Thursday, August 14, 2003
By the way the power facility at Niagara where this outage was reported to have started insists that there were no major events... no lightning strike or anything else significant for that matter.
10:21:33 PM
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And here's the quote from the president:
I have to paraphrase... 'It's a question of whether the power grid needs to be improved. I happen to think it does. I've been saying it all along.'
9:06:34 PM
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The outage took 8 - 9 seconds to cascade completely.
9:04:42 PM
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I don't mean to be overly negative. I do think it's amazing how emergency management comes together in situations like this. People always seem to be able to react quickly and fairly effectively in times of crisis. So why are we all so incapable of adequate preparation?
I'm not suggesting that this or any other single event is preventable. What I am saying is that immediately after something like this everyone talks about why it's absolutely vital to improve whatever it is that has failed, in this case the power grid.
I can hear the speeches now: 'we're a nation that runs on power'; 'this cannot be allowed to happen again' and 'we will do everything that is necessary to insure that this never happens again' and '...blah, blah, blah...'. So why weren't they working on this yesterday? It would have been a lot cheaper then. Tomorrow the cost starts at the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars this black out will run.
This doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. I've been reading about the horrible, desperate condition of the power grid for years and years. Apparently power facilities go down "all the time" and today experts are clinging to the same predictions they have been making for years about the inevitability of events like this and barely stopping to take a break they warn about the enevitability of this happening again.
I understand that there are a lot of priorities but I have to believe that just about all of us would pick electricity, and services dependent on electricity, as a priority in our lives given a list of choices.
9:03:39 PM
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Let's see what happens now that the lights are off in major cities in the US.
What separates civilization from anarchy... let's hope it's more than a light bulb?
8:27:01 PM
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I'm willing to declare that I've already heard the worst quote of this event. CNN had a live interview with a girl of was having her teeth drilled when the power went out in NYC and her quote was:
"My dentist thought she was working in a timezone from like 30 - 40 years ago when they had no electricity..."
8:24:01 PM
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If you're in an affected area and you don't want to run the risk of losing your electronics unplug before the grid comes back online... that would be a good idea.
8:21:20 PM
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The affected area is 9300 sqaure miles.
8:20:32 PM
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"CNN confirms lightning hit Niagara power plant"
8:20:07 PM
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Thursday Aug 14, 2003. Another great day to not be in NYC.
Now what's all this about a power outage?
7:42:54 PM
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This is one of those situations when news anchors should just talk as little as possible and defer to experts because they just sound rediculous talking about things they don't understand and about which they haven't been coached.
6:54:17 PM
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What I learned today:
1. When outside power is lost to a Nuclear power facility the station shut down.
2. The last time NYC lost power on this scale was 1965.
3. Power facilities "go down all the time" - Fox News Live
6:49:54 PM
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Massive scale power outages across the East Coast: NYC, Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa, Northwest PA, Akron & Canton OH, New Haven CT and much of Upstate New York and elsewhere.
Unaffected cities: Boston, Washington & Chicago
No AC, public services, air traffic (because airport screening is down apparently other systems are operational). The NYC Subway system is being evacuated. Expect he same sorts of things in all affected areas.
Of course there are a lot of issues to consider...
I hope people have data and IT services in order. This is going to be very very expensive!
It's a good thing the economy is strong enough to absorb this type of thing...
**cough**cough **cough**
6:44:02 PM
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Another day another visit to Starbucks.
Looking for a Starbucks in Boston? Here you go.
I've been hopping around between 2,3 or 4 different Starbucks in the city for a long time now (while I'm unemployed). Today it was Atlantic Ave.
But I also frequent
State St. (State St. T stop that is... I actually don't know the name of the street off the top of my head) and 1 Financial
Atlantic Ave. is by far the best Starbucks I've found in the city but it's a little out of the way (close to the North End or a walk past Fanueil Hall from the Haymarket T station). It's big and comfortable and easy. The bathroom is usually clean and they haven't found it necessary to require a key. There are a couple of power outlets accessible to at least 4 tables and the T-Mobile access is great. The is also the "least drama" Starbucks I go to regularly.
State is iffy. The seating is very limited. There are a couple of power outlets accessible to only two tables. The wireless connectivity is great. This place is high employee drama, high tourist and high downtown business fucks so headphones are a requirement if you're here by yourself. The manager guy here is new I think. He seems to take his job very seriously, in an overly visible way. I certainly have no problem with sanyone taking their job responsibilities seriously but too much management applied inconsistently can seem messy and frantic combined with some of the other craziness of this place and the tight quarters can make this place a bit of a struggle. Still the location is great, right in the middle of dowtown Boston and near food, bookstores, shopping, the park and the new Loews movie theater (the best in the city).
1 Financial is pretty must shit. No bathrooms. The building killed the power to the one outlet accessible to the public seating area and the wireless network is basically non functional here. There is extremely limited seating in Starbucks directly but you can usually get a seat in the "cafe seating area" outside in the lobby of the building.
2:02:24 PM
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My apartment is horrible.
The building itself is ugly and doesn't look structurally sound.
Inside the floors are warped and twisted and banked at the walls like an Indy race track.
The wall to wall rugs look like a murder scene that no one bothered to clean up.
Everything I own is garbage (other than my new gifts from Heather of course) and fittingly the apartment has the organization of a dump. We have loosely defined areas where we try to group together the different types of debris. Boxes and bicycles are in the kitchen, books and magazines in piles on the floor in the bedroom and all of our personal possessions are gathered together in a heap of cheap cardboard boxes in what we simply call "the storage area".
The whole mess is covered in a not-so-thin layer of dog and cat hair.
Seemingly, at all times 1/2 of our dishes and 1/2 of our laundry is dirty.
We have a fish tank that could be fish purgatory or maybe a scale model of fish purgatory. I don't know what our fish did in their previous life but it must have been unspeakably horrible (we may have Hitler swimming around in there).
In the winter it snows inside (literally).
Thankfully the livingroom is positioned right in the middle of the bedroom/storage area and the kitchen/bathroom, so if you turn just the right way close your eyes and breath through your mouth you can almost imagine that the place is livable... except for the tilt in the floor and that creepy 'we shouldn't be here'/Indian burial ground feeling that bypasses your senses and strangles your soul.
But it's nice.... we've hung christmas lights in the livingroom and keep them up all year long.
My girlfriend Jenn would argue with this characterization but she can't deny a single word of it. In fact here's a quote "I don't think it's that bad but everything you've said is true and it's making me depressed."
Really, it's not as bad as it sounds just don't ask me how/why.
By the way, we pay $1400.00 a month for this luxury 2 bedroom in Charlestown (Boston) MA
12:46:05 AM
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