Ramin’s Blog and Stuff

Sending SMS messages from your web server seems like something that’s relatively simple. It is, but what I found was that there are a lot of services that offer this, but for a fee. The fee structure is usually per message. Just do a Yahoo search on “SMS Gateway” and you’ll come across a ton of these.

Going with a paid service might be a good option for you, but there are other options. Almost all carriers provide an Email-to-SMS gateway, and they’re free. Therefore, the other option is to programmatically determine which email address domain to use based on the carrier for the phone number you’re interested in sending the SMS to.

There might be some restrictions on how frequent you can send messages, but I haven’t hit any limitations yet.

Here’s a list of carriers and the email addresses your web server can send an email to in order to send an SMS message to their customers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateways#Email_to_SMS_.2F_Web_to_SMS

Ok, it’s Tuesday morning and I have power. Thank you to the hard working PG&E field workers.

I am extremely frustrated by how PG&E handled the aftermath of the storm and how the outages were dealt with (hence the title of my original post about PG&E being clueless about taking care of its customers). Let me try to summarize the mishaps and what I suggest should have been done. In these types of situations, the first thing I want to have is information. Information about what has happened and what should I expect next, and when should I expect it. I can understand that PG&E may not have the answers in the beginning as they have to come and explore what happened. I do expect that when they know, they keep people informed.

PG&E put together the hotline for people to be able to reach a live person. I cannot believe that PG&E management don’t know that the reason we want to talk to a live person is to get information. The consistent message I got from the automated system and the live people at the hotline was “We don’t know” and “We don’t have any estimates”.

Here’s what went wrong:

• No transparency on the process of evaluation of damages and restoration.
• Somewhere in PG&E’s internal systems they used a process to deal with the queue of requests. I finally got my power restored, but even now PG&E’s hotline has no information about how that happened.
• Having transparency in the process would have allowed me to plan accordingly. If I knew I would be without power for 1 day, I would do something completely different than if I knew I would be without power for 1 week. I chucked so much food from my fridge because I “hoped” the power would be back soon, but it didn’t.
• Incorrectly dealing with the workflow
• PG&E lost/wiped out my tickets at least twice that I know of during the course of the outage.
• Handling Information Technology can be challenging, but for a company that is managing a piece of infrastructure they must be held to a higher level of expectation.
• Misconfigured notification systems
• I got status call-backs. This was good, but following the instructions led me to a disconnected number. Worse yet, those status call-backs automatically wiped out my tickets because I wasn’t able to let them know that I was still having trouble.
• Again, I expect a higher level of service.

I think the storm could have caused more damage, and I think future storms and natural disasters will cause more damage. We should expect that. It’s inevitable.

Let this be a wake up call to PG&E (and more importantly to all of us residents) that PG&E is not able to deal with natural disasters efficiently.

(Note to self: look into getting a power generator and alternative power supply)

It’s Monday afternoon and after several more phone calls to PG&E I find out that my ticket keeps getting flushed at PG&E’s system. Apparently, when the system generates a status call-back, it “assumes” the ticket has been resolved so it closes and flushes the ticket. I guess no one bothered to check the system to make sure they were routing people to the right phone number before closing their tickets (see my previous post).

I guess this is what we get for not having competition in the marketplace. Just pray that you don’t need a real service from these people.

It’s now Monday morning and we’ve been without power for over 3 days. Calls to PG&E outage hotline feels like talking to a computer. The people on the phone do not have any power to do anything other than update tickets.

I thought I was the only one without power in my neighborhood, but I saw my neighbor across the street and she said that they too do not have power. Apparently the power box on the pole is damaged and we’re the only two neighbors that are affected. She said they don’t have anyone to stay with so they’re staying home and are sheltering under a lot of blankets. Poor folks! They too have a child.

Last night I received a “Status Callback” on my cell phone and the message said “Power has been resotred in your area and most people have power back. If you still don’t have power, press 0 to talk to PG&E”. I pressed 0 since I was at the house and there was no power. I ended up with a message “You have reached a non-working PG&E number”. It then hung up on me! Nice!  Can it get any better?!

I called PG&E back directly and tried to explain to the person on the phone. Of course, she was just doing her data entry and had no clue on what to do with this information, so I decided to skip trying to educate her on their system.

Here’s what PG&E website mentions about the outage:

“The majority of outages in San Francisco will be restored on Sunday. Other customers may be out of power until Monday. The majority of outages in the Peninsula Area will be restored late Monday with the exception of the Woodside and Skyline areas which will be restored by Tuesday.”

and

“In west Santa Clara County (Mountain View, Campbell, Cupertino) service is expected to be restored in the urban areas by mid afternoon Monday. The more mountainous areas will not be restored until Wednesday evening.”

Now, I’m not in a moutain area, so I’m assuming there are some confused people in PG&E.

I’ve been without a power since Friday morning. It sucks, but it’s due to the recent storms we’ve had. Friday morning (Jan 4th, 2008), when the storms hit the Northern California, life was normal. The power kept dropping out and coming back on. It finally went completely out around 10am Friday. I incorrectly assumed that it was the entire neighborhood that was without power. In the afternoon, when it started to get dark, I noticed that our neighbors had power. After checking my power boxes in the house I determined that the problem wasn’t at my house, and because all the neighbors around me had power, I suspect the problem is at the power post across the street. This is the power to my house comes in. I called PG&E and told them that I’ve been without a power since morning. The representative on the phone took down my information and said they’re working hard to restore power to everyone.

I called later that night to get an updated status. The lady said the only thing she can tell me is that they put in an estimate for when they’ll restore power, and that is 10pm Saturday. It meant that we had to sleep somewhere else that night since it would be too cold to sleep at the house. I rechecked the breaker box and noticed that there’s a loose wire on the post across the street. I called back and reported that to the man on the phone. He said he noted it on the ticket and he’ll let the dispatcher know so they would send someone quicker. We packed our stuff for the night, packed the kids PJ’s and headed to my in-laws.

In the morning I called to get a updated status. By now it seemed like things were becoming repetitious. The automated message kept saying “There’s a storm-related power outage and we’re working hard to restore power and we cannot provide an estimate for when it’ll be restored”. The person on the phone would say the same thing, but I was hoping that I could get a little more accurate estimate since I was given a 10pm estimate before. The lady on the phone said that the earlier estimate was taken off my case and no estimate is now available. I told her again about the loose wire and she said “Yes, I see that in the ticket”. Well, apparently they don’t care enough about the loose wire to check it out.

We went back home and tried to salvage some of the perishable items from the fridge. I ended up throwing a lot out.

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http://www.musicdiversion.com

http://www.bita.us

When was the last star added to the US flag?

July 4, 1960.
The last new star in the U.S. flag was added after Hawaii became a state, bringing the total to 50.

After an earlier version was declared unconstitutional, an income tax was authorized in the U.S. by the 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913. The basic rate of the first tax was 1 % of income over $3,000 for single and over $4,000 for married couples. We’ve come a long way in tax codes, tax rates and tax brackets, haven’t we?!

Did you know that the oldest bridge in the US with continuous use was built in 1697? The stone-arch Frankford Ave Bridge crosses Pennypack Creek in Philadelphia, PA. A 3-span bridge with a total length of 75 ft., it was constructed as part of the King’s Road, which eventually connected Philadelphia to New York.

Self-service gas stations have been around since 1947, and became popular in the 1970s. They are common fixtures today, but 2 states, Oregon and New Jersey, have laws requiring that all gas be pumped by attendants.Don’t you wish you lived in one of these states?!