.
The “Launch” of the Eiffel Tower:
Whatever reputation the poor French have gathered, they won the Millenium World Fireworks Spectacular in my book! The sheer creativity of the idea and apparent flawless execution (I don’t remember any international taunting, so it must have been OK) put them way ahead of the runners-up (whoever they were?).
S’il-vous-plait, un encore presentation, Messieurs!
Would’ve been scary to have been on the very top balcony during that…
.
Aren’t we just sooo much better off than those poor schmucks who lived before us??? Just LOOK at how advanced we are, these days, all the conveniences available to us, the whole easy-life society.
So, what tipped the scales to trigger this rant was a returned package in the mail. Incomplete address. Mangled and ripped package with the address label actually missing! All nicely sealed in a plastic bag covered in apologies by the Canadian Post in both English and French. The package was mailed on November 5, 2008, and returned today (that was Nov 25 - when I started this posting…). Mind you - it WAS mailed on the cheap, so what should one expect, right?
Last night we had some pretty good rain here, qualifying as a downpour, I would say, but certainly not a vicious storm. Just very, very wet. Before the brunt of it even hit, the regular land phone-line went dead.
A few weeks ago in the middle of the night (I was working on a project to be delivered the next day…) a sharp double-bang accompanied by the lights blinking announced that something was up with our electrical substation. This is not the first time we’ve experienced that; things settled down for a few minutes. Then several more of these double-bangs and blinkings, fairly rapid succession and longer outages - and then the computer was “dead”. So, I start crawling around in the tangled mess of cords and surge-protectors, etc. Find out that this actually blew out my power-supply surge protector/back-up unit. GREAT! Between everything that is plugged in, it’s quite a challenge to find enough openings to even accomodate the lamps. I get it re-configured, then shut everything down - conceding defeat for the night. Thankfully! Because now comes the great finale: a tremendous bang followed by complete darkness, not even a flickering. The substation is located in the next tract up from ours, within less than a mile, so we went outside to see if we could see anything. Oh, yes. A huge column of very thick black smoke was rising from the location. At that point we went to bed.
Not a peep about that in the newspaper or on the TV news (well - it was all the way down there in “the OC”, so what would one expect…?).
Then there’s our street light. Ours is an older neighborhood and the street lights are sparse, but typical for a residential area. A year and a half ago (!) the whole post across the street came down - it was all corroded at the base. Luckily, nobody was hurt when it happened - there are many families with little children in the immediate vicinity. This light pole position is right in a rather sharp bend in the street, and that bend can sneak up on you if you’re not familiar around here. I have several times alerted the City to this condition and they tell SCE about it - that’s the way it is: it’s not the City’s responsibility and they don’t follow up on it. SCE drives-by and confirms that the light is, indeed, out. And nothing happens. I have confirmed with others in the neighborhood that they have also complained about the situation.
I looked more closely at the property tax-bill (statement, actually - thankfully we have the lender collect the taxes in an escrow account). Holey-moley! We’re enjoying 25 years of Prop.13 taxes, and the bill is half-again of that!! Yikes. There are these two fees, separate from the actual property taxes themselves. I de-coded their codes, looked up reverse telephone numbers to find out just WHO was doing what, here. The first one turns out to be for improvements to sewage treatment for “Coastal Communites” served by a plant in Huntington Beach (we’re in Westminster…). OK, so sewage from our Community (already processed, mind you!) gets further processing there. Their website explains about hearings, negotiations, conclusions and decisions made. The zinger: “it was decided” to collect the cost of this as a fee on the property tax bill “for simplicity’s sake” (loosely quoted). Further explanations inform that local/individual cities may impose further fees to cover the cost of their upgrading to compliance with the new requirements for delivery of sewage to this Huntington Beach plant. Yep, you guessed it - that’s what the second fee on the tax bill is. Well, I should say the fee was imposed by our local Midway City Sanitary District - and that’s all that’s available on that. There’s not a peep explaining this on their website. Nothing!
Wouldn’t it be just peachy if we could all collect our accounts receiveable and installment accounts by simply putting them on the individual’s tax bill? You know they’ll pay, ’cause otherwise they’ll loose their property - Big Bro doesn’t fool around. So, even if they protest it, we’d still have the money (and interest!) while the bickering was going on. It’s pure genius.
FIRST OF ALL: Yo - what are the property taxes for in the first place????? One of the main uses is supposed to be for infrastructure. Isn’t the tax rate set to cover the cost of maintaining and upgrading infrastructure? What about the FEDERAL dollars that trickle down to the individual cities/communities - a chunk of “local” tax money could be spent in what, in my opinion, would be proper ways if those federal funds’ designations were interpreted in a somewhat wider sense. The recent funds that were earmarked for road embellishment, for example. Yes, it IS nice to have artfully laid custom brickwork and greenie-approved plantings, maybe even some commissioned art pieces, but isn’t it even PRETTIER to have streets in good repair to begin with? To me, that would constitute embellishment. Personally, I’d be more proud of living in a city with the best maintained streets than the prettiest plantings. But - that’s just me. If we didn’t have pot-holes the various auto repair shops would have less work. Aye, aye, aye - can’t have that. Hurting the “little guy”, again.
SECOND OF ALL: The better mouse trap. You know - if somebody built a better mousetrap, people would be buying it, right? Let’s see - this is going to be hard for me because my convictions run so deep on this one - trying to keep it sort-a brief (and finally getting this posting up!). I’ll probably be letting more of it out in some later posting…
Anyways, that new-fangled fancy invention they call electricity. One day it’ll be quite useful to society, I’m sure, once we get it figured out how to produce enough of it and deliver it efficiently and safely. Gosh - should we maybe try DC instead of AC for a while? I mean, we are still in the wonderous experimental stages, no?
I “can’t believe” the ridiculous state that electrical service is in, at least here in California. Brown-outs, black-outs, voluntary and forced “rolling” such, substations that blow up (see above, hint, hint), power lines that are downed by mild storms (compared to the Gulf and Mid-West), incentive programs that let the power company decide when to run your airconditioning - you name it.
HELLO! The past 15 years, and particularly the past 10, have seen the emergence of HDTV, personal computers and the Internet, amazing strides in small electronics and electrics, in general, and the shoving-down-the-throat of EV’s. There’s much more, I’m sure, that I’m not familiar with especially on the commercial and industrial levels. My question is: did the power companies really seclude themselves and not notice that more and more electricity was being used and figure out that this was not just a seasonal little thing? There is not just desire for more, but actual demand ? Dare I add need, with an increasing number of home-based businesses? Oh, yes, the poor, poor power companies have so little wiggle room because of all the regulations - just check your elecctricity bill for all those pennies here, single-digit bucks there charges - most are related to some regulatory compliance issue. And the power companies are quick to point out that these charges are “imposed” on them - ah, the help- and hap-less waifs.
And then there’s the cost-per-unit tiers. The more kWH you use, the higher the cost-per over your basic allotment. Who came up with that basic thing, anyways? And WHO, I ask who?, gets by on that basic only, in other words doesn’t pay at least some of their electrical bill at an usurpury rate? A few lights, a refrigerator, a TV (tube) and a clock radio and you’re maxed out, it seems. Funny, usually you get volume discounts…
If you get FREE electricity to charge your EV - remember, I AM PAYING YOUR BILL. And I’m not one of them despiccable rich people, either, I’m in fact just barely scraping by, right now (and getting ready to pay my overdue electricity bill…).
Clean fuel; renewable resources; greenhouse effect; global warming; climate change; environmental preservation - think about it. It’s all energy. Energy cannot be destroyed! Energy only transforms from one type of energy to another - it is not used up. Darn old nature loves equilibrium. There is always a by-product when we harness any kind of energy for our needs or conveniences. Let’s look at the bright side, here: all animals and humans have to eat - transforming the energy contained in the food into various life-giving substances. But, there is the ultimate by-product that can be used to enhance the growth of new food. Instead of just considering it nasty sewage, it can be harnessed further, for more good. I guess my point here is to look at enhancing existing technology, not by adding devices (such as catalytic converters) to proven, but no longer environmentally desirable, apparti, but rather by re-designing from scratch. Not just one component (if more than one are involved) but the whole concept, including its ramifications. Seems to me that one of the biggest goofs with the EV, as a unit apart from the power grid (see above….), is the failure to develop an adequate energy source - read: battery. We’re still looking at pretty antiquated and inadequate technology when it comes to batteries. And…they do eventually die, and then you have to dispose of them, and then….. See where this goes? Just ’cause an EV doesn’t smell doesn’t necessarily mean that it is holy - I mean clean.
Obviously not a scientist, here, but I think the above is at least as valid as some of the more popular opinions out there (and maybe even a little closer to “real science”?). I’m not going to get into any great debates here. These are musings and I am annoyingly chipper of disposition - I just like to see the ironies in life. Hope that doesn’t disappoint you, my current reader!
