Designed to Fail.

I cannot comprehend why homes and other buildings constructed in tornado alley are built of match sticks that blow apart into a hundred thousand pieces when the first storm comes by. Its not like the people who live there don't know that they are living with tornadoes. Its not like they don't know that its only a matter of time until the wind comes and blows it away.

Several decades ago I read a study done by an engineering professor from the University of Iowa. They suggested some modest improvements to the structure of homes so that they would withstand the force of a tornado. He estimated that structural improvements would cost about 10% more. Engineering is not all that complicated. Its not like we don't have competent engineers who can design structures for EXPECTED winds. Its not like our ancestors haven't been building homes for a million years.

Last year in Alabama 250 people died and thousands more were injured when their crackerbox homes blew apart. One might expect that engineers, building standards committees, local building code officials, and government regulations would notice all the death and destruction. One might think that mindless liberals have a brain. Neither assumption would be true. In today's news we read of a man who's home blew away last year, so he built a new home just as fragile and flimsy as his previous home. It lasted 10 months. The new home was built just as poorly as his first home, and it blew apart just as easily. They are Designed To Fail. See other story.

It wouldn't take that much. Much of the damage is caused by lift, the rest is side pressure and damage from flying debris coming from your neighbor's house. The lift pressure and side pressure are not infinite. They are known and calculable. If you have 100 pounds of lift per square foot of house, build a house that weighs 200 pounds per square foot. Put a foot of concrete on your foot, for example. Put the concrete on the ground and tie your roof down with wood posts or steel straps. It isn't that hard. All it takes is half a brain and the decision to do it.

The 250 deaths last year, and those this week are the direct fault of home builders and code officials who sell crackerbox homes to unsuspecting buyers that don't know any better. They should be hanged for professional neglegence causing the death of 250 people. Most of the public wrongly believes that the homes they buy, the ones “built to code” are adequately designed for the area they are built. The fools who bought and live in the homes are at fault too, of course. Anyone living in a tornado area should demand that adequate structural strength is designed and constructed into the home. There is no excuse whatsoever for a fool to have his replacement home blown away 10 months later. That's just stupid. I'll bet he voted for Odumbo. That's just how stupid it is.

You can fix homes that blew away, but you can't fix STUPID!

HughesNet Really Sucks!

Update February 10, 2010

The HughesNet 9000 modem lasted for a little less than a year. It died suddenly leaving Bob without Internet service. Phoning the HughesNet All-India technical support made it worse. Prior to phoning the "support" person the modem status screen said that both its transmit and receive were functional but it wouldn't find a web site. After the HughesNet tech "support" interacted with it, the modem no longer would even try to transmit. They quoted $125 to send a technician out to look at the hardware. The technician spent 2 hours fiddling with the equipment and said he couldn't fix it. They will send someone else sometime next week.

The problem is most likely at the HughesNet Control Center, the system load shedding probably dropped customers who had been on for a year to free space for big commercial customers, and for new customers. Their management policy and practices are criminal. See HughesNet Still Sucks.


Update February 20, 2009

Despite what they promise on their glitzy TV commercials, the functional speed of HughesNet service is never close to the "up to" that they claim, and continues to decline over time. It gets slower and slower as long term customers get pushed lower and lower on their priority tree. Their HughesNet web terminal host computers serve the priority customers first, and then the lower priority customers when they have time. New customers are added to the top, and long term customers get what’s left. Eventually it becomes as slow as dial up phone service.

After 3 years, Bob’s HughesNet service not only was sloooooooooooooow, but it stopped working at all during peak evening usage hours. Bob phoned the HughesNet Asians who are euphemistically called “customer support.” Their job is to cause the customer to perform a series of useless tests until he becomes tired of complaining and goes away. HughesNet also has “level 2” support technicians, but they still don’t have any authority to raise your priority assignment until you get to their “level 3” technicians who are Americans and can actually speak good English. It is the job of the level 1 Asians not to allow you to speak to the level 3 technicians who have better things to do than take care of customers.

The Level 1 Asians recommended that Bob “upgrade” from the “DirectWay” DW 7000 model modem to a “new” HughesNet HN7000s modem. He said that HughesNet could not fix my problems (dropping out during peak usage periods) unless I paid to “upgrade” my modem. The cost of the HN 7000 modem was going to be $349 counting a service technician to install it.

Bob checked the HughesNet web site and found that they have not provided the 7000 series to new customers for almost a year, since last March. They were demanding that Bob pay over $300 to “upgrade” to an obsolete 7000 series which (according to the local HughesNet installer) is not significantly different from the DirectWay modem except that it says “Hughes” on it. Hughes bought or took over the service from DirectWay about the time that Bob became a customer. “We no longer support the DW modems,” said the Asian “customer service” operator.

New HughesNet customers have been getting a new HN9000 series modem since last March. Their own web site doesn’t even mention the 7000 series at all except when an existing customer requests an “upgrade.”

Bob called the Customer Service Asians back the next day and demanded to speak to someone who could address the change in service during peak hours, and/or provide a real upgrade to the 9000 series modems. Bob must have upset him because my HughesNet service went from bad to not functioning at all while I was talking to him. He refused to consider any options other than paying to “upgrade” to the now obsolete “HughesNet” 7000 modem. After that “customer service“ from Hughes, Bob has been without an Internet connection for about 2 weeks.

Bob phoned the Hughes account department to inform them that Bob would not be paying their bill as long as Hughes is refusing to provide service, and eventually was told that Bob would have to cancel the account in order to be eligible, as a “new” customer, for the 9000 series modems. I told her to cancel my account.

Bob eventually tracked down the local HughesNet installer and signed up for a new account with the new 9000 modem. The local technician said that the “upgrade” HN 7000 modem is no better than the DirectWay DW 7000 modem. He said that he often replaces the 7000 series with the 9000 series because the HN 7000 isn’t worth shit.

There is one other satellite direct Internet provider called “Wild Blue.” According to my installer, they used to sell a lot of Wild Blue installations, but had nothing but trouble with the modems and connections. They also are reported to have very shoddy billing and business practices. Wild Blue is apparently even worse than HughesNet. What ever happened to companies who take care to do a good job and serve their customers?

So Bob is back on-line from home again. There is a wire running across the yard on the snow, and through an open window, but its connected.

If you live in town where Comcast is available don’t ever get HughesNet. Even the phone company now has better service in most places. HughesNet really sucks. Lies and bad service is how they work. If Bob lived anywhere that any other broadband service is available, Hughes would be dumped immediately. At least with Comcast you don’t have to trudge out into the snow to sweep off your dish, it’s a lot faster, and doesn‘t limit your total usage.

Original Article April 24, 2006
I subscribed to HughesNet satellite direct Internet. It was DirecWay Internet. I've had it for about a month now and it's the biggest piece of crap I've ever had since I've been on-line. Bob has been on line since the days of Commodore computers and 300 baud bulletin boards. Bob has seen the good and the bad, and Hughes satellite direct Internet service is expensive crapola. About 1 day out of 2 it goes off-line and stays off line for hours. Their "technical support" phone number gives you an endless recording recommending their on-line support web site, which you can't access since their crap Internet service is down. Every other company I've dealt with at least would talk to their customers, and some of them actually have technical support available. For example, I subscribed to Comcast cable Internet for several years. Their service only went out about once a year, and when I messed something up their technical support was always available for help. Not with HughesNet crap. So fare I've never been able to talk to a live support person, and by now she doesn't want to hear the things I would tell her about how crappy their lack of service has been. As a company, HughesNet makes AOL seem like heaven. I wish we still lived where Comcast serves. HughesNet (DirecWay) has got to be the worst company I've ever tried to deal with. They don't provide the service they promise, and they won't talk to their customers.

Does anyone have a software that will phone their number every 15 seconds? I'd love to call their "customer assistance" line a few hundred thousand times. I'm liable to pack the whole dish up and give it back to them and tell them to sue me. They have failed utterly to provide the service they promised.

Put Down the Landing Gear

Anyone who has read or watched the news this week has seen a lot of footage of a US Air jet that landed hard in the Hudson River after takeoff from New York. A few of the passengers were injured but none were killed. Most of the plane remained in one piece, and it floated. Ferry boats picked up passengers from the frigid water before they succumbed to hypothermia.

The usual pundits are heaping accolades on the pilot of the doomed plane who chose the Hudson River rather than some street full of buildings, and who managed to miss all bridges and river traffic with the doomed airplane. He and the passengers were extremely lucky to have survived. Most of the time a plane hitting water comes apart in several pieces and many of the passengers are killed by sharp metal edges and high speed impact, or drowned. They were very lucky. The wreckage has been hoisted out of the river today and we see the ripped up under side of the airplane. One engine was ripped off by the impact with the water and the other engine was ripped apart but still clinging to a wing. Much of the aluminum skin on the bottom of the plane was ripped apart. They were very lucky. Another plane crash into water is sometimes seen on one of those “Worst Video” disaster programs as the other plane cartwheels and kills half the passengers.

Badly damaged Airbus

Back in the late 1960s while Bob worked in the structural test engineering division at the Boeing Aircraft Company the 727 airplanes were the new thing. Unlike previous 707 planes the 727 had a much smaller wing that was efficient at high speed. Without power the small wing 727 would glide like a rock. When experienced pilots moved from the 707 to the new 727 many of them tried to land the new plane the way they had always landed the older 707s. Standard practice was to shut the engines down to idle and glide onto the runway. That didn't work with the 727 and several pilots came down short of the runway because the new 727 didn’t glide well or far. Engines used in the late 1960s took up to 30 seconds to spool up to full power from idle. Once the pilot figured out that he wasn’t going to make the runway, he couldn’t get power in time to save the plane from a crash landing short of the field.

Two of the crashed 727s came down in water, in San Francisco and Boston where the airport is next to the bay. Unlike the US Air crash in the Hudson, the 727s were prepared for a normal landing on the airfield. They had their LANDING GEAR extended. They suffered virtually NO DAMAGE at all other than salt water corrosion.

Boeing engineers who evaluate every crash of a Boeing plane concluded that the LANDING GEAR deployment saved the plane and the passengers. The landing gear is the strongest part of an airplane, and is the ONLY part of the plane that is strong enough to hit the ground, or the water, without suffering major damage. At 150 mph water acts almost like a solid, deflecting any attempted penetration. The landing gear skid first and then sink in while transferring huge momentum of the plane into the water without suffering structural failure.

Boeing structural engineers concluded that pilots had always previously been landing wrong in water ditch situations. Pilot training throughout the history of aviation tells pilots to keep the landing gear up and pretend the plane is a “flying boat” for a water ditch landing. Unfortunately a flying boat is much stronger and shaped different than the bottom of a regularly plane. A regular plane’s underbelly rips apart, the wings usually catch a wave, and the plane tumbles and tears apart into several sections. Even WW II fighter planes that ended up in water usually ended up upside down. After evaluating the 727 crash landing short of runways with the landing gear down, Boeing engineering concluded that pilots should always put the landing gear down and land as if its solid ground. A plane ditching in water with the landing gear down will remain intact and none of the passengers will be injured or killed. Somehow this jewel of safety information has not been transmitted to pilot training. Pilots are not trained to put down the landing gear for a water landing.

The US Air pilot who has received so many accolades in New York was very lucky, not very smart. He was lucky to land in calm water without waves to catch one wing first and flip the plane sideways. He was lucky that the engines dragged water uniformly. He was lucky that only the bottom of the plane was ripped apart by the force of the water. He was lucky that the top part of the plane held together. The landing gear is the only part of the plane that is strong enough to hit the water without severe damage. The plane that landed in the Hudson River was an Airbus rather than a Boeing plane, but the structural strength of the landing gear is universal to all planes.


Destroyed Airbus on a barge

There were some people injured on the US Airways plane. One woman suffered two broken legs. A stewardess was badly cut. Several other people were also injured. He failed to do the most important thing when landing on water, but got away without anyone being killed.

To the pilots who may read this, do some research. Find out about putting the landing gear down. And don’t try to pretend you are piloting a flying boat. It doesn’t work that way. If you don’t put down the landing gear people are going to be injured and perhaps many will be killed.

Hang the Bastards!

Many of the news reports coming from Louisiana after hurricane Gustov deal with the collapse of the electrical power system. The Governor of Louisiana has apparently asked President Bush to help find like crews from other states to come to Louisiana to help rebuild the electrical system. As Bob has previously observed, the system is DESIGNED TO FAIL whenever the wind blows. Read Failure After Failure

Here are some questions for everyone who lives along the gulf coast:

Why isn’t the electrical system designend and constructed to be hurricane resistant in a known hurrican zone?

Why aren’t the managers and engineers responsible for the electrical system being charged with criminal malfeasance and dereliction of duty for failing to design and install hurrican resistant system in a known hurrican zone?

Failure after Failure

A year ago Bob wrote about the faulty design and construction of the electric power distribution system in the US, a system that is DESIGNED TO FAIL. Last year in Seattle 50 people died while living without electricity. Some froze to death and some died of carbon monoxide trying to cook or stay warm from fuel fired heat sources. Our whole society is dependent on our electric appliances. Our heating systems won’t work without electricity, not even our oil or gas fueled furnaces. We have come to think of our electricity as always there, but the whole system is poorly designed and very shoddy construction. It is designed to fail, and to kill people when it fails.

After two million people in Seattle suffered through a winter blizzard without electricity last year, and watched in horror as 50 people died, one might think that there would be a public demand for improvements in the electric distribution system. One might think that the public might demand that the very shaky and unstable electric system be made more robust, be designed to survive a modest storm. But nothing has been done.

According to this week’s news, the Seattle area experienced its first storm of this year and 280,000 people are without electric service. The totally crap power grid failed again when the first autumn wind blew. It holds up in the summer, in nice weather, when our comfort and our very lives are not at risk. But its designed to fail and fall down with the first autumn wind that blows. Read story The bungling idiots at Seattle City Light, Puget Sound Power, and other greedy money grabbing incompetents ought to be summarily fired for malfeasance of their responsibility as design engineers, and the management of those firms should be held criminally liable for dereliction of their responsibility to the public.

Seattle, of course, is not unique. The electric grid all across America is built much the same. In the Southeastern US this week there are also several areas where the electric grid has failed.

We are not talking about extreme conditions such as the center of a tornado. Such extreme conditions affect only a small area, though that area is subjected to extreme violence. Some buildings such as schools in tornado alley must be designed to withstand even the most extreme storms and to protect children housed inside. Failure to design adequate storm resistant schools is criminal malicious malfeasance of design responsibility. The electric grid could be excused for failure during a limited area extreme storm such as a tornado where the surrounding area is not affected. It can be quickly restored to buildings in the small affected area. That does not excuse an electric grid that fails during normal expected weather conditions such as annual wind, rain, and snow storms. Allowing such a necessary part of modern life to be hung on a shoestring and vulnerable in the face of normal expected weather is unconscionable.

We need to wake up people. We can not accept such horrible shoddy design and construction of such an important part of our lives. The reason it’s built so cheaply is because the utility owners are getting rich on the money that should be spent to construct a decent reliable system. There is no excuse for it, and we ought not accept it. Our necessary utilities are designed to fail That is not acceptable.