It Got Really Hot Really Quick!

Oh my goodness is it tough starting up both units with temperature in the upper 90's! To make things worse I think these are the dreaded Santa Ana's with really dry air. Needless to say I went through a lot of water, and that is really the only thing I like about the hot weather. Hot weather sucks! So with the unexpected heat wave we got called on to start up both of our units, and yet again I am exhausted as heck. Apparently the heat waves here in Southern California correlate to the days when I am at work, darn meteorologist's! The heat is also causing some brush fires in the mountains somewhere near, some homes have already burned down. It is really amazing how people seem to always forget to keep the brush clear near their homes, people suck!

I Need to Stretch!

I woke up with a sore back this morning! Thanks in part to a gift I recieved yesterday, I was treated to a deep tissue massage at a local day spa. There I got to have my butt kicked (for a nominal fee) by some Russian chick, and it was pretty cool! My back has always been a problem area, but I think a few of these massages a year will help keep my back happy and flexible. I don't think I have ever felt this good in years, I feel like a huge weight was lifted of my back. Part of my job now involves a lot of anaerobic activities, i.e. turning huge valves, I drink plenty of water but eventually all that crap just builds up in your muscles. I do need to start working on my flexibility, my back muscles have always been really tight and I need to figure out what kind of exercises or stretches I can do to help keep my back happy!

I Feel Like it's My Party!

We celebrated a friend's birthday party last night, but it kind of sort of almost felt like we were celebrating my day too. My girlfriend's sister turned seventeen and as a birthday gift we got her a new iPod and some anime dvd's. We also decided to take her out to dinner to celebrate. It was really nerve wrecking trying to find something that would make everyone happy. We had a very large group of twelve, and keeping twelve different individual's tastes in mind when making the reservations was really tough. In a perfect world where it would have been up to me (one day it will all be up to me...but not quite yet), we would have tried something really awesome like Ruth Chris Steakhouse. You can even book your reservation online! The birthday girl is an anime freak like Flint, and we were gonna try a place called the Geisha House somewhere in Hollywood for her. Instead, keeping the whole group in mind, we went to P.F. Chang's out in Long Beach! The food and atmosphere were great, but being seated like 40 minutes late really sucked. All in all, I think the entire day went well and everyone had fun. I swore to myself two years ago to be a happier person and I think I have come a very long way!!!

Tomorrow is a Holiday....

Well at least for me it is! I celebrate the mournful day that I joined the military, but more importantly, I celebrate the day that I got out of the military! It feels like so long ago that I was a little shocked after I did some simple math...it turns out that it was only two years ago when I ended my stint in the military! I mean...it was so difficult to accomplish anything that looking back in time there seems to be a six year gap. I usually gauge time through a series of important events and as I look back, I seem to have skipped ahead a few years, like a time warp! I know this had very much to do with my outlook in life, which had very much to do with my surroundings. Having control of this simple thing can be very empowering. If I don't want to be at work I don't go, if I am not ill and don't want to go to the doctor, I don't go! It is just that simple. I like having a simple life, and am very thankful that I can enjoy doing the things I enjoy doing.

Direct Hits!

We got hit directly with at least ten bolts of lightning last night. It was pretty cool, you would simultaneously here the thunder while seeing the lights flicker above just to have 69 different alarms come in. We were still offline meaning very little equipment is running, plus even if we were online all of the alarms that came in weren't that important. But lightning is funny that way, most of the alarms that came in were in one way or not related to power supply's, mostly undervoltage alarms...but nothing tripped. Today the rain was gone, and so was the smog.

Thunder and Lightning!

It's raining tonight, something really fierce like! It was kind of odd since I got to see some rainbows on the way in tonight. I got to see quite a few of them too since my sorry butt was stuck in traffic forever...thanks in part to cingular's shitty ass customer service. This just goes to show that Cingular sucks, but I am stuck with them for two years now. At least my phone is pretty, it is black and silver.

Excuse Me, You Didn't Give Me My Change!

So I got some fast food at a franchise burger joint, and the friekin' lady did not give me my change! I politely reminded her of this fact and she got really defensive, I immediately asked to speak to the manager! My girlfriend who has had some retail experience did not like the cashier's attitude and told me what to do. She had me ask the manager to cash out the register, so I did! A few minutes later the manager walked out with my four bucks and a cheesecake. But what he said next really pissed me off, he said the register was not over but that he would return my change anyway plus give me a free cheesecake. I did not like this answer, it was not about the money, it was about doing the right thing. More suspicious yet the cashier chick did not give me a receipt, she threw it away. This was really bothersome, since I think I caught them doing something wrong and all I really wanted was an apology!

In Town!

I was glad to see Sean today, he came by my work place today! He was nice enough to come down for the high quality H2O to wash his friend Erik's car. I think it went well, but years of grime and road tar were a pain in the butt to remove. I mostly just watched though while Erik and Sean did the washing, I just started up the RO system for them and they took care of the rest. At first they were washing with regular old dish soap, but I was kind enough to get some Simple Green for Sean since his wiping technique was reminiscent of his Navy years. I hope I brought him some fond memories with the whole wiping and simple green action!!!! As far as the plant goes both our units our down, and I gave them a real quick tour since nothing was really running! I was such a dork though, maybe it was the lack of sleep or something, but I know that on an AC generator the rotor carries the field current and the armature (which is stationary and around the rotor) carries the output! Sean had to remind me of this, I felt kind of embarrassed since I know this, temporary mental blockage. Maybe I need some brain food?

It's About Time!

I finally got to splurge and bought myself an iPod! Somehow I don't think I needed 60 gig's of music, but that is the one that I will have soon. I ordered it straight from the mac people and the cool thing is that they engrave them for you. Not much else going on, I need more sleep, I haven't been sleeping well lately. It is really starting to drive me nuts! On the good side of things, Sean is here in town tonight and hopefully we can meet up for dinner somewhere. Other than that I am looking forward to my sleep!

I'm Hoarse

After yelling all night long, I think I might have lost my voice! Well not really, I am just joshing. It is Mexican Indepedance day today and all I could hear were the local celebrations going on. Should I have joined in? I'm supposed to be Mexican, but I seem to lack the culture that most of the other hispanics in Southern California seem to have? Maybe it has to do with where I associate myself, My mom's side of the family. She is from Baja, most people there just like to hang out at the beach, kind of like me if I had some time off.

To Sir, With Love!

Oh wait wrong letter. I decided to get a little involved in the goings on of my neighboring city! I decided to write the Mayor of Los Angeles a letter...and it goes a little something like a this.

Dear Mr. Villaraigosa,

I would like to be of help concerning Monday's power outage. From my understanding here is what happened: A technician made a mistake and worked on the wrong piece of equipment (which can be really easy to do as most equipment is identical). When this happened, certain actions were automatically taken by the control system which took out Scatterwood generating station at Playa Del Rey. The Loss of Playa Del Rey caused a condition which is not desirable, the system was operating with no reserve...in fact the system was operating with too much load! In case you didn't know, too much load is not good and can only be remedied by curtailing load. Therefore, certain parts of the city needed to be removed from the system.

Making matters worse, in an overload condition, the immediate action for most generating stations is to come offline (this was seen by the Haynes Power Plant tripping on under frequency). So what was the reason we got into an overload condition? The DWP is a very small network, and all of its electrical load could probably be carried by just a few plants, sound reliable? For example, let's imagine the LAPD operating with a fleet of 2 or 3 choppers. If something were to go wrong, as it did Monday, the majority of your system will be affected. When talking about electricity this happens very, very QUICKLY! For number's sake, let's just say Playa Del Rey was carrying about 20% of the system load; this means you immediately need the other plants already online to pick up that slack, you cannot accomplish this with a small network. You might have the generation capability, but it takes hours not seconds for a plant to start up. Certain plants that can come up in minutes, known as peaker units (peaker units were designed for overload situations), have been made obsolete by strict pollution requirements.

So how do you solve this problem? You can make it easier for certain peaker units to be installed and operated. That would mean that you, Mr. Villaraigosa, would have to talk to the SCAQMD (South Coast Air Quality Management District) and make them be more realistic in their limits. A more feasible solution would be to operate your system in parallel with a larger network, Cal ISO's infrastructure of power for example. California's system is controlled by the aforementioned independent non-profit organization and maintained by EDISON here in Southern California. The DWP has a larger generating capability than needed, so becoming part of the Cal ISO network could allow you to sell power to the State. This in return will be helping California with its energy needs.

The switch will guarantee that energy is coming from a local source as opposed to out of state. Creating more jobs and bringing in more money, all because we are producing this locally. So in conclusion Mr. Mayor, I believe that cooperation between the DWP and Cal ISO would have definitely prevented this situation. Making the system more reliable by re-instating peaker units might have prevented this. I am sure some sort of report will come out soon when the investigation is done; it will detail exactly what happened and who is to blame, combined with certain administrative actions to keep it from happening again. You might even be looking at making the system more modern and more reliable, but I can guarantee you that the system was fine many years ago. What has happened is that years of regulations and restrictions have sacrificed reliability, just to appease many of the environmentalists that have no clue on how to safely and reliably provide power to millions of customers. The system was designed to be smarter than the people who run it, don't let the politicians tell you human error was to blame. The many years of red tape and unrealistic regulations are to blame!

With Love, Lou!

Which Wire Was it Again?

I guess the city of L.A. lost some power today, it was widespread enough since the city is so large that it was the only thing on the news this afternoon. Apparently the guys over at the DWP made some mistakes during some sort of routine maintenance evolution and nearly took out all of L.A.'s generating capability! I sure hope no one gets fired, but yet again they are labor union...and they make quite a pretty penny doing the same job we do! What I really feel sorry for are all the nameless operators that had to scramble to shutdown their plants safely, just to have them come back up online in a few hours, but I guess that is why they make the $$$! I wasn't really aware of this but the city of L.A. runs their own power grid seperately from the state. They have been doing it for a very long time.

Morones!

Some numb-nuts driving a turbo charged porsche on the freakin' freeway seems to think my four wheel drive diesel pickup is part of the DHRA! Sure I take care of my truck, but come on now! I was on my way to work and traffic was somewhat heavy, heavy enough to keep morones like him from flying past traffic, but not heavy enough to be slowing down normal traffic! I swear this guy had no clue how to drive, he passed me several times on the freeway just to slow down after he was ahead of me, why people refuse to get passed on the freeway beats me? I just kept my pace, minding my own and this jerk-off would just get irate every time I passed him. He seemed to floor it and slow down as soon as he was ahead of me. I decided to drive smarter, and left him behind in traffic! I should just contract Nathan to give people the beats, I think that would make the world a better place!

My Phone is on Dope!

For the past couple of weeks I have been noticing that the time on my phone's text messages have not been quite right. If it's one thing that irks me the most, it would have to be improperly adjusted clocks, or just time in general! So having messages on my phone with an incorrect time really pisses me off. In fact I am so picky about the time of day that for the past couple of years I have been synchronizing all of my clocks/watches at least weekly through this site. Is it the perfectionist in me, or am I just an obsessive compulsive, maybe both? Anywho, I finally looked into it a little more and noticed that my Cingular text messaging service is timing all of my messages exactly a half hour behind. Why, I don't know? I recently moved to Cingular and have my phone under the 30 day window to exchange it at the store. I called to complain but the customer service rep I spoke with recommended I change out my phone....somehow I knew they would tell me this, but it is not my phone. I know other people with the same problem....Cingular sucks! Well at least until they get this glitch in their network fixed.

Me Likey!

I came in to work tonight since I had signed up for some overtime, I even left about thirty minutes early to get here early! Traffic was a pain in the arse, my offramp was uber backed up and I got to work on time. This was somewhat of a problem since I wanted to be here a little early to mess around on my computer. Hopefully the weather will cool down a little and make it easier to take some time off. I need to take some days off here in the next couple of weeks, I think it might happen. Tonight we shut down our only running unit, and if the weather guy is right the weather cooling down will probably mean we wont be running for a while!

Feeling Better

I feel like a new man, apparently months of awkward valve manipulations can really take a toll on your back. I visited a spa over the weekend, I had decided that it was about time I enjoyed some time off together with my girlfriend. I got a really nice back massage, it reminded me of when Rob paid for one of those massages as a going away gift when I left the east coast! I even decided to treat my girlfriend to a facial, and in support I got one too, well at least that's my story! I am still not comfortable admitting it, guys just don't do that kind of thing right? But I felt like it was about time to do something like that, and I really needed the time off!

Getting Away!

I finally decided to take a little break this long weekend, well let's say holiday weekend! I signed up for some more overtime, I came in yesterday and today and ended up getting quite a work out. We ended up shutting down both units, and I am beat. One needed some vital repairs, and the other came offline since it was not needed. I guess with the long weekend, the demand for electricity is low, and as such we will be starting one unit back up monday! At least I have that day off.