Mr. Toy's Mental Notes

Someone on a discussion forum directed me to this website for the Desal Response Group. It provides the most concise explanation I have yet seen for the proposed Monterey Regional Water Project, which would build a desalination plant to provide for Peninsula water needs. The more I look into this project the less I understand it. The physical plant seems straightforward enough. A desal plant in Marina, and a pipeline to The Peninsula. All well and good. What makes my head spin is the array of different agencies who would have responsibility for the project. Apparently, one agency, the Monterey County Water Resources Agency, would own the intake pipes. Another, the Marina Coast Water District, would own the desal plant while Cal-Am ratepayers (you and I) would pay for it. Yet Cal-Am would only have control over the pipeline to the Peninsula. Yet another agency would be responsible for the salty water discharged back into the bay. And the Monterey Peninsula Water Management ...

Last week we had a little adventure with Comcast cable TV technical support. On Tuesday July 27th, we noticed that our on-screen program guide had disappeared, along with On-Demand service and every other on-screen display. We could still watch TV, but had to use the newspaper TV listings (remember those?) to decide what to watch. The first thing I tried to solve the problem was to reboot the cable box by disconnecting the power for a few seconds and plugging it back in. That trick worked for some other problems we've had, but not this time.   When the problem persisted into Wednesday I called Comcast and got a woman with an accent so thick I had to keep asking her to repeat things. She said she was sending a signal to our box to do something, but nothing happened. She then concluded that we needed a technician, and said one could be sent to our home a week from Friday. What? Nine days? I protested that was too long to wait. After all, I told her, the last time we needed se...