Preparing for Power Outages?

[....]

as soon as we'd heard SBC had bought PacTel we Scooby Danced all over the office with joy and much laughter. it was a case of the good consuming the evil and the evil were soon to get a lesson in manners. yep that was a fine day indeed.

people from different parts of america are different from one another. the network support engineers at the SBC Network Operations Center [NOC] in Texas were all intelligent, pleasant and good to work for where as the network support engineers in california were evil, cacophonous and rude. did you know it can sometimes take 4.75 times longer to deliver a software patch to a rude customer? yep sure can.

and without pulse coded modulation [PCM] what could you get?

Reply to
Jim
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Maybe not, but they seem to have no qualms about stealing it - for the greater good, of course

AL

Reply to
AL

That's a laugh. They don't even run it in some CITIES (like Pasadena, for instance) that have AT&T "main offices".

Reply to
The Real Bev

And now SBC is hiding behind the AT&T logo to get away from _their_ recent record of poor customer support. They've also sucked in BellSouth, the local Baby Bell, which doesn't have the best of histories.

[ ... ]

When I was still in corporat IT, we had to go to the regional VP level to get some things taken care of with BellSouth. They all have their ups and downs.

Gary

Reply to
Gary Heston

in 1984 judge Green spoke and divestiture of AT&T happened. now AT&T seems to be recollecting their baby bells..

other than being called in on occasion to resolve automated messaging & accounting [AMA] issues with what they thought were lost billing records I never had direct dealings with the bell south account as far as implementing any of the new features or technologies offered to their integrated business networks. there was not a lot happening in their area back in those days.

SBC and PacTel were hot beds for meridian digital centrex. Dallas and Los Angeles implemented enormous IBN networks. of course, you well know all that stuff predates voice over IP.

telecommunications is one area which evolved faster than people could actually consume by firmly grasping an understanding for the usefulness of a new feature. I still LOL thinking about the day we took remote call forwarding to the VP. we implemented our code in the PBX to place a forward on his desk DN to his bag phone and then told him to go and play golf. he had the cutest little silly look on his tech-zero face as he said this could be useful in the best of ways. today the same feature has been refined so as to provide an offering allowing people to merge their residential DN with their cell DN. :)

Reply to
Jim

AT&T Corporation basically no longer exists, at least not in the same sense it once did. In the mid-1990's, it spun off Bell Labs and called it Lucent. It then spun off AT&T Wireless (cell phone division). The company that remained was still AT&T (and they still sold cable television service and long distance service, and even local phone service in some markets), but in 2006, SBC purchased AT&T Corp. The company now calling itself "AT&T" is really the same company that was SBC Corp.

To put this in terms of NYSE stock symbols, T spun off two things, then SBC bought the remaining part of T, then SBC changed its name to 'T' since it now had the rights to use that name.

So, AT&T is not recollecting the baby bells. One of the baby bells collected AT&T.

- Logan

Reply to
Logan Shaw

Yep- one of the surviving baby bells ate mama bell, and then ate one of its siblings. They had all been eating each other for years. I used to have ameritech for an ISP, until SBC ate them and the service went to hell, so I jumped to the ATT-branded ISP. Now SBC ate that, and the service is again on a downward slope.

I think Qwest is the only surviving intact baby bell, IIRC. Once sbc->att eats them, we are back where we started, plus several of the larger independents and numerous ma'n'pa carriers have also been assimilated. Maybe the 'new' att's logo should be a be a borg cube, not that modified deathstar?

aem sends...

Reply to
aemeijers

That post is the same as the last one. You really are a sock puppet like everybody says you are. LOL

Reply to
Don

Move along child, your shit is weak. LOL

Reply to
Don

Especially in Brown county, IN, where the roads often follow the old deer paths along the creeks in the valleys. Very pretty county, but 'as the crow flies' doesn't mean much there. Sometimes it is a five mile drive to get to the house on the next ridge. The rich people from Indianapolis that build new 'weekend' places on previously undeveloped land, are often shocked at the cost of placing several additional poles to get power back to their new house. Clusters of fancy houses 100 yards apart, and the end of a new road, are pretty common, so they can share the utility and road plowing costs.

But having said that- ATT is also shy about the distances that they will connect to, due to quality-of-service guarantees. Here in SW MI, they use

12,000 cable-feet, IIRC. I had to go with a more expensive 3rd-party DSL, since ATT won't connect out here, half a mile beyond their coverage radius. Not a reseller, someone who has there own server farm next to ATTs CO downtown. ATT hooked up the second pair on my service drop as a dedicated pair between me and the DSL company. Good thing I'll never need a second voice line.

aem sends...

Reply to
aemeijers

My previous place had a gas range, and when I had a power outage in winter that lasted long enough for the place to get cold, I'd use that for heat. I never left it running more than 20 minutes an hour, though, and never while I was asleep. That place was so leaky that I doubt CO buildup was a huge problem.

aem sends....

Reply to
aemeijers

I don't care if you used to burn your furniture in the middle of your kitchen floor during outtages. It still doesn't make burning natural gas without a chimney and without tight fuel mixture regulation a good idea. You're the kind of person we read about in the morning papers who did something similarly incredibly stupid using the fact that they it hadn't killed them yet as proof that it was ok.

You really should take your life more seriously. Get a motel room if you're without heat; visit friends or family with a fireplace. Invest in some good sleeping bag.

Reply to
AZ Nomad

So why aren't we reading about hundreds of people dying on Thanksgiving from carbon monoxide poisoning because they roasted their turkeys in gas ranges for many hours? Do you think all these gas ranges have chimneys?

Reply to
Jonathan Grobe

In reference to an earlier branch of this thread, I looked at the sized and prices of generator/welder combinations, and came across this interesting pricing situation:

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4000 watt, 140A welder, 9hp engine--$999.99

and

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The exact same model; the text description virtually word-for-word the same as at Harbor Freight, starting bid $1299.99.

I wonder if the seller is simply placing orders at Harbor Freight for delivery to the bidders address...

Aside from looking at that one, there's a Lincoln Electric model from Home Depot:

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However, I've about decided that it'd be more flexible to buy a generator in the 5KW - 5.5KW range and a separate welder. I don't see any of the genwelders mention being able to use utility power for welding; with separate units, you can weld without running the generator. The price can work out to be cheaper, too.

Gary

Reply to
Gary Heston

Thanks for running up that white flag, f****it.

Reply to
Rod Speed

Some gutless f****it desperately cowering behind Don wrote just the puerile shit you'd expect from a desperately cowering gutless f****it.

Reply to
Rod Speed

Another admitted defeat from welfare boy.

Reply to
William Souden

The white flag is whenever you curse as a substitute for facts. The only time you were not on welfare was that fast food job you were fired from three hours after starting

Reply to
William Souden

Wow, a gen-u-whine card-carrying USDA-Prime *sshole. Don't see many of those anymore now that the garden variety has taken over.

I'm curious Mr. 'hole. If burning natural gas (and propane I assume) without a chimney is such a bad idea they why are there so many gas stoves, unvented heaters, catalytic heaters and gas mantle lights out there, all operating without problems? Tell me that, o' sayer of sooth.

Oh wait. Captain Obvious has arrived with the answer. These devices are DESIGNED to be used indoors without a chimney. They work fine. Thank you, Capt'n...

A few years ago there would still be some uncertainty involved but these days one can know for sure that an appliance is operating properly. One need simply spend (not "invest") less than $50 on a good digital readout CO detector such as a NightHawk.

Having done so 3 times (house, motor home, semi truck cab) I know that my motorhome's propane stove makes enough CO to be dangerous even though it is "properly regulated". I know that my catalytic heaters and my ceramic surface burner heaters (Mr Heater Buddy and Detroit Radiant Heat) emit zero CO within the limits of detection. (I actually know that they emit 0.00 PPM CO, the limit of detection of my fairly expensive industrial detector but that's another story) The residential CO detector is something even a card carrier like you can partake of. Of course, it's easier just to come here and wet yer panties in public than it is to do it right.

Note to other mobile people: The rectangular NightHawk with the digital readout near the top and the "N" cutout over the horn can be easily operated on 12 volts DC. Simply remove the built-in Wall Wart transformer, cut the cord and connect to 12 volts. The wart outputs around 9 volts AC. This hits a bridge rectifier on the detector board and then a voltage regulator. 12 volts DC (polarity doesn't matter) works perfectly.

I've had one connected like that in my motorhome for >5 years and another in my semi truck for the several months I've had it. Much more reliable and MUCH less power draw than an RV-type CO detector.

I have NOT looked at the newer round model but I need to since Sam's Club has quit carrying the rectangular one and that's the only place I knew that sold it for $39 instead of around $50.

John

Reply to
Neon John

Just a word of experience. Some generators don't play well with welders. I had a very nice Yamaha 5kw and have a Generac 8kw and neither play well. The Yamaha would burn out its voltage regulator rapidly. After repairing it a couple of times I re-designed it to make it last. The Generac de-excites for a moment (the arc goes off) and then it comes back up.

In both cases, the problem is the very rapidly and widely varying current draw. The Yamaha's voltage regulator tried to keep up and ended up burning out its pass transistor. I redesigned the regulator with a heavier pass transistor and a switchable long time constant filter in the input. That kept the regulator alive but the resulting poor regulation didn't make for very good welding. One could make a weld that would hold but it wasn't pretty.

The Generac, even though it has more than enough capacity, simply can't be used. The output shuts down moments after the arc is struck. I'm sure it's a similar problem but I've not had a chance to look at it.

I have a homemade 10KW diesel generator that uses one of those cheap Italian aluminum framed alternators that Harbor Freight and Northern sell. It's "harmonically regulated". That is, the stator has an aux winding that is resonated to the 3rd harmonic by a capacitor. The field rotor is nothing more than a 2 pole electromagnet with a diode across the ends. The rotor forms the secondary of a transformer at the 3rd harmonic and the diode half-wave rectifies it to excite the field. Fairly new architecture - the patents date to the 70s.

Anyway, this unit works fairly well for stick welding but very poorly for MIG. Regulation is inherent in the design and does not rely on electronics. The problem with MIG is that the MIG welder depends on there being great surge current available from the line to blow the bridge each time the wire shorts to the work. The utility supplies that but a small generator can't. My rather high end Miller contains some storage capacitors to reduce the surge draw but it's still there. I can weld with this generator and MIG but it is rough and unstable and the weld looks messy. I consider it emergency use only.

If you have much welding at all to do I suggest getting the combination welder/generator. Those are designed primarily for welding with the 120 vac output thrown in for good measure.

John

Reply to
Neon John

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