Day four of no power and no Internet. This big tree is the reason. One among hundreds in the area, but this is the one that took out *our* power and Internet.

PGE (Portland General Electric) claims we should get power back by 10pm today, but the ice storm arrives today, so we'll see.

Edit: well, it looks like PGE fixed the outage by just removing me from the outage database, not by actually reconnecting power. That was the second time that happened, so I re-re-reported the outage. Not that I was hugely optimistic about the 10pm timeframe, but it looks even less likely now.

@torvalds its almost comedic

@torvalds Four days, yikes. Stay safe!

@torvalds No commits on that trunk.

@ioletsgo @torvalds kernel development hindered due to the working tree having to be reset

@torvalds is that your bmw there?

@torvalds hoping things get sorted out over there!

@torvalds where I live, this happens every other winter, but tends to get fixed a bit quicker.

I wish those power lines were in the ground where they can't be damaged so easily.

@torvalds yeahhh that's not good...
Bit of a sticky situation there.

@torvalds Adopt the tree and name him Merkle! 😂 😜

The reason why it’s taking so long is mostly that we’re in a fairly sparsely populated area on the outskirts of town. So not only do we have a lot of these big trees around, PGE also always ends up prioritizing the areas with many more customers affected.

But it doesn’t help that this really is a pretty massive tree, and it has also fallen in a way that makes it hard to remove, with the middle unsupported.

One of our neighbors has a brother that is a logger, and he apparently thought you might want two trucks to get it out: one to support the tree while the other cuts it from above.

Me not being a logger just nodded wisely.

RE: https://social.kernel.org/objects/98d5c1fa-1f94-452d-868c-f49b6f250579

@shibao @torvalds mogged that powerl*ne thats for sure

@torvalds I hope that everything is back online for you soon!

@torvalds stay safe, Linus

@torvalds Not a logger either, but I believe loggers call that kind of thing "widowmakers".

@torvalds You could maybe try to cut it from below.

(The problem is that if the side you cut is compressed by the bending direction, your saw gets stuck.)

The downside of cutting from below is that you then work your saw against gravity instead of with it (unless you put it on a big lever…).

And you probably shouldn't /stand/ below it while you cut. The more I think about it, the more I wish for a chainsaw on a big stick.

@torvalds it's always incredibly funny – though for you probably less than me right now, I apologize – that despite all the tech we have, whenever nature decides to do anything of even mediocre size at all the best we can do is catch-up eventually.

@torvalds that tree is definitely... something.
Just wow they don't bother getting rid of A TREE THAT IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAMN ROAD.

the trees are fighting back!
@torvalds

@torvalds 🤞

@wolf480pl in our immediate neighborhood the power lines are all underground. But the power comes through these feeder lines that are all above ground.

We used to have fairly regular short outages every winter as smaller branches fell on lines and shorted things out. The lines have gotten replaced and are all “branch safe” these days, and our power is actually very reliable now.

But “branch safe” is not “huge #$!?& tree safe”. So now we have these big outages when things really go south.

@torvalds Making me wonder... should #InvestInOpen #POSI https://openscholarlyinfrastructure.org/ care about physical #infrastructure too? Bus factor needing to be higher if maintainers live in countries suffering from poor healthcare, underinvestment in public infrastructure, etc.

@torvalds git log

@torvalds If you would've lived in Sweden and this happened, it would probably take a month minimum. We are not very efficient when it comes to road work and clearing things for emergencies. Atleast not in the south. No idea about the middle and nothern part. So you are very lucky that you don't have to deal with that long of a service.

@Vincent392 that tree is in the middle of a road that isn’t very central. There were hundreds of trees down on much more important roads, I’m afraid.

Even in our immediate neighborhood, you could just drive the other way and get out. So the road being blocked is a relatively minor inconvenience.

The electricity being out and our house being rather cold is the bigger inconvenience. But there were 150k PGE customers without electricity, and sadly me being inconvenienced was apparently not the priority to PGE that it clearly should have been.

When I’m elected Grand Poobah, there will be some changes around here.

@torvalds yikes that's a big tree! I hope they can remove it and restore power before the next storm!

@torvalds

Why haven't we achieved
"self-healing"networks, grids?

#internet

@torvalds But really, we're in the same area but lucky enough to have our power restored quickly (this year). It's been a crazy weekend and I'm hoping the coming ice storm won't be as rough.

@torvalds "GMove? What about TreeMove?"

@torvalds pff who needs internet 🤷 ;-)

We just drive around with chainsaws and cut them ourselves down here.

I cut a large maple to allow access a while back, and was asked how I managed to do it with a small bar. I told them you just alternate cuts from the top and bottom so you don’t get wedged.

@torvalds @Vincent392 This just in: Linus Torvalds wants to abolish the American suburbs. (good on him)

@torvalds is this an actual account of torvalds or some advanced parody account

@torvalds I believe that tree is in a detached state.

@torvalds I hope that you get your power back soon!

@torvalds just for comparison, ESB takes around 6 MONTHS for fiber.
And then we have things that have never happened cough cough, DART Underground.
Still, could be worse.

@torvalds I hope you have a generator of some sort.

@torvalds
not so massive i think. about 1 meter in diameter
You need a chainsaw and two men. you make three cuts and put two logs on the sides of the road. less than an hour and you can drive
but you may encounter difficulties in cutting the tree. you need a professional lumberman

@torvalds Yeah - that's stretching your data plan way too far...

@monsieuricon @torvalds underrated Toot 👆

@torvalds Fingers crossed you get it back before the storm

@torvalds storm damaged wood is very dangerous. It has strong tensions that you can't see and that suddenly release during cutting. You have to have a lot of experience to recognize the danger

@torvalds Next Linux version should be called"Timber".

@mdwalters @torvalds same. Also thanks for Linux!

@jeff @torvalds When you can put voltage into a routable packet, maybe...

@torvalds Our situation is similar here, and I'm only about 20 min from San Francisco. In March last year, we were without power for four days in a row, and several other shorter periods. So far this year we've only been out a couple of times for a few hours. I hope for you that road isn't the only way out!

@torvalds

Took out your road, too.
3 for one, not even sneaker net.

@torvalds Failed rebase - visualized. ​

@torvalds I assume without power != without heating. It looks freezing!

@torvalds At least now you've got free firewood.

@torvalds I wonder if this kind of shenanigans would also happen in your native Finland.

@torvalds time to try NetBSD

@torvalds If it were me, I'd be out there with my fusion splicer fixing it myself :)

@torvalds

Can you zip and split this logfile?

@torvalds But mobile internet still works?

@torvalds the weather in Sweden isn't much better atm.

@torvalds

PGE, obviously, need more skateboards

@torvalds good luck getting your power back. Internet can wait for a few days, but being without power can be annoying...

@torvalds We usually manage to call the power company before damage is done :)

@szescstopni @torvalds

#polesie

@torvalds My family had to abandon ship when the indoor temp of our house (NW hills) started to approach refrigerator levels.

While I can't blame PGE for the outage, I feel like their ability to communicate status updates or even rough timelines leaves a lot to be desired.

@torvalds Very sincerely hope things get better and soon.

Prayers for you.

@tokensane @torvalds A widowmaker is a tree that gets hung up in another while being felled. One that’s already on the ground is a log.

@torvalds the secret is an undercut from the bottom about an 1/8 up then cut straight down. It doesn’t spring back up that way and just drops. Still, that’s a huge log to cut. Not sure an even a massive 24” bar would go through it.

@torvalds

"Fixing" outages by removing people from the database should be actually criminal. In Australia we have Optus doing not the same thing, but similarly shady practices to improve their apparent numbers. Not sure who they think they're fooling though.

@torvalds Oof! Ironically, we're about to be without power, too! Our electric company has decided that today would be a good day to take out power for a couple hours... in the middle of the day. 😬

@torvalds As someone who rely on power for work, wouldn't be a good idea to invest on some energy generator and/or solar panels?

@torvalds have you considered trying "git log" on it

> it looks like PGE fixed the outage by just removing me from the outage database, not by actually reconnecting power.

It seems they hired somebody from Russia.

I hope power will be restored for real soon.

@mhkn @torvalds It’s real, his account is on the official kernel.org instance

@torvalds Sad. What a SPOF.
Kernel hackers need to insist that genetors should be included in Rust by default. Or use JS.

@torvalds I really hope your power is restored soon!

@torvalds Tell those Ewoks that Trump won't come to Oregon until May 21...