Interesting power outage

[Morella]

We just lost our electrical, as far as the eye could see, even the street lights, for about an hour. My home theatre stayed on, running on the big UPS, and it didn't squeal, so that worked as planned, except that it wouldn't take power from the hearse's aux batteries. It's too sophisticated, I guess. I had a 750 here that would, though, so I turned off the home theatre and just left a lamp on the big UPS. The 750 runs the Internet services, laptop charger, my electric blanket, another light, another computer, and the printers, so I shut some of that down, lit some oil lamps, and I was comfortable. I could have easily been all night. I was just putting a cable on another, smaller inverter to run one more small UPS, in case I wanted to run the engine on the small car, charge everything up and power some more stuff, but the power came back on.

Tomorrow, I am going to buy a generator with 110v, 12v and 24v outlets, so I can power everything, and I won't have to recharge the batteries in the hearse.

Doesn't anyone else plan for power outages? I went outside and it was like "Monsters on Maple Street"...I was the only house anywhere around that had lights on in the windows. I'm glad we don't have any department stores nearby. I have a lot of respect for linemen, the most dangerous and demanding job in the country, but I wouldn't put all of my faith in the power company without a backup plan.

-dee

[Scary Guy]

We still win http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003

I LOVED it. I was without my computer and everything else for a week. I even shut off the breaker box until everything was powered back up (saving all the electronics). After that I got so many jobs fixing power supplies that blew in computers it was amazing (also they were fine, the fuse inside them just pops so if you know how to replace it you still have a working PSU unit).

It was summer, and August no less, so we were getting hit pretty hard by heat. I spent a lot of time in the basement where it was cooler. Stayed up during the night by candlelight. Stargazing was great too without all the light pollution affecting things.

Because of the lack of power things like gas pumps and water wouldn't work either. It's amazing how much we rely on power, and how crippled we are without it. We did have a generator for the food, and we ate a lot that week so it didn't spoil.

Here's the LJ entry http://scary-guy.livejournal.com/2003/08/16/

Backups are great, but learning to survive and do without is an even more important thing I think.

[EvilManor]

Backups are great, but learning to survive and do without is an even more important thing I think.

I agree. About 8 years ago we had a pretty rough winter atleast for Texas and was without power for 9 days. In town was without for 5 or 6 days. Luckily my parents had a fire place in the main house and a wood burning cook stove in the game room. The house I was living in had neither. So got to spend some time with parents. Was actually kinda fun without electricity and realizing we could still get by. The funniest things was dad pulling the crappy lights and battery out of the boat so we could still play pool in the game room. He didn't like my zippo on the table idea...lol.