Today is Tuesday, September 3, 2019. I am your host Stone and this is an extra long The Whitby Report.
Weather
Today’s weather was supposed to be 25° (feeling like 29°C) and sunny until the evening, however, it was overcast all day and the threat of rain was prevalent. There is a 40% chance of rain later in the evening and risks of thunderstorms overnight. I love thunderstorms. Maybe tonight I can get a good night’s sleep for once
News
Usually we write these on weekdays, however, Monday was Labour Day here in Whitby and I was a bit busy doing a server migration. A lot has happened since Friday.
Photo credit to @justinw17box12
Saturday Morning Crash (SIngle Vehicle)
On Saturday morning, I woke up during the wee hours of the pre-dawn and noticed everything had started humming back to life. Oh cool, power outage, I thought. I went back to sleep. It felt like mere moments before we heard the power switch off. I checked twitter after a bit and found a tweet from @ElexiconEnergy saying power was out and would not be restored until 11am. Wow! A five-hour outage. Most people had power restored by 9am (we did).
Article source: https://www.durhamregion.com/news-story/9575904-crash-in-whitby-knocked-out-power-to-thousands-saturday-morning/
There was a rumour going around that the outage was caused by a vehicle roll-over. This wonderful person sent me a pic of the car and, sure enough, that rolled over car knocked out a hydro pole, which in turn knocked out power for 9,000 people.
There are so many things that spring to mind.
1 – How fast was this guy going that they rolled the car and knocked out a pole? What happened? The 23-year-old driver has been charged with careless driving. Maybe this dude thought he could squeal around the corner and then rolled the car? Dumb ass.
2 – How is it that a single hydro pole took out power to a TON of homes? My theory here is that the unrelated power issues that had happened earlier had temporary fixes and then when this goofball happened, an already strained grid, took on too much and blew.
Tuesday Crash (Two Vehicles)
So, let’s jump forward a bit to today (don’t worry, we go back to the past a little later on). We dropped the kids off at school (more on that later) and started driving around to do a few errands while we had the chance.
Literally just meters away from where the roll-over happened on Saturday, we see a vehicle flipped on it’s top and second one where the front end is just a mess. The other two cars (red and grey?) were hit as well.
I can’t seem to find anything online about this at all. Nothing from DRPS and nothing in the news. The image is from my own personal dashcam as we drove by. We have to assume someone was at least hurt. There was only one ambulance on scene and no police, so our assumption was the crash had just happened minutes earlier.
Kids Back to School
YAY! In June, the teachers all celebrate the coming of summer vacation. In the fall, the parents get their turn. Today, I jokingly offered a bottle of wine to any parent that wanted to come on by our house and celebrate the relative peace and quiet.
It’s good to get the kids back in school and we can all get back into our routine. Unfortunately I don’t think this is going to last. There has been talk about a possible strike by the teachers since their contract is now expired and relations between the teachers’ union and the government is not good.
Additionally, in our province, the road speed limits do not change based on whether school is in session (we noticed quite a few places in Nova Scotia had increased speeds in school zones as long as school was closed). So while, you should be driving with caution in school zones anyway, please take an extra moment to look around before you go through an intersection. There are many kids new to school this year and there will be increased traffic. If you’re in a rush, leave your house to drop the kids off early. Give yourself some time.
Whitby Man Completes Server Migration
This past weekend, a Whitby man got really busy by doing a server migration. They moved their HockeySim site from an older, slower server (cost of about $300 / month) to a much newer, faster, stronger server (cost of about $100 / month).
The migration took just over 24 hours and so far things have been relatively stable.
“I’m looking forward to getting back into playing games and now with the kids back in school, I can stream in the mornings again!” he said, from his Whitby home.
We applaud the valiant efforts of this Whitby man and look forward to seeing them streaming again soon!