Electric company grocery spree food for thought!

http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonNews/es.es-09-29-0009.html

Quote:

"Alberta's major power supplier is stockpiling huge pallets of groceries and other emergency items should Y2K bugs turn out the lights, The Sun has learned."

YIKES!, I dont need to say anything else !!

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), September 29, 1999

Answers

"This has the potential to be very scary," Goebel said of TransAlta's latest addition to its $30-million Y2K price tag.

"The thing I'd worry about is a lot of the things we've heard about Y2K problems is (designed) to reassure people. Now, all of a sudden, we find this strange behaviour. It's alarming." ________________________________________________________________
AMAZING. _________________________________________________________________

-- lisa (lisa@work.sheeit), September 29, 1999.

A Calgary radio station is having a field day with this one this a.m.; it's as though they just now woke up to y2k! The power company referred to is TransAlta, and they apparently spent $15,000 on food for emergency crews that might have to work during the rollover. These huge corps. usually use caterers, so it would be interesting to learn exactly what kind of food they are storing. And whether or not they are providing for the families of the workers. And whether they are storing water, too.

This "question of the day" is bringing its usual response from radio listeners: a woman who says she believes there will be problems and who is preparing; a man who says he has been working on a y2k project and he's done, therefore everyone will be done. Sound familiar?

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), September 29, 1999.

A personal note:

I do all kinds of computer work and one thing I do is repair PC's. I repair about 6 machines a day and have been doing minor Y2k upgrades on these machines (bios/rtc, windows updates,etc) and not a single person who brings in their machines have done a damn thing to get the machines ready. I have worked on over 80 machines in the past couple of weeks and every single one is a business machine running non-compliant applications, in a non-compliant operating system and many are not hardware y2k compatible.

After doing the basics I tell each customer they have to personally address issues with application software and usually specify which programs are at risk.

I get blank stares or comments like "I guess I have to contact the manufacturer, or something....." and not a single one of these people will actually do that, they dont know how the software got into their PC in the first place or where the manuals are or how to install a floppy disk.

I dont even bother to mention the personal prep side of Y2k, these people think "Y2K" is a new car from KIA.

People are walking around in a trance and Y2K is creeping up behind them and they dont know it.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), September 29, 1999.

Who will the electric company be feeding? If the grid goes down, the workers will be sent home. This food sounds like the executives are preparing for their families with company money. I can just about say with smugness that is true.

-- Carol (glear@usa.net), September 29, 1999.

Flint - quickly now my friend -

Call TransAlta and let them know how stupid they are for prepping prior to the rollover. Those idiots who own and run the electric companies obviously don't know what they are talking about.

A smart fella like you might save these foolish folks from sending good money to those pesky Y2K scaremonger vendors.

-- You Can't (Handle@The.Truth), September 29, 1999.

Carol -

One of my erstwhile neighbors worked for SoCal Edison. When there were outages, he wasn't home for the duration of the outage, which seems to indicate that this power company at least keeps their folks working when problems arise. Why would TransAlta send folks home?

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.hid), September 29, 1999.

Last week an electrican told me that he had been speaking with an employee of Mass. Electric. The guy had told him that,

1) He had been ordered to come into work on Dec 31. 2) To bring his entire family with him! 3) To pack enough clothes for a week.

Maybe this explains the elec co stockpiling food!

See the FAQ's in www.nees.com !

-- Thomas Alva (From Mass@elec.com), September 29, 1999.

This doesn't exactly give me a warm fuzzy feeling, coming from a power company. Makes me wonder how much testing is really going on.

But we know this could never happen in the good old USA, don't we? After all, Flint has told us:

"We've presumably tested our generation and distribution systems pretty damn thoroughly by now. We've found the problems (which were very few) and we've fixed them."

So, Flint is right, isn't he? Tell me he is right. Someone. Anyone. Please. Pretty please! Just say "yea, Flint is right."

Tick... Tock... <:00=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 29, 1999.

Sysman:

Anything for a fellow doomer.

Yes, Flint is right. Presumably, they have done comprehensive tests and fixed the few minor problems they found.

I hope they got around to working on the "major" ones, if any... [evil grin]

-- Jon Williamson (jwilliamson003@sprintmail.com), September 29, 1999.

Prepare, prepare, prepare.

That's what you say.

So they do.

And you say OH MY GOD! WHAT ABUNCH OF LIARS, THEY'RE PREPARING.

Just like you said they shoud.

I guess it would be better if they needed to fix something they should do it when they're hungry.

-- Once again (laughing@you.now), September 29, 1999.

I don't think anyone said their liars at all. I simply think people are pointing out the hypcrisy in saying "everything will be fine" and "no worries" while buying $15K worth of food.

Wil Rogers said it best when he said,"The Art of Diplomacy is saying 'Nice Doggie' until you can find a BIG rock!"

Unfortunately, Diplomacy doesn't belong in Y2K Remediation and Preparation.

-- Paul Hepperla (paulhep@terracom.net), September 29, 1999.

A close friend of mine sells multi-axis CNC machine tools to the aerospace industry in the US and Canada. One of his accounts in Canada is Bombardier. After his last visit to Bombardier he called me and told me that the company purchased 10 tankers full of diesel fuel, 10 large multi-megawatt generators on flatbeds, and hundreds of pallets of food and water. His sources at Bombardier were not shy about the fact that there is little confidence that the public utility infrastructure in their area. His clients also have personally prepared. Needless to say, my close friend is a reformed polly and is now GI.

Curious if any of our brothers or sisters in the frozen tundra of Canada have heard anything about this.

Regards

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@Y2KOK.ORG), September 29, 1999.

Not really,

Most of the utilities in the US and Canada plan to have a lot of extra staff on hand during the rollover. A lot of normally unmanned substations will have people in them looking at the lights and meters.

Some of it is real, and a lot of it is show for the media and to be honest, people like you.

As for Trans-Alta spending $15K for food. If they plan on having most of their staff there (plus media people) for the roll over that would be about right. If you are going to feed several hundred people for two or more meals plus snacks, etc. its going to cost a lot. Plus you have to think of where they are. Lots of snow, ice and cold. Bad winter storms are not unusual in that area.

-- The Engineer (The Engineer@tech.com), September 29, 1999.

Also see this article about Canadian soldiers at rollover:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/990904/2816348.html

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), September 29, 1999.

For DWGIs:

THIS IS A CLUE!

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), September 29, 1999.

Hmmmmmn.

Notice that all these indicators are from north of the border - similar to the UK -> same problems, same information available to everybody,

BUT add a different (more responsible, more prudent) government, and you get a different level of preparation from the citizens and companies .......

Let us hope that this level of preparation is not needed.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 29, 1999.

TransA lta "encourages its customers to be prepared for outages at any time." At present its site does not include media releases that might explain more about its food stockpiling. BTW, this company operates in Australia, New Zealand, and U.S. as well.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), September 30, 1999.

This Edmonton Sun story has disappeared and cannot be found in archives under transalta, 9-29 or 6 other key words. Can someone help and post body of article if not link to where article is now stored? Thanks.

-- OR (orwelliator@biosys.net), September 30, 1999.

OR,

Some or all of the article (I can't tell which) was posted on this thread:

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001UtH

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), September 30, 1999.

Transalta started remediation in 1995 and has been claiming completion for months now.

-- T the C (tricia_canuck@hotmail.com), September 30, 1999.