D'oh! Every truck for every blue collar trade for 1000 miles around Chicago sports a JULIE bumper sticker. That’s the Joint Utility Locating Information for Excavators, whose motto, “Call before you dig” isn’t particularly catchy or interesting, but that motto has nonetheless averted any number of disasters that would otherwise have been caused by moronic, tired, distracted, or overzealous guys who need to dig trenches or pits for something or another. Had those couple of guys slapping their foreheads in L.A. this afternoon taken the time to go through the steps

4 STEPS TO SAFE DIGGING

• CALL before you dig.
• WAIT the required amount of time (2 workings days).
• RESPECT the marks.
• DIG with care.

then most of L.A. wouldn’t have been without power for a chunk of this afternoon, and you, gentle reader, wouldn’t have been without this website, which is hosted by L.A.’s Dreamhost.com, who, aside from city-wide power outages, provide excellent webhosting services for ridiculously cheap prices. Sorry if you were jonesing.

That's the beauty of RSS, I didn't even know you were down :-).