Portlander here and experienced very similar circumstances to what is described in that post just before Stanich's closed.

I was there just over a year ago, and it was pretty bad then too. We waited probably 90 minutes for burgers at lunchtime the last time we went.

This is still a major problem in distribution. Some of the best workers are in their late 50s and they are familiar with older equipment in the field that the younger guys may have never seen.

They would much rather use pen and paper to report what they did or didn’t do, with little appreciation for the reporting that could be done with a bit of input on the computer.

Work with a number of utilities in distribution. Happy to answer any questions.

There is more to the story around being banned from United than he states in the article. It wasn't about the lying, it was what he was doing after he received the certs.

I don't think this necessarily signals the end of Matrix ITA. In fact, QPX Express and the Matrix are completely unrelated.

And, "QPX Express was a lower-touch way to let companies start experimenting with QPX without needing full on biz-dev contract cycles", per someone I know with some inside knowledge.

I used to use Matrix but stopped using it after finding that a lot of the time it doesn't actually catch certain deals available only on airline websites themselves. Now I'm back to individually searching every airline website.

It recently received a slight update and has been working better. My understanding is that developers are still actively monitoring it.

I worked on some small pieces of things mentioned in the article, specifically around the maintenance and reliability of the underground network in Manhattan.

There is a mix of submersible transformers and those that can handle water but can't be submersed in the city. The former are usually placed in areas that are prone to flooding, they are much more expensive than a regular transformer since they are basically waterproof and have a number of extra features built into them so they require less maintenance.

In Manhattan proper, the worst enemies of the underground network are salt + water and the build up of gases. Salt and water + eletricity = corrosion which leads to burnouts. There has been a significant move to try and preemptively visit underground vaults and clear them of the salty water after a snow melt.

Most underground cabling is enclosed in an oil filled casing. Over time these wear and leak. Those gases can fill the underground transformer vaults and lead to explosions. These events are usually pretty well documented and again, ConEdison has been putting procedures and inspection routines that help prevent these.

What is amazing about the Manhattan and Brooklyn networks is how resilient they are simply by the simplicity of design. A transformer outage in a certain area can go almost completely unnoticed by citizens because of the control centers around the city and how they will reroute power. It's something that doesn't exist just about anywhere else and allows crews to isolate issues and perform maintenance when needed.