The Secret Life of Dave

[baltoro]

On Friday, in mid-afternoon we had a HUGE power blackout. I live in Orange County (which is just north of San Diego -- in the Northern Hemisphere), and, everything went black. It was spectacular. Everyone was so angry that they all jumped in their cars and drove somewhere. You've never in your life seen anything like this,...all the traffic lights were out,...the gridlock was paralyzing. 4 million people were without power in Arizona and Southern California for 8 to 12 hours. Supermarkets had to trash tons of fresh food. ATMs wouldn't work and gas station pumps were not working either. It was like the ultimate Mad Max dystopia.   
Anyway, this morning there was an article in the Los Angeles Times, with details about the power failure: Utility Officials Seek To Learn Why Safeguards Failed in Blackout

The information in the paper blames the entire incident on a failure of a capacitor at a substation in Yuma, Arizona. This apparently, caused a cascade of equipment failures that rolled all the way across southern Arizona and completely disconnected San Diego from the rest of the world,...
Weird,...I wonder if,...
...Hey,...wait a minute,...Uhhhh,...

...And, then my suspicions centered unerringly on the most likely culprit: DAVE !!! (We have multiple Daves here on the MASM Forum,...I'm referring to: dedndave)
It makes complete sense to me,...a retired electrical engineer,...looking for a little excitement,...probably hacking into the Billing Department of his local electric utility to try to reduce his monthly payments,...and his protocol goes horribly wrong, and, instantaneously reduces the modern lifestyles of four million American citizens to a primitive Neolithic existence.

[Gunner]

Wow, that brings back memories, 9 years ago the blackout of the Northeast!  We were without power for almost 2 days.  That was FUN.  People had to learn all over again, how to go out and socialize :-)  No electric, no Air conditioning... it happened in a hot August in '03... people spent most of the time outside and talked to neighbors and strangers FACE TO FACE....

It was a cascade from MANY places that caused this...  Basically in anything like this.. it boils down to greedy CEOs...  Just skimmed over that article you linked...  Really?  Nobody learned anything from the 03 blackout?  Of course they did, and after the blackout the power companies in your area found vulnerabilities in the grid and just kept em quiet...  They don't fix anything till it breaks.  It is a shame such a broad area of people should loose power when one station goes down...

[baltoro]

It wasn't really that bad for me,...I was stuck on a public bus going so slow that I could have walked faster.
But, utility officials have not given us any useful information. For all I know, it could have been a counter-terrorist exercise that backfired,...

[MichaelW]

For all we know the entire problem could have been Dave in his underground laboratory overloading the grid trying to kick-start a new assistant that he built from body parts, to replace the old assistant that got fried when his fusion reactor prototype burped. You just never know about people.

[dedndave]

[Bill Cravener]

Does point out just how ancient and vulnerable our power grid actually is. :eek

[dedndave]

nice haircut, Bill
you looked good when you were younger...
...what happened  ?    :bdg


funny thing
last night, we had a power outage for about 40 minutes   :P
caused by a nice thunderstorm - the first sign of the end of a long hot summer for us
monsoons - finally   :eek

[Bill Cravener]

I actually do get my hair cut like that during the summer months Dave. :bg

What I want to know is how the hell can you stand it down there in furnace-land when you guys lose power and have no air-conditioning?

[dedndave]

sometimes, we lose a few elderly people when it happens
this time - the storm that caused the outage cooled things off quite a bit
we opened up the doors and windows and got some nice air - free !!!   :bg