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Yep, had to shovel a path across the patio, and into the grass so my two 6 pounds dawgs could do their business. This overwhelmed grid is the same one that they want everyone to charge their EV's with. I love their performance, but the infrastructure is nowhere near ready.

My neighbor works at a nursing home. Got an emergency call in last night. Didn't even make it out of the driveway and the car got iced in. She later walked to work because it's about a mile away and the old folks were getting cold and hungry.

No power going on 30 hours straight. Got a lot of reading done. Slept on top of the bed in my sleeping bag last night with a puppy to help keep me warm. Currently 53 in the house. We left it as 65° before the power went out, so our house is pretty well sealed! New windows a few years ago really paid off. We moved all of the worthwhile contents of the fridge/ freezer to the back porch this morning. If we don't have power by this evening, we're going to my SiL house. Only five miles away but we have to bring two dogs, a cat, and some essentials with us on the snow and ice. We have a gas stove that we light manually to cook. We can still make tea. However, the gas fireplace (no wood, just fake logs) is a mystery. I got it burning last night and it didn't do a damn thing after an hour of flame. I opened the flue. Are we supposed to shut the glass doors to radiate heat? Seemed like just a big waste of fuel. Lastly, how did this happen? All this money and brainpower in the fastest-growing residential area in the country and no one has thought to build infrastructure to keep up? It seems that if you shout "I'll make jobs" into the wind, Texas politicians line up to give you tax breaks and blow jobs, but no one thinks to get money for life-sustaining infrastructure to maintain it? Get off my lawn!

I heard it was the one-wheelers charging up for an epic snow shred. We're going on 19 hours down. We're 1.5 years in the house and haven't even thought about the fireplace other than putting bottles on the mantle. It's a gas/wood hybrid though, so we had options. But without a ceramic insert and only a couple of hours of smoker wood available, we still had issues. Running a gas fireplace does basically nothing without something to heat up. Well I had an idea here, but that wasn't the biggest problem. Like I said, I hadn't even thought about the fireplace since moving in. And it turned out that we didn't have the square gas key. And it's an odd one, given that the valve is sank 4 inches deep into a 1 inch bore in the fireplace. I scoured my tools for anything that'd work and the best I could find was a needle nose plier and I just couldn't get purchase with it on the valve. Ah well. Give up and bundle up! Hours lata': After not so much as looking at it, @Jessica asked if my Jeep's wheel lug wrench would fit. Well, no, but an immediate light bulb went off! I ran out and grabbed my stock jack tools, and I'll be damned if the jack's square interface tool didn't fit the gas valve perfectly! So now we had a gas fire running...so part A of the plan was back on-line. We went out and collected 5 good sized garden pavers to heat up in the gas fireplace. Great and cozy success. We even heated up a frozen pizza and boiled some water for grits on top of the fire.

I have Pedernales was without power for 12 hours. Just came back on an hour ago. Also without water.

Not a lot of data out there. Found this GMBN video very helpful, basically they recommend 10 days of rest after symptoms are gone. I am currently recovering from a mild case, and have a growing concern that my lungs will never be the same. i breezed through the illness, so i assumed a full recovery. Now 4 days after symptoms are gone, i can still feel a shortness of breathe lingering. of course, this freezing, dry climate is not helping the situation. anyone else have experience after a mild case? or recommendations on rest?

It's a PITA for sure but been enjoying burning some mesquite the last week. Sexy coalbed for the win!

Our wives have that in common, they're both married to people with no common sense.

My wife and I both had it, thanks to her job. We both had mild cases mine was a bit worse than hers. It was a full two weeks to feel ok but it was three weeks for full recovery for us. We didn't have any lung issues no cough or fever. Worst of it for me was vertigo. so for us three weeks was back to normal.

Fan to move the air.

Yeah, and after more than 10 years it still glows. All I do is use a spray cleaner for the logs that has to be used while they're hot.

I blame e-mtbs.

I imagine you could say this about everyone. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Once I got off the roads it was definitely worth the effort to get out for just a short ride today. Hadn’t ridden in the snow for a long time- it’s still great fun.

Hell, that's all I have🤣

Makes good sense. Wife keeps reminding me I have no common sense.

Gas fireplaces come in two configurations: vented and ventless. Vented gas logs produce carbon monoxide emissions so your fireplace must have a chimney or flue. Ventless logs do not put off these emissions so no chimney or flue is needed, and the heat is more likely to stay in your space.

Does yours have the little pieces of fluff that glow like embers? It really makes the fire look real.

Genius! Gas fire place but not gas cook top? I don't understand these houses that have gas service but electric cooking appliances. Gas is so much better to cook with. My wife just got me to buy a gas log for our fireplace five days ago. Unbelievably good timing. We've been really enjoying it. It was also reassuring to have when our power went out for a few hours Friday morning. Knock wood we've been on since then.

Interestingly, the other side of the coin is if you have an EV it could sell energy back in peak periods if you so desire. We need more distributed generation to improve the grid.

Lost power last week for a few hours but today has been fine. We will see as the night goes on. Shoveled sidewalks for ourselves and neighbors. Driveway is 8ft long and I have a lifted 4wd tacoma so not worried about needing to GTFO

We really need to get out and ride soon if we're discussing 15 year old personal electronics on a MTBing site. I fear for what discussion comes next...

Yeah I had read ERCOT, Austin Power and PEC saying to turn breakers off major appliances once power goes out so as to prevent a surge from everyone pulling hundreds of amps at the same time when power comes back on. I left a single 20A circuit on so I could tell when power came back. My oven stove and water heater are still off. Just the heat pump indoor/outdoor units and emergency heat circuit are 300A in breakers total. My cold weather riding gear base layers and my MSR Jet Boil have sure come in handy! I just loaned my neighbor a halogen work light he's putting in the water meter hole and has other heat lamps pointing at water filter pipes. I have water indoors but all my bibs are frozen. Those little styrofoam cups can't do anything about so many days below freezing and so many hours this cold.

I'm sure he had other issues the LSD only accelerated what would have been anyway.

Mopar certified technician right there. Can tell by the Mopar M on his shirt😂

Yeah we've been shoveling too, mostly so our rat-size dog can walk and go pee. As to the outages, work people join in on those calls so I got some info. There are plants offline that will be coming back online, there are areas that cannot power down b/c they don't think they will come back up, there are areas that don't power down b/c they're on the grid that supplies hospitals, 911 centers, EMS/fire/police, etc. So it seems like some large blocks are being shut off for long periods of time. Even the ones that power back up are having problems (people not turning off their breakers then staging stuff back on). PEC has been doing a bit better, at least in our neighborhood. We lost power for 4 hours. I left AC/furnace off for an extra hour and a half since we can deal with it with clothing. People are having to be rescued by fire trucks or neighbors b/c they have no power and their house is in the 30's and they hew newborns and they can't make up the hill to go to a hotetl.

I did 2.5 miles. On foot. Some idiot in a convertible got halfway up the Shoal Creek hill, stalled out and then got stuck. Started spinning his wheels, I asked if he knew what he was doing. He appeared to not need my help (even though he did) so I kept walking. This is why I will not drive. I can drive in this shit, but Texans cannot. And I would be on the road with them.

did 5-6 miles today, giggling like an idiot the whole time😁

"Wintry mix." It must be warmer up high. At these Temps, it should just be fluffy white.

Morse kills it on this bad-ass cover of an American Top 40 classic!

Our oak tree in the backyard didn’t fair too well during Thursday’s storm. I’m really impressed with the 40V Ryobi chainsaw I bought. Got everything cut up with one 5ah battery. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Quick edit from Monday. Chickened out on the second drop in snail but was too tired to go back up

You'd have to be an idiot to ride in this weather.

Well we only had power for an hour.