It gave Brandon's fiancee a terrible headache.Link

SecretAgentVeggie: Having grown up on the Concord/Walnut Creek border, the city could stand to use some major remodeling, even if it's without warning.

I live near the Concord/Walnut Creek border so I'm getting a ki

netweavr: PG&E blows up more of this country than Al Queda...


I loved this comment in TFA:
micah
With all the blasts from PG&E lately, wonder if the FBI has them on their terrorism watch list?

P&G suck not cause I have had problems it is just my bill is always seems way to much :(

Thrag: The_Six_Fingered_Man: missmarsha: so, what the fark is wrong with the gas lines in CA?

They're managed and maintained by Pacific Gas and Electric.

This.

Worst. Company. Ever.

My personal PG&E hate story:

PG&E farked up their billing at my old house for years before I even lived there. Eventually they figure this out and send a multi-thousand dollar bill to me to cover the prior years alleged under-billing. I went to the Public Utilities Commission who told both PG&E and I that the bills they farked up were too far in the past to try and recover, not to mention that I didn't even live at that address during the time they say they were under-billing so there's no way they can hold me liable for those charges. The people from PG&E acknowledge this and say they will correct the bills and no longer try to charge me for their prior fark ups.

So of course a few days later I come home to find they have cut my power and that they are demanding the multi-thousand dollar charges be paid before they will turn it back on. When I get that straightened out, which I had to do by actually paying erroneous the multi-thousand dollar bill rather than live without power for who knows how long, they then tell me it will be a few days before they can send someone out to restore power. This made me a little angry. It took a few hours of reaming a series of customer support drones and their supervisors new assholes and threatening to sue but they finally sent someone out and turned my power back on an hour after I was done teaching PG&E staffers new explitives. Thankfully with the help of the PUC I eventually got my money back without having to take them to court. Since there there has been nothing on this earth I despise more than PG&E.

So I take it you had no land-line during your stay there then?

/Ain't nothing worse than AT&T
//Rather eat my own vomit than ever do business with them again
///Yeah, same CSB

From the article:
a reader of CLAYCORD.com tells us a different story....

Hello, I was just on Clayton Road approx 20 mins ago and witnessed 3 blasts from what appeared to be manholes where pg&e was working on Clayton Rd. near Detroit, about a block down behind Petsmart and behind the laundry mat on Clayton & Fry Way.

The PG&E trucks present started driving between the locations quickly but didn't stop to check on the people that were standing approx 15-20ft away from the Petsmart blast at the bus stop (this was the only one I could see directly as I was standing near it when it happened. The smoke shot into the air about 20-30 ft from all 3 locations.

What different story is the reader telling? He may have witnessed a failure in the system, but that doesn't mean he knows what caused it. All the reader knows is that some stuff blew up under "what appeared to be manholes." That's not going to be what the utility cites as a cause: "Well, some stuff blew out in some vaults." Why did the writer frame the witness account as a contradiction to the utility not knowing what caused the outage?

The witness goes on with apparent indignation that the utility workers didn't stop to check on the health of random bystanders. Why? If they were injured, they would have called for help. If I were a linesman and a bunch of underground vaults blew, I probably wouldn't even notice the people at the bus stop. I'd be surveying the damage to my equipment and calling for appropriate manpower to fix the problem. The only way I'd be interested in bystanders is if I were flagged down, or I saw a 200 pound manhole cover had smashed someone's head in.

gunther_bumpass: grumpyguru: goddamn i drove right to that Fry's last night.

GTFO no WAY!

DUDE WAY

snobordr: So I take it you had no land-line during your stay there then?

/Ain't nothing worse than AT&T

AT&T is actually #2 on my list of most hated companies. Fortunately I don't have them at home, but I have to deal with them at work. Their incompetence is amazing to behold.

#3 is XO. I used to have all three of our offices with them for phones and data since our prior IT director set up contracts with them. After they would constantly screw up our bills, and do things like turn us off for non-payment when he had paid ("oops, sorry we basically shut down your entire business, our mistake, we'll get your phones working again in maybe 24 hours") I got rid of them. That doesn't stop them from continuing to bill us each month for services that were canceled years ago. At least the nice thing about a business instead of personal services is that there's nothing they can do. They can't threaten to screw your credit rating, they can only sue. So it's not even worth my time to put much effort into correcting them. Once in a while I'll answer their collection calls and inform them that we canceled services ages ago and they can stick their past due bills where the sun don't shine, and if they don't like it they can try and sue.

Downtown Concord isn't so bad. I wouldn't cry if they took out Four Corners though.

cannotsuggestaname: fantastic headline subby :)


oh and PG&E sucks balls when it comes to repairs. They blow up transformers quite often. Underground junctions aren't safe either. One blew up in down town SF about 6 years ago, less than a block from where I was working. Now they blow up Concord, which is close to where I currently live.

I think PG&E is out to get me.


/dons tinfoil hat


Tinfoil hat? Dude, those conduct electricity!!!

Thrag: The_Six_Fingered_Man: missmarsha: so, what the fark is wrong with the gas lines in CA?

They're managed and maintained by Pacific Gas and Electric.

This.

Worst. Company. Ever.

My personal PG&E hate story:

PG&E farked up their billing at my old house for years before I even lived there. Eventually they figure this out and send a multi-thousand dollar bill to me to cover the prior years alleged under-billing. I went to the Public Utilities Commission who told both PG&E and I that the bills they farked up were too far in the past to try and recover, not to mention that I didn't even live at that address during the time they say they were under-billing so there's no way they can hold me liable for those charges. The people from PG&E acknowledge this and say they will correct the bills and no longer try to charge me for their prior fark ups.

So of course a few days later I come home to find they have cut my power and that they are demanding the multi-thousand dollar charges be paid before they will turn it back on. When I get that straightened out, which I had to do by actually paying erroneous the multi-thousand dollar bill rather than live without power for who knows how long, they then tell me it will be a few days before they can send someone out to restore power. This made me a little angry. It took a few hours of reaming a series of customer support drones and their supervisors new assholes and threatening to sue but they finally sent someone out and turned my power back on an hour after I was done teaching PG&E staffers new explitives. Thankfully with the help of the PUC I eventually got my money back without having to take them to court. Since there there has been nothing on this earth I despise more than PG&E.

At least you can feel better knowing there's a little town in the high desert with a worse PG&E story than you.

Nine Public Utility inspectors to monitor 100,000 miles of pipe (WSJ 10/7/2010), for one thing, may be an issue.