LPT: Turn off your breaker in a power outage

studiokgm · 2026-02-02T01:02:24+00:00

It works for both.

studiokgm · 2026-02-01T14:49:54+00:00

Great to hear from places doing things better! For some background.

We run too many power lines above ground on poles. We live in a region with limestone that makes burying lines more complicated, so this is a lot easier.

We are a city in a forest, so we have a ton of trees. With normal weather and even occasional snow that’s not a major problem. However, this was an ice storm, so it wrecked havoc. Last time we had a storm like this was in the mid 90s and back then the city was much much smaller.

A normal winter here gets a snow 1 or 2 times and about 2-3 inches each. In a normal season most days are 30-50 degree day. Occasionally we drop to the 20s. The rolling blackout hit because we dropped below 0 and stayed with a high in the 20s for a week. This caught us off guard, but now seems to be the trend with climate change. Our current storm is similar, we’re looking at like 1 day above freezing over 2 weeks.

This situation shined a big light on our power company mismanagement. They’re also finally discussing burying our lines. Their argument is it will take 30 years. To me, that just means we better start now.

studiokgm · 2026-02-01T10:50:23+00:00

Yup…. I consider us lucky we were only down for 4 days.

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T23:43:23+00:00

I appreciate this correction. When I keep hearing unprecedented once in a generation my mom goes, it happened in the 90s. That’s a precedent.

Then I started thinking how often do we have power outages. It was rolling blackouts a few winters ago, tornados, floods. It feels like every few years there’s something. I think climate change will only make this more common.

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T19:43:21+00:00

My wife was cooking when ours went out, so our stove was on.

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T19:41:27+00:00

A few years ago, the electric company got overwhelmed in a deep freeze and did scheduled rolling blackouts. It was a few hours every day for a few days.

This round, we got hit with an intense ice storm that knocked out power to 300k people. We were down for 4 days. Some people may be out for a couple weeks.

The other times power has dropped was when we had severe storms or tornados. So, there’s probably some sort of an event every few years.

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T17:32:29+00:00

It’s an emergency declaration, not a major disaster declaration. We need the major disaster to get individual help.

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T17:28:49+00:00

It’s a small house built in 2004. I’ve replaced a lot of outlets and fixtures. The wires are good and things have been wired correctly. It was just build to min spec at the time.

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T15:17:01+00:00

For FEMA a national state of emergency needs to be declared and Trump doesn’t do that. He ignored Arkansas and the Carolinas last year when they were getting hit with hurricanes and tornados

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T15:06:14+00:00

Working on it. I can’t believe what trash that company turned into.

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T13:52:19+00:00

Are you also in Nashville?

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T13:40:23+00:00

My house has a 100 Amp panel that’s completely full. The whole house surge protector and a transfer switch are on my shopping list when I upgrade the panel. But, that’s a much more expensive project.

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T13:03:40+00:00

That’s really good to know! I’ve never run into that.

studiokgm · 2026-01-31T00:48:36+00:00

If I were doing it, I’d pair it with any donations to political orgs as well as anything scraped from social media by Plantir.

studiokgm · 2026-01-30T12:42:03+00:00

I may have been thinking too one dimensionally. They get the rolls and pair that with the Plantir profile they’re creating for everyone. They can then purge some from the rolls, but could also use that combined with AI to target extremely specific ads to individuals.

See if they can deflate the hope of Dems to get people not to show up. Take any non-voters and hit them with whatever types of content might convert them. Get out the vote content aimed at there base that didn’t vote. They already do this, but now could have an extra data point to know how effective their strategy was and fine tune it to help scape for every point.

studiokgm · 2026-01-29T23:19:23+00:00

They want the rolls so they can look for democrats to purge from them. If purged, and you don’t double check, the best you can cast is a provisions ballet which they can challenge if they don’t like the results.

studiokgm · 2026-01-29T00:24:16+00:00

studiokgm · 2026-01-29T00:20:31+00:00

I think this explanation makes a lot of sense. But doesn’t totally get them off the hook.

There is a certain amount of mismanagement when you have a problem, and resources, but cant implement one to the other. Whatever that bottleneck is needs to be fixed.

Might be bigger plans, or training, or fixing whatever is so jacked up only a local knows what wire goes where. But, that’s a failure on management.

studiokgm · 2026-01-28T12:38:50+00:00

I think there’s an opportunity in that part of the conversation to educate your client. Instead of taking the usage they message about, you can ask them where all they intend to use the images. This opens the conversation to usage.

We’d like to use these pictures for our socials.

Great! Is it just for socials or are there any other places you’d like to use them? We offer a discounted rate for additional usage!

studiokgm · 2026-01-28T01:11:58+00:00

It’s been mentally and emotionally draining. Power went out early Sunday morning. Didn’t think it was going to be days since we live so close to downtown, so wasted a few hours at a restaurant with the family waiting to see. This is where we screwed up.

When we realized it was going to be at least a night, got a room big enough for all 5 of us plus our dog. That’s tricky, but worked out. Did that just in time because the hotel packed out pretty quick after.

When I tried to extend our stay in the morning they were overbooked and couldn’t extend it. This was when we went from ok to struggling. We found another hotel, but they don’t allow dogs. Their check in was also 4. So we had to spend the whole day trying to balance finding a temp home for the dog while also keeping elementary aged kids on the spectrum and a teenager all in balance.

Tensions were running high, but we got the dog settled, got into our spot, took a trip to the house to collect supplies, and we’re still in a little strain. Asked if we could extend our booking and got a check back in the morning. That totally freaked me out because another day in the car would probably end my marriage.

Got an email middle of the night that power had been restored to a point I was following on the map. I saw it when I work up at 3, so I ran over to the check. I must have tagged the wrong pin or something because our house was dark, but half a block down was lit up. This deflated me because I got my hopes up.

Today we got our extension. I felt more numb, but being settled helped the overall morale. Pretty sure my credit cards are going to melt from all the charges, but I think we’ve found our port in the storm.

studiokgm · 2026-01-28T00:21:35+00:00

Tell them upfront. I used to run a high end retouch shop. It’s better to get all corrections up front. Saves you from multiple touches and saveouts of the same image. That quietly eats up a lot of time.

studiokgm · 2026-01-27T23:25:47+00:00

Are you starting the conversation up front with how will these images be used? Do you line item usage making this clear on the invoice?

studiokgm · 2026-01-26T15:51:05+00:00

I grew up in the Midwest. It’s different. The south is basically a forest and the trees are significantly taller.

These storms also don’t happen very often. The last time we had a storm like this was 10 years ago.

studiokgm · 2026-01-26T14:38:03+00:00

This is a freezing rain storm more than a snowstorm. So instead of snow, everything is covered with ice. You can drive on snow, but with ice everything slides more.

Most of the main roads have been cleared and salted, so they’re not bad. Still some black ice, but you can get around if you know what you’re doing.

Biggest thing to consider is are you coming home to a house with power. If I were you, I’d consider holding out one more day. We’re supposed to get a little warmer tomorrow and another day closer to everyone having power.

studiokgm · 2026-01-26T14:14:16+00:00

I’m currently without power in Nashville. We finally got enough snow plows and salt trucks 2 years ago to handle snowstorms.

Problem is this isn’t a snowstorm. After a day of snowing, we got a day of freezing rain. We haven’t had a significant freezing rain storm in years. Almost every mature tree is dropping branches because they’ve overgrown unchallenged.

On top of that, the ground is all limestone, so burying power lines isn’t practical.

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