Pretty bad storm last night–wind, rain, hail, you name it. Around 7pm Val calls my cell and says “the power just went out!” Ironically enough, I was shortly on my way to Fry’s to buy, among other things, a UPS battery back-up for the new server in the basement (RAID box building updates to come later). So I picked up some Wendy’s on the way back, and we had a nice candlelit dinner, which was actually kind of fun, except that it was Wendy’s after all, and they as usual screwed up the order.
It’s always so cool to have a temporary power outage, with the emphasis on “temporary”. You can remember what it’s like to do simpler things, like read by candle/flashlight, or heaven forbid, TALK to another human at length with no distractions. This all happened right around the kid’s bedtime, so he didn’t get to experience much of it, but Val and I kind of had fun with it. Digging up batteries for the radio, chatting, wandering around the dark house like it was a mysterious new place. Playing tag with the flashlights. Burning ourselves lighting candles. Enjoying the eerie quiet of the neighborhood.
Still, it was weird too, because something kept saying in my mind “hey, go check e-mail” and “flip on the tv”. Apparently the use of electronics has taken root into the reptilian parts of my brain, as well. And even simpler things were raised in our consciousness… Val realized she didn’t know where the flashlights were, if we had a radio that could use batteries, if we had a gas or electric (electric) water heater, if we had a phone that didn’t require power (yes), etc. In George Carlin’s latest stand-up, Life is Worth Losing, he says the fastest way to destroy civilization would be to turn off all electricity, and that it’d take a lot less time to all go to hell than people think. I am certain he’s correct about this, even without the inmates being released from prison in his scenario. We just depend on the magic electron frow from the holes in the wall, altogether too much. Butwhatyagonnado? I need my MTV, or VH1 Soul as the case may be.
I was definitely relieved when power was restored around 3am. In other words, I think everything in the frige/freezer probably survived 
Hopefully the Tivo and Macs did as well, I didn’t have time to check everything over this morning. I’m pretty glad I shut down the RAID box in the basement the night prior! Now to configure Linux for the UPS I bought, and grab last night’s Apprentice 5 premiere off bittorrent!
Tags: burlingame, family, Life
