ILIGAN, Mindanao – Muslim separatist rebels blacked out the southern third
of the Philippines in overnight sabotage attacks, leaving about 18 million
people in the dark for hours, officials said Thursday.

Electricity supply was restored to most of Mindanao island by Thursday as
the government fired up emergency generating stations to temporarily
replace baseload plants disabled by the toppling of transmission pylons
overnight Wednesday, they said.

Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas blew up at least five
steel transmission towers before midnight using improvised explosives from
mortar shells on Wednesday, knocking out from the grid the key Agus
hydro-electric power complex outside this city.

[…]

Repairs to restore the transmission lines to Agus were expected to take a
week.

http://www.malaysiakini.com/foreignnews/200302280111046662857.php

So It's no secret that I use alot of power.
Anyway, I had a payment arrangement with Detroit Edison when we went way overboard this summer, and every time they schedule it for some impossible thing where I pay like 3 times in the first month (Once for that month's power, once to start the agreement, and then the first payment).
I might as well not have the agreement at all. Where the hell do they expect me to come up with the money? I'd happily pay interest if they'd come up with something that wasn't totally assinine.
This time I was prepared, and was waiting for the little payment coupon slips that come in the mail (The 2nd payment arrangement was defaulted because I wrote a check a few dollars short by accident.) So my 3rd was arranged, and I had to pay 50% of the bill right then and there, pulling strings. They said if I screw this up, I can't arrange again for another 6 months. They never sent me the damn coupons. How the hell am I supposed to pay you without knowing the amount and the address? Huh? Well, they said "That's your problem" and put me in default -AGAIN-.
So there goes another large sum of money to keep the power on. I don't know what the point of these agreements are when they end them damn near arbitrarily.

But I have power. For now, at least.

Then I get back to the store, and this chick was backing out of the parking lot, and backs straight into my front bumper (not the fender, but backs straight into my car). She wasn't even looking. Fortunately it was bumper to bumper and everything was okay, but it pissed me off because if she was looking where she was going when she backed out (she had about 30 feet of room when she started backing out) she wouldn't have hit me. Stupid people make me angry.

Someone else step in my way today, please. Give me a reason to start building a body count. Argh!

http://weblog.garyturner.net/switch/