Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply

Our power company thoughtfully turned off our power this week for 30 hours because it was windy.  They claim this was to prevent fires, but of course every time they do it, they turn the power back on and something blows and it starts a fire.  (This year was no exception, although the fire wasn’t anywhere near us this time at least.)  Personally, I think they’re doing it because of the Camp Fire, which nearly destroyed the town of Paradise (there’s actually a new documentary about it on Netflix, although I haven’t watched it).  Anyway, a judge held the power company responsible for starting the fire and it cost them a bunch of money, so ever since then they turn off the power when it’s windy ... but only to the primarly residential areas, so as to piss off the consumers and have them complain to their local governments in the hopes that they’ll finally get sick of it and pass some law or other that the power company can’t be held responsible for keeping the power on.  Notably, most of the primarily business areas (where the power company presumably makes the most money) are not turned off at these times—this week, there was about a 10-block-square chunk right in the center of our city which had power the whole time, which was sort of like adding insult to injury, even though it did make it nice to be able to drive about 2 minutes to someplace that had power.  Still, annoying to have a corporation thumb their noses at us so blatantly.

Of course, I have no proof of any of this, so you could accuse me of peddling a conspiracy theory.  I would counter, though, that it doesn’t take much of a “conspiracy”: just 4 or 5 folks at the power company who care more about the bottom line than than whether all my frozen fish food is turning into disgusting goop in my freezer.  And, honestly, if you don’t believe there are way more than that number of people with that attitude running the power companies in our country, then I have nothing more to say to you.  Well, except for this lovely bridge I’ve got to sell you.

Anyhow, it’s sort of put a crimp into my whole week, and I never really caught up.  This should be a “long post” week for me, but as last week’s “short post” was, in fact, quite long, I think I’ll just skip this week, except for the obligatory ranting above.  Which you’ve already suffered through enough, I’m sure.

Back next week for another virus isolation report.