I still have all my fingers and toes, and thoughts on how to make it true for everyone

The near-zero °F weather hasn’t been all that dangerous because I never get far from the house for long enough to get hurt. I went to check the mail twice just to make sure it didn’t run (hasn’t for 3 days so far), and that’s all the time I spent outside. So far we had one extended power outage caused by lack of natural gas to the co-op generator that hasn’t happened again. We still have good water pressure and safe water to drink, and the water heater is still online.

In other news as of today Mrs. the Poet has been married to me 43 years. Yeah I know, I don’t know how she did it either. I am NOT the easiest person to live with, but neither am I the worst person to live with. I have my problems, and so does Mrs. the Poet. We manage to not kill each other somehow and are still together in spite of all the people betting against us. How that happened I’m not really sure, but I think it means we were made for each other. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m glad it did.

Back to the weather and the problems caused by it, the causes have been isolated. Basically it comes down to a system designed to run on the ragged edge because profits, which when the Spam hit the fan basically fell apart because there was no reserve capacity for abnormal conditions like there would be if it was regulated by people who put reliability over profits. The system has enough capacity to handle the load if the weather is above freezing, but as the temperatures dropped near or below 0°F the equipment wasn’t built to take it and went offline. The controls at natural gas wellheads literally froze up and wouldn’t allow more gas to flow in spite of demand. The wind turbines were not equipped with deicing equipment and froze up and couldn’t turn at full speed, because it was cheaper to not equip them, and nobody to force them to install the equipment. This is why electrical power systems need to be regulated because making the system work in good weather is not good enough, making the system work in really hot weather isn’t good enough because it gets hot every summer, but the system has to be built for when weather gets really bad once in a blue moon. And the last time it got this cold was winter of 1989-90.

There are only 2 ways to fix this. Either make everybody build to the standard that will work at -10°F, or pay operators to be emergency capacity and have wind turbines that will work at -40°F and wells that still work at -40°F just to make sure they will work in spite of anything that comes down from Canada on the jet stream. Personally I think making everyone build to the same standard works better than paying some to build to be ready for anything. If you can’t (won’t) build to standards that exceed record bad weather then you don’t get paid as much for your electricity when the weather is good. If you build for all weather then your turbine gets a bonus to keep it that way when weather is good. This recognizes that building and maintaining systems that only get used once or twice a decade is an added expense and compensating operators that build to that standard. Since TX is so afraid of “regulations”, make them “incentives” instead. I don’t know what way would be best to do it, whether paying more per KWatt/hour, or by paying a flat rate per month for fully winterized systems. The only other way to do it and be fair is to require winterized systems for every provider.

And in case you wonder about that tag.The Flintstone Happy anniversary song full clip How Barney manages to sing and play piano with his head facing the wrong direction I’ll never understand beyond “cartoon logic”.

Advertisement

It is freaking cold out

The local temperature went from 71°F(23C) Saturday afternoon to a 0°F wind chill with 17° (-8C) still air temp on Sunday morning. Mrs. the Poet was sick on her B-Day from the rapid temperature change and even my body was made uncomfortable by the rapid change. But the people I was most concerned about were the local unsheltered homeless people. For them, lacking access to lots of blankets and high-calorie foods the rapid change in temperature could have been fatal.

I’m going for the 5 mile walk after I post this. This is the one that gets me 190 points on my phone game that pays me money to play instead of the 125 points for doing the same number of check-ins on the 3.75 mile walk. There are 3 big point check-ins on the long walk that I don’t get on the shorter walk, plus the longer the walk the better for my <3. I'm wearing tights over my long underwear under my jeans with the holes in the legs so I don't get sore knees from the cold while my other pair of long pants are in the laundry. I have less than 2 weeks to get an additional 4500 points before the end of the year to clear $100 for the year. I’m real close now to getting the weekly dollar and the $5 extra card before 1/1/2017. I have a bunch of gigs that all pay about the same, ~$100/an. Some are more work than others, the phone game requires I leave the house and go places to make the most money from it, the others are mostly internet based and require me to be at home most of the time. I’m losing the internet secret shopper gig the end of this month, but I’m hoping the selling plasma gig will work out better in the long run. This is what it’s like when you’re too disabled to get regular work but not disabled enough to get SSI disability payments. Anyway after the Trumpites get into government there won’t be any SSI Disability payments so it’s good that I have already set up my own “safety net”.

Well I have to go get dressed and hit the bricks. More l8er.

Billed €0.02, Opus the Unkillable Badass

Hello Tuesday, and the Feed

Tuesday is my slow day here at WoaB, right after my busiest day on Monday. I used to use two other sources on Monday that I now use on Tuesday to fill in for the total lack of links from the regular Feed. And by lack of links, since I stopped doing wrecks that means Tuesday sometimes has no links from the Feed. So moving those other links from Monday to Tuesday sometimes is the difference between a few links and no links. And a link accumulator blog with no links is kinda sad, y’know?

Up first, is why this blog existed for the first 8 years I wrote it. The Web Monkey Speaks: Mean Streets Yep, there are some crazy people out there, and they only seem to get crazy when they drive. Outside of a car they are sweet kind people who wouldn’t hurt a fly, behind the wheel they would kill a cyclist in a heartbeat because they had to lift a foot off the gas pedal and coast for a few seconds.

To drive home the point from the previous paragraph. Funny Kill Victory Count Vinyl Sticker Decal, Honda, JDM, Acura, BMW, Ford, Oh yeah, funny like a punch in the face with a fist full of broken glass and razor blades. Maybe someone should report them for selling a product that encourages violence against vulnerable road users, like someone registered as an eBay user? I mean this product just screams “Slash my tires, I am an idiot who deserves it!”

This gap in the infrastructure leaves everyone at risk. Unlicensed, Hit-and-Run Drivers Kill First NYC Pedestrian Victims of 2015

And some (slightly) good news from NYC. Traffic Deaths Declined In 2014 For Everyone Except Cyclists I would count the increase in cyclists as “data noise” given the small number killed in either year.

And we get another entry in the winter bike riding frenzy. Can You Bike In The Snow? I prefer to use home-made studded tires for riding in icy conditions, and I use ski gloves for when it gets really cold to keep my hands warm.

If you have been thinking that intersections have been designed by idiots who never walked further than from their parking spot to the office, you may be right. Injustice at the Intersection It is interesting to note that the St.Louis suburb of Ferguson has very few sidewalks including only on one side of the street where Darren Wilson shot Mike Brown after Brown allegedly jaywalked.

You think you ride a lot, you are just a piker. The great Tommy Godwin – 75,065 miles (120,805 Kms)… on a bicycle… in one year… 1939! To give this a TX scale this is equivalent to riding from Garland to Texarkana every other day for a year, and then riding back the next day. That’s a long trip and boring as heck, but mostly flat so it would be doable (but not by me).

Unfortunately we are still a long way off from reaching Peak Car here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. URBANISTS NEED TO FACE THE FULL IMPLICATIONS OF PEAK CAR Two ways of looking at this: with having passed Peak Car congestion can be beaten by installing bicycle infrastructure to reduce the car count through bottlenecks and just flat reduce the number of cars on the roads, or “you can build your way out of congestion” because there won’t be any more cars to fill those new roads.

This is why you need good bike infrastructure even after peak car. Bicycle safety advocates call for road improvements Pt. 2 Woman sues over accident on bike path that left her paralyzed If a wreck on a bike path can do that to an experienced cyclist, you are not building Dutch quality infrastructure.

And sometimes bad infrastructure is made worse. Cyclist dodges roofing nails on Silver Comet Trail That string of nails looks tailor-made for poking holes in tires.

A critical part of bicycle infrastructure in the UK is the NIH. How London Air Ambulance saved life of cyclist who lost leg in skip lorry crash

Not everyone in NJ is like Chris Christy, or even voted for him. Ringwood pair recognized for aiding cyclist

Another pair of great people in IL. Relatives of injured cyclist reach out to good Samaritan

Another e-assist bike kit that will “change the world”. The FlyKly Smart Wheel for Bicycles is Now Available and First to Hit the Market in the Movement to Usher in a New Era in Urban Transportation What, you thought I was kidding? I see one of these things about once a month, it’s like the people that put these articles out think we never saw all those other articles on the web. It’s almost like “sooner or later one of these things will succeed.”

And I’m all out of links again.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet