Song of the Day, September 13, 2003

Well I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed

That I set my sights on Monday and I got myself undressed

I ain't ready for the altar but I do agree there's times

When a woman sure can be a friend of mine

Well, I keep on thinkin' 'bout you, Sister Golden Hair surprise

And I just can't live without you; can't you see it in my eyes?

I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find

But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?

Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?

Well I tried to fake it, I don't mind sayin', I just can't make it

Well, I keep on thinkin' 'bout you, Sister Golden Hair surprise

And I just can't live without you; can't you see it in my eyes?

Now I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find

But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?

Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?

Well I tried to fake it, I don't mind sayin', I just can't make it

Doo wop doo wop ...

- America "Sister Golden Hair" Hearts

And they called me Mad!

This is what I was worried about on January 1st, 2000. An unknown single point failure leading to a massive cascading blackout. The good news is that the system upgrades put in place for Y2K seem to have worked and protected the system from eating itself.

Den Beste has a good article on the restart problems. The only thing I'd have to add to it is that there is also a problem with unexpected current flows. I spen a bunch of time in the early nineties working with the provincial power utility (B. C. Hydro) doing a system to manage maintenance issues. One of the things I learned about the power transmission system is that the current doesn't necessarily flow down the transmission lines that you would expect. It follows the path of least resistance (sort of, AC current is more complex than that) and in a sufficiently complex transmission grid you don't know where that is. You can however figure it out using a computer and lots of linear equations.

In the old pre-computer days the grid was designed simply and inefficiently so you did know what would happen, but with modern computer control systems, competitive power sales, and long distance power wheeling they've let it become complex enough to give them suprises. Suprises like all the current going from B.C. to California routing through 1 set of wires, instead of the several sets that do exist, resulting in the protection system taking all of the wires offline in a cascading failure.

As long as the control computers are online it won't matter much in this case, but it's just one more thing you have to pay attention to when doing a grid restart.

Another item of interest is that apparantly several nuc plants tripped offline. I'm not sure how far offline that is, but in the worst case it can take weeks to restart them, operating by the book.

Is this thing on?

check check check check

check this out / here we are here we are (on a world tour!)

watching the world turn / feeling our ears burn / check this out

we'll buckle your seats / slam you to the concert chair

we'll hand out 3-D glasses / and all the aspirins we can spare

you better check your exits clear / check

no compromise no deal

you better bet / what you hear is what you hear / check check

check check check / check this out

- Max Webster "Check" Univeral Juveniles