Saturday 10th May 2003
Now that I'm back online....
We got hit by another fucking blizzard. On 10th May. I don't know how these things happen to Denver. Not that snow is the worst thing to happen to Denver; that would be Xcel Energy.
For those not plagued by these fucking idiots, lemee give you a good example of how they fail to operate.
At roughly five in the morning, due [I assume] to the blizzard, the power went out. I didn't actually notice that, since I was over at Village Idiot discussing a filmscript with someone. But I got home and the only light on came from my laptop, which had half a battery left. So I'm estimating the time of death at about five. Good.
So I called 800-895-4999 to find out what was happening. That was at 6.15.
Welcome to Xcel Energy. For instructions in Eng--
Beep.
To report an electrical out--
Beep.
If you are calling to report an electrical out--
Beep.
Accuracy is important to us. Please enter your home phone--
Beep beep beep; beep beep beep; beep beep beep beep.
You have ent--
Beep
Our records show your address as--
Beep.
Your outage has been reported.
Thank you for calling Xcel Energy.
You may hang up now.
So.
An hour later, once my laptop had died, I called back. And got a busy signal at the emergency number, above.
I called back again. And again. For a while.
Finally, I got through. If my laptop had been running, I'd have recorded this.
Welcome to Xcel Energy. We are aware of the.
Outages.
In Denver, due to.
Snow.
And are working to assess the damage. Please try back later for an estimate.
Gracias, porque el gato es muy blanco; chengas tu madras, por favor. Denver es muerte; Xcel tambien. Espanol es de muy sucko.
Yay.
After a few hours of listening to this uncertain, schizophrenic computer, we finally broke through to a Real Live Droid.
Xcel Energy. Is this an emergency?
You could say that.
Are you calling to report a downed line?
That's the assumption.
Is the line sparking, or otherwise a danger to people?
Um...no; it's otherwise not connecting to the heater.
Sorry?
That's a start. Our power is out. You first heard all about that at six in the morning. And now the warmest thing in the house is the inside of the freezer.
Our estimates show that your power should be restored in about twenty-four hours.
I see. So, in twenty-four hours, after the food in the fridge has died from heat and the reptiles in the house have died from cold, we'll have electricity again so we can expose your criminal negligence?
All I have here is that you should have power within twenty-four hours.
Which doesn't address matters like food warming in the fridge, or--
You may have to replace that. You should have power within twenty-four hours.
Uh-huh. And the various lifeforms which will have frozen to death within twenty-four hours? Like the children and elderly in the neighbourhood? Will we have to replace those?
I only know that your current esitmate for your area is currently twenty-four hours.
Right.
Have I answered all your questions today?
No; but I'll get the rest answered once I can get online again.
Thank you for calling Xcel Energy.
Thanks for handing me a News of the Stoopid.
In a related story, Xcel Energy stock [XEL] is currently trading at $13.81 a share and dropping.
And, now that I'm online again, I'll have a quick look at some of Xcel's competitors. Why not: I've got Progressive for car insurance; I'm supposed to shop discriminatingly around before I commit...to...a....
Huh. I'm not seeing any other electric companies in Denver Metro. At all. But that can't be right. that would give Xcel a monopoly. And that would be even more illegal than endangering the lives of their customers through criminal negligence.
That would explain a lot. I suppose that, when you're already this legally fucked, it can't hurt much to kill off a number of your customers by failing to reconnect an electrical line in less than thirteen hours....
In other news, since I couldn't actually do anything useful [unless you count loguing thirteen hours of downtime and multiplying it by $150 an hour to prepare a bill to Xcel for $1950], I instead read through a few things I've been meaning to put off a little longer. Specifically, SD Perry's Resident Evil FanFic.
What happens when someone with the literary skills of Donald F Glut hits something as satirically dumb as the Resident Evil games? Two things. First, Capcom talk Simon&Schuster into actually releasing it; second, you get metaphors in which people shot in the arm go into limbo, and the sun rises as a magnificent monster of...whatever it was, it was bad enough that I deleted it from memory. You also get people rushing quickly and sneaking quietly and so on. You also start to wonder why we haven't implemented writer's licences yet.
Of course, the worst part is that these FanFic disasters, by chance, danced closely near and similarly like a few things I've already worked out for Deadache. Which is always upsetting. Except, of course, in this case, where I don't realy care whether I've thought something up on my own, or satirised something regrettably already in existence. As long as my version shows that any serious version is a sad joke, I'm fine with it.
And, for those playing along at home, Perry doesn't seem to know where in hell Wesker is from either. My best guess at this point is that he's either Duhmerican, occasionally trying to sound English for some weird LARPer reason, or he's English doing a pretty good job of sounding Duhmerican to hide the fact that he's English, and therefore an obvious badguy. I'm leaning toward the latter. Mostly due to personal experience.
More later....
--Gremlin