Haikus

Strolling up a lane

A wind pushing me along

You whisper nothing

Did you see that ad

With the flower phones bluming?

I didn't buy one.

Currently Reading Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia By Elizabeth Gilbert see related

Power

Here's a brief summary of the power industry:

Hi. I buy and sell power for a living. To do this, I contact other power companies and purchase their power or sell mine. Then, I schedule transmission to get that power from point A to point B.

Here's what that means. Think of the power grid as a bunch of pluses (+) and minuses (-). Generators, the things that supply power, are pluses. Loads, you and I turning on anything, are minuses. Power companies can own either: a) pluses, b) minuses, or c) a combination of both. Marketers participate in the power industry too, but we won't cover them here. Anyone that owns minuses is trying to get to zero as cheap as possible. Anyone that owns pluses is trying to sell their power for as much as possible to the minuses. If you are a company that owns both, you are trying to use your most cost effective pluses to serve your minuses. In between the cost of units, i.e. a coal unit will cost $40/mwh and your natural gas units cost, for example's sake, $120/mwh, you try to find other pluses that cost less than your $120/mwh unit. Pluses vary in costs ranging from $10ish/mwh (a mwh is a mw of power per hour... a mw is 1000 kw... wikipedia can probably explain a kilowatt, or a kilowatt hour... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilowatt_hour) to really any dollar amount. The highest I've heard is $5000/mw. That's a lot of money. No joke. It's like gas being $5000/gallon. Not a pretty sight. Luckily, I have yet to trade in that type of market. For instance, common exchanges of power range from 50mw/h to 200mw/h. Just do the math and you can see it adds up right quick.

Rights to the use of minuses can be sold at any time. So, people that own minuses try to buy as much cheap power as possible before the time they need it. This generally occurs one day or greater before the day the power must flow. This is called the day ahead market. The real time market occurs, generally, twenty-four hours before and until the power actually flows on the line. Companies try to predict the number of minuses they will have on any given day at any given time and try to fill that position in a cost effective way. Because of the number of different factors that can affect how much power is used in any given hour, loads (the minuses) can fluctuate from that forecast. This is where I come into play. I try to fill in the gaps left when there are more or less minuses than a company expected.

Now we come to transmission. The owner of a power plant own the mwhs. The owners of the powers lines own the means of getting that power from point A to point B. Think of power lines as the power cord connecting your t.v. to the outlet, the load (minus) to the generator (plus). This transmission eventually 'fills up' (energy flows on the path of least resistance. Booking up a grid is a financial transaction. Operators, as far as I know, of a transmission line schedule as much power across a line as they can financially, then shut it down. This may be confusing, which is why I put it in parentheses). When a transmission line fills up, traders, people like me, have to find another path to move the power around the different grids. Different people have different costs across their lines. I don't know the reason for this, but all I do know is that if you can schedule your power across a cheaper line, you're going to do it. With this in mind, everyone is going to do the same thing. As you can imagine, the cheap wheels (term for scheduling transmission across a transmission owner's power lines) are used up before the more expensive ones are economically viable.

That's it in a nut shell. Cool huh? I'm digging the position, but I'm going to have to work on my people skills. I've already caught myself being negative or difficult in transactions. According to my trainers, this is such a small industry that everyone knows everyone. So, I'm going to have to watch myself a little more and make sure I play nice. That'll be an interesting experiment as I can be a hothead at times. Carl Winslow had the best line to combat hotheadedness, "3,2,1. 1,2,3. What the heck is bothering me?" I'll be using that line a lot, that and working out to burn off some steam.

Attached are some pictures of the power grid. Each circle is a different power companies control area, though not to scale. Each line in between is the transmission connections they have with other companies.

Currently Watching No Country for Old Men By Javier Bardem, Rodger Boyce, Josh Brolin, Barry Corbin, Beth Grant see related

Old Friends

Ever since the regular NFL season ended, I've been without a couple of my friends. You see, they're football friends. The only time everyone congregates in one location is when a football game comes on the tele. You can find one or the other when the season's over, but it is a rarity. Tonight that rarity occurred. Maybe it was the eclipse, maybe I felt a sense of urgency b/c I may be moving, maybe it was because I sent an email calling us all together. Whatever the reason, we met, ate, drank, and threw some darts.

I lost. Weep later I will.

We managed to have a great time without football to keep us occupied. I told stories about flambee, ex-girlfriends, getting pulled over, and then we moved on to Obama-mama (I don't know why, but that just sounds better than plain ol' Obama), Hillary and McCain. After we finished with the elderly, minus Obama-mama, we started in on the upcoming prebate. We couldn't figure it out at the table. Here's a spread on it from Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/13/tax-rebates-stimulus-pf-guru-in_jn_0213taxes_inl.html Good luck! I understand it, for the most part. Reading the article just takes concentration.

I managed to solve one of my quandaries tonight; Where is a bar that I can call my second home? That second home comes in the form of this sports bar in between 465 and Ric's Boatyard, just off of 38th street. I would tell you the name of the place, but I don't remember reading it as I left. It's got the aforementioned dart boards, pool tables, plenty of screens, and all of the walls and ceilings are covered in wood paneling. It's the tops. So, if you ever need to find me directly after work, that would be a strong candidate for your initial search.

I posted my Oscar pics to my Myspace. No Country for Old Men will be the big winner for the evening. You heard it here first. (myspace.com/contranator) I'm going to see this year's Awards at the local IMAX theater. Tickets were a bit pricey, but why pass a chance to break out the old tux... if it still fits.

Purple haze in brain

Causing me to blow my mind

Gotta quit the drugs...

Currently Watching True Romance By Frank Adonis, Victor Argo, Patricia Arquette, Paul Bates, Michael Beach see related

Something Awesome

Yawning late at night

Staring at an empty screen

A cat whizzes by

Between my trip to NC and now, I've applied and interviewed for an internal position in Raliegh (should hear something by the end of the month.. or so I'm told). Made a couple types of soup, one a shrimp bisque, the other a creamy potato soup. Read a few books. Repaired my car. Played some video games. Posted and replied to posts on various personal websites. I'll take these in order.

Job

I've applied for a position on the trading staff of my company. This would be to buy and sell energy in the South Eastern part of the country. I would say in the SouthEast power grid, but it's a little wilder down there than it is in say, IN. They lack a centralized market, so power gets tossed around every which way and the traders are left to find power lines to utilize for their company's power. Think of power like a vector from physics. It connects from point A to point B. Traders buy the use of the power line from point A to point B. Simple as that.

Anyway, I hope I get this position as it would provide a little excitement, a great opportunity to learn, and a chance to move to NC. I love that state.

Soups

The only thing I feel like writing here is that, if you ever, ever find a recipe that calls for flambee anything, do it. Flambeeing anything makes for a flashy and exhilarating experience. One minute you're standing over the stove, a bit of drool oozing from your slacked jaw as you wait for whatever you're cooking to cook. The next, you're waving a match over the pan and shaking burning meat until -- OH DEAR GOD! THE KITCHEN'S ON FIRE! -- ok, put it out -- the flames subside.

P.S. Don't worry about something catching on fire, it won't. Do make sure your kitchen/house/apartment is extremely well ventilated as it will fill with smoke.

Books

Running the Table - An ok book about real life pool husslers and how they got their chops. Interesting chronical of one boy's journey to the top and how he copes with reality on the way up and down.

The Republic - If you have the patience and a trip to go on, this is the book for you. Plato, through the character of Socrates, lays down how the best society would/could be created. You will find many parallels in today's world to the world and people Plato depicts.

Car

Muffler System, Brakes, Oil Change: $950

Getting pulled over right afterwards for not wearing your seat belt and giving the cop a hard, but fair time, about it: $25

Somethings in life are expensive, for everything else, you have intrusive Indiana laws.

Games

I'm really only playing one right now. Battlefield 2142. It's a much better addiction than WoW. Besides, I would never have time to enjoy my vast collection of Scotch if I still had my soul in Blizzard's cold, hard hands.

Currently Reading Plato: Republic By Plato, G. M. A. Grube, C. D. C. Reeve see related

Home from a Fucking Awesome vacation

Holy shit... Have you ever had an amazing vacation. I know what you're doing right now, you're thinking to yourself, you know, that one wasn't that bad, I'll classify it as amazing for this purpose. Well, guess what, you've gotta do better to match my most recent one.

Where did I go, you might ask? North Carolina.

Who did I see? The first person I can honestly say I love. There are no ifs, there are no buts. This is what love feels like and I have it. I'll see if I can't write a haiku about it at the end of this blog.

What did I do on the vacation? As written on my previous post, I hadn't been able to sleep for some time before I headed down to the big NC. Last Monday, I made a trip to my Great Grandfathers grave to have some reflection time as I had just found out that she has gotten engaged (this happened just recently, long story, don't want to tell it). Anyway, I came up with some solutions at the graveyard and made my way home. Cut to Thursday.

I get into Raleigh airport after 3 and a half or so hours on the plane. She meets me at the airport and we start heading to her place. We had planned on me crashing there for the duration of my stay. It takes about thirty minutes, but we slide right back into our old grind. Verbal attacks back and forth with me holding my own better, now that I have more confidence than I did four years ago. We banter like this until we get to her apartment.

Note: Buy liquor in Raleigh before 9 pm. All of the stores close then.

When we get to the apartment, we change into more comfortable clothes and I toss in Casablanca, which I had brought along, to provide a background for our initial feel out. This took a good 80 minutes and allowed me to air out all of the questions I had had since our breakup in college. They were answered. She went to bed, I tossed in a movie and fell asleep on the couch (after we had finished off the tequila she had left in the apartment).

The next day, I wake up before her and unpack my bags in her office/guest bedroom and start working on a book idea Zod, master of the submarines, and I are hatching. She wakes up a few hours later, we take our showers and head out to walk around a local lake. Great conversation this entire time. There are instances where I find myself without something to say, but she's filling them in as we go along. Now that I think about it, there were only a few times when we had absolutely nothing to say. We get into racism, politics, people we both know, etc. Comfortable conversation between two old friends. We head out to see Sweeny Todd, then look at each other in disgust during the final scene of the movie. Gershwin's Piano Concerto and Sweeny Todd both end the same way, the writer breaks from the previously established pattern and creates a disappointingly uncharacteristic finale. We met up with an old college friend that night at this hopping little bar, I picked up the tab (gotta support the teachers), and we went home after two hours of conversation.

Wait a minute... this is just a list of what we did. What was amazing? What was amazing was the chemistry she and I still had. We picked up where we left off and could add the experiences we've amassed since to the mix. Her wit challenged me to keep up, but we were both vulnerable to open attacks, which we exploited repeatedly. Her abilities as an educator surprised me. She has a clarity in her vision, what she expects to see from the group she's directing, and requires them to reach that level. She is sincere. She is intelligent. Her sense of humor sparkles, as do her eyes when you catch them off guard. We both have eclectic tastes and she embraces new ideas instead of pushing them away, making it easier for me to suggest new things she may enjoy. That's the person I went to see over the weekend. That's the main reason why this vacation rocked.

A secondary reason came in the form of a restaurant we visited. If you ever find yourself in Raleigh looking for a mid-high range dining experience, look up Second Empire Restaurant. The best food I have ever had at a restaurant. I might describe the food in a later post. Right now, I'll just say, wow, I have a new appreciation for scallops.

Life is full of experiences, some good and some bad. If you look to enjoy the experiences themselves, whether or not they are positive, you will find a new level of enjoyment.

Haiku: I can't think of anything that will do what I'm feeling justice. Look up Shakespeare?

Note: Note: She is still engaged. My feelings are mine alone, as far as I can tell. She and I had a wonderful time of it during this weekend, of that I am sure. What the future holds for us, who knows. All I know is that I now can say, I know what love is.