Trials and tribulations in a busy world..

A family reunited- without power

Yesterday at 10.45 pm, I picked Siw up at LA/Ontario airport for her return from Denmark. Her trip went completely according to plan and I had more problems getting to the airport from Redlands than she did all the way from Denmark. For reasons I've been unable to figure out, the I-10 freeway was completely closed off at the I-15 junction. Me and some hundreds of other motorists were stuck on the I-10, not moving, for well over 30 minutes until finally let off towards I-15. The I-10 freeway was blocked off by flares and a number of CHP patrol cars with full lights flashing. A large number of fire engines were off in the distance also with their lights fully flashing, so I assume it must have been some kind of major accident.

Today Siw has been adjusting to the time zone change, which is going quite well. Here tonight she has gone to bed a little early since once again our power went out at 8 pm. SCE are nearing historic new highs of incompetence.. Since Monday, this is the third major power outage in our area. No information on what is going on has been forthcoming in any way. Right now it is around 10.30 pm and repair crews have been working on a nearby substation for over an hour without any improvement. In fact, fifteen minutes ago, they shutdown a huge area around us (which had power until then) in order to proceed with the repairs. Right now, that means even more people are without power and we still don't have any. 2.5 hours and counting..

I don't now what it is with the major accidents, power outages and such.. Maybe it's the heat. We've been having a heat wave for the past week. In Inland Empire terms, a heat wave means it's even higher than the somewhat normal mid-90s we usually have here during the summer. For the past week, we've been hovering in the triple digits. Today, nearby Riverside clocked in at 108 degrees fahrenheit. My car when I drove home from work said it was a balmy 113 degrees before I cranked the a/c to max. The State of California actually declared a "stage 2" power emergency yesterday, which means that they were down to less than 7% reserves. However, our current problems with outages aren't supposed to be related but are rather "equipment problems".

Wish list for the coming weekend:
1. Cooler weather (chance of coming true: 0%)
2. No more power outages (chance of coming true: unknown)

Thankfully, I have my beloved wife home to keep me moderately sane :)

11 pm: power just came back.. let's hope it stays on

Yet more power outages, and a small quake

Power at the apartment went out again at around 3 pm today while I was at work. It allegedly came back about an hour later, so by the time I came home from work, everything was okay. We also felt it slightly at work- at 3 pm, the lights flickered for a couple of seconds and some network routers apparently rebooted causing our external Internet connection to briefly fall out. SCE's automated phone system (they're not high-tech enough to have that kind of information on their website, go figure) was completely unhelpful just like last night "The city of Redlands is experiencing widespread power outages. Edison is aware of the situation and repair crews have been dispatched. We have no estimate for the restoration of power".

Another fun thing, which I assume is completely unrelated to our power outages, is the number of minor earthquakes. Morten sent me a link to a list of the most recent earthquakes in the California/Nevada region that is kind of fun/scary. Take a look at the list and do a search for "Redlands". Fun, huh.. (note: I haven't felt a thing a single time; a quake of less than 3 is practically nothing)

Power outage

7.55 pm
Here I am, eating dinner alone, and watching TV while surfing aimlessly around different news sites, when suddenly the power goes out.

Now, I've tried power outages before. In Vietnam, they were pretty much a weekly occurrence, but come on.. it's the U.S., and we're not in an energy crisis or anything.

8.15 pm
I started writing this blog post when the power first disappeared. After about 10 minutes it reappeared for 5-6 minutes. Then it went out again and flickered on for a couple of seconds before disappearing completely again.

If this is really a common occurrence, as some of the neighbors claim, then I suddenly understand the American preoccupation with buying expensive circuit protectors and similar stuff for their computers and flatscreen TVs.. For now, I've unplugged the TV and computers to avoid pressing them too hard when the power comes back. Which I assume will be any minute now.. right.

8.50 pm
It is now 45 minutes since I last updated this offline blog entry. I've walked around the neighborhood and there's still no power. A pretty big area is affected apparently. Morten doesn't have any power either, though a neighboring apartment complex does. He lives about a mile away from here, so quite a number of people must be affected.

Some observations:

- at first everybody seemed completely unfazed and uncaring

- after 15-20 minutes there was a mass exodus of people getting in their cars and driving off, I can only assume they were driving somewhere that has power

- walking up past our local Stater Bros. supermarket, I noticed that not only do they have emergency power for keeping the fresh food cold, they also had emergency power running for the cash registers! people were still buying food and groceries during a power outage.. don't think I've seen that before

- good thing Siw loves candles.. I can't find the flashlight that I'm sure I put here somewhere and using my cell phone as a light get's annoying real fast

9.00 pm
Now I'm bored. What in the world did I do with computers before the Internet. Everything interesting is online and needs a live connection. Windows Pinball is not enough fun. One of the toddlers living a couple of apartments away has also had enough and is very unhappy.

9.25 pm
Anyone at Southern California Edison reading? I made this really cool Outage Management System at DONG Energy in Denmark. It's based on GIS data and customer outage reports and it tries to dynamically calculate the most likely cause and location of a power outage- give Informi GIS a call if you're interested, because it sure looks like you need such a system..!

9.35 pm
Just called the SCE 800-number. According to their automated system there is a "widespread power outage in the city of Redlands". Really. I hadn't noticed. There is "no estimated time for restoring power".

10.30 pm
Morten came by about an hour ago. We decided to go to Wal*Mart.. they're open 24/7 and there's airconditioning (it was getting quite warm). After walking around Wal*Mart for an hour, and finding a surge protector for Morten's TV, we drove back. Power had been restored to half of my apartment community, but of course my exact building didn't yet have power..

11.30 pm
Since neither of us had any power after coming back from Wal*Mart, we decided to go to The Vault and have a beer. That seemed to be the right decision, because I at least have power now.

A night at the ballpark

Last night, Morten, Annie and I went to see the Inland Empire 66'ers play against the Lake Elsinore Storm at Arrowhead Credit Union Park in San Bernardino. The 66'ers is the local baseball team with home in San Bernardino, and they're a farm team for the L.A. Dodgers, one of the local major league teams.

It was the first time I've been to a minor league baseball game, and I really didn't have too high expectations. While the stadium and the size of the crowd was definitely smaller than major league, it was a lot of fun. The players were much better than I feared and the concession stand were cheaper (bigger beers, lower prices, what's not to love). The between-innings entertainment was much better than major league: cheerleaders, a mascot, and a hilarious speaker with a great arsenal of sound effects. At one point, there was a foul ball that went into the right field stands which was caught barehanded by a member of the audience. The appropriate sound effect? 32 dohs of course :-D When the opposing team's coach complained to the umpire about an allegedly bad call? A wailing, crying sound. Priceless!

The game was excellent, plenty of hits and runs, and even ended with a victory for our local team: The 66'ers won 7-4 over the Storm.

What a trip

I made it back to southern California, not on Friday but veery early Saturday morning at 4 am. Shortly after my last entry, we were told that our plane had been given clearance to depart for Houston. This meant we were only 30-40 minutes delayed, and I should be able to make my connecting flight to Ontario without any problems. Well, we lift off and fly to Houston without incident and land about 30 minutes late around 8.15 pm. Since my flight to Ontario was scheduled for 9.15 pm, no problem..

Except, that after landing we can't get to our gate. Half of the planes leaving from Houston were delayed because of the weather, and the plane that was supposed to leave our gate was still there. An hour later we were finally given a new gate (the plane at our gate was still there after having developed a 'maintenance issue'!). After running out of the airplane a gate attendant told me I could just make my flight if I hurried (they'd been delayed a bit as well). After a mad dash across Houston Intercontinental Airport from terminal B to terminal C, I arrived at my departing gate.. just in time to see the airplane taxi away and be told by the gate attendant, that I missed it by five freakin' minutes (I think it took me 6-7 minutes to run, take the metro-thingy, and run again).

At this time, hundreds of people were stranded in Houston after missing their connecting flights (Houston is a hub for Continental Airlines). Instead of standing in line at the terminal customer service island - with a line at least an hour long - I did the sneaky thing and went outside to the normal check-in booths. This went surprisingly well: I skipped in front of probably a hundred people by choosing the right line. With a little bit of persuasion, I was rebooked as standby on a flight leaving for LAX at 10.50 pm instead of having to wait until 5 pm the next day for an opening on a flight to Ontario.

I waited until the very last minute, but I received one of the last empty seats and got on my way to LAX at around 11.30 pm (needless to say, this flight was delayed as well). While waiting, I had called ahead to Hertz and changed my rental reservation from Ontario to LAX. After arriving at LAX at about 1.45 am, I went to baggage claim and stood around for a half hour. Of course my bag hadn't made the change - fair enough - and yet another half hour was spent in line to make a 'property irregularity report'. Finally, I got to Hertz about 2.45 am and was given a car fairly quickly- being a Hertz #1 Club Gold member does have some perks it seems. At this point I got on my way to Redlands, and with no traffic (compared to normal when going through L.A.), let me just say that I might have gone a bit over the 65 mph speed limit..

At 4.00 am, I was finally home. Now, a little more than 24 hours later, I just spoke to Continental about my bag. After giving them a call, they found it in Ontario (I wasn't surprised, but apparently they were, and it took a phone call for them to figure it out) and they're driving it out to me sometime today.

Delayed in Florida

After a nice week working in Shalimar, Florida, I am now stuck at the Okaloosa Regional Airport (VPS). I'd like to complain to whoever takes complaints about the weather.. Apparently, there's a lot of thunderstorms in Houston, Texas which is where I'm going through to get back to Redlands.

Sigh.. So far it's uncertain if they're going to send me to Houston to see if I can make my connecting flight (it'll be a real tight squeeze) or if I'll have to stay overnight here. Such fun. Normally I wouldn't mind an extra day in Florida - it's pretty nice here - but staying overnight and then getting up at 4am to get the first flight out to Houston doesn't seem like much fun. What a Friday evening.. maybe I should just call it quits and go over to the bar.

There's just one

Siw and I just came back from the latest routine checkup at the OB/GYN, and all looks well.

No new pictures yet. We'll get some more pictures after Siw gets back to Redlands from her trip to Denmark, and she has a 'real' sonogram at the hospital. The major question  that was 99.9% resolved was the matter of how many are actually in there.. and there is just one, thankfully :-D

Other than that, we saw a small beating heart, a head, spine, arms, and hands, which all looked perfectly fine.

Disneyland and more

The house is quiet once again after our visitors have now gone back to Denmark. Having had some action-packed weeks in Southern California, I'm sure they need some real time off now.

On Monday, we joined all five of them in Disneyland for the day. We experienced everything from Snow White's Scary Adventures to Winnie the Pooh to Buzz Lightyear to Cindarella; Siw had her picture taken with Donald Duck and much more. Although we spent our fair share of time waiting in line for the different attractions (note: avoid going to Disneyland in August, if possible), it was a really great day with a lot of fun. We didn't get to try the newly opened Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage because of the wait though: at it's high point there was a 2.5 hour wait, although it did get down to about 1.5 hour during the afternoon parade on Main Street U.S.A.

A couple of days before, on Saturday, we drove into L.A. to meet up with the family at Venice Beach where we had a relaxing day, just lying around on the sand and enjoying the sun and the view. Complete with lifeguards that look like they're straight out of Baywatch, it was a very nice way to get away from the desert heat and out to a cooler climate.