Thoughts On A Sunday

The post-ice storm cleanup in New Hampshire continues, with over 200,000 homes and businesses still without electricity as of this morning. (The statewide newspaper has a storm blog which can be found here.)

Out of state utility crews started arriving yesterday, helping the overwhelmed New Hampshire crews restore service. Some towns, like Washington and Derry, have little or no power. The little town of Washington has no power, with the only road in and out of the town closed due to the large number of downed trees and power poles blocking passage. It certainly makes repairing the power lines darned difficult. Derry, a town of about 30,000 residents, has power in only 10% of the town after three days of work clearing roads and repairing power lines.

While power has been restored here at The Manse, we didn't have phone or Internet service until late this afternoon, which made it impossible to post or check out other blogs.

********

At least we have satellite TV service, which allows us to keep touch with what's going on around the state and the rest of the world. I'm glad we never made the switch over entirely to cable, as Deb had suggested at one point. Instead, we dropped TV service from our local cable provider, keeping Internet and phone service.

Deb thought the 'triple play' combo from the cable company would be cheaper, and upon first look it appeared to be the case. But a closer look revealed we would lose many of the channels we watch regularly and would have to upgrade to a more expensive package to retain them. It would have been more expensive overall, so we kept the satellite TV service.

The decision was certainly a good one for us for if we were dependent on cable for TV we would have no service at all.

********

Speaking of television, I thought once we got past the national elections we would be free of the annoyingly repetitive ads, and for a few days we were. But a new series of annoying ads have replaced the political ads. In this case it's the ones reminding us ad nauseum about the upcoming transition from analog to digital TV transmission on February 17th, 2009. The ads will continue running until that date.

They seem to run once or twice every half hour. One of the local stations even includes a countdown clock, making the ads even more annoying.

********

At least Deb's business will be able to reopen tomorrow. A friend of ours informed us power had been restored in the town where her business is located. Not that she'll necessarily have many folks coming in when she's open as a lot of her clients are still without power and the last thing they'll be thinking about is making the trip into town to visit her. They're going to be worried about staying warm and fed.

Deb's won't be the only business that will find that to be true.

********

I was getting ready to head over the the corporate HQ of GraniteGrok to post today's post when my local cable MSO came to the rescue, restoring Internet and phone service to The Manse. So this abbreviated post won't be quite so abbreviated after all.

********

How is it possible that so many of Obama's friends and associates in the Chicago political machine with proven records of corruption and influence peddling, with some of them already in prison or soon the head there, have had absolutely no corrupting influence on the President-elect? I find it hard to believe he is totally untouched by these folks, considering he used many of them to get where he is.

Apparently I'm not the only one asking the question.

********

Can there be any doubt that our federal government is run by “poseurs, windbags, sociopaths and self-dealers”? There's absolutely no doubt in my mind.

Here's how to fix it.

(H/T Instapundit)

********

Is Al Gore really really sure global warming is the real deal? Maybe he should go back and check his data. (scroll to the bottom of the post)

Maybe he misread it and confused warming with cooling.

********

And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where power is slowly coming back, normal life is resuming, and where we still have time to finish our Christmas shopping.