'Oldest Living Blogger' asks: "Was your power off this morning?"
By Ray on August 27, 2008 - 8:28am
"So," you ask, "What were you doing when the lights went out?" I'm glad you asked me that, because I'd like to tell you. May I?
I was in the midst of filling out a 'feedback' form on a CTV website, when the old computer blacked out, and then flickered a few times, and then showed me a page of black screen with white printing, telling me what to do to get it recovered and functioning again...and it seemed to already know about the power outage, because it mentioned that specifically. I thought that was very interesting... - Why? - Because....
Because I spent 20 years of my life in some of the gawd-awful'st places in not-always Beautiful British Columbia at B.C. Hydro generating stations and distribution stations doing my bit to keep your lights on - before Hydro's brass decided they could do it cheaper with people who didn't know how, or didn't understand why, or wouldn't go where it all got done.
So me and about a thousand of my fellow old-timers got pushed out the door (literally!) and were sawn off the various branches of the corporate tree, some of us with premature pensions that wouldn't keep anybody alive & well without a lot of help from their friends or another job to work on. My own Hydro pension, ten years before I became 65, the usual pension age, was less per month than I had previously earned on the job in a week - make that four days.
And as the dust was settling, Hydro professed to not understand what all the howling was about, when your lights would go out and stay out for several hours, or in some cases several days, whereas before our mass retirement, while we all knew what, where, when, and why, you'd get the power restored to normal again in maybe 20 minutes or half an hour, or at most one or two hours. But remember - that was before Hydro forgot who's paying them & why, and before they decided it was better not to have to build more new generating stations than have happy and satisfied customers. Customers who wouldn't feel like starting a revolt over Hydro's staff pay increases or power rate increases while we're being urged to cut back on using a system that we've all bought and paid for, and planned on using without a lot of static from the hired help.
So "Live Better Electrically" folks - carry a flashlight! And pray you don't need it.
