It is incredibly ironic that only hours after I put up a post about missing household cues, our power went out.
Green Country got hammered by a line of severe storms Saturday night the 17th, and at one point, something close to 200,000 people had lost power. Ours went out around 0100. It flickered several times, then stayed on for a minute. Then it finally dropped, and five minutes later the tornado siren (that sits only a hundred yards away) started its moan. I think it was running on battery power because it seemed to take forever to get completely wound up. I don’t think anyone spotted any rotation because it only sounded for a minute. Usually for a tornado warning, it’ll sound for five minutes or so.
Power was still down when I finally got up around 8. OG&E’s website didn’t have any estimated restoration time for just about anyone in the region.
I broke out the generator early Sunday afternoon. Or I tried to.
We bought this set almost twelve years ago, not long after we settled out at Crossroads RV Park. It was a decent unit for $500, capable of supplying 3000 watts steadily and a peak of 4000. We ended up not needing it while we lived in the RV or in our first home down here. It came in handy when our church first returned to running fireworks stands. Neither location we used had a decent power supply for the stands, so we loaned our generator for one site, and that worked out well. Even when we planted our own church, we used our generator. Then we got permission to install a permanent power source at the retail parking lot we were using, so other than the flood six years ago, the generator sat in our garage.
We replaced the recoil starter at least once while we were using it at the fireworks stand. When I pulled the starter Sunday, it spun freely.
That was disconcerting.
At that point, we’d already been without power for twelve hours. The fridge and big freezer hadn’t been opened much at all since the power went out, but there’s only so much an insulated box can do. At some point, it needs electricity to keep the temps down.
I called Diana and we decided to replace the generator.
As I headed into town, I considered my options. Harbor Freight likely had a better selection and lower prices. But I was pretty sure everyone else in town would think the same thing. I checked the Lowe’s app, and they said they had over thirty generators in stock. But those sets were bigger and more expensive than what I needed or wanted to spend, so I headed for Harbor Freight.
I was not the only person looking at generators.
I found one that was close to the specs I wanted, and it had electric start. Plus, they had several in stock, judging from the pick tickets in the shelf pouch, so I grabbed one of the tickets and made my way to the registers, pleased that I’d found a generator so quickly.
And then…
“We’re out of those.”
But you’ve got half a dozen pick tickets on the shelf.
“Yeah, they print like five at a time.”
I blinked a couple of times. So?
“Well, the ticket doesn’t actually mean we’ve got them in stock. It just tells us you want to buy one of them. All we have left are these two right here.”
But you don’t have any pick tickets for that one generator.
“Yeah, because we sold all but one of them.”
So if you have pick tickets left, you should have generators to go with them, right?
“No, we have to leave them up there.”
So customers can get upset when they think you’ve got something in stock, but you don’t?
She didn’t answer me.
So those two right there are the only ones you’ve got left?
She nodded. I went back to the display units to compare the two that were left, decided on one of them, and headed back to the register…
Just in time to see them wheel it away for another customer.
Sigh.
I considered the one that was left but it was only 1800 watts, and I wanted something more than that. Still, it’d do what I needed it to do, so I asked the clerk how much it was.
“That one’s already spoken for.”
I was very proud of myself for not screaming. I wanted to scream. But I behaved and headed for Lowe’s.
Right as I got there an older gentleman was working on putting a Craftsman generator in his car. I thought, Knowing my luck, that’s the last one in the store.
It was not, though. I found the Briggs & Stratton Storm Responder. 6250 watts under normal running, with an 8k peak load. That was more than enough power for us. It’s got a digital screen showing power generation; oil, air filter, and spark plug life, plus a carbon monoxide shutdown sensor.
It’s noisy though. Even with just a 450 cc engine, it’s very loud. I’ve seen several YouTube videos showing people enclosing their generators, and I’ll probably look into building some sort of easily assembled thing.
It ran our fridge, deep freeze, pool pump, and internet access, plus a power strip for charging our electronics. That took just 10% of its capacity. I think it’s realistic that this thing could power our water heater and HVAC system as needed. I plan to look into a transfer switch so to connect the generator more directly. We’re also going to look at setting up a battery bank for our solar system.
Our power was restored about one AM Monday. By 6:00 PM Monday, OGE reported about 25,000 households without power. PSO, which covers most of the rest of the state, said they had about 150,000 people in the dark. By Monday afternoon, gas stations in Green Country were starting to run low on gas, due to increased demand and reduced supply. People needed gas for their generators, and distributors didn’t have the electricity needed to load tankers. It’s been a mess.
OceanGate
I’m not really sure how to put my thoughts into words here.
I felt from the beginning that they were lost. The ocean at that depth is even less forgiving than on the surface. I read from some knowledgeable acquaintances that if there were a leak at depth, the implosion would have been nearly instantaneous. They likely died before their brains could process what was happening.
I’ll admit I’ve chuckled at some of the memes that have popped up. I feel a little guilty about it, but only a little. I’ve developed quite the black sense of humor after working in law enforcement and the military for so long. Occupational hazard. Dark humor has been a coping mechanism for people in occupations like emergency services and the military for forever. It’s just how some people process a tragedy. It may not be how you process it. But it’s generally a legitimate way to process such a thing.
And let’s face it: this is a complex thing to process. You’ve got the college kid who kind of didn’t want to go but decided to bond with his dad, one of the richest men in Pakistan. You’ve got a guy with a huge adventurous spirit. One guy was arguably one of the world’s experts on the wreck. And you’ve got the company CEO with all of the baggage he brings on his own. Five families represented, and trillions of dollars in wealth. There’s such a miasma of emotions here that I don’t think it’s fair to complain about how people process it.
Humor is just one more tool people use to process grief and anger and all of the other emotions involved with this tragedy. It’s okay if it’s not the best tool for you.
But I’ll also admit that I understand why Stockton Rush did what he did. That kind of exploration has always fascinated me. If I had that kind of money and a chance to see the Titanic in person? I’d likely have been all over it, just like I’d be all over the chance to fly in 80-year-old airplanes like the B-17 or B-29. I’d take a ride on Blue Origin too, for the same reason. Was Rush in it for the money? Sure. But I understand the excitement that led him to do this.
I was completely enthralled by a fiberglass semi-submersible craft I once saw in the July 1978 Mechanix Illustrated called the Aquasub. The thing looked something like a spacecraft, with two outrigger pontoons to pipe fresh air in and help the thing float. I desperately wanted to build one to explore local lakes and rivers. I had all sorts of plans in my head to turn the Aquasub into a free-swimming unit that didn’t depend on getting air through the pontoons.
Would I have necessarily signed up for OceanGate’s expedition? Possibly not, as I’ve learned more about their processes and so forth. But I’d still love to make the trip.
And while I’m thinking about it…
Much is being made of OceanGate using a modified videogame controller. Some comments suggest that something so inexpensive couldn’t be proper equipment for such a venture. Yet every day, members of U. S. military forces use equipment made by the lowest bidder. It’s all made as inexpensively as possible, everything from parachutes to grenade fuses to the cooling pipes on the nuclear reactors. So keep in mind that inexpensive doesn’t mean cheap, and it doesn’t make it unsuitable. If you think it does, then talk to your members of Congress about military procurement.
Fireworks
Tis the season again. We opened our fireworks stand a day or so later than in years past. I’m only working two overnight shifts this year, which is kind of nice. Diana won’t be working many shifts at all. She had District Assembly this weekend and is traveling to California for a training session related to work software early next week. She gets to spend three days at Disney for the training. Must be nice.
Writing
Good Men Project excerpted another article this week, from this post.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to share a thought in the comments. Sign up for my infrequent newsletter here. Find some of my other writing at The Good Men Project, too. Subscribe to the blog via the link in the right sidebar or follow it on Mastodon. You can also add my RSS feed to your favorite reader.
Share your thoughts!