Bitter Sweet

Well here in NYC its been HOT(high 90's) for the past few days. Because of this people go nuts and leave their A/C on 24/7. Con Ed advises people to take it easy on the a/c due to a overload resulting in power outages(which all of us flashaholics want). Anyway, I came home from work seeing that my neighbors across the street, and right next to me had a black out but I did not. We are on different quadrants on the street and it just so happens mine was not affected. I was happy because I did not want to be sweating the whole night but I kinda wanted to have one to use the flashlights Any black outs to you guys lately?

Power went out for parts of the city for about 30 minutes this afternoon. Unfortunately my wife was at home when the power went out, and she's the one who got to enjoy all my wonderful flashlights :shakehead

Even if I did loose power in my office though, the entire wall on one side is nothing buy windows. I would definitely not be lacking for light... :mecry:

I'm in NY too ... as much as I want to use my flashlight during blackout, it's been way too hot.

Yea, its really disgusting. All sticky, hot, humid, ugh just nasty.

We have a 4.9 kW Sharp 208 to a Sunny Boy system. No black, or brownout worries here .

Cosmo7809 said:

power outages(which all of us flashaholics want)

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Speak for yo'self

No power means my router, game computer and file server go offline (the notebook stays on battery power, but what do you do with a computer that can't go online, can't play movies from the file server and isn't powerful enough to run games? ). I also lose the AC (or the heater if it's cold). And yes, I do always keep the AC on minimum to prevent overloading the grid.

Having an excuse to play around with flashlights isn't worth all of that, especially since I don't actually need an excuse (living alone rocks)

Did someone say power failure? I had an 11 hour long weather induced one on Sunday night that started around 5pm.

Here's what I ended up gathering together to combat the darkness: :devil:





I do have more lights than pictured , but these seemed like the best ones for the job.

Cosmo7809 said:

Well here in NYC its been HOT(high 90's) for the past few days. Because of this people go nuts and leave their A/C on 24/7.

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Slightly off topic, but I have to say that's funny to me. In south Mississippi we turn the AC on in May and run it full blast till September, sometimes October.
Now back to the official discussion!!

Speaking of crazy weather... Out here in the PNW it's a balmy 55 degrees (F), though tomorrow's forecast is for an even further scorching 59.

:mecry:

Katdaddy said:

Slightly off topic, but I have to say that's funny to me. In south Mississippi we turn the AC on in May and run it full blast till September, sometimes October.
Now back to the official discussion!!

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Yeah but NYC weather sucks... Its still cold in May so when people hear heatwave they panic.

Power went out here for 5-6 hours about a week ago. My Mom was just fascinated by that little 4aa Eveready folding lantern. Was still going strong the next day.

RE: People go nuts and run their AC 24/7

It's the JOB of the power company to supply ME with as MUCH power as I'm willing to pay for, and to charge me for that power. It is NOT their job to tell people on 99 deg days (or 97 deg days) with 40% humidity, every summer "please turn down your Air Conditioner"

We should NOT allow any more conversion of single family houses, building of new Apt buildings etc, until the utility companies get around to upgrading their gear. We hear about low water pressue, sewars that are over flowing, power shortages etc. It's because we've allowed our population in the city to grow by 1 million over the last decade or two, and NOT followed up with the necessary infrastructure improvments

KC2IXE said:

RE: People go nuts and run their AC 24/7
It's the JOB of the power company to supply ME with as MUCH power as I'm willing to pay for, and to charge me for that power. It is NOT their job to tell people on 99 deg days (or 97 deg days) with 40% humidity, every summer "please turn down your Air Conditioner"

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In an ideal world we'd already have clean cold fusion and our energy problem would be solved forever. Since we do not live in such a world, compromises must be made for the well-being of all.

If it bothers you so much to be feeling slightly hot instead of freezing cold in the middle of summer, you're free to cut your home off the grid, buy an industrial genset and you'll truly get all the energy you're willing to pay for... though you will be paying a lot more per KWh, of course.

We should NOT allow any more conversion of single family houses, building of new Apt buildings etc, until the utility companies get around to upgrading their gear.

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And I suppose you have a plan to get people to stop spawning more of themselves?
While I agree that if we managed to stop spreading as much as we're doing the condition of the whole of humanity would greatly improve, most people see the argument as valid so long as it doesn't touch their dream of a nice happy family with lots of beautiful children who'll be good and smart and successful in everything and go to college and become someone (and yeah, I'm being sarcastic).

People want families, and unless actively and forcibly prevented they will have them. Families need housing. Houses need power. There is surely room for improvement in any electric grid in the world, but that's just delaying the problem. My opinion is that soon we'll get to the point where we either throw everything we have into scientific research (instead of, say, pointless wars) and try to discover some revolutionary breakthrough in the field of renewable energy generation (and even then we only solve the shortage of one resource), or we force most people to stop having kids... which would spawn a whole new set of problems, of course.

Or, you know, we always have the option of starting a nuclear war that decimates humankind and solves the problem all by itself, at least for the time being.

KC2IXE said:

We should NOT allow any more conversion of single family houses, building of new Apt buildings etc, until the utility companies get around to upgrading their gear. We hear about low water pressue, sewars that are over flowing, power shortages etc. It's because we've allowed our population in the city to grow by 1 million over the last decade or two, and NOT followed up with the necessary infrastructure improvments

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+1 on all that. I'll also add that we seriously need more subways, especially in the outer boroughs. Plans made in the 1920s had called for no place to be more than a mile from a subway station. Too bad we didn't have the foresight to build the planned subway extensions. We would have had far fewer buses and cars on the road, and far more room to build housing.

Fallingwater:

You have no idea how bad the infrastucture here is. Last summer our basement flooded four times from sewers backing up. This wasn't during storms of the century but rather during routine but heavy rainfall that can be expected nearly every year. Developers love to build new luxury housing. They love to take the profits from selling that housing. However, they're unwilling to build much more sorely needed affordable housing, and they're neither willing nor required to make infrastructure improvements when they build out of scale. On our block we easily have twice the number of families here as we did 25 years ago. The developers who knocked down the single family housing across the street (replaced it with two three-family homes) didn't enlarge the pole-mounted transformer serving the block, didn't enlarge the sewer pipe, didn't add underground parking to accomodate the extra cars. If those things get done at all, it will be because the city and power company pay for them, and in turn pass those costs along to everyone on the block. Yet the developer didn't split his profits when he increased everyone else's costs. The current model of private profit/public risk is what needs to end ASAP. I think that developers should have to foot the bill for infrastructure improvements when they enlarge existing housing. And they should have to have enough offstreet parking to accomodate at least 2 cars per family. Since this is the city, it would be better if fewer people had cars, but until they do, keeping them on the street is both ugly and affects people leaving their driveways (it takes my mom 5 minutes to back into the driveway with all the parked cars nearly blocking our driveway entrance).

jtr1962 said:

Fallingwater:
You have no idea how bad the infrastucture here is.

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I've had the pleasure of being in NYC in a ridiculously hot summer, right when the power grid had been partially restored after full-blast AC had caused it to seize the day before. It wasn't particularly pleasant, but the AC on minimum was still enough to not feel too hot. I can live with that.

Of course, if you're suffering from floods etc, then the problem goes beyond just AC and electricity, and I'd say you have all the rights to complain.

Fallingwater said:

I've had the pleasure of being in NYC in a ridiculously hot summer, right when the power grid had been partially restored after full-blast AC had caused it to seize the day before. It wasn't particularly pleasant, but the AC on minimum was still enough to not feel too hot. I can live with that.

Of course, if you're suffering from floods etc, then the problem goes beyond just AC and electricity, and I'd say you have all the rights to complain.

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It's not just electricity - NYC, and in particular, Western Queens has, over the last decade, had a HUGE problem with being overbuilt an NO investment being put into infrastructure - No Water/Sewer improvements, no new electric mains being put in (gee, double the numbver of people living in an area, but don't increase the number of feeders - there is good planing) - Take areas zoned single family, and either allow illegal conversions (don't enforce the laws) or re-zone to allow multi-family dwellings, but don't charge the developers enough to improve the infrastrcuture.

When you look, the huge increase (1 million over 15 years or so) are almost all immigrants, and many (by the city's own admission) "undocumented"

Twenty years ago, there was a small gas station where this photo was taken

http://cache.virtualtourist.com/2943768-Flushing_NY_2006-Flushing.jpg

Where this one was taken was an automobile dealer (and the Apt building in the back was a 2 story office building)
http://cache.virtualtourist.com/2943766-Flushing_NY_2006-Flushing.jpg

The sewers were never rebuilt, and they can't understand why they have sewer problems down there

They don't charge builders enough for water/gas/electric/sewage "hook ups" to actually improve the infratructure

About 15 years ago, NYC decided to allow builders to "self certify" that their buildings met code. Most don't, and they never get inspected. On top of that, we keep finding that the vast majority of building inspectors are taking bribes (shocking - the chief crane inspector was just arrested for taking bribes to allow unsafe cranes to work - who would have guesses it after 2 crane collapses in 2 months)

Here is an article for you

http://citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=3568&content_type=1&media_type=3

and a blog

http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/

Right now, in the part of Queens I live in (BTW I live oh, 1-2 miles from JTR1962), the population is booming. Mostly Asian, and they are coming because we have the best school district in the city. The problem is, the school population has increased a HUGE amount, but they are not building schools at anywhere near the rate needed (it typically takes NYC at LEAST 15 years from proposal to opening). My Daughter's classroom is 4 students over the"legal maximum" (they had to get a waver). To make it 'more fun', because of "no child left behind", students in failing districts can demand to come to the district. Two things happen then. Local students get bumped out of the district, and the school gets even more crowded. It's common for classrooms designed for 28 students to have 34 (and this is grade school)

NYC has had a population increase from 7 million to 8 million, and NO real infrastructure increase for years. An interesting factoid - something like 3/4 of the people who live in NYC were NOT born here, and something like 80% of those born in NYC move out!

NYC May be "the shining city on the sea", but what you are looking at is the Manhattan core. Get into the "outer boroughs" and you'll find the airports, trains, and the infrastructure falling apart, being overloaded, and what little green space there is being taken up for other uses. Gee, go ahead, build a tennis stadium in the park, so the folks from Manhattan can come for 2 weeks, who cares about the other 50 weeks. Park all over the grass while building the new baseball stadium that sits 15K less people, but has 100 more skyboxes. Build a new building in the park for the police (they would never stand for that in Central Park)

I can go on and on. How many times has the 2nd Ave subway been "fully funded" by bond issues? Three, or is it four? And they are talking about stopping AGAIN, because "we're out of money" The "West Side Extention" of the 7 train? Stripped down to almost nothing

The subways can only like 90% of the trains they could 30 years ago (they stopped the practice of 'keying by' due to an accident, and then removed the capability - cut the maximum trains/hour buy about 10%), but the population and ridership is up. The roads have lanes closed because the bridges and tunnels are wearing out - they are all 50+ years old

Pissed off? You betcha. My Dad is in a nursing home on Long Island. When he goes (probably sometime this year based on his health), I'm going to try and talk my wife into moving out - again. The only things keeping ME here is my Dad (Mom's gone) and my wife and kids.

NYC (particularly the outer areas) are becoming a 3rd world city. I just hope and pray I get out someday. If not, I hope my kids are smart enough to go away to college, and NOT come back. I came back for my parents. I hope they don't make the same mistake