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tuftearsTuesday at 12 noon, my power went out... and didn't come back until Thursday at 5 AM. About 40 hours. This was my first time experiencing such a long power outage. (it was due to storms in the Bay Area, not someone driving a backhoe through a row of power poles or something)
This pretty well shattered my concentration and drove up my stress level for the week, so I didn't get a lot of writing done. Actually, what really happened was that I started thinking about a different story I had on the burner, because lacking power and ready access to the Intarwebz, I couldn't spend much time on Alien Tastes, which requires me to have access to Google Docs. So, I may start working on this other project for a while (instead of Alien Tastes), which is a superhero VRMMO mystery, tentatively codenamed 'Bright Heroes, Dark City.'
Anyway, thanks to my recently acquired IR thermometer, I was able to determine the fridges had reached temperatures of 57F and 53F respectively, well above safe levels, but the freezer had only gotten to 37F, which was relatively safe. So I only had to throw away about a hundred bucks worth of food.
After some research on the subject, as a short-term stopgap in 'emergency preparedness' for just such extreme power outages, I've put a bunch of bottles of water into an otherwise unused freezer. If the power goes out for a significant period again, I'll put these bottles into the fridges, which should help keep them cold longer. I'm also thinking about the merits of a solar powered battery to, at least, charge my laptop and network so that I'll be able to continue minimal computer operations in the relative safety of my own home.
I mean, the ideal circumstances would be that such power outages wouldn't happen, but we live in a world far from ideal...
This pretty well shattered my concentration and drove up my stress level for the week, so I didn't get a lot of writing done. Actually, what really happened was that I started thinking about a different story I had on the burner, because lacking power and ready access to the Intarwebz, I couldn't spend much time on Alien Tastes, which requires me to have access to Google Docs. So, I may start working on this other project for a while (instead of Alien Tastes), which is a superhero VRMMO mystery, tentatively codenamed 'Bright Heroes, Dark City.'
Anyway, thanks to my recently acquired IR thermometer, I was able to determine the fridges had reached temperatures of 57F and 53F respectively, well above safe levels, but the freezer had only gotten to 37F, which was relatively safe. So I only had to throw away about a hundred bucks worth of food.
After some research on the subject, as a short-term stopgap in 'emergency preparedness' for just such extreme power outages, I've put a bunch of bottles of water into an otherwise unused freezer. If the power goes out for a significant period again, I'll put these bottles into the fridges, which should help keep them cold longer. I'm also thinking about the merits of a solar powered battery to, at least, charge my laptop and network so that I'll be able to continue minimal computer operations in the relative safety of my own home.
I mean, the ideal circumstances would be that such power outages wouldn't happen, but we live in a world far from ideal...
