Interesting ripples from Katrina

[dvandom]

One of the front page stories in the local paper today is about how a traffic signal downtown is broken, and won't be fixed for months because of Katrina. It's not that a major traffic signal maker is in the strike zone of the hurricane...it's more interesting than that.

Stoplight manufacturing is fairly predictable, all in all. You need X new units per year for new developments Y units per year for repairs due to accidents, storms, and simple wearing out. And while the manufacturers have some ability to increase capacity, Katrina has overwhelmed that and then some. Priority is being given to replacing all the destroyed signals on the Gulf Coast, so any lower priority signals are just going to have to wait a few months. Trained personnel are also at a premium, so you won't see parts simply shifted from really low priority lights to low priority ones.

Ripples. I wonder what ripples we'll see next, or if we'll even recognize them when we do see 'em?

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Cynical type that I am, I have to wonder how many such ripples are even true, and how many are creative PR wonks at these companies going, "Why can't we get off our asses and fix your light before next June? Well, ummmm... it was the storm! Yeah, that's it, that's the ticket... the storm. You don't want to question that too closely, do you? You'd seem horribly insensitive to all those poor people who got caught up in the storm and its terrible aftermath."

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

That's deeply amusing to me for an entirely different reason. The local city-news channel (3, I guess), which has rotating blocks of text on city-interest snippets like meetings or community events, had this story up at least five days ago, probably even longer.

So my question is did nobody at the Mercury watch channel 3 for almost a week -- not that I can blame them -- or was there another reason this story stayed out of the paper for several days only to get front-page play on, geez, a Sunday?

These are the things I notice....

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Deciding what goes in a paper when, and where it runs, is an interesting business (said the former newspaper editor). It could be as simple as "the editor thought it was cute, but not particularly important, so it had to wait for a slow day, and then Sunday was really slow, so it wound up on 1." Or, who knows, maybe they were under intense pressure from the massive and wealthy traffic-light-manufacturers' lobby not to publicize their plight, and it took the Sunday editor to make a bold, defiant stand. :)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've done my time in paper budget meetings. It's just that the Mercury is a paper I wouldn't be surprised to see run a nine-part special on "Your pocket lint and you" on front above the fold during a civil war....

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Well, hey, why not? Maybe the readers are more interested in lint. Let The New York Times shoulder all that heavy civil war stuff. :)

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

People watch Channel 3? Seriously, I only switch to 3 in order to use the DVD player.

The story's below the fold, and it looks like it's actually two stories merged into one. There's also a chunk on the "continued on the back page" part about a local mailbox manufacturer being asked to drop everything and concentrate on gulf coast restoration efforts.

So maybe the editor got the stoplight story days ago, but decided it wasn't enough to run (or ran a capsule version buried inside where I didn't see it), then got the Auth-Florence piece yesterday and merged the two.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Eh, I'm willing to take it at face value in this case, at least. Seriously, it's not like you normally need to replace the stoplights for several entire cities at once. Even after a major sports win and its attendant riots. :)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I watch channel 3 for the same reason I watch channel 21: schaudenfreude. I love counting the number of times they misspell or miscapitalize words (my favorite from #21 a few years back described K-State's next opponent, Oregon State, as "Organ State"). And they've got a good habit of not de-smart-quoting their text, so instead of punctuation up pops a rectangle outline....

Though I confess I think they've gotten better recently. Not nearly as funny as #73, which had the same still-frame of a person in mid-syllable for about a week....

[z4nd4r.livejournal.com]

Channel 3 here in Tulsa is the cable company's channel. They'll show local HS sports or pick up broadcast feeds for STL Cardinal games...

So, I'll watch the Cards' games :)

[j-anderson123.livejournal.com]

It's like the typical eBay scumbag seller who thinks they can wait 4-25 days after you pay to ship your item. Then charges you Priority prices and ships first class.

Expedient service isn't expected anymore. It's the same reason it takes the service people an hour to rotate your tires when there's no other cars ahead of you, even though that electric wrench takes a tire off in 15 seconds. They know they can take their sweet ass time and you'll be forced to like it.

Or better yet, why game stores will only give you 1/4 of their sale price on a game instead of a fair 1/2. Because they know they can. "Service with a middle finger".