​​​​​​​Apparently his miata is not doing so good though.

Good he's okay, but I can imagine it's pretty rough seeing your stuff all gone or ruined.

We just got power back on tonight... and our ac doesn't work. Probably the biggest tease ever. Ac guy is coming tomorrow to bend us over for sure, but at this point I'll pay pretty much anything they ask to get ac back.

Our county is now approaching 50% of people with power. Quite a few businesses are starting to reopen. I can't imagine what the keys are dealing with though.

Yep- My wife was talking with coworkers in Boca who said they were positively miserable trying to sleep with the heat and humidity. We were very fortunate up her to have a cold front roll through. I'd certainly pay the entry fee for AC- hope you get it fixed.

what is causing all of these A/C outages?

In lots of places in Florida power is still out, so that could partly be why A/C is not working. For others that have had power restored, it very well could be that A/C units were flooded and had damage caused during the storm.

Had lunch with the family on Monday, as I was moving from NC to CHI, and they'd just settled into evacuation quarters with my step-brother's parents in Knoxville.

Mom's house, which is on a canal in Charlotte Harbor and therefore a class A evacuation area, was spared. If the storm surge had gone a few feet higher they'd have flooded, but although it crested the seawall, it didn't make it up to the foundation. Some damage to the pool cage, gutters, etc., but nothing compared to what they took during Charley.

Sister's house is A-OK as well. She's a bit inland, and you wouldn't even know a major hurricane swept through aside from the fact that a lot of trees and bushes which were badly in need of pruning have been pruned.

Power is still off in much of PC from what I understand, but that's to be expected. All in all, they got lucky on this one.

There have been a lot of electrical problems caused by electrical shorts after the restoration of power. That is how the school caught on fire. I imagine a lot of people with A/C's at the end of their expected life will start having issues with them as power comes back on.

I was quite impressed by how FP&L handled this situation during Charley. They simply announced that they'd be shutting down the distribution grid and such-and-such time before the storm hit, and they did. So while there were a lot of downed lines, there were no shorts, no blown transformers, etc. The power-up sequence was thus relatively uneventful.

Kinda surprised they didn't do that this time.

Short circuits at the consumer level shouldn't affect restoration of power, assuming they're downstream of the local load center. The breakers up on the poles are a lot stouter than the 200A breakers at the point of use.

TECO said they were going to do this on Wednesday or Thursday before the storm. It was all over social media. I think there was a lot of backlash or something because they pulled a 180 and said they were not going to do that and never were. Not really sure exactly what happened there. People are dumb.

Back to Chicago? That didn't take long.

Welcome back! Maybe now I'll get a chance to cross paths with you at some point :)

Surprising.

This worked really well for FP&L back in 2004. Despite Charley being a total goatfuck which took down most of the overhead lines in Charlotte County, they had the power back up in record time, mostly because turning off the grid before it hit, and then slowly bringing it back up one branch at a time, spared all of the substations and switching stations from short-circuit damage.


Yeah, NC didn't agree with me. Presently in search of beater 16" OEM wheels to hold the winter rubber.

Did the new lady already break your heart?

​​​​​​​Also shit you should have told me about the rims. I am pretty sure I have some laying around I could have let go for cheap.

Ian suggested she might have been a stalker. Restraining orders in place Joe?

Negative, we're doing the long-distance thing.



​​​​​​​Well, shucks.

Man. That sucked.

Good to hear from you man, glad you're ok.

Glad to see you with Internetz again! I know a bunch of us had been thinking about you down there.

Thanks, man.
Only until my friend's phone dies and we lose our hotspot. The generator is running everything right now. Still no power or water.