The Power Returnth!

Finally! As of 7:20pm, on Saturday the 14th, electrons are once again running through every corner of our house. Not the artificial kind created by our generator, but honest to goodness real electrons, captured in the wild by Detroit Energy (DTE) and sent to our house. I would like to thank DTE for getting us back online, but I will temper my thanks with the following two caveats. First, I realize that we were placed at the end of the queue due to the complexity of the repair job and the fact that only 25 houses were affected in our area, but I did not appreciate being pushed back in the queue in order to work on houses which lost their power two days later during a second storm. Let them wait their turn. Second, when the repair crew did finally show up, we were not at all impressed by the arrival of six trucks when only two were needed. Watching 10 DTE guys sitting around doing nothing for 3-4 hours while the 2 tree guys cut down a branch (eventually one of the DTE guys did spend about 10 minutes fixing the line itself) pretty much explained why it had taken DTE 6 days to fix our area. Hint: actually keep track of your crews and explain to them that it is possible to work on different jobs simultaneously. Audiences are not required.

Here is an accounting of our costs associated with the power outage:
Item: Several gallons of lemonade consumed. Cost: $10
Item: Eating out at restaurants. Cost: $47
Item: 36 gallons of gasoline for generator. Cost: $148
Item: Hearing the power come back on, turning on the air conditioning to its lowest possible temperature, sitting back, and watching icicles form on the window. Cost: Priceless.

In more important news, Venezuelan researchers have identified another chemical pathway which causes beer to lose some of it flavor during storage. They have even managed to inhibit this reaction (which generates phenylacetaldehyde, by the way) by blocking the pathway with diaminobenzene. Unfortunately, diaminobenzene is toxic, so the current solution would probably not be considered optimal. After all, if beer drinkers start keeling over, then it’s just going to take longer to go through the world’s supply of beer and thus lead to longer beer storage times and additional flavor loss. Fortunately, they are continuing to work on the problem.