While some are offended these days to be called "sheep", the term really seems to apply to people who did nothing to prepare for the recent winter storm. Granted, there are many senior citizens and others who have good reason for not preparing their homes for the severe cold that forecasters told everyone was coming. Call me judgemental if you like, but there is no excuse for 20 or 30 somethings to have no clue when it comes to turning the water off in their home, or how to turn off the electricity by flipping the main circuit breaker. Do these people really expect the electricity and water to never fail, or what's going to happen inside their home once they do and it's 10 degrees outside?

Some have said high school kids should be forced to take a class that covers many of the actions that everyone should be able to take in the "real world". It's obvious there are many things that go with home ownership that should be included in such a class.

Rant over.

It is called preparations, groundwork. preparedness. rehearsal. study. training etc.

You should fix your faults before whining about others

Not really a rant, you're just stating the obvious. If we gave a class in school titled "LIFE", probably 40% failure rate, teachers would then have to curve, and give each of them a participation grade!!!

You proposing you being a guest speaker on flag etiquette? SMH...

Over half the teachers would have to learn how to teach that class first

Parents should be responsible for most of this.

Yep.

Call me a sheep. Other than buying some additive for my diesel pickup I didn't do anything extra for the deep freeze we had. No broken pipes etc. My faucets were already covered.

I don't know how people got so bad cold inside. My in-laws heater fried the first night, they didn't have any plug in heaters, they left the water on. It never got below upper 40's in their house and they had no damage.

Ditto.

Texas Dan is right. But, I was as prepared as possible, and it still wasn’ t enough. This was bad, but it was, or should have been, a good learning experience. I’ll do better next time. I know what to fix and what to improve.

As for the people that did nothing but wring their hands and whine this time, if they do that again I have nothing but scorn for them. I can forgive them once for being unprepared. But only once.

And a big positive from this is that the ‘green energy’ idiots now clearly see what an over reliance on wind and solar can do to mess up their lives.

In some regard, this was a good wake-up call.

[quote=

Some have said high school kids should be forced to take a class that covers many of the actions that everyone should be able to take in the "real world". It's obvious there are many things that go with home ownership that should be included in such a class.

Rant over.[/quote]

. Don't dump all that on the school system. There is a thing called parenting. The problem comes from trying to teach life skills to
a teenager that knows everything.

MO

I haven't see the exact number recently but understand the number of kids who grow up in a home without a father is significant. Like many if most of us here, it was my dad who taught me how to care for things around the house. It was rare that he called someone to fix something that have broken or failed. Today, few guys even want to hassle with mowing their own lawn.

Unfortunately I think there are far too many people that expect the government to take care of them and have no self reliance.

Bingo

I'm proud of my 18 year old. He cut wood made a fire in the fire place and kept all of his critters alive even after power went out. All those camping trips really paid off for him it seems.

Most any info desired is located on Al Gore's internet.
People that didn't know what to do could find it, had they cared.
Either live it or live with it.

We survived, but that doesn't mean I want to excuse the monopoly that I pay hard earned money to provide me electricity. When I don't pay they cut off my service. When they fail to provide service when i need it most, I shouldn't have to pay.

Absolutely. A sense of entitlement has run amuck through the population. People do nothing and expect to be bailed out by others. If people had done nothing but turned their water off and opened every faucet and flushed every toilet until the worst was over, any damage to their home would have been minimal. I have a good friend who has a lake house on Lake Livingston that sits on a northwest facing shore. He drained his pipes before the storm and suffered zero damage.

Ol' Dad wasn't very patriotic then was he

Idk I bet buzz was raised right.

Just when you think you've seen it all with the rampant sense of entitlement, something comes along that tells you there's more to come. I noticed a post this morning from someone looking for help paying her vet bill. Apparently, she left her cat out in the cold for too long. Not a scam as she's asking for people to make payments directly to the vet.

Unbelievable.

Why do you keep making threads on the cold?

I know mine taught all 4 of us how to hook the generator up, flipping the main, turning the breakers on 1 at time, and where the water shut off is. Among other things.

Back in the late 90's, early 00's, I had a lot of young, white collar guys that worked for me doing IT work. Other than the very basic 10 item tool kit you can buy at Home Depot/Lowes, I was always astounded at how many of them didn't own any tools at all. Some of these guys lived in apartments and I can gave them a break for not having a ton of tools. However, many of them owned houses and didn't own a hand saw or even a drill. These guys were all of the "I'll just pay the guy mindset"