Hell Day

Hey faithful readers. If you are still here, know that I appreciate you still checking back once in a while, I know it is a long dry spell between posts.

Been here at my current power company gig now for about 18 months.  Really liking it, really glad I made the move, and fully intend to retire from here.

When I wrote this post, I talked about how I was one of three hires.  They actually only hired two at first, myself and an internal guy I'll call Eric.  Then, one of the other companies I had applied for called, offering me a job that I turned down because I had accepted this one. Turns out, one of the existing operators here also put in for that other company, and after I declined, he got the offer and subsequently left. So my bosses went back to the list that Eric and I got chosen from, and grabbed the #3 guy, Dave.

Eric started first because he was already an employee and didn't need to relocate.  I had to give two weeks and then move across the country, so my start date was almost a month later.  Dave was an internal employee like Eric, and came in just a week or so after I did

We all went through training more or less together, but it was understood by everyone that I was the fast track guy because I was the only one coming with experience and there was a hole in the rotation that needed to be filled. I was released to operate first as expected, before the year was out.

What wasn't expected is that Eric would struggle as much as he did.  This job just isn't for everyone.  There are so many moving parts, so many things that you need to understand, and it requires substantial capacity to maintain situational awareness of everything going on.  That and the confidence to do your job, be decisive, and take actions as needed without delay.  Then there's loads of mundane abilities you have to master, mostly having to do with navigating procedures and software and such.

Still, Eric was making progress, but despite starting a little later, Dave was progressing more.  About four months after I was cleared to operate, Dave got the blessing and went on shift as well.  Eric and Dave actually were friends before coming in here, they worked together in the field for years before this. Dave being released first was hard on Eric, for sure.

Today was finally Eric's big day to make the final hurdle. Hell Day.  After completing myriad task checkoffs and required courses, getting all of your documentation completed and certifications filed, and after passing a final written exam, you have an all-day intensive review in the training room on the system simulator, getting grilled by four or five other operators and supervisors. Various operating scenarios and system events are loaded into the simulator so the trainee can demonstrate recognition of what is wrong and what to do about it.  Lots of questions, and maybe a few curveballs.  You don't have to get everything exactly right, but you do have to demonstrate that you can function under pressure and are teachable, and that you at least don't do anything to wreck the system.  Better to be decisive even if imperfect, than to do something seriously wrong, or to freeze up and do nothing. It's high pressure, no doubt.

So about three hours into Eric's Hell Day review, during a break, he came out, went to the restroom, and then... left the building without telling anyone, and never came back.

I mean, not everyone is cut out for this line of work, but usually this is discovered in the course of training well before Hell Day or whatever various companies do, and the operator candidate is allowed to coast along and help out as able until they are able to bid back out to a job in another department. Violently flaming out like this is, well... I know it happens, but I've never personally seen it happen before.

It left a dark cloud hanging over the place. Everyone feels bad for Eric. He's a nice enough kid, but maybe he never really recovered his confidence after Dave moved ahead of him. I do fully expect the company will work with him to find him a home elsewhere, probably in his previous department. But man, it's just a horrible thing to have happen.

I'll try to get back to you guys to let you know how it all ends up working out for him. My hopes and prayers are that this ends up ultimately being a good thing, that he finds a job he likes and can thrive at, instead of suffering in here over his head.

Keep the faith, my friends.

Echoes

My mind comes back around to thinking about this blog from time to time. But most days it feels like I've already told the best stories, and then of course it also seems like the golden age of blogging came to a close in like 2014, you know?

A big part of why I stepped back was that, frankly, my new power company job that I started in 2011 just turned out to not be that interesting. Don't get me wrong, it was a great job that I enjoyed very much, but it didn't provide much the way of blog fodder. And then, after a heavy dose of personal burnout combined with incompetent leadership and growing toxic culture at my last fire job, I had to step away from that. So I really didn't have a source for fire blog fodder any more, either.

So, Three Mouse Clicks went pretty much idle.

In the intervening years, other stuff broke down. In 2018, my wife of 26 years, after too much personal stress not entirely under her control, decided she didn't want to be who she was any more. She walked away from us, her professional life, and nearly all of her family and friends, to start a new life. Three years on, it hasn't worked out so well for her, but you know, choices....consequences. I wish her well anyway.

Then, 2020.

W T F

Don't get me started.

I have spent the last 15 years in a land of predominantly liberal leadership, and closer to one of the cities renowned for 2020's senseless nonsensical violence and rioting than I'm comfortable with. I never took this blog to political places much, but suffice to say I was done living in a region lacking leadership that also couldn't seem to allow people to make choices for themselves. Between that and losing interest in my power company job there, I hit my limit.

Time to hit the reset button.

I took a new job as a dispatcher for a very large midwestern utility. This job is very similar to my first one, but with a better company. Nice, spacious control room. Chill personnel. Big map board. Lots of consoles. High security all the way around. An interesting system with lots of complexity. I like it.

I also have moved back to the small town where I got my first fire gig. The FD there runs 10 pieces out of a large central station, including three paramedic ambulances. It's been 24 years since I left there, but there's still a handful of guys there I know. Dropped in with pie and ice cream to visit the duty shift a few days ago, and all signs point to me ending my five-year hiatus from Fire as soon as things get settled in. I'm still got a few years left in me, and this time I want to go out on my own terms.

Anyway, this place has been filled with nothing but echoes of old tales for a long while. But now I'm picking up the pieces of those earliest echoes, when I was happiest. The reset button worked beautifully.

Oh and yeah.... I'm getting married again. Found a great partner, making it permanent, and no longer going to have to fight the single-parenting struggle with my youngest kids who are still at home.

Life is what you make it, right?

And maybe my new adventures will lead to new stories for this place.

If anyone is still out there reading this, drop a comment so I know this didn't just get broadcast into a black hole.

God bless and stay safe out there.

Lesson Learned, Lesson Passed On

I was riding with Gary in 579 when we got a call for arcing wires near downtown.  It got slightly more interesting when the dispatcher told us the feeder breaker had operated once and then closed again, so something more than a little spit and pop.  The dispatcher put the breaker in non-auto so if it tripped again it would not keep reclosing into a problem.

We were sort of out of position without many guys working, so it would be a bit of a delay.  Then I heard Engine 1 from Very Big City go en route, so someone had called 911 undoubtedly frightened by the show.

As we were rolling along, the tickets were rolling in, and I was pulling them up on the MDC to get some hints.  Our phone reps are uncomfortable paraphrasing much because of past incidents where they edited something important out, so they pretty much type into the trouble tickets what they hear on the phone.

Customer states lives right near substation, heard several loud booms in that direction and lights flickered, still have power.

Power line arcing on north side of 5th between Sampson and Flannery, looks like trying to catch on fire now.

Lines in front of this address are making very weird noises.

(I love those kinds of tickets, "weird noises", good stuff.)

Customer heard several very loud booms and saw two blinks, lights still on.

And just as we were getting close, the dispatcher called to advise the breaker had operated again and the circuit was out.  Darn.  Was hoping to see something good!

So we pulled up, and Engine 1 had closed the block down, which was the right call while it was burning up.  Now that the circuit is dead, not much for serious hazards, and we told them they could open the road and take their cones, thanks for coming out.  Turned out we had an overhead primary switch that burned pretty good until it melted off a jumper, which then fell into the next phase below and blew the circuit.  The glass was all carboned up and lots of charring on the pole, with some burnt debris in the street.  But the big drama was over.

Engine 1's Captain walked up to our truck as his guys made their way back up the street with their cones to make small talk and bid us adieu.  He got a little close to the pole, and Gary said he might not want to be under that switch.  Either he didn't hear us or he didn't take it seriously, but about 0.2 seconds later he jolted like he'd been stung by a bee and darted back into the street, slapping at his shoulder, "Ouch! Something hot hit me!" He was looking at the ground to find what he had knocked off his shoulder.

One of his crew said "Cap! Your shoulder is still smoking!"  Amusement ensued while the Captain danced a little circular jig in the middle of the street while tearing off his uniform shirt.  Turns out the creosote treatment on this pole was generous, and the fire had melted a lot of it so that it dribbled down to the insulators on the side of the pole and then dripped to the ground.  Just because the fire was out more than five minutes ago does not eliminate the threat.

No helmet, no coat, no PPE.  Lucky he wasn't seriously injured like if it had landed on his head or ears, only a slight 1st degree burn and a destroyed Class B shirt.

When the serviceman stays stay back, there's a reason!  We all have our moments of oopsie so we're not here to poke at the Captain too hard, but for him I am sure it is a lesson learned and lesson passed on to his people for the rest of his career.  And now, to you too.

Thanks for reading.

You wouldn't block a hydrant, but . . .

The internet is filled with fun pictures of what happens to cars (especially police cars!) that block hydrants, but we in the fire service are all very familiar with bane of overgrown and hidden hydrants as well.



Spot the hydrant!

Mayor fail

Of course, you wouldn't block a hydrant or allow one to be overgrown on your property.  But hydrants are not the only things that need to be found promptly at 3AM in the rain sometimes.  Yes, another power company post, I present you the case of the beleagured and oft-neglected padmount transformer.

Where's the love?

When we are switching to restore power after an outage, my guys are usually working these hot, or are heating them up.  They have to stand several feet away and work with a hot stick, and there is always the risk of equipment failure and a flash arc.



Pay no mind to those tripping hazards.

A bad hydrant won't generally injure or kill you, transformers are a different story.  For this reason, there is a near-universal standard that utility companies require for clearances around transformers.  Not that very many people comply.  Generally speaking, 3' to the sides and rear, and 10' in front for working space as shown by the lineman switching above.

 

This comes up because of the topic of the previous post, where we've been out auditing a crap-ton of transformers in our system.  We often find occasional problems in the course of day-to-day operations just like we find the oddball hidden hydrant, but there are many more transformers out there than hydrants, and the special attention we've been giving them lately here has given rise to a large number of fun discoveries.

We get a lot of complaints when we have to trim them back in an outage to access a unit, but at least then those people were out of power and sort of get it.  It's when we find and trim some pre-emptively that people really cut loose.  They've been growing that shrub or bush for years to hide it, they say.  It's ugly, they say.  No one has opened it in 15 years they say.  Funny, since electricity is as essential as water is for fire protection (some would say more so), how almost no one complains about fire hydrants.  Even the ones not used for a fire in 15 years.

If you have one of these at your home, in your neighborhood, chances are good you never gave it much thought.  If it's overgrown, I am not going to tell you to clear it out, but I will tell you to not get your panties in a wad if one day the power company does it for you unannounced.  And to not complain too much when there are delays getting the power on while linemen wrangle chainsaws and heavy trimmers just to get to their stuff.

Now you know.  Knowing is half the battle.

Enjoy the gallery, it gradually gets better as you go down.



Even when you know it is there, you can't see it.



This one is actually behind that center tree trunk, way back.



Fence overbuild.  Priceless.

Thanks for reading.  Stay safe out there.

Would you like it gift wrapped, too?

Power company tale here.  Several months ago we got a request from our GIS department.  Seems that at the time of transition from AutoCAD feeder drawings to GIS drawings over ten years ago, a lot of data was not transferred properly.

Now that we're implementing a new asset-tracking platform, the missing data that has been known about for many years is now a problem.  No one really got after it before, because over time we get out to places and did an upgrade here, replacement there, added something on, and each time that happened a tiny little bit is filled in.  In theory I guess this means eventually you'll catch up, but eventually is now too long to wait.

Our project request was to identify in GIS every location where we had a padmount transformer installed with no asset data tied to it, and then send a serviceman out to that unit and record the necessary data.

We're talking somewhere along the lines of 2,000 units.  For realio.

So I've been working on this for months.  Identifying the units, assigning work orders, and collecting their data and funneling it back to the GIS group.  We use these jobs as filler when nothing else is going on, and a little fill is nice when you're bored, but doing 10 or 15 per shift per person on slow days gets old real fast for my guys.

Serviceman Pete is one of my most tenacious guys, but not in the usual sense.  He is tenacious about his time being used efficiently and effectively.  And this job was really bothering him.  He complained, and I told him we had our orders and it was our job to fulfill it.  He had some ideas he wanted to chase down, and I won't stand in the way of my guys, let alone get steamrolled by Pete on a mission.

Pete researched old database records and asked around, lo and behold he located a positively elderly but still functional database that had a great number of these lost units in it, and told the GIS leader about it.  Put two and two together, and most of the missing data was now recoverable with some GIS department desk time matching records up and making updates.

So I get to work today and get an email from the GIS leader with this data in it, explaining that it should help in our search for info, and we can use our established communication chain through the GIS system to get the data back to him.

(screeching, scratch across a vinyl record, full-stop sound effect.)

So, you mean to tell me that you had this data all along?

And, pray tell, why are you sending me the data, that you asked us to get for you?

Would you like me to put a pretty red bow on it and give it back to you, saying "here's the data you asked us to get for you"?

How about this: You keep your data, clean up your records to the best of your ability, and then come talk to us when you've exhausted your resources and actually need help filling in the gaps.

Honestly.  This happened.

Thank the good Lord for great employees like Pete who find solutions, and that I don't have the GIS guy anywhere in my management tree.

No guarantees!

We got a single call for power trouble from a place with three-phase service, some of their stuff wasn't working but they weren't totally out.  According to the mapping data, they were served from three individual overhead transformers.  Certainly this meant that one of those transformers had failed, especially since we were not getting any other calls.  We sent Bear over in 574 to check it out.

Upon arrival, Bear is a little perplexed to find that all three cutouts to the overhead banks are closed in and holding.  He investigates at the customer's panel and is getting no voltage on a couple of their low-side phases.  Perhaps something is wrong in the secondary from the transformers to the panel?  No, it is all above ground, plainly visible, nothing obviously wrong.  Bear flies up in the bucket and tests for voltage above the banks, and shows good voltage to all three transformers.

Nothing is apparently wrong, yet stuff isn't working.  Rare is the day that the Bear is stumped.  Today is one of those days.  Bear swallows his pride and calls for backup.  577 Kevin heads his way.

Kevin arrives and goes through the same checks, comes to the same conclusions.  While he is up in the air near the transformers, Kevin also load-checks all three phases of the 12kV overhead going down the tap to the 150 or so customers downstream past this place.  They are stumped, and looking for inspiration.  Oddly enough, Kevin gets 30-something amps on A phase, 2 amps on B phase, and 50-something amps on C phase.  Ideally they should be sort of balanced, and the mere 2 amps on B phase is outside of plausible under normal circumstances.

This isn't making any sense.  If there is voltage on B phase, people should be in power, but according to the load check of just 2 amps there is effectively no flow going downstream, yet none of the B phase customers downstream have reported power outages over 90 minutes into this incident.

At this point, if I was out there, I would want to have a cup of tea to think things over.  The urge to break something in frustration would also cross my mind.  Thankfully it isn't me out there, but the dedicated duo of Kevin and the Bear.

Kevin has a hunch, and drives back upstream to a set of line reclosers just a few spans before the problem site, and much to his surprise, finds the B phase recloser is open.  Yet..... B phase has voltage.  Can it get any more confuzzling?

Kevin and Bear pair up in one of the trucks and go patrolling the downstream tap to try to sort out the mystery.  Sure enough, about a half mile down the way, they find that something.... wind?... has caused a span of the B phase primary overhead to lay flopped over C phase.  Suddenly, the flood of comprehension washes over them.

Under normal circumstances, all three phases should be more or less equally loaded.  Something caused B and C phase to come in contact with each other and cause a cross-phase fault.  The single phase reclosers for B and C phase would have been extremely unhappy about this and would have tripped one or two times hoping the fault would clear.  The timing of these reclosers was just ever so much of a smidgen off that one of the reclosers closed back in and held while the other gave up.  The result was B phase load was now being carried not through the recloser as normal, but through where the lines were entangled.  This is why there was no load on B phase at the outage site, they were now electrically at the farthest end of B phase with its source coming through the tangle.  This is why no B phase customers reported an outage, at most they saw a couple of blinks.

And lastly, the original caller was the only 3-phase customer on this tap.  Some 3-phase service relies on magical AC theory stuff having to do with the gap between phases, and when two of the three phases are unexpectedly tied together (instead of A-B-C they were getting A-C-C), anything relying on the difference between AB or BC phases will get no potential, and stuff won't work.

If not for that one and only 3-phase customer reporting a problem, there's no telling how long this might have sat this way until something else brought the problem to our attention.

And another lesson was driven home for everyone.  Despite the B phase recloser being open, the line was backfed and hot.  Even if you have a visual open, a line isn't dead until it is grounded and dead.

Those guys did a good job sleuthing it out.  Stay safe out there.

Well, now ya gotta do it anyway

Over four years ago I first told you about the bowling alley.

Within a year of that tale, the bowling alley was torn down.  It has been a gravelly rubble-strewn vacant lot for years.  The only thing left is the dead end power pole that used to serve the building.

Within a few months of the teardown, I submitted a recommendation to our planning group to have the pole, with the 3-phase transformers hanging on it, be removed to reduce our exposure to outages.  It is clear nothing is going to be built there for years, and those energized transformers weren't doing anything but asking to be smacked.  This is sort of what it looks like:

And of course, my dear readers, you can see where this is going.

Tonight we got a call, car vs. pole, wires down, transformers in the road, wires on the car.  This is bread and butter so I didn't think much of it until I pulled up the map.

Oh yes, they did.

Two of the transformers are leaking oil on the road, the haz mat contractor is en route, and we've got a hell of a mess out there.  The road is blocked, and it is very late on a Friday night so my dispatchers are still struggling to get enough manpower rounded up to head out there.

My recommendation is now being followed, out of necessity.

That's all this post is, just one long ungracious I-told-you-so moment.  Carry on and be safe out there.

What you don't see will still kill you

We got a call at the power company early one morning during the commute, reporting a broken power pole.  Before we arrived, several callers had notified us directly and many more had called it in to 911.

We doubted that it was ours at first, because we had no reports of power outages, figured it might be a telecom pole.  But lo and behold, upon arrival, we have a broken pole with all three phases of the primary under tension from neighboring poles helping to hold it up.

The first arriving serviceman also noted some absorbent applied to the road about midspan to the left of the pole as shown above.  Upon further inspection over there he found random car parts debris, and signs of trauma intervention (bandage wrappers and sundry litter).

A little more research revealed that fire and law enforcement had been out here shortly after dinner time the previous evening for this wreck, a rollover.  Either no one noticed the broken pole, or word never got to us.  Probably no one noticed.

This was a very close call for two reasons.

First off, if you look at the close-up below, you'll note there is something amiss with the center phase.

What you see there is that the insulator stack holding the center phase up off the tip of the pole is broken, and the bare wire is laying on the crossarm.  Sometimes when this happens, the voltage is able to push through the damp wood of the pole and find a track to ground that results in an arc flash and line trip.  Other times, it never finds a good track but nevertheless has a (relatively) low amp sustained fault to ground.  When the latter occurs, touching the pole or even walking too close to it can easily injure or kill you.  Close call.

Secondarily, of course, there wasn't much holding this thing up, and it just as easily could have gone ahead and collapsed into the scene while the guys were working it.  We never had an outage, so those lines stayed hot the entire time until we got out there for repairs.  Close call.

So here's today's message.  Remember that wrecked cars will leave damage for quite a ways, and it behooves the IC or safety person, if not the guy doing the outer circle scene survey, to try to find out where the car came from and what happened along the way.

Saying you didn't notice it doesn't bring dead people back to life.  I don't want to second guess the crew on this job, but I do want them to go home to their families.

Stay safe out there.

The Y2K Tale

In commemoration of the new years observance.

Thirteen years ago I was on duty at my first power company gig, and although there was a lot of hoopla leading up to the rollover from 1999 to 2000, tensions were not really that high.

Some of my readers may not be old enough to remember this night and the lead up to it the way public safety and software people do.  Being at the power company was almost as close to merging all concerns as you could get save perhaps flight controllers.

For the uninitiated, this was the problem:  For the prior half-decade or so, software had largely been written to handle date information with a two-digit year ("87" instead of "1987").  Try to remember that until the 90's, data storage capabilities were far less advanced.  I remember when we got our first computer with a hard drive in 1989, and it was a HUGE one, with a whole 2MB! 

No one writing software in those early days gave much thought to the technology being asked to deal with a centennial rollover, let alone a millennial one.  But people found ways to stretch the life of software through upgrades and such, and these two-digit year legacy systems were everywhere.  The race was on, beginning in the mid 90's when people starting figuring out there was a problem, to update any and all critical software systems to handle the change to the year 2000, so they wouldn't simply roll from 12/31/99 to 01/01/100 and explode in multicolored flames.

People were making riches selling survival gear for the coming Armageddon of massive infrastructure failures (sound familiar?).

And so here it was, December 31, 1999, approaching midnight.  We were pretty confident things would be OK and not really buying into the hype, but just the same we were staffed heavy at the power company.

We watched the seconds count away, and at midnight on the nose eastern time, when the first of the failures would theoretically hit the fan, sure as hell ....our lights went out.

All of the monitoring displays of course continued to function, as they were all on UPS systems, and we spent the next few anxious seconds of stunned disbelief trying to figure out if we had just experienced a large regional blackout or maybe if we're lucky just a local one.  But there were no alarms coming in, all readings were nominal and fluctuating (not static/frozen), no open breakers, no nothing.

Then we heard the snickering.  The dispatch manager had come back without telling any of us, and threw the lights at the appointed time.

Well played.  And with that, Y2K came and went with nary a blip.

Be safe out there, my friends.

Beyond Amusement, to Sympathy

We heard back from the crazy character mentioned in the previous post.

[name, address, phone]. [email name] is my cover email because someon intercepts all emails communications and phones some im constantly isolated from anyone reaching me. I am so sick from harm by meter and poisons entering my apartm I almost am never strong enough to leave. my bank acct has gone done $50,000 since aug 2011 of me living here when I normally spending $12000 per year.
have witness cyber intercept when I do financial online and cant even review bank statements as though someone sees into apartm what I am doing and then poison enters in or high pitched humming sound has stopped me from being able to work or function for 2 years now. everytime I try top review bank statement harm to me by bizarre poison enter to aprt. tonight it was cigarette smoke into kitchen and bedroom when try to sleep ; took 3 hours for smell to leave kitch. and 5 hours bedroom so someone constantly doing something to stop me sleeping or working or finding out who;’s stealing money from bank acct. posionoing me so I cant review the numbers and alarm companies told me someone here rigged spy cams and microphone to see and hear me all day, 3 separate alarm cos females said they know this but I lost their numbers someone cut phone line. im alone so atty advise not to call polic as I have no witness and would be public record if I report polic report. atty said don't do because whoever doing this could do more harm 2me.

It is no longer amusing, this person has some serious issues.  We went out to see what we could do, changed the meter, but the problem - at least having to do with the perception of the meter humming and preventing sleep, etc. - was not resolved.  Of course, we knew from the beginning that this was not the real problem.

We had to hand it over to social services.  From here we won't know where it goes.  I hope this tormented soul is able to get help.

Maybe I should start a sister blog about crazy emails

Got this one shared with us by the customer service friendlies today.

They got this message first.

From: [name] [mailto:[handle]@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2013 2:30 AM
To: [custsvc]
Subject: urgent need to stop humming sound in apartment

I have a digital smartmeter and there is loud high pitched screeching humming sound all over my apt causing me to not sleep for days.  I left my apartment for hours and upon return there has been nonstop humming sound. I am reading others are reporting same and my bedroom has 3 large power lines across from it. this humming sound commenced around dec 10 but worsened greatly when I was out.   others have told me locals want this apartment and are doing some secret thing to annoy me so I will flee but cannot confirm this.

need immediate help getting analog meter. reply promptly please. the worst of humming has been since I left apt and returned on dec 24th. thanks [phone number]


The phone number provided is not in our customer database, and the name (nor any of its common variations) is also not in our database.  There was no answer when we called it, and no voice mail.  We have no idea who this is, how to reach them, or where they are.  So, we sent this reply.

From: [custsvc]
Sent: ‎December‎ ‎26‎, ‎2013 ‎7‎:‎16‎ ‎AM
To: [name]
Subject: RE: urgent need to stop humming sound in apartment

Good morning.

Thank you for your e-mail.  Please e-mail us or call us at [phone number] and provide your address so we can follow up with the service department to check out your meter.

Thank you,
[name]
Customer Service
[power company]

From there things apparently degraded, as this was the next message we got.

From: [name] [mailto:[handle]@hotmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2013 1:39 PM
To: [custsvc]
Subject: RE: urgent need to stop humming sound in apartment

high pitched humming sound so bad haven't slept now 5 days, ringing in my ears even when cut off breakers off electricity running still as I sampled one of those glade plugin scents where liquid all gon e and smell is putting out like its full. if power off no scent should occur. additionally cigarette smoke smell is entering into my kitchen at 7 pm and when I was in my bed at 11 pm cigaretee smoking entering apartment but all windows closed and I don't smoke. I am told people here want this apartment.

digital meters cause these affects.  im being made very sick here, reported to apartment management who maintenac guy says he doesn't hear anything.

sound is making me deaf and will sue if meter not replaced with legacy analog meter. 3 giant high voltage towers are next to my bedrm window . says they are microwave cell towers.

need immediate remedy


We still can't reach this person by phone, no idea who it is or where they are.  I opted to get involved and sent this.

Hi there, my name is [Grumpy Dispatcher], I am the [dispatch boss man] for [my power company]. Our customer service department shared your concerns with me.

We would like to try to help you, but you have not yet told us how to find you so we can assist.  You have emailed us twice, but you have not provided us with your address or your account number, and we do not have anyone in our customer database by the name of [name] or any variations of that name, nor do we have the phone number you provided us anywhere in our customer database.

We have tried to call you several times but no one is answering.  In order to assist you, you MUST call us [phone number] so we can assist.

I'll keep you posted on how this turns out, if I ever find out.

Another Sendoff

The power dispatching world is a small one, a very tight community.  I've bounced around a little, as have many of us, and I now know folks in dispatch and operations management all over the country that I have worked alongside literally or figuratively.

The best power companies have an internal family structure very much like the fire department, very familial.  You work with the same two or three guys on a shift for years, it gets that way.  And you bitch about guys on the other shifts who don't clean up or put things in the wrong place.  Sometimes we can get pretty owly with each other about the dumbest things, but none of us would bat an eye at loaning a car to each other or families sharing a cabin for the weekend.  Sound familiar?

For that reason, when something bad happens to a member of the extended family nearly anywhere in the country, just like in the online fire community, it tends to impact someone you know within a degree or two.

Last week the Bonneville Power Administration lost a lineman out on the west coast, near Spokane I think.  He fell from a transmission tower during routine maintenance, and while he was wearing a full harness it is not clear what went wrong yet.

I know the feel in the dispatch center when you get that first frantic field call of an injury to personnel.  Of hearing voices on the radio you're familiar with remaining calm but with that edge that tells you its bad.  Just like the fire service.

Word started to filter around, and I got an email from a colleague the same day.  The name sounded a little familiar, and I couldn't figure out why.  I went to Facebook to contact a former colleague and old friend who dispatches for BPA now, because standard response for all of us is to pass the hat for the family, to get the details we needed to help out.  And right there in his short list of friends on his profile was the fallen lineman.  Probably where I had seen the name before, I guess.

He had just celebrated his first anniversary earlier this month, and his wife is expecting a son.  These never get any easier over time, fire or utility LODDs, but it helps knowing that in this kind of organization (just like fire), his wife and son will be well cared for by the brethren.

My BPA friend emailed over some pictures from the procession today.  The colors of the trucks are different, but the emotion is the same.

Rest easy Matt, your brothers will take it from here.

Another Cat Call

So a little girl of nine years old found her kitty up a tree. Being resourceful and with her Mom's permission, she looked up the non-emergency number of her local fire department (not my agency) and asked if they could help.

Now, normally, the answer is of course no, but the LT who took the call just could not bring himself to deny her directly. And hey, they don't get to practice with the old Sqrt that often, so c'mon boys let's call it a drill. The crew of four climbed aboard the rarely-used 1975 American LaFrance with the 65' Telesqrt and headed out to save the day.

Upon arrival, the little girl was pretty calm but clearly concerned. Mom was right there, admirably guiding her daughter through learning how to properly handle emergencies on her own but otherwise staying out of the way. From the accounts I've heard, Mom was pretty terrific about the whole thing.

So, little girl, where's your kitty? Which tree?

She pointed up. Way up. Way, way, waaay up. The LT's face fell. There was no way the 65-footer had a chance to reach up to the crazy height that kitty had ascended to. Once again faced with not wanting to tell the little girl "no", he apologized because they did not have a bigger ladder truck in the fleet and suggested maybe the power company could help. It was a stretch of desperation, sure, but who wants to shut down an adorable little girl who thinks you're the best heroes ever?

Then, like magic, they got an actual call, promptly responding gallantly to a medical emergency, without being forced to slink away in depressed failure.

Ever the resourceful young lady, the lass followed the LT's advice, and we got the call. It routed in here to dispatch (this being the first I heard about it), and my initial reaction was not just no, but hell no. We can't set a precedent for doing non-utility work. This is the fireman in me talking, of course. Then the customer service rep asked if I wanted to speak to the caller. Prepared to do my usual logical explanation of why we couldn't help, she transferred the little girl to me.

Of course, I had no idea the caller was a little girl. And then she told me how the firemen had let her down.

Damn you! I am powerless against her abilities! Like the LT, I looked around for an out. Like magic, there was Gary, having just returned from his service duty tour and filling out his timesheet. Miss, can you hold a second?

I gave Gary a quick rundown of the situation. He kind of relished the idea of outdoing the fire department. No one was using the highline truck (the one we use to reach the really high transmission lines on the towers) and nothing was really going on, so he grabbed the keys and headed out. I attempted to call the fire station she had called but no answer (they were still on that call apparently), left a message.

The highline truck's bucket goes up to 100', and it was pretty much at its maximum extension when he reached the kitty, which thankfully didn't scamper up any higher when he moved in for the grab. Sensibly, he had Mom take the little girl inside while they worked in case kitty decided to take a crazy suicide leap, but kitty was fairly cooperative about getting into the cat carrier.

Gary said the look on the little girl's face will be a permanent highlight on his career, and that beating the fire department in the rescue business was just icing.

I got a call back later from the LT, who filled me in on all that I had missed before we got the call, and was very happy to hear that things worked out well. I arranged for Gary to get a little private attaboy in our next staff meeting, but we can't publicize it too wide or we'll start getting more of these, right?

Good job, Gary. Don't take it too hard, LT.

Happy Birthday, Paul

An email came down from the power company's marbled halls that a new security firm was taking over the contract for the operations facility. It noted that nothing would change other than the uniforms worn by the guys who had been working here all along, that they had moved from one company to the other.

As an aside, I find it a little disheartening that our security is contracted out, for the same reason that I dislike our custodial work and other relatively low-paying jobs on contract. I know there are financial reasons for it, but the loss of entry-level jobs into the business makes it hard to grow local, loyal employees. These days most everyone comes in sideways from another career.

At my first power company gig, the operations center was named for a previous longtime CEO who was well-liked and who led the company through a difficult period into an era of lasting success and growth. Story goes that he used to stop by Dispatch pretty much every morning and chew the fat with the crusty dispatchers, hearing the unedited opinions of how things were.

Today you are hard pressed to get high company leaders into Dispatch even once a year, which is true for my current company. And forget getting them into a truck with a crew for a day.

But what was even better about this legendary CEO was his career path. He moved into upper management after stints as Chief Dispatcher and Superintendent of Operations. Before his dispatch career he was a meter reader, worked at one of the coal power plants, drove heavy equipment, worked in the warehouse. His first job at the utility? Custodian. For real. I saw the old company directory to prove it, a genuine success story, and a lifetime career with a company he knew intimately from top to bottom, a company he loved and who loved him back.

I know those days are over, so no use crying about it.

So (back on topic), I arrived at work and met Paul, one of those security guys, and asked him if he was going to look better in his new black duds that would replace these gawdawful green threads. Paul is in his late sixties and probably does not spend much time thinking about uniform fashion.

"I don't know, I'm not going to be wearing them."

(scratching record - full stop)

Say what?

Turns out Paul was informed about an hour before I saw him that he was in fact not going to be picked up by the new company. And why? He was told it was because he had a DUI back in the 90's on his record. A misdemeanor, for which he paid his debt to society, and a clean record ever since. Not good enough. He said they defined their disqualifying criteria as having been in jail.

Now what the hell is this? At my level of security, especially when I worked at the monster utility and had instant unfettered access to remote transmission and generation controls spanning several U.S. states, you'd think I would have to meet a higher standard. I could have single-handedly blacked out a huge chunk of the USA in about 30 seconds. And guess what?  I've been in jail, too.

Yes, when I was 18 and much dumber than I am now, I was stupid and got caught up with some friends in activities which are not germane to the blog. I was arrested, processed, spent several hours in a holding cell. I was never charged with anything, because I was on the fringe of the stupidity, but the arrest is still on my record and has come up at every power company and FD interview. Nonetheless I keep getting hired because I pass the checks and polygraphs (having not been charged with anything helps, of course).

So here we are. I am in middle management like a division chief at my current power company, with the same full access to everything. Yet Paul, who can't get to any of this stuff, apparently can't otherwise be trusted on the premises or in the fleet yards despite almost 20 years of watching the place for us without a blemish.

And you know what?  It was his birthday. He had arrived to find that the office ladies had brought him pie and ice cream. Had a little social thank you event and then went about his rounds. Two hours later he got the call that he was working his last shift.

And then I showed up and cluelessly asked him a silly-assed fashion question. As if his day wasn't just peaches already. Something doesn't add up here, and we are left to wonder if the new company didn't want to assume Paul's upcoming retirement costs or something equally cold. Sounds like the jail time thing was just an excuse.

Happy birthday, Paul.

Apathy

Two nameplates with the same typo at the same substation are better than one, said the engraver, and the installer.

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And hey, as long as we're posting pics, this one is due for Tuesday.... amazing to me that this is still alive after this long.

Genius Fail

So, we've got a guy who is not paying his electric bill. It is months and about a grand behind. It finally comes to the point that we cut him off, and a serviceman goes and boots the meter, mission accomplished.

Not so fast.

Because of previous drama at this address, a meter tech went by there to check things out a few days later. Found the lock ring and boot on the ground, meter back in and spinning. This is called a "self-restore" and a "tamper", which is an automatic $400 fine. Plus, we cut you off "more permanently".

So the next day, one of our nicest and most laid back servicemen, Paul, arrives in Truck 575 to cut this guy off from the pole's service drop. No one is home, but he chats with an elderly neighbor lady who sees him and comes out to visit. We're the Good Guys, after all. Service dropped, he's done and on his way, mission accomplished.

Not so fast.

Our customer service department gets a call, the recording of which I have not yet had a chance to hear, but the notes tell the story. Apparently the homeowner called in and said he was out of town but had heard from his family that the power was cut. That is to say, 217 members of his family. Yes, that is the precise number of people he claimed were at his home during a family reunion gathering, which was ruined by the power being cut off.

Aside #1: I had about 40-50 people at my house for a Memorial Day gathering. I actually did try to count once but couldn't do it. And I was actually present. How he got 217 while not physically present is an amazing feat.

Aside #2: If this family reunion drew 217 people to his home, then why precisely was he himself as host out of town during such an important event?

Aside #3: His house is 1080 sq ft. If all 217 were inside, they each individually had about 5 sq ft of personal space and were very quiet while Paul was there.

Aside #4: And where did those 217 people park their cars, anyway?

But wait, it gets better.

Dirtbag went on to claim that his grandson had approached Paul to ask "what was going on" when Paul went off and "smacked him with a wrench". He says the grandson is in the hospital and will incur medical expenses, and that a police report has already been filed with "80 witnesses".

Oddly, the brothers in blue did not come to arrest Paul on an assault charge, or even try to interview him, or even call any of us at all for any reason. Curious.

The first Paul heard about it is when I asked him if he carried a wrench on his service truck. A little crescent wrench, he said, that rarely gets used, why? Oh the fun we had telling him all about his violent ways that he kept hidden from us. He must have been plenty mad at the dirtbag's family, because he has no memory of the event at all and obviously blocked everything out except the nice chat with a little old lady in front of a small empty house.

Um, dirtbag, we're the power company, not plumbers. Our one-man service crews don't carry weapons-grade wrenches.... anywhere. Now if you piss one of our guys off you might get brained with a hotstick or something.

A wrench? 217 family members? While you're not home? That all stayed hidden? 80 witnesses? And no arrests?

I've stopped laughing, because it is absurd to the point of tragic. Good luck dirtbag. We'll probably bill you for any legal expenses you incur on us, on top of the arrears and tamper fine. Genius, you FAIL.

Keep Your Hat On

A little shout-out to those arriving from Radio Reference: The post you're looking for is from December 2009, and can be found here.

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I was out in my staff pickup doing some mundane power company errands when my FD was dispatched into the local small town to assist them with a reported traffic accident.  It was fairly close by, but not in my fire jurisdiction, and I was not dressed for the part in any case.

I lug along the fire radio and power company radio in the car with me most places, as you never know what you're going to find or get asked to go do.  Can't actually wear all that crap though.  Gee whiz, if I tried to carry everything.... my Minitor, Mayberry's Minitor, my fire radio, my power company radio, my cell phone.... I'd walk in circles and develop a limp worthy of disability.  But I digress.....

But, since I had the fire radio in the truck, I turned it on anyway just to be nosy.  The small town FD arrived and was unable to locate.  Boring.  I turned the radio back off.  Attention fully back on my power company business....

Several minutes ticked by.

"Dispatch to 570."  That's Bruce.

"570."

"Bruce, sent a call to your screen on the Valley Road, request from fire dispatch."

Hmmmm, could it be?  The Valley Road comes out into town and changes its street name, but some of the locals call it the Valley Road through town to the county line.  The original traffic accident call I heard was on the town portion of the "Valley Road".  I called my dispatcher on the phone.

This is Grumpy, I'm near Valley.  What's Bruce got?

Got a reported car versus pole at 4567 Valley Road.

Clicked together like new Lego blocks.  I had turned off the fire radio a tad early.  The original UTL had evolved into finding the correct location, in my "home" fire district..

Where's Bruce coming from?  A long way off, as it turned out, perhaps 30 minutes.

I'm about two minutes away, I'll head over and see what we've got.

I arrived to find a long backup of cars, some of them trying to turn around.  Finally getting to the good part, there's our Engine 55 and the small town Engine.  There's a couple of spans of wire on the ground, and a broken pole.

Keep your hat on.

It's so easy to stumble into trying to do both jobs, but that is just begging for confusion.  The white staff hardhat came out, the turnouts stayed in the truck.

I found the IC, E55's captain.  Sweet! he laughed, our dual subject matter expert!

He asked me if I'd carry the fire radio so he could reach me easier as we worked the scene, and I agreed to do it to keep track of their actions, but avoided actually talking on it.  I nearly tripped up and used it a couple of times, but stayed clean.

This scenario happens once in a while, much more often since I got my new gig.  It's old news for me, but this one seemed like a typical keep just one hat on kind of day, and it worked perfectly.  I guess my message to you guys, if ever you find yourself in a place where you potentially have more than one role, is that things go so much better when you stick to one function and don't have two bosses with widely varied goals and needs.  Nonetheless, it is always fun meeting my guys from one agency when working the other.

Stay safe out there.

Lightbulb Moments

The tow truck guy rolled the car back upright, and it fell with a crunch. The left rear tire was still about 18" off the ground. This car was crushed in a funky way, for the tire to be off the ground like that. Yet, the 18 year old kid who rolled it end-over-end on prom night was merely rattled. Signed a refusal against our advice and wasn't transported.

We were sweeping crap off the road when a power company truck appeared out of the darkness. One of my guys, but I didn't know who. Wrong hat at that moment. The pole that had been clipped was OK, the primary still firmly attached, but technically a journeyman needs to eyeball it for our company to call it good.

I went to meet my serviceman, and saw that it was Gary, the new guy who was promoted from the line department to fill Howie's position.

"Hey Gary, who are you with tonight?" Gary is still in his training window and assigned to another guy for a couple more weeks before going solo.

A slight pause. And then, "It's just me, we're busy tonight and no one else was available."

"Let you out all alone huh? Well, cool. The pole has a nick but is fine, I haven't looked at the primary real close but it seems OK. Let me know if you see something I missed."

Gary shined his light at the crossarm, and all was well.

"It's not as if you're new at this anyway, right? We all know you don't need the training month except for how to deal with customers one-on-one when they get shifty." Just giving him friendly guff.

Gary looked at me for a couple of beats. "You look really familiar."

My lightbulb moment. Gary didn't know I was a fireman in my other life, and has only ever seen me driving a desk or with a white staff hardhat at job sites. Now it's night, in a downpour, on some back country road, flashing red and blue lights, I am dressed in turnouts and am totally out of context.

"Sorry Gary, the context is wrong.  I'm Grumpy,....your new boss."

Gary's lightbulb moment. Your boss is also a fireman.  I introduced him to the other guys on my crew.

Too bad I can't play that trick more often. And it could have had so much more fun with it if I had only known of the possibilities beforehand.  Next time.....

What Are You Looking At?

Bruce was out on routine duty in Truck 570, cruising from one keeping-the-lights-on chore to the next, when he saw something strange on the top of a streetlight pole. Seeing as how we've supplied him with a company bucket truck, he decided to take a closer look. This is what he found.


Now we do get the odd request once in a while from the FBI, asking permission to put something on our poles, but their stuff is very subtle, usually the camera is so small it looks like the photocell. This camera was not in that league, rather it seemed to have a flaming coming-out party, screaming "look at me!".

Just to be safe and not step on any federal toes, Bruce left it there after taking some pictures and letting me know about it. I kicked it up the chain. A week or so later the work order appeared: We don't know whose this is or why it is there, take it down. I saved the job for Bruce, and he brought it in at the end of his shift. It was even bigger in person.


So, he says, while he was removing it, the guy whose house it was aimed at came out and crossed his arms, watching with disapproval. That could have meant a lot of different things. I looked up his house and found it listed to someone with an very eastern Europe-sounding name. Interestinger.

But the truth was boring. The guy came in a few days later and asked for his camera back. We figured we'd never know where the signal was being transmitted to know who or why someone was watching this place, but this was pretty cut and dried. Putting up your own security camera doesn't carry the same drama as hidden surveillance. Except for the part where you're stealing a little electricity.

We let him go with a "don't do that again", and that was that.

Bruce revived the drama, though.... what if he actually was being watched and now he's taking apart the camera to figure out who was watching him? Cue the cliffhanger music.....

UnionThink

Can't rule out making some haters from this, but I haven't ranted for a while.... this blog used to be all about ranting and I just haven't had much to rant about since getting into my terrific new job. Summarily, the posts have thinned out to the remaining non-rant topics, and the readership has subsequently dropped. So... rant time!

UnionThink is the warped, disconnected from logical reality way of thinking that doesn't come naturally from the workforce. It pretty much only appears from union members, due to the evolution of unions from an umbrella of protection to a confederation of greed. I understand the need for protection. I've been a dues-paying member myself. If only protection remained the mission. In fact, I've never heard of a union having a mission statement to occasionally verify their bearings and purpose from. Any you know that have one? What is it?

Don't get me wrong, not all dues-paying union members are like this. I am hopeful that most aren't. But nearly all people who do think this way are in a union, and that is where they picked it up. The same way my oldest daughter, who is stunningly beautiful and freak-out intelligent, recently went totally off the rails after a couple of years of bad friend influences despite our efforts. Yes, prevention may not be possible.

Here is the microcosm seed for the rant. The working agreement between my outfit and the IBEW local states that overtime must be shared equally, but does not get into any specifics of how we make that happen. It is quite ambiguous in its definition.

The way we've been managing overtime for years is to keep track of how many OT hours you have accumulated on the year, and release a callout list every week with the lowest OT hours at the top and highest at the bottom. When you have a callout, you start at the lowest hours guy and work your way down until you get someone.

The problem is, some guys frequently don't want OT, or they like to "cherry pick" their OT by asking what the call is. These guys end up at the top of the list because their acceptances are low. Thus, we end up wasting our time on every callout by going through the people who don't answer or say no, and wasting our time describing the incident to someone who only wants the "good" ones, before finally getting someone to take the call down somewhere past the 5th or 6th person.

Since the rules are ambiguous, we are proposing a change. We are being nice and proposing it to them even though the agreement definition does not require us to, and there is no doubt it would survive arbitration. The change is a rolling callout list, and requiring a simple yes or no response without discussion.

Now, I take my callout list and start at the top. If I get the 3rd guy to take it, that is where I will start my calls on the next incident, on the 4th. This spreads the number of callouts to each employee perfectly evenly, and it is up to the employee to take it or not. This saves us time, as we get someone on the road earlier without the guaranteed initial nuisance calls. People with their power out will appreciate that.

This change will also vastly improve some callout acceptance percentages for my guys. For example, I've got one guy who hangs in the middle of the pack who has been working a great deal of OT and actually worked the most OT last week by a wide margin, but relative to how many calls were made to him, his acceptance rate was below 30%, partially because he was worn out and had to say no here and there. Another guy farther down the list who has accumulated his OT by being held over instead of called out has only been called three times, worked two of them, and has not willfully contributed much on callouts historically. Yet, his acceptance rate is 67%. Where's the justice? My hard worker is getting dinged on his performance even though he is by far the better of these two.

Under the rolling list, my hard worker example will get called fewer times and not have to refuse so many, forcing his acceptance rate up without any change in effort on his part. The no-OT people will get called vastly fewer times, and the cherry pickers will be forced to stop cherry picking because (a) they won't be told what the job is first, and (b) the calls will be fewer and far between and they better say yes now and then to get the OT.

So we take this to the guys, and they don't like it. They reason that if you don't have as much OT as other guys, it will be harder or impossible to catch up. Also, with the calls for those at the top farther apart, there will be less chances of them getting calls in the time window that kicks in their premium pay rule.

As a side note to the change, we are also invoking a callout exemption for certain predefined emergency events, where the closest serviceman will be called without regard to the callout list at all. But, the emergency event has to be one we've pre-defined, to avoid claims of gaming the system for anyone. Emergencies are pole damage, wire down, arcing/fire involving equipment, structure fires, and as requested by 911.

They perceive this whole thing as what we are taking away from them, as if it was an evil scheme because managers hate union employees. Where in the rules does it say we are responsible to make sure everyone works the same amount of OT despite the inconsistent OT behavior across the ranks?  The rules talk about equal OT opportunities, not guaranteed OT equity.

Insert reality here. Let's try to remember what we do, why we exist, and who we work for.

We keep the lights on.

We exist to keep the lights on.

We work for the people whose lights we keep on.

The new callout procedure will help us get personnel on the road earlier, especially in emergencies, and will save us money by eliminating the rules nuance that some of the guys play to get into premium time situations. Premium time will still happen, but it will be nearly impossible to "arrange" it any more. We are making OT available to everyone as fairly as possible, and it is up to you, the employee, to take it or leave it. It is not up to us to help you catch up if you get behind.

Faster response, save money. Wow, imagine that. As managers, that's in line with what we are charged with. We know our mission.

Some of my union people have forgotten what we do and why we're here, and only concern themselves with what they feel entitled to, especially if a change reduces that "entitlement".

That is why unions are broken. And it's too bad, because they once had a noble and necessary purpose. Sadly, UnionThink has detached from reality.

The new callout procedure will probably go into effect anyway, because it is the right thing to do for the ratepayers. Because in reality, it is the ratepayer that pays us money and actually has an entitlement to what they pay us to do. That's reality.