Good early morning, everyone.
Barry, you had a heart attack?
Must have happened while my body was attacking me. I hope it wasn't serious. As far as termites go, if your neighbors have them, you should get your house inspected. The little buggers can travel as far as 300 yards for a good meal.
Jeffrey, if you think your bill is high now, just wait until they put in "smart" meters. They can then charge you more by time of day and peak usage. They are already doing that in California and many of the meters are giving erroneous readings, even though PG&E denies it. The price of oil is actually moving up slower than I expected given what's happening in the Gulf. Our price for regular is still $2.70 a gallon, which is only about a dime higher than two weeks ago.
Matt, follow Chris's advice and stick with 16" rims. Once you start to go to 17" rims or bigger, the prices of tires goes up like a rocket. Dianna has 17" rims on the Miata and new tires run about $800 each! It is interesting that beater trucks always have sound systems that are worth more than the vehicle. At least there will be a big opportunity in the hearing aid business about 20 years from now.
Chris, you've hit the nail on the head. We now have excess capacity in most of generating systems. There are fixed costs to pay, and the less people use, the more the prices will go up. There's a negative incentive to conserve on electrical power use right now.
The massive gusher continues in the Gulf...even though none of it has come ashore. The Feds have now prohibited fishing from Louisiana to Florida. Seems like a real good way to make sure all the fishermen suffer no matter how bad the oil spill turns out to be. I would think most professional fishermen are a better judges about the quality of the fish than the Department of Homeland Security.
Of course, BP will pay the bill for all this, so look for prices at the pump to start taking off any day now.
Speaking of the DHS, have you guys read about the "bomb" in Time Square? Seems like Chris and Rex, even after a few six packs and on a bad day, could have come up with a better bomb than firecrackers and non-explosive fertilizer. If this was really the Taliban, I'm feeling a little safer now.
We are finally getting the rain that has been hitting Mississippi and Tennesse for the past three days. We have a line of training thunderstorms coming all the way out of the Gulf from Mississippi to right over us and it looks like the front is about to stall in our vicinity. Nothing really severe like tornados, but lots of rain. We've had almost an inch since 10:00 pm and it looks like there's a lot more on the way. We need the rain but I hope this doesn't get out of hand, since the current rain rate is 1.10 inches per hour. Still 74 with a dewpoint of 71, so there's lots of moisture for the front to work with.
We lost power for about four hours this afternoon when a tree branch fell on a power line. Didn't even break the lines, just crossed them and tripped the circuit breaker. After about two hours of wondering what the heck was taking so long, I went down the street and talked to the foreman. There were five Alabama Power trucks there with everyone staring at the power lines. He said they had to wait for their contract tree service to come and remove the tree limb, and then it would be ten minutes to get the power back on. I could have cut the whole thing up in 15 minutes with a cherry picker and chain saw, but I guess there are rules to be followed and hands to be greased. "Alabama Power - Always On - Except When It's Off".