"Jim Elbrecht" wrote in message
...
(Doug Miller) wrote:

-snip-

Your electric and gas meters were inside the house? Yeah,
riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.....

Pretty common in the northeast in old houses in the cities.

I've lived in houses in Maryland (built 1971) that have had the meters
inside (Mom HATED that) and in olders houses (built 1941) that have all 3
meters (water, gas, electric) on the outside. Once I lived in a place
(D.C.) that had no electric meter at all. The previous occupants had done
their own hookup to the pole and since it was a second floor apartment, no
one ever caught on while I lived there. I learned later that the utilities
can bill you for usage anyway based on estimated use if the meter is bad or
missing entirely.

My water meter is still in my basement and I've been reading it every
6 months for 25 years. Supposed to go to electronic, remote read
meters this summer.

I imagine the big push is because of liability issues first and workforce
reduction second. It's just another mechanism that causes jobs to
evaporate. I'll be interested in seeing if employment rates ever really
recover in the US. I don't see how that will occur given that all the
current trends are working against it.

I was pleased to read that for the first time, US cars are getting higher
marks for initial quality than foreign ones.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...for-first-tim/

"For the first time ever, J.D. Power and Associates has rated U.S.-brand
vehicles higher than import brands in its prestigious annual Initial Quality
Study. The study - now in its 24th year - is taken as the standard by which
foreign and domestic cars are judged in the auto industry and is frequently
cited in ads."

It only took half a century for us to catch up. There's still hope left.

I'll bet Toyota's runaway cars had something to do with it. BP's troubles
seem to have helped take the heat off Toyoto. I shudder to think what will
take the heat off BP in the same way.

--
Bobby G.