Subj : Various Things (2) To : Daryl Stout From : Barry Martin Date : Tue Feb 07 2023 07:42:00 Hi Daryl! BM> Yea! ...The co-pay on my plan went up a dollar this year but the BM> overall cost of the plan went down IIRC ~$3.50 per month so I'm ahead, DS> The stuff I ordered from Wal-Mart is coming in 3 separate DS> shipments from FedEx. Why they can't do it in one trip, is beyond DS> me. But, I had the HMO allowance, where I wasn't charged for the DS> items (nearly $120). Some stuff just doesn't make sense -- or at least on the surface. I've ordered stuff and had it delivered in two or three shipments -- sometimes by two different companies. Sometimes is because two different suppliers (Amazon and an Amazon store) or one warehouse has one item and another the other item. Also have had split shipments because I ordered batteries: some/all have to be ground shipped. BM> That's good on you not losing power. With the stength and severity of BM> the storms up here I'm surprised I haven't lost power more often. I BM> think only two, maybe three times this winter and was restored quickly BM> -- usually less than an hour. DS> We have a potential of severe weather here Tuesday night DS> through Wednesday, so I'll be offline for a bit. "Rather windy" here last night: winds up to 30 MPH or so (and it's not even March!). Today (Tuesday, February 7) supposed to be breezy during the day and then windy again tonight but not as windy as it was last night. Thursday morning they're talking about an inch of slushy snow. BM> I think it's kind of 'funny' in how people don't prepare for a power BM> outage: "oh, I can find my flashlight" type of response. DS> I have it, and the cellphone handy. Good. I'll admit to probably being a little overboard with emergency lighting around here -- some of it was "well, while I'm doing this upgrade may as well add this". BM> Not really, though I do remember being annoyed when the commercials BM> went from alluding to their competitor to outright naming them. Using BM> "Brand X" was sort of a cop-out, but something like using a misbehaving BM> colt to represent the Budwesier Clydsdales was more mind-fun. DS> I was watching TV getting ready to eat lunch, and here came the DS> commerical for Pepto-Bismol, asking "Do you mind if I talk to you DS> about...diarrhea??". There went the appetite. :P Wouldn't have been so bad if they limited themselves to heartburn but nooooooo: they had to go all they way! BM> No charge is even better, of course. I was thinking of the non- BM> medically-related trips such as to the grocery store (I know: they BM> deliver) and the Post Office (hmm: they deliver too! DS> So does Union Pacific Railroad. They could summarize the Post Office "through rain, snow, heat of day" with "We keep chuggin' along!". BM> Remember when you had amnesia? DS> When was that?? I'm not sure.... BM> We can do that without lightening much less 'bad weather'. Several BM> years ago a squirrel or some smaller animal got into the distribution BM> station serving most of Bettendorf, IA: pretty much the entire city BM> went dark (and yes, did happen at early in the evening so no sunlight). DS> Yeah, there have been many reports of fried squirrel here. When the pole transformer in the back yard was replaced years ago (also powers the neighbours) we we chatting with the supervisor -- we almost knew the guy as crew was here frequently to replace the fuse because of 'curious critters'. He sort of suggested a squirrel-proof version of the transformer, or at least the option came up. (They were going to replace the transformer because it was nearing end-of-life.) He did 'warn' they would have to get it from a different site and so take longer to replace and we'd be without power a few extra hours. Took about a quarter-second to make that decision: few hours now and greatly lessened future outages. We did ask about the neighbours' input -- they would be without power too, Response was didn't matter as the pole was on our (my) property. (Not sure if valid -- the pole is in the corner but probably under some right-of-way statute.) So the good news is with the 'squirrel-proof' transformer we now have a lot fewer critter-related outages. Don't think the power company will replace a transformer "just because" but LIS it was determined the original one was nearing the end -- sooner than normal because of the excess times being shorted out by critters. - BarryMartin3@ r - @MyMetronet.NET r .... 4 out of 5 doctors agree: 1 out of 5 is an idiot --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47 þ wcECHO 4.2 ÷ ILink: The Safe BBS þ Bettendorf, IA --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1) .