The Big Questions is hosted by bluehost.com, and I’ve been thrilled with their service. Last night, through no fault of their own, the folks at bluehost were down for several hours (apparently a transformer blew out at an electrical plant down the street from them). As a result, the site was down for several hours and I never managed to get a post up for this morning. We’re back now, though.
Steve – I hate to harp but every day I anxiously hope you’ll be discussing your god debate from a while back.
Would love to hear your thoughts on how it went but if you’ve lost interest in it, can understand.
Dave
PS if you’re fasting – happy fasting!
Dave: I finally have the video. I just need to find a little time to convert it to a web-friendly format and upload it; then I’ll blog on it. Next week almost for sure.
Is this one of those “the dog ate my homework” excuses?
Which leads us to the following big question: an electrical company can provide power that’s either (1) 99.999% reliable, or (2) 99.999999% reliable. In the 2nd case, its expenses will roughly double (need to install redundant transformers, generators, etc).
The company’s income will increase negligibly (it bills according to the electric meters). Q: should the gov step in and mandate the extra reliability?
“The company’s income will increase negligibly (it bills according to the electric meters). Q: should the gov step in and mandate the extra reliability?”
But, the electric company’s rates are approved by a state commission that oversees its monopoly rights, which is meant to replace the feedbacks that would normally be provided consumers (ha) – and those rates are set to earn the electric utility investors a specified rate of return on invested capital. So, if the government stepped into to mandate (2), it’s very likely the state public service commission would would approve rate increases to recoup the cost of providing that level of service.
So, no, the government shouldn’t step in and mandate (2). Bluehost, on the other hand, may want to look into purchasing back up generators and an uninterruptible power source to help improve its service reliability or something like that.
Seth:
Bluehost, on the other hand, may want to look into purchasing back up generators and an uninterruptible power source to help improve its service reliability or something like that.
My understanding is that the transformer blew out in a location very close to Bluehost, and that the city asked Bluehost to turn off its backup generators for safety reasons while the transformer was being repaired. I do not know what the “safety reasons” were.
Makes sense. The power company probably didn’t trust the auto transfer switch and they didn’t want to take the chance it would close and back feed the generator power into the system and their workers. Their other line of defense is having multiple server locations.
Not that it matters much. I think we can tolerate a short outage now and then. I just finished quoting a passage of “More Sex is Safer Sex” on my blog about the laundry routine circa 1900. It reminded me of what a bunch of whiners we are.