.

At the moment it's about 83 degrees, more or less comfy, and I have  
fan blowing on the modem and router, and on the fish tank's water  
surface (temp is a bit too high and the kids are a little unhappy  
about it, but probably not in any real danger). The other critters  
are all more or less tropical and don't seem to care that much one  
way or the other.

Through it all, oddly enough, my computer has belched slightly and  
needed to be restarted, a total of once, and that was during the  
worst of the heat Tuesday afternoon/evening (when it was about 97  
degrees).

In short, this is all rather strange. I'd be much more prepared  
mentally to simply have an honest-to-gosh blackout for a day or two,  
and get it over with, rather than this now-you-see-it, now-you-don't  
stuff. If we're lucky this will all be resolved before the food in  
the big freezer thaws.

Adamantius

  
    



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