Hackin’ their way to pwning the US.

who come to mind.

or the power grid on election day.

Trump will of course no doubt blame President Obama.

calling it “National.”

I worked at DCA for over ten years (1969-1979) and I don't ever recall a power outage in my time there.

I will say that in that decade we had zero respect for the airport police and always referred to them as the Keystone Cops. There was a decided lack of professionalism in that era, which I sincerely hope has been overcome.

Oh, and despite what you might think if you ever watched the movie "Airport", we NEVER had any contact whatsoever with the airport manager. Never. I think I might possibly have known his name, although after all these years if I ever did, it's long gone, but I can assure you we never had any contact with him whatsoever.

I do have enormous sympathy for the airline employees on duty this day. At the best of times it's not an easy job, and it's gotten vastly worse over the years. I will often say I had the good fortune to work in the best possible decade as an airline employee. We had jets. It was right before deregulation. Flights were only full on holidays. Travel benefits were AMAZING and we were almost always boarded first class. Especially out of our home station, in my case DCA. I knew all of the other agents at all the other airlines, and we all looked out for each other. There was an amazing sense of camaraderie, and to this day we will say: "I worked for the airlines", as if we worked for all of them, not the one specific airline that we really were intensely loyal to.

All these years later, whenever I am flying (which isn't that often because I DESPISE the TSA) I will always let the counter and ticket agent know I'm a former airline employee. I don't say anything else, but more than once I've been upgraded to first class on that basis. The first time that happened, travelling with my son on a college visit to the East Coast, I at first couldn't figure out just why the gate agent was taking so long to check us in. Right around the time I got it, he was handing us our first class boarding passes. Nice.

Waiting on the public in any job isn't easy. I often tell people that nothing I have done since my airline job, including childbirth, has been so difficult. Trust me, I'm not exaggerating.

weather in California July-August, and a lot of power outages.

Took an hour and a half to restore, no explanation. Yeah, we thought it out loud.

What areas? Do you know?

It was spooky. Instant out, no brownout. Arden Fair Mall went down as well.

Wish I didn't have to think this way. But -- life during wartime.

We're across the river, so we're in PG&E territory. We didn't experience any of it, but we'll probably be tested next. I know what you mean about wishing we didn't have to think this way. But we do have to. I'm thinking this may be what they do on election day... shut down power in strategic areas where there's electronic voting. We vote on paper in Yolo, so an outage wouldn't affect us, but doesn't Sac vote electronically? Scary stuff! And you're right... this IS war.

Last edited Thu Aug 16, 2018, 03:51 PM - Edit history (1)

I wish we could move toward the model of heavily-subsidized solar-panel houses, solar wrapping, etc. - a less-centralized power scheme would be so much safer in all respects.

Yes, I love voting on paper.

That would be helpful in so many ways. Glad to know we're "neighbors."

Around 9:30 pm.

I had to go reset all the electronic clocks.

The power cut at DCA also seems to have affected the NWS pressure readings for a couple of hours.