The Oldsmobile Connection

Brando · Joined: 06 Jun 2003 Posts: 3067 Location: Michigan, USA

Ugh...had a small storm last Sunday, power went out around 6PM...thought, no big deal. Have had a couple short power outages before, never lasted more than an hour.

Well, it's still out. My stepfather brought a generator out today, so now I can actually do stuff. It's amazing how dependent I am on electricity.... :shock:

No microwave, no hot water, no fridge, both aquariums were out, can't use my soldering station, no A/C (it's hot and humid here now), no home telephone (digital).....oh and no lights, I was using candles before.

The story is that there was a power line down on top of my shop in the backyard. They told me to not go back there, they had "Detroit Edison Public Safety" people parked in front of the house 24 hours a day....what a job, eh? All they did was sit in their cars all day long.

So I went in my backyard anyways after looking at the roof of my shop from the third story of the house. It definitely didn't look like a power line to me--I could see where it was going, and I recalled a line coiled up in that corner of the yard, before the power outage.

I went outside into my backyard, which was marked with caution tape with a picture of a little dude getting shocked. I went to look at the alleged "power line", I approached it somewhat cautiously, but not really. Turns out it's an old telephone line....2 days and they didn't do anything but tell me not to go in my backyard and sit in their cars.

I approached the "public safety" people and asked them if they had any idea when my power would be back on, they had been sitting there for hours and told me they were "trying to figure that out"....yeaaaa

I told them what they thought was a power line, is actually a telephone line. "No kidding." Yea, no kidding, you didn't even take a closer look to see what it was. They had left by the time I came back to get ice for the freezer to keep things cool, before I left they said they would send someone out to take a look.

I've since torn the stupid caution tape down since there is no hazard in my backyard... :lol: Plus I needed to be able to open the fence to get the generator in the backyard.

My mom kept checking up on me through cellphone, today she told me she called Detroit Edison and they said they plan to have power restored by Friday :shock: ....by the way, I found out there's only three houses without power in the area, my neighbors and I. So it's gotta be something simple...

Just had to vent...

TOC Admin
Brando

73Delta88 · Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 9:57 pm Post subject: Re: No power...

only 3 houses without power?? damn, give your neighbors a few bucks and run an extension cord from their house!

My whole area lost power last night for only a couple hours, the whole town was without power. My good old UPS took care of my stuff though :D

I remember a couple years ago we had a really bad ice storm that knocked out the power for quite a while, luckily we had plenty of fire wood so half the neighborhood ended up hanging out at our house because it was the warmest :lol:

87Delta · Joined: 15 May 2005 Posts: 678 Location: Mississippi

They shut down our power a month or so back to upgrade the lines. However they did it from 12AM to 5AM so nothing really got disrupted besides my sleep (80* at 95% humidity with no A/C or fan will do that to ya :lol:)

andrewk · Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 1245 Location: Ames, IA

3 houses down and its gonna take them 2 days to fix it? That is a load of crap! They should be able to have you up in 10 hours MAX if they knew how to work.

Around these parts, a crew can go out with 3 trucks, and have 10 poles replaced and lines run overnight.

I guess we Iowans are a little more experienced though...

Hope you get power back soon!

Brando · Joined: 06 Jun 2003 Posts: 3067 Location: Michigan, USA

Yea...I've had power for a while now.
Took em a week to fix it.

The power went out about a week afterwards...same exact problem, took em a couple days to fix it.

They're getting faster, but not as fast as they should be....plus the same problem happening over again isn't very encouraging.

TOC Admin
Brando

andrewk · Joined: 18 May 2005 Posts: 1245 Location: Ames, IA

Brando wrote: Yea...I've had power for a while now.
Took em a week to fix it.

The power went out about a week afterwards...same exact problem, took em a couple days to fix it.

They're getting faster, but not as fast as they should be....plus the same problem happening over again isn't very encouraging.

TOC Admin
Brando

Shit- I didnt even look at the time stamp before replying...lol.

Either way, sucks that your power company is shitty.