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Apr. 9th, 2003 04:47 pm3:04 p.m.
Great. The power just went out. Since it's a bright sunny day, I can't tell if the rest of the neighborhood still has power or not. I've already checked the circuit breakers, and they're all right, so I called in the problem (and discovered that our upstairs phone won't work when the power's out. I haven't checked the downstairs phone yet, but I'd be surprised if it's affected. It's an old rotary model) using my cell phone. Now I just sit here hoping my husband will call soon so that he can walk me through dealing with powering down the desk top computer. It's plugged into a battery backup that's intended to give us a chance to power it down properly if we lose power, but it would appear that the keyboard and monitor I need are NOT plugged into the stupid thing (which they're supposed to be!). Since I'm in no shape to go crawling around searching for power cords and moving furniture, I really hope Scott's got a better solution.
And I really hope he calls before I take a hammer to the battery backup to make it shut up.
I think all the electronics that could get fried are plugged into surge protectors. The TV and its appendages are on a surge protector, but I've unplugged them just to be safe. I'm reluctant to mess with any of the computer stuff.
3:20
Scott called. He hadn't checked his voice mail, so he hadn't gotten my message, but he did help me shut down the desktop Mac. Sadly, he pointed out that I was forgetting the Windows machine and Linux router, neither of which I can do anything about, so the battery backup is going to keep running until either he gets home or it runs out of juice. He's not sure how long the latter will take, but it'll be about an hour before he can get home.
I've now confirmed that the phone in the basement is working. Somebody called. We're looking at getting some windows replaced, and Scott asked the sales rep who came by last night to call us with the names and phone numbers of some satisfied customers. Naturally, he called after the power went out...
At least I can use my laptop for quite a while on its battery. Maybe I'll even get some more work done on "Rheotaxis." I've gotten about three pages done since yesterday evening. The bit's out of sequence, but it's flowing okay. At least so far. If I can get through a few more pages, I'll have the last part of the story completed and will know exactly what I'm aiming for. Maybe that will help make the intervening scenes more cooperative. Yeah, I know... Wishful thinking.
3:45
Another two phone calls later... Maybe I should move downstairs. It takes a minimum of six rings for me to reach the phone down there, and I've now missed a call. As long as I'm working from battery and unable to connect anyway, it's mainly a matter of comfort. But it's chilly and dark down there, not a place I really want to be when there's still enough sunlight upstairs for me to read and type comfortably. My big fear is that the power company will try to call (or that the missed call was the power company). I wanted to give them my cell number, but I can never remember the dratted thing, and the phone won't let you access that information while in the middle of a call.
The other call was from Scott, on my cell. He told me that I should just turn off the battery backup entirely (which is why I can't connect, and why anybody who may try to access our websites will have no luck). I'm feeling just a bit frustrated.
I was watching a DVD, the first volume of Trigun, when the power went out. I just wanted something on in the background while I was trying to write. When I work in the basement, I use music, but that doesn't work as well upstairs. Theoretically, the DVD player can play CDs, and the desktop computer actually can (so can the laptop for that matter, but doing so makes things heat up an awful lot faster), but... The DVD player's picky as hell and won't recognize most commercial CDs or any privately burned CDS. The desktop computer has fairly poor sound quality and volume.
Before Trigun, I watched Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, the old black and white version. A while back, Scott spotted a boxed set of old Hitchcock movies, 6 DVDs for something like $10, and grabbed it for me. The sound quality hasn't been very good on any of the three (the other two are The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes) that I've watched so far, and the picture's not particularly clean either. I suspect that nobody put any time or money into cleaning things up before they made the DVDs. Still, they're pretty good movies, and I'm glad to have them. I find it particularly interesting watching them and comparing the acting style to that of silent films. They're all in the period when sound was still so new that people making films hadn't realized that they didn't have to play things quite so broadly just to get the point across.
I've got all of our DVDs stowed in the new entertainment center. Now I just have to start finding homes for the video tapes. That's not a chore I felt up to tackling today, though. Dishes and laundry are also waiting for my attention and being ignored in favor of this babbling and bits and pieces of "Rheotaxis."
We finally got the last of the living room furniture moved last night. The big shelf of gaming books is now where the TV used to be. We sorted through a lot of papers that had ended up nesting there and recycled quite a bit of junk. There's no reason to have four copies of one particular character or notes on a campaign Scott was going to run in the early 90s or... You get the idea, I'm sure.
4:05
Scott called again to tell me that he's finally done with his errands and that the news on the radio sounds interesting. I had to growl at him on that last since there's no way I can currently access anything more up to date than the issue of Newsweek sitting on the couch next to me. Sigh...
The power has now been out for over an hour. I'm pretty much counting on the fridge to let me know when we have power again. Oh, great. I didn't want to think about that. My damn anti-nausea medication's in there, and I'll need to pull out my next dose about 5:00. Hopefully, it'll still be functionally chilled at that point. I hate suppositories. (Yeah, probably TMI. Sorry. Well, not sorry enough to delete the griping.)
4:41
The power's back on. We have no idea what caused the outage, but the repair crew seemed to be focusing on something in our neighbor's yard, so I suspect we weren't the only ones to lose power.
Scott got home about 10 minutes before the power came back, so he's the one who ran for the next phone call which was the power company asking if things were back on (they weren't at that point).
Great. The power just went out. Since it's a bright sunny day, I can't tell if the rest of the neighborhood still has power or not. I've already checked the circuit breakers, and they're all right, so I called in the problem (and discovered that our upstairs phone won't work when the power's out. I haven't checked the downstairs phone yet, but I'd be surprised if it's affected. It's an old rotary model) using my cell phone. Now I just sit here hoping my husband will call soon so that he can walk me through dealing with powering down the desk top computer. It's plugged into a battery backup that's intended to give us a chance to power it down properly if we lose power, but it would appear that the keyboard and monitor I need are NOT plugged into the stupid thing (which they're supposed to be!). Since I'm in no shape to go crawling around searching for power cords and moving furniture, I really hope Scott's got a better solution.
And I really hope he calls before I take a hammer to the battery backup to make it shut up.
I think all the electronics that could get fried are plugged into surge protectors. The TV and its appendages are on a surge protector, but I've unplugged them just to be safe. I'm reluctant to mess with any of the computer stuff.
3:20
Scott called. He hadn't checked his voice mail, so he hadn't gotten my message, but he did help me shut down the desktop Mac. Sadly, he pointed out that I was forgetting the Windows machine and Linux router, neither of which I can do anything about, so the battery backup is going to keep running until either he gets home or it runs out of juice. He's not sure how long the latter will take, but it'll be about an hour before he can get home.
I've now confirmed that the phone in the basement is working. Somebody called. We're looking at getting some windows replaced, and Scott asked the sales rep who came by last night to call us with the names and phone numbers of some satisfied customers. Naturally, he called after the power went out...
At least I can use my laptop for quite a while on its battery. Maybe I'll even get some more work done on "Rheotaxis." I've gotten about three pages done since yesterday evening. The bit's out of sequence, but it's flowing okay. At least so far. If I can get through a few more pages, I'll have the last part of the story completed and will know exactly what I'm aiming for. Maybe that will help make the intervening scenes more cooperative. Yeah, I know... Wishful thinking.
3:45
Another two phone calls later... Maybe I should move downstairs. It takes a minimum of six rings for me to reach the phone down there, and I've now missed a call. As long as I'm working from battery and unable to connect anyway, it's mainly a matter of comfort. But it's chilly and dark down there, not a place I really want to be when there's still enough sunlight upstairs for me to read and type comfortably. My big fear is that the power company will try to call (or that the missed call was the power company). I wanted to give them my cell number, but I can never remember the dratted thing, and the phone won't let you access that information while in the middle of a call.
The other call was from Scott, on my cell. He told me that I should just turn off the battery backup entirely (which is why I can't connect, and why anybody who may try to access our websites will have no luck). I'm feeling just a bit frustrated.
I was watching a DVD, the first volume of Trigun, when the power went out. I just wanted something on in the background while I was trying to write. When I work in the basement, I use music, but that doesn't work as well upstairs. Theoretically, the DVD player can play CDs, and the desktop computer actually can (so can the laptop for that matter, but doing so makes things heat up an awful lot faster), but... The DVD player's picky as hell and won't recognize most commercial CDs or any privately burned CDS. The desktop computer has fairly poor sound quality and volume.
Before Trigun, I watched Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, the old black and white version. A while back, Scott spotted a boxed set of old Hitchcock movies, 6 DVDs for something like $10, and grabbed it for me. The sound quality hasn't been very good on any of the three (the other two are The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes) that I've watched so far, and the picture's not particularly clean either. I suspect that nobody put any time or money into cleaning things up before they made the DVDs. Still, they're pretty good movies, and I'm glad to have them. I find it particularly interesting watching them and comparing the acting style to that of silent films. They're all in the period when sound was still so new that people making films hadn't realized that they didn't have to play things quite so broadly just to get the point across.
I've got all of our DVDs stowed in the new entertainment center. Now I just have to start finding homes for the video tapes. That's not a chore I felt up to tackling today, though. Dishes and laundry are also waiting for my attention and being ignored in favor of this babbling and bits and pieces of "Rheotaxis."
We finally got the last of the living room furniture moved last night. The big shelf of gaming books is now where the TV used to be. We sorted through a lot of papers that had ended up nesting there and recycled quite a bit of junk. There's no reason to have four copies of one particular character or notes on a campaign Scott was going to run in the early 90s or... You get the idea, I'm sure.
4:05
Scott called again to tell me that he's finally done with his errands and that the news on the radio sounds interesting. I had to growl at him on that last since there's no way I can currently access anything more up to date than the issue of Newsweek sitting on the couch next to me. Sigh...
The power has now been out for over an hour. I'm pretty much counting on the fridge to let me know when we have power again. Oh, great. I didn't want to think about that. My damn anti-nausea medication's in there, and I'll need to pull out my next dose about 5:00. Hopefully, it'll still be functionally chilled at that point. I hate suppositories. (Yeah, probably TMI. Sorry. Well, not sorry enough to delete the griping.)
4:41
The power's back on. We have no idea what caused the outage, but the repair crew seemed to be focusing on something in our neighbor's yard, so I suspect we weren't the only ones to lose power.
Scott got home about 10 minutes before the power came back, so he's the one who ran for the next phone call which was the power company asking if things were back on (they weren't at that point).
