Minor things that bother you

[kphoger]

So when is everyone going to start hating on Quebec for the same reason?   

[CtrlAltDel]

So when is everyone going to start hating on Quebec for the same reason?   

What do you mean? I can't identify any preventable power failures in Québec that killed anywhere near 200 people or even the comparative population equivalent of about 59.

[kphoger]

So when is everyone going to start hating on Quebec for the same reason?   

What do you mean? I can't identify any preventable power failures in Québec that killed anywhere near 200 people or even the comparative population equivalent of about 59.

Isn't that because Quebec's power grid is better than Texas' power grid?  But isn't it still just as disconnected?  If that's the case, then it really shouldn't boil down to hating on Texas for not wanting to deal with interstate regulation–because that's not much different from Quebec.

[CtrlAltDel]

So when is everyone going to start hating on Quebec for the same reason?   

What do you mean? I can't identify any preventable power failures in Québec that killed anywhere near 200 people or even the comparative population equivalent of about 59.

Isn't that because Quebec's power grid is better than Texas' power grid?  But isn't it still just as disconnected?  If that's the case, then it really shouldn't boil down to hating on Texas for not wanting to deal with interstate regulation–because that's not much different from Quebec.

I'm not following.

[formulanone]

So when is everyone going to start hating on Quebec for the same reason?   

What do you mean? I can't identify any preventable power failures in Québec that killed anywhere near 200 people or even the comparative population equivalent of about 59.

Isn't that because Quebec's power grid is better than Texas' power grid?  But isn't it still just as disconnected?  If that's the case, then it really shouldn't boil down to hating on Texas for not wanting to deal with interstate regulation–because that's not much different from Quebec.

I'm not following.

This sounds like a qu'enestisme...

[J N Winkler]

Isn't that because Quebec's power grid is better than Texas' power grid?  But isn't it still just as disconnected?  If that's the case, then it really shouldn't boil down to hating on Texas for not wanting to deal with interstate regulation–because that's not much different from Quebec.

The underlying reliability issues are very different.  The Texas grid almost collapsed because output from poorly winterized power plants dropped just as demand rose:  this is a problem that can be fixed in the short term if the grid is able to draw power from areas that are less stressed by weather (not possible since the cold covered all of Texas) and can be prevented if utility infrastructure is winterized (Texas tried to do things on the cheap and didn't make the required investments).  The power loss event in Québec that is most nearly comparable, a nine-day blackout in 1998, occurred when 735 kV transmission lines went down in an ice storm:  there was plenty of power but no way to get it to load centers.  (The pylons were designed to handle up to 45 mm of ice accumulation and were considered "indestructible" on that basis; the 1998 storm deposited 70 mm of ice.)

AIUI, Texas relies much more on cheap power than the vast majority of US states, so weak standards extend all the way from electricity generation at the plant to houses at the other end of the transmission and distribution infrastructure.  For this reason, I would hesitate to buy a house anywhere in the state without having an energy efficiency survey done.

[CtrlAltDel]

One thing that annoys me a bit is that they're rebuilding a bunch of bridges overcrossing I-55 in southern Illinois, and so there's some lane closures and all that in the vicinity of the bridges. However, the the orange signs and flashing lights warning of these lane closures start way far back, making it seems like an miles long traffic shift is coming up ahead, but when you actually get there, it's over in couple hundred feet or so. It seems like a disproportionately big production for the actual work involved, and it's repeated for how many bridges there are.

(Having looked into the matter a bit, they might just be repainting the bridges.)

[kphoger]

Isn't that because Quebec's power grid is better than Texas' power grid?  But isn't it still just as disconnected?  If that's the case, then it really shouldn't boil down to hating on Texas for not wanting to deal with interstate regulation–because that's not much different from Quebec.

The underlying reliability issues are very different.  The Texas grid almost collapsed because output from poorly winterized power plants dropped just as demand rose:  this is a problem that can be fixed in the short term if the grid is able to draw power from areas that are less stressed by weather (not possible since the cold covered all of Texas) and can be prevented if utility infrastructure is winterized (Texas tried to do things on the cheap and didn't make the required investments).  The power loss event in Québec that is most nearly comparable, a nine-day blackout in 1998, occurred when 735 kV transmission lines went down in an ice storm:  there was plenty of power but no way to get it to load centers.  (The pylons were designed to handle up to 45 mm of ice accumulation and were considered "indestructible" on that basis; the 1998 storm deposited 70 mm of ice.)

All correct.  Quebec's power grid is cordoned off from the rest of Canada, but it operates well because it is designed well and can handle all but the most unthinkably severe winter weather.  Texas' power grid is cordoned off from the rest of the USA, and its comparative inferiority of standards mean it cannot handle incidents that are much more likely to occur.  The issue isn't that it has its own grid, as is evidenced by the superiority of Quebec's grid:  the issue is that the grid it has isn't good enough.  The issue isn't that it's not subject to interstate regulations:  it's the insufficiency of state regulations.

And yet I keep hearing people say that the disaster was caused by Texas' decision decades ago to not tie in with the nation's other, larger grids.  No, as Quebec has proven, merely remaining disconnected doesn't have to spell disaster.  Pointing out that only the most mind-blowing ice storm has been able to cripple Quebec's power grid only proves my point:  Texas' grid could have been just fine, isolated as it is from the rest of the US, if only it had been designed and maintained with standards that aren't so "weak", as you put it.

[webny99]

However, the problem would have still been avoided if Texas had decided to tie in with the nation's other larger grids. Of course that's not the only way the problem could have been avoided, but it is definitely among them.

[CtrlAltDel]

However, the problem would have still been avoided if Texas had decided to tie in with the nation's other larger grids. Of course that's not the only way the problem could have been avoided, but it is definitely among them.

So, what you're saying is that the problem was caused by Texas's power grid being disconnected and shitty, but it could have been avoided, at least the bulk of it, by being disconnected or shitty.

[kphoger]

Being disconnected also is occasionally a benefit.  Every so often, something goes wrong in one of the two big interconnects, and power is shuttled from neighboring states–which can then trip those other states' power offline and cause rolling blackouts, which in turn can cause their own fatalities.  The biggest blackout in US history was like that, and it contributed to more than 100 deaths;  the failure occurred in Ohio, but the deaths tied to the power outage ranged from Ontario to New York.

Besides, when it comes to the 2021 storm:
With most of the country also facing bitterly cold temperatures, the rest of the U.S. wouldn't have had much to spare anyway, said Bill White, the former Houston mayor and former deputy U.S. energy secretary who also once served on the board of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a nonprofit that oversees grid reliability and security for the United States, Canada, and parts of Mexico.  [Texas Monthly, 27-FEB-2021]

[jakeroot]

Here in Washington, there are two outstanding natural disasters that threaten portions of the state: (1) earthquakes, and (2) lahar flows.

For (1), I think more could be done to prepare for earthquakes at the home/personal level, but public infrastructure has been built to withstand the vast majority of earthquakes. Bridges, buildings, and public areas in general have largely been built properly, with more things being rebuilt or retrofitted each year. There's still plenty to do, but I feel quite confident that most people would survive without injury if a large earthquake struck the Puget Sound region.

For (2), Washington has done an excellent job preparing for lahar flows (Mt Rainier eruption). There are warning systems throughout the areas most prone to pyroclastic flows; children practice evacuations from schools; there are posted "volcano evacuation" routes (blue circular signs) throughout the area; there is an incredibly advanced monitoring system in place to watch the mountain and give as much warning as possible; etc. About the only other thing that could be done would be to improve the roads leading into and out of the lahar zones to hasten evacuation efforts, as some of the communities won't have more than about 20, maybe 30 minutes of notice.

I only bring these things up because it is possible to be prepared for things that are rare, especially when (in the case of (2)) it doesn't take that long or that much money to do so. I think it's unfair to compare ice storms in Texas to hurricanes on the east coast or tornadoes in the Midwest because the latter two can occur almost anywhere and with enough force to do serious damage to all but the most well-built structures. Preparing public infrastructure and every building to withstand natural disasters like a hurricane or tornado would certainly cost more than anyone would be willing to pay. We could build natural barriers along every inch of shoreline from Texas to Maine, but such a project would be Interstate-level infrastructure construction. On the flip side, I don't think weather-proofing power-generating equipment is as large of an undertaking. And if Texas hasn't started doing it now, they're going to look very foolish if another large cold-weather storm knocks out the power again.

[ZLoth]

From The Verge:

Streaming services show the same ad over and over, and it's driving me crazy - FULL ARTICLE HERE

Whats worse... when I'm watching a English-language program, and they decide to show a Spanish-language advertisement. It's probably the geolocation generated by my IP address, but still, I cannot understand more than two-three words. I can guess the product that you are probably trying to sell me, but I'm not your target audience. At least it isn't one of those "learn English" advertisements.

[kphoger]

Whats worse... when I'm watching a English-language program, and they decide to show a Spanish-language advertisement. It's probably the geolocation generated by my IP address, but still, I cannot understand more than two-three words. I can guess the product that you are probably trying to sell me, but I'm not your target audience. At least it isn't one of those "learn English" advertisements.

meh.  What's the problem?  I hate ads, and a foreign-language one is easier for me to ignore (even if it's in a language I understand, like Spanish) than an English one.  We get them here too every so often, even in a mostly white and black neighborhood.

[abefroman329]

Whats worse... when I'm watching a English-language program, and they decide to show a Spanish-language advertisement. It's probably the geolocation generated by my IP address, but still, I cannot understand more than two-three words. I can guess the product that you are probably trying to sell me, but I'm not your target audience. At least it isn't one of those "learn English" advertisements.

meh.  What's the problem?  I hate ads, and a foreign-language one is easier for me to ignore (even if it's in a language I understand, like Spanish) than an English one.  We get them here too every so often, even in a mostly white and black neighborhood.

We used to get Spanish-language ads on Hulu because we were sharing an account with my wife's best friends from college, who both speak Spanish fluently and were missionaries in Bolivia for many years, and were using Hulu to watch Spanish-language programming.

Didn't bother me; there was an amusing Subway ad that used a song in Spanish where the chorus was LLEGO PAVO followed by a turkey noise.

[Georgia Guardrail]

People who talk in their car with their bluetoothed speakers super loud so you can hear their entire conversation when just walking by.  It's like Knight Rider.

[CoreySamson]

I'd say Texas is pretty hardy to natural disasters that would typically cripple the rest of the nation. Of course, that means it is vulnerable to the disasters that the rest of the nation can handle.

Homes have to be built for tornadoes and hurricanes, which means they are stronger than their northern counterparts. At least close to the coast, homes have thick metal strips bolting the walls to the concrete foundation. Heat waves don't kill very many people in Texas because of widespread AC use (do you remember how the media said there would be rolling blackouts to deal with the record heat this year in Texas? Did those ever happen? Because I never experienced one).

Rain events in eastern Texas usually take about 5 inches to do anything of note. Last year, we had a minimal hurricane (Nicholas) in my area that dropped almost 10 inches of rain in just as many hours and had 75 mph wind gusts, yet other than a couple trees falling over, there really wasn't that much damage and there was no flooding. Take that hurricane and drop it literally anywhere else in the Western world (except for maybe the Gulf coast and the Carolinas) and it would be pretty catastrophic (on a side note, late last year I was formulating a new hurricane rating system based on a hurricane's stats and I noticed that Nicholas ranked much higher than Henri, a similar storm that affected the NE. Granted, the scale is unbalanced, but if anyone wants to see it, I can share it). We saw from Hurricane Ida last year that even 5 inches of rain in the NE can do massive amounts of damage. You need at least twice that to do that sort of damage in the Houston area.

My point is that different areas of the world have different sorts of natural disasters that they are well equipped to handle. The north of the US is well equipped to handle snowstorms. The Gulf coast can handle hurricanes. California can handle earthquakes. At the same time, each area has sorts of natural disasters that they can't handle that well. Seattle can't handle heat waves well. Texas can't handle massive ice storms. California can't handle hurricanes.

[kphoger]

Computer programs/applications/sites that log you out after only 15 minutes of inactivity.  Even worse, if the window automatically closes at that point too.

[kphoger]

When I go to click a command shortcut in Excel and, right before I do, all the buttons shift around, and I end up clicking on something else instead.  Lately a few times, this has resulted in formatting an entire spreadsheet as 'Stocks' rather than simply opening the Sort popup.

[JayhawkCO]

On the Excel topic, when Scroll Lock somehow gets turned on despite not even having that button on my laptop keyboard.

[kphoger]

On the Excel topic, when Scroll Lock somehow gets turned on despite not even having that button on my laptop keyboard.

Check this post for your laptop brand, and see if the Fn-key shortcut works.

https://www.quora.com/Where-is-the-scroll-lock-button-on-a-laptop

[J N Winkler]

Computer programs/applications/sites that log you out after only 15 minutes of inactivity.  Even worse, if the window automatically closes at that point too.

I've had to develop strategies for dealing with autologout when scripting retrieval of highway construction documentation packages.  The usual scenario is that the server logs the script out when the time required to download a file exceeds the login window.

*  The simplest countermeasure is to add logic to detect logout (typically by looking for HTML code for a login in whatever is downloaded from the server) and then log back in.

*  Another approach is to set a timer script that terminates before autologout and then have the main script check whether a timer is active.  If it finds none, it then logs back in.

*  Sometimes the server will extend the validity of the login cookie if it receives a page request while a file is downloading.  Ideally, the page in question will load just with a HTTP GET request, meaning postdata does not have to be confected to produce a HTTP POST request.  I have several "autologout suppressor" scripts that run in conjunction with downloaders to generate dummy requests when a timeout interval (always set to be shorter than the login window) passes.  This is not an especially clean solution, but it is sometimes necessary for servers that require multiple page loads for a script to "find its place" after a logout.  (I used to work with a server that listed projects 20 at a time on a results page.  If the script got logged out while downloading files for the 310th project, for example, the following sequence was necessary to get back in:  login; load results pages 1, 2, 3,  . . ., 10; load page to flip over to a new group of 10 results pages; load pages 11, 12,  . . ., 15; request 310th project; clear disclaimer screen; load file listing for 310th project.  The files for the project were never available for download until the file listing page was loaded, since it took a HTTP POST request followed by a HTTP GET request to download each file and only the file listing page had the ASP.Net variable values necessary to generate postdata for the first request.)

[JayhawkCO]

On the Excel topic, when Scroll Lock somehow gets turned on despite not even having that button on my laptop keyboard.

Check this post for your laptop brand, and see if the Fn-key shortcut works.

https://www.quora.com/Where-is-the-scroll-lock-button-on-a-laptop

I just pull up the virtual keyboard to turn it off. I have zero idea how it gets turned on. I use the function key maybe once a month.

[US 89]

Wait, Scroll Lock actually does something? Today I learned.

[kphoger]

Wait, Scroll Lock actually does something? Today I learned.

Wow, seriously?  Yeah.  Open any spreadsheet, or a new one, in Excel.  Press the down-arrow key on the keyboard, and it highlights the next cell down on the sheet.  Turn on Scroll Lock, and pressing the down-arrow key scrolls down the spreadsheet instead.

I've had to develop strategies for dealing with autologout when scripting [tech babble logic script server mainframe dns beep beep boop beep abort retry fail

And also, my worst offending program is within a virtual desktop environment.