MASSIVE FUCKING BLACKOUT

[Darth Wong]

We were knocked off-line for about 25 hours by a massive cascade power failure in the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada. After waiting roughly 1 full day for power to be restored, I have moved the board down to MJ's server (something I was planning to do for a while but I could never find a good time to take the board down for an hour).

They say that power restoration might be intermittent at best over the next few days, so if I drop out of sight again, that will be why. At least the board should remain up even if I'm off line for a while.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Many people may have just tried the normal link and not the secure one, and might not know it's back up.

[Ghost Rider]

Yeah I and a few other figured that was it.

Well this goes to everyone in that area...like Stravo, Dalton, yourself and others...hope everything turned out okay.

BTW nice rant .

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

You know what really fucking sucks? Almost every area around me got power back hours before I did, and some areas got it at 4:00 AM!

[Ghost Rider]

You know what really fucking sucks? Almost every area around me got power back hours before I did, and some areas got it at 4:00 AM!

That does blow...mostly because sometimes it's your neighbor who gets it first just sorta to rub into your face where on the power grid you are.

Though it's funny when the reverse happens...still.

[Pablo Sanchez]

You know what really fucking sucks? Almost every area around me got power back hours before I did, and some areas got it at 4:00 AM!

You're just not important.

[Darksider]

We had power until about 6:00 pm yesterday.


Ours came on at 4:38 pm.

[Darth Wong]

Primary link restored.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

You're just not important.

Shut the fuck up, BITCH!

We had power until about 6:00 pm yesterday.

Really? Most places (including based on the last posts, the board) lost power at 4:00.

[Darksider]

quote]We had power until about 6:00 pm yesterday.

Really? Most places (including based on the last posts, the board) lost power at 4:00.[/quote]


ours went on and off about two times in between four and six, then it went out for good at sometime around six.

[Gambler]

It must have been realy fucked up for people who couldn't get home because they had no transportation from their workplace to their houses.

[Jason von Evil]

Admit it, Mike, it was the penguins. You know it. I know it. We all know it.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

Admit it, Mike, it was the penguins. You know it. I know it. We all know it.

Most likely, within days thousands of websites will be up blaming the government, terrorists, and seagulls.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah I and a few other figured that was it.

Was it big on the news? I would hope so, considering some 50 million people were affected. I was very proud of our city for the way we hung together and dealt with the crisis, though. There was almost no looting or public disturbances, and volunteers went to many of the major intersections (all of which had dead traffic lights) and helped direct traffic until the cops arrived.

In fact, the biggest irritation was knowing that my board was down!

When I couldn't cook, I just went outside and fired up the ol' propane barbecue, and I brought my cast-iron frypan out there to fry up some eggs this morning. An old friend dropped by and we spent a few hours talking because he was stranded by the heavy traffic, so it was really not that bad (luckily, the water was still running, so we had flush toilets).

I was afraid there would be more public panic, but everyone was very calm about it. After SARS and everything else, I think the people of Toronto have just become accustomed to dealing with crises. I hope things went as smoothly for the guys in New York.

Well this goes to everyone in that area...like Stravo, Dalton, yourself and others...hope everything turned out okay.

Seconded.

BTW nice rant .

Thanks

BTW, for those who did not notice it, it was on my site table of contents page, and looks like this:

IMPORTANT NOTE

4:43pm EST5EDT August 15

The bulletin board has been temporarily brought down because of the massive cascade power failure that struck the northeastern United States and parts of Canada approximately 24 hours ago, far exceeding the time-limited capacity of my battery-backup system. I have been unable to get back on-line until now, when power was finally restored. Unfortunately, I have also been informed that power restoration may be only temporary.

Efforts are currently underway to move the bulletin board to an area outside the affected region. However, it is not known whether this operation can be successfully completed before power fails again, as the independent market operators who run the power grid admit that the reliability of the system is currently in a very "fragile" state.

Perhaps this incident, in addition to the growing string of business and industrial horror stories, will finally serve as a wake-up call to the self-professed neo-con experts who have been proclaiming for years that deregulation and market competition will create a stronger power market. The mantra that private industry will always be more efficient than public or regulated industry has been proven true, but people have forgotten that efficiency, by its very nature, breeds unreliability. This is because reliability and redundancy intrinsically require wasteful expenditure of resources in order to build over-capacity into the system. Conversely, efficiency intrinsically requires the elimination of any capacity which is not currently and immediately being used (much as the "Just in Time" manufacturing credo led to the entire North American auto industry shutting down after a strike at a single parts plant in Flint, Michigan once).

All preliminary indications are that this failure was caused by a power transmission grid which was being massively overloaded since an enormous spike in long-distance transmission ever since deregulation. It has become common to build local power grids with under-capacity and then simply buy up extra power from the cheapest distributor (regardless of location, even if he's a thousand miles away) when needed. This efficient but reckless practice is precisely the sort of thing that private industry tends to do when not limited by regulations, and it has vastly increased the load on the system which apparently caused this crisis (a significant failure in one transmission line causes the load to shunt onto other lines, which trips their overloads and shut them down, thus shunting even more load onto remaining lines, etc. in a massive cascade failure).

Of course, any who disagree with this rant can feel free to get on the bulletin board whenever it comes back on-line and vent their neo-con dogmas again.

PS. Just in case anyone's curious, my server shut itself down cleanly after running for five minutes on the battery, so there was no risk of data corruption.

[Enigma]

Well I got power back half hour past midnight and lost it again 12 later, only to have it come back again at 2:30

BTW, one of the two people that died as a result from the blackout was my best friend's cousin. I know that kid and we'd hang out quite a few times.

[Specialist]

Well it's nice to see this site back up and running again. Why is our power connected to the states? Who do you think is to blame?

[kojikun]

Mike, how can a power system be overloaded? I don't understand this whole AC power generation thing, I only know DC where the more shit you hook up the less power per device, not the more you hook up the more PULL on the generators. Can you explain that?

[RedImperator]

Well it's nice to see this site back up and running again. Why is our power connected to the states? Who do you think is to blame?

You. The whole thing is your fault.

[Specialist]

You. The whole thing is your fault.

How did you know

[Pablo Sanchez]

Shut the fuck up, BITCH!

*ahem*

The holy see and God Himself behind it hath made the Treaty of Tordesillas the unbreakable law of man. This Treaty commends these uninhabited forums unto the realm of Spain and the hand of Pablo Sanchez the First, king of Castile and Leon, Aragon, Catalonia, Granada, Naples, and associated territories.

In short: I claim this land in the name of Spain.

The current inhabitants of this territory are hereby ordered to submit themselves to the care of the representatives of the most Catholic Church until such a time as they are converted, at which point they shall report to the colonial administration that they might be to work as peons upon the land of their new Spanish overlords.


...

Well, now that I've got that bit of spam out of my system, I feel much better.

[Darth Wong]

Well it's nice to see this site back up and running again. Why is our power connected to the states? Who do you think is to blame?

Read the rant. The power transmission grid is being asked to transfer large amounts of power over very long distances because of deregulation and increasing privatization, both of which lead to market operators running under capacity and buying up any deficit power from the lowest bidder ... even if he's a thousand miles away.

This reduces prices in theory but it also puts an enormous burden on the long-range transmission system, which was never built with this in mind. No one has ever spent any money on upgrading the system, because there was no short-term financial gain in such an investment. The free market in action

Free markets are good for many things, but not for essential public services like water, power, policing, etc. If you want to blame someone, blame all of the neo-cons out there with their mindless knee-jerk "private industry can always do the job better" dogma.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Mike, how can a power system be overloaded? I don't understand this whole AC power generation thing, I only know DC where the more shit you hook up the less power be device, not the more you hook up the more PULL on the generators. Can you explain that?

To save money, the power companies maintained less generating power than was needed to actually provide for the areas they were supposed to supply. They then bought cheaper power from an outside source and shunted it in to where they needed it. Evidently, one of the horribly overworked and essential relays failed, starting this situation.

That's what I think is the deal. My knowledge of these systems is very limited, and I'm mostly parroting what some people (including Mike's editorial) have told me.

EDIT: Whoops, Mike already fielded it. Oh well...

[Montcalm]

Testing time 5.56 pm what time will it say on this post?

[Pablo Sanchez]

Looks to be about 7 minutes fast.

[Gambler]

Was it big on the news? I would hope so, considering some 50 million people were affected.

It was in all newschannels all over the world, the thing is, we were better informed here across the atlantic than you there without electicity and a TV

I was very proud of our city for the way we hung together and dealt with the crisis, though. There was almost no looting or public disturbances, and volunteers went to many of the major intersections (all of which had dead traffic lights) and helped direct traffic until the cops arrived.

In fact, the biggest irritation was knowing that my board was down!

When I couldn't cook, I just went outside and fired up the ol' propane barbecue, and I brought my cast-iron frypan out there to fry up some eggs this morning. An old friend dropped by and we spent a few hours talking because he was stranded by the heavy traffic, so it was really not that bad (luckily, the water was still running, so we had flush toilets).

I was afraid there would be more public panic, but everyone was very calm about it. After SARS and everything else, I think the people of Toronto have just become accustomed to dealing with crises. I hope things went as smoothly for the guys in New York.

Yes New York managed pretty well, public transportation was mostly unexistent from what we could see on TV but most people simply left on foot to their homes or catched a ride. All those streets filled with hundredthousands of people on foot was pretty amazing