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Wednesday, February 02, 2011

It's Frickin' Cold Here!

It's like 23 degrees Fahrenheit here. This is Texas, folks. We just don't do cold. Unless it's the ice in our tea. So, yes, we do lose our minds when the temperature gets to below freezing levels. I've never seen my dogs do their business so quickly in their lives. The beagle just looked at me as if to say, "It's too cold to pee, let's get back inside." At least the two other mutts have long, thick coats.

We woke up this morning, expecting cold. I mean, we knew it would be in the teens when we woke up. What we were not expecting was that the power utility would decide today would be a great day to start rolling outages to test their system for over-capacity usage when summer hits. WTF TXU? It's the coldest day EVAR and you want to play What If? I think tomorrow morning I want to see what happens if I hit your head with a very large brick. It should be OK, I'm just testing to see what conditions are like for the day I really do decide to bash your useless skulls in.

To be honest, my husband immediately lit candles, found all of the new flashlights and started a new fire in the fire place. We were warm and cozy getting ready for work. Power was out for 30 minutes... that time. The moronic school district officials decided to have everyone come in, except the lights kept going out every 15 minutes, forcing a fire drill in the buildings forcing all the kids outside until it was cleared... they finally decided to send everyone home at 1 PM. Tomorrow is still up in the air, and we're supposed to get freezing rain tonight.

JOY!

However, my friend, Dave Hand, put a bug in my ear. What if, after a huge disaster of some kind the power company decided it would be a good time to test the medical center power grid for an emergency? Is that really the right time to do such a thing? No! Just like today was not the primo time to decide to do rolling outages when high winds were causing outages all over and they could not figure out which was a real outage and what was part of "the plan". They finally gave up this afternoon, however not one of them has admitted it for the lesbian cluster f$ck it was. Telephone and Cable companies all over North and Central Texas are at their wits end. The power company decided to inform other utilities of their "test" only after City Managers started calling in wondering WTF was going on.

Now, I don't think you have to be a certifiable genius to divine that this was a bad idea all the way around. In fact, with the exception of a can of cling peaches, I can't think of anyone who would have pegged this as a "good thing". It messed up emergency services in more than one Texas town. I think I heard one chief of some small town volunteer fire department say he was driving up to Dallas and he was all out of bubble gum. My guess is the only option he sees is kicking some major ass.

This is what I demand, the ONLY thing that shall appease me. I want everyone who signed on to this abortion of bad idea to be fired, permanently and no good reference or severance package given. I want them in public stocks and the public can take out their ire by throwing their power bills at them. Then, I think we should receive no charges for today. AT ALL. Learn at the peril of your pocketbook.

In my world, utilities are free market. You screw up like this and there are a dozen others there to fill the void. Then you'll think twice about running your stupid hypotheticals.

2 comments:

Joe Ehart said...

Isn't that the point of a 'test'? To do it when the conditions aren't ideal, to see what happens. Not like the tests in the Marines we used to do, where everyone knew what was coming and when. To truely be able to gauge response and capabilties it has to be a blind study. And yes, its crappy conditions and it sucks and you got a little cold and inconvenienced; but that just added to the stress and confusion, all parts of a true gauge of readiness.

youranidiot1968 said...

Well, first of all the school district did not let the kids out because of the weather, they had a scheduled early release that day and they DID not have fire drills that day. The school district would not do that to kids. Heck they don't even let them go out for recess when it is cold let alone for some stupid fire drill. Get your facts straight or don't blog about something that is not true.

what is the big deal anyway about rolling power outages. Texas was not the only one effected by this the whole country was. Next time you blog about something get the facts straight because obviously you don't know what the hell you are talking about.

And get some candles that stay lit so you can always have light since this is such an inconvience for you. IT IS LIFE DEAL WITH IT!!!!