Damn, there goes the power. I think. Wait, the laptop is still running. Dummy, it has a battery.
Crap, that damn security system. I discontinued the service over a year ago but their stupid box still starts beeping — loudly — when the power goes off and won’t stop until I enter the code. I’ve got to call them about that because that green light means the box is still drawing power and it’s supposed to be dead. Dead!
There’s the Lawn Doctor guy treating the lawn. I wonder if he tripped the power? Nah, why would he mess with the power? Guess I’d better go set the sprinklers to run the extra time he specified. Oops, the sprinkler timer runs on electricity too.
Oh no, this means I’ll have a bazillion clocks to reset …
Gotta call the power company and report the outage. At least I still have one old phone in the bedroom that doesn’t require electricity to operate. … I’ll give Xcel credit for one thing — their machine knows who I am and even told me my name and address. Good deal. I wouldn’t want to forget that.
At least it’s still daylight out. I’d be in the soup if it were dark. I’d better go check the circuit breakers anyway. Maybe something tripped for some reason. Funny I’ve never thought to do that before when the power has gone out. Probably because I could see the other homes in the area were dark, too.
Glad I got a new battery for this laptop. Now I can play Bubble Shooter till the power comes back on. Funny how addicted I am to that little game. It’s almost mindless, sort of hypnotic. Just keep shooting pretty bubbles …
Haven’t seen any Xcel trucks drive by. I really hope they’re working on the power. It’s starting to get a bit warm in here …
Funny, someone was commenting recently and I was writing about America’s crumbling infrastructure. Forget crumbling; how ’bout inadequate? Around here, the contractors can’t build infrastructure fast enough to keep up with the population growth, much less worry about going back to fix the old stuff.
All of this reminds me of what my ex (a nuclear engineer and former nuclear submariner) once said about terrorist attacks. “Forget attacks on the heavily reinforced and guarded power plants. That plant is built to take a direct hit with a 747. Just go a few miles down the road and take out the unguarded transmission lines. You’ve cut power to most of NY state.”
Do that in a couple of places and you can probably get huge sections of the power grid to domino and fail. So easy. So effective. Especially when everyone is still so cotton pickin’ focused on the airports! Really? That horse is already out of the barn.
Ah, the power is back on. That was only about an hour. Not too bad. I guess I’d better get to work on those clocks.
I had a short outage this morning myself. Thankfully, it was nothing like the 4 hour one last week, or the 3 hour one the week before. And speaking of low security targets, I got 4 separate automated messages from AEP explaining how the longest one was due to an “outlet fault” at a low level substation I used to drive by every day. Wow.
It takes so little to cause so much chaos …
Our infrastructure is falling apart, but they’d rather spend tax dollars on glitzy “photo op” projects and secret “anti-terror” networks!
Older farts – like me – can remember buying War Bonds during WWII. In a voluntarily effort, the population was able to donate to something they felt was worth paying for. I’d like to see something like that take the price of arbitrary taxation. I’d gladly donate (like Infrastructure Bonds) at the STATE level, but I can think of almost nothing I’d volunteer to fund at the federal level.
What are the chances of that? I know. Zero.
Whatever it takes to get money spent to put people to work replacing or repairing water lines, building and repairing bridges, rail lines, highways, electrical grids, etc. People need jobs and these things need doing before catastrophic failures start killing people. There’s more than enough bloat in the federal government to pay for this.
Didn’t we agree once that all those federal dollars are really ours anyway? It’s about time some of them came home to roost.
And as far as I’m concerned we can start with the paycheck those do-nothings in Congress are getting!
Boy did he get that right! While we are frisking babies and grannies, the bad guys are plotting the next big thing. When will we learn?