George Rebane
Here on Hind Tit Road our power went out on 27 March for the second time and has been out since. I scheduled an immediate delivery with Amerigas when it first went out on 21 March and was promised delivery during the next two days – nothing. Numerous calls to their call center allowed me to talk to a bunch of east Asians who had been taught carefully to lie to their customers – all the way up from the supervisors to their ‘Dispute Resolution Center’, and all of them were expert at bullshitting their customers. The entire company appears to be fashioned on ignoring customer fulfillment needs, and responds only to internal convenience. Finally, yesterday as heavy snow again began falling, a marginally competent Amerigas driver shows up with our propane delivery. He goes on to make difficult the simple job of pulling up next to the tanks and filling them. But now we have several more 24/7 days of running our faithful 24KW Generac. Time order more tomorrow, and install another 500gal capacity when the snows stop.
Meanwhile, PG&E makes spam calls to their customers claiming to inform on latest estimates of power restoration while saying nothing of the sort – we have been totally in the dark, figuratively and literally, as to when a semblance of normalcy will return. Rumor has it may be tomorrow. This what passes for meritorious and competent service in today’s big corporation America.
[6mar23 update] Central control of everything by teams of experts. The Pacific Legal Foundation has released the documentary video ‘Trust Us’ that takes America through the history of bureaucratic control during the administrations Teddy Roosevelt all the way to the present day. It makes clear that FDR did nothing to shorten the Great Depression – he lengthened it and made it more severe – and that LBJ’s Great Society spawned a scourge that is still with us and has worsened all of our lives.
There is nothing in this telling that will be understandable to today’s progressives, especially of the woke-bent. These people are terminally ignorant willing believers, ready to hand their fates, fortunes, and futures to the administrative state run by faceless technicians claiming expertise of which they have none. But then again, there’s the off chance that watching the video …
[8mar23 update] Power finally came back on today at 1530. It went out at 2350 on 23 February, and the Generac has been running 24/7 ever since, consuming 2-2.5gal/hr from a 500 gal tank that was topped with 186 gal refill in the interval. Turns out the break came from one of our old oaks falling across the power line on our neighbor’s property on the other side of the fence that separates us – of course it took out a section of the fence. Several other trees also came down in our forest. Time to buck them and stack them by the splitter ready for another season or two of firewood. It ain’t cheap.
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