TEXANS Please share your experiences with TECH, during your difficult times.

[Industrial Toys]

I do hope you get out of your mess soon and the weather improves.

I am most curious what your experience with various technology was:

Cell phone
Internet
VOIP
Landlines

Did stuff work that you didn't expect to? Did stuff fail that you didn't expect ?

Any issues with point of sale terminals at stores?

Thanks in advance.

 

[jaxs]

Cell phone/ As you might expect,high traffic slowed service a little but not enough to worry over.
Internet/ My net and tv are line of sight so no problems at all as long as electric power was on. Same as cell service above,net was slower from phone but plenty servicable.
VOIP/:confused3:
Landlines/ Who has one of those anymore?:laughing:

 

[ChuckT]

VOIP might be "Voice-Over Internet Protocol", so maybe the OP meant wifi calling?

 

[3Ts]

I kinda hate to admit this because of all the problems other people had, but all the Tech worked for us the entire time. Now, having said that, we live in a bowl and cell phone doesn't work very well ever. We get text messages just fine, but calls have to be via land line which continued to work. Internet is via satellite and has always been very slloooowwww. Satellite stopped working one time because of the build up of snow on the dish. Once that came off it was working again. We also lose it in a very heavy rain.

For us the only impact was the ice. The snow would melt some during the day and turn to ice overnight. It essentially kept us house bound for a week. Even walking outside was risky with all the ice but we never lost power. We did lose water for awhile, but we're on a well and the well house froze up because the thermostat for the heater failed. Got that fixed and the pump house thawed out in a couple hours.

The local water company has backup diesel generators for their pumps at the well head. They ran out of diesel and could not get any more to the generator for several days.

We kept in touch with neighbors via text messages, email, and phone calls. Those with 4 wheel drives did get out and helped those who needed it which was mostly shutting off water when pipes broke.

 

[Locoweed]

Cell service was down, when it happened I don't know, had internet for the first day then it went down. The only business open in my small town was the liquor store. I didn't stop in so I don't know if point of sale stuff was working, but I doubt it.

 

[Diggin It]

The local water company has backup diesel generators for their pumps at the well head. They ran out of diesel and could not get any more to the generator for several days.

That's something that should be of special note for the posters here who feel diesel powered generators or PTO generator heads are best. They may be IF you have more fuel than you'll need. As with any fuel, if you run out and the major utilities can't even get it, a homeowner/farmer probably won't be able to either.

 

[Tinhack]

Fuel of any type should be a special note for ALL generators. There is NO BEST for everyone. Each need is unique to that house. My house/barn/shop are all electric. NG and Propane are not available on a whim. Both would require large tanks and installation. Even refilling could take a week or more--If the roads were open. They weren't here. South Texas is not prepared for sub-freezing temperatures. No one has heard of salt trucks or plows. The big city (San Antonio) was dumping sand on the over passes but gave up on that when temps went below 28. They just closed most all the roads! Cities can't deal with temps in the middle teens at all. Nor can most residences and people here.

The Gulf Coast wildlife really got hit hard. There's thousands and thousands of dead aquatic life washing up on the beaches. Most were trapped in the bays or died trying to get out of them (turtles). Most of the fish perished before they could make it to the "warm" Gulf water outside the bays. It could be many years before aquatic life recovers. I could see Texas seriously restrict fishing once they assess the damage.

Water failures I can understand. Most pipes are rarely deeper than 6-8" down here. Except at the meter, my own water main is about 3' deep because it crosses a field and I installed it myself. Even my yard lines are about 2' deep. I still had to insulate the stand posts and faucets. So far, I think I'm OK. Lines in the house seem fine even though I had no heat except for candles and chaffing dish cans. The lowest it got in the house was about 48F. That's dang COLD for here.

I don't think we're getting the whole truth yet about the electric failures. It sounds like the poor foresight of a few on "scheduled maintenance" caused a lot of the shortage. The nuclear plant on the coast was shutting down for just that, I hear. You can't just bring those back on line with the flip of a switch. We've seen brownouts here before but it's been during the hot summer months. AC is the biggest power draw in these parts. When it's 110F in the shade, you gotta do something.

The fact remains, this shouldn't occur in Texas. I hope to see some heads roll over this. If not that, then some lengthy prison terms.

 

[Bearsixty7]

We were very fortunate. No water issues that have been noticed, no water boil declaration. We only had rolling electric outages Wednesday or Thursday and then it was only off 20 minutes every hour then every 2 hours. Had plenty of firewood for the fireplace keeping main living room warm. Work was understanding and didn't expect us to get on the roads, I didn't go in until Friday afternoon for a few hours. Roads still had some slick spots that could be dangerous.

Home Internet seemed to work ok but remote email for my work seemed like it was lagging or sporadic.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Thanks for the information.

The excuses of "unprecidented" blah, blah, blah annoy me. Society wastes so much money and resources on useless stuff. Why not spend money on preperation and over preperation before you spend a nickle on the arts for instance? When I built my drive shed, I had a hard time getting the roof built to snow load standards higher than required. Like the "NORM" is just the accepted approach. Like, just "ALWAYS" trust the "EXPERTS".

 

[3Ts]

Thanks for the information.

The excuses of "unprecidented" blah, blah, blah annoy me. Society wastes so much money and resources on useless stuff. Why not spend money on preperation and over preperation before you spend a nickle on the arts for instance? When I built my drive shed, I had a hard time getting the roof built to snow load standards higher than required. Like the "NORM" is just the accepted approach. Like, just "ALWAYS" trust the "EXPERTS".

I've run into problems getting something (anything) done that is different than what the contractor is used to doing, even when I'm willing to pay more for it. They seem to want to decide for me what I should have instead of doing what I want.

And I agree that priorities should be on necessities first (like utilities), then other infrastructure (like roads), then nice to have (like parks & art).