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#175286 - 14/08/2003 19:39 Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-)
g_attrill
old hand

Registered: 14/04/2002
Posts: 1172
Loc: Hants, UK
Not actually funny really, I hope everybody is ok and gets switched back on soon. The forum has been down for ~10hrs but is up now so I guess things are happening.

I can imagine some bbs member's rigging up power systems a-la MacGyver so they can get posting here to tell us how they are doing!

Gareth

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#175287 - 14/08/2003 19:45 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: g_attrill]
msaeger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 23/09/2000
Posts: 3608
Loc: Minnetonka, MN
Where is the bbs hosted anyway ?
_________________________

Matt

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#175288 - 14/08/2003 21:20 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: msaeger]
trs24
old hand

Registered: 20/03/2002
Posts: 729
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
Visual route says it's hosted by Verio in NY. So that would explain why it was down for a period of time today.

- trs
_________________________
- trs

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#175289 - 15/08/2003 06:59 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: g_attrill]
robricc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
Power was out in Tomkins Cove, NY until 3:13AM. Living without A/C is not fun.
_________________________
-Rob Riccardelli
80GB 16MB MK2 090000736

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#175290 - 15/08/2003 07:01 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: g_attrill]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
No power here (west Ottawa, Canada) until at least Sunday. So the "Home Docks" link up top won't be working until then, and I'm mostly offline (except when running on batteries, like now).

Cheers

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#175291 - 15/08/2003 07:13 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: robricc]
jmwking
old hand

Registered: 27/02/2003
Posts: 768
Loc: Washington, DC metro
Living without A/C is not fun.
Weenie . I grew up in the Triangle in NC without A/C. I do feel for y'all, though.

We went almost a week without power one summer after Hurricane Fran came through. Now that was truly miserable. I managed to buy the second to last small generator 85 miles away: we could run a refridgerator, a fan, a couple lights and the tv (broadcast stations only - all the cable was pulled down with the power lines). I had to get up every night at 3 am to put more gas in it (and only a couple stations in town had power to pump gas). I hope to never go through anything like it again.

-jk

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#175292 - 15/08/2003 07:18 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: jmwking]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Yeah, that was fun. I worked downtown at the time and since the power was on there since there are no trees downtown, I worked a lot. I couldn't convince my wife to come and hang out, though, despite the fact that we had a TV there and several other families were hanging out, which means I still had to come home and sweat while sleeping and otherwise entertain her misery.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#175293 - 15/08/2003 07:20 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: jmwking]
robricc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
Weenie
I'll admit it. I am a weenie when it comes to air temperature. I even filled up my car with gas last night just in case I decided to sleep in it with the a/c running.
_________________________
-Rob Riccardelli
80GB 16MB MK2 090000736

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#175294 - 15/08/2003 07:26 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: wfaulk]
jmwking
old hand

Registered: 27/02/2003
Posts: 768
Loc: Washington, DC metro
I couldn't convince my wife to come and hang out, though...
I'd have been there in a heartbeat.

I'm now in DC, so I mostly missed last winter's ice storm (I went down a few days later to help scrape my mother (still in Durham) out. She had no power for several days, and it was downright cold in her house. She lived under blankets (and had to balance the desire for warm drinks with their inevitable, very chilly, result) for most of that time.

-jk

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#175295 - 15/08/2003 07:33 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: robricc]
jmwking
old hand

Registered: 27/02/2003
Posts: 768
Loc: Washington, DC metro
I even filled up my car with gas last night just in case I decided to sleep in it with the a/c running.
Huh-uh: I'd be too worried about not waking up to sleep in a running car. I've read too many stories in the papers. Some people worry about spiders; I worry about colorless, odorless gasses (And I majored in chemistry once upon a time).

-jk

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#175296 - 15/08/2003 07:39 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: jmwking]
robricc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
I planned on cracking the window.

In college I commuted and many times I would have 1-2 hours free between classes. Nearly every day I would sleep in my car with the A/C going and the windows closed. Probably not the best idea, but I turned out OK.
_________________________
-Rob Riccardelli
80GB 16MB MK2 090000736

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#175297 - 15/08/2003 07:42 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: jmwking]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
I had no power for the better part of a week and the best thing I could find was my mother's gas-burning fireplace.

For those of you to whom this information might be valuable, gas logs do not produce much heat, and what they do produce doesn't radiate much at all. Sleeping only a couple of feet away didn't keep me very warm at all, but it was better than nothing.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#175298 - 15/08/2003 08:06 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: wfaulk]
g_attrill
old hand

Registered: 14/04/2002
Posts: 1172
Loc: Hants, UK
The last large major power cuts we had were in the "Great Storm" of '87. I think we were out for three or four days. It was October so it wasn't cold, and we have coal heating here anyway. (There's a good story by a local police officer here about the events of that night). Some people were out for longer, most were out for about the same time. All the damage was from trees which haven't seen winds like that for a hundred years (15 million trees were blown down that night!)

In our local area we used get several short cuts every year - usally during a thunderstorm. A few years back they spent a lot of money replacing all the copper power lines with plastic coated aluminium ones and upgraded some equipment which was *supposed* to improve reliability. It did, for a while, but in the past few years we've had a *lot* for no particular reason. We were off for four hours last week after a storm, and it's probably the fourth cut this year.

Gareth

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#175299 - 15/08/2003 08:14 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: g_attrill]
jmwking
old hand

Registered: 27/02/2003
Posts: 768
Loc: Washington, DC metro
Where I live (Suburban Maryland just outside of DC), they don't trim the branches away from the power lines. At all. I see branches growing between powerlines that are no more than 4 inches apart, and even growing around the lines themselves.

Every time we have high winds (thunderstorm, etc), the power flickers, browns, and sometimes blacks altogether, usually just long enough to kill anything not on a UPS. Very, very annoying. When I was in NC, Duke Power kept the powerlines much clearer - only hurricanes and ice storms seemed to cut power.

-jk

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#175300 - 15/08/2003 13:49 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: robricc]
Laura
pooh-bah

Registered: 16/06/2000
Posts: 1682
Loc: Greenhills, Ohio
In reply to:

but I turned out OK




You sure about that
Sorry, couldn't resist.
_________________________
Laura

MKI #017/90

whatever

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#175301 - 15/08/2003 14:37 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: Laura]
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
I bet he can't remember anything he studied for that test - all of the fumes...

I, personally, grew up under high tension wires. That doesn't make me glow unless it is really, really dark out.
_________________________
Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

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#175302 - 15/08/2003 14:40 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: pgrzelak]
lectric
pooh-bah

Registered: 20/01/2002
Posts: 2085
Loc: New Orleans, LA
I do understand that the EMF from high tension wires is known to produce headaches though. Not to mention really crappy AM reception.

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#175303 - 15/08/2003 14:53 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: g_attrill]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
As I understand it, there are three major power grids in the U.S.: eastern, western, and Texas. Thankfully, everything here has been business as usual. It was fun listening to Democracy Now this morning. The way they described it, New York was a massive party last night: drummers in Union Square Park, a marching band parading through the streets of Brooklyn, ... It almost would have been fun to be there.

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#175304 - 15/08/2003 14:58 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: robricc]
jasonc
member

Registered: 08/12/2001
Posts: 109
In reply to:

I even filled up my car with gas last night just in case I decided to sleep in it with the a/c running.




About a month ago, me and 100k of my closest neighbors lost power here in northern Illinois. With temperatures at 95 and no ac, we ran the Geo Metro (all 3 cylinders!) for 4 days solid, although with a slightly different use. We ran several fans, the dvd player and tv off of an inverter. It used about 3 gallons of gas every 18 hours at idle. I probably could have gotten the refrigerator goin, if only I could get to the Passat in the garage; without electricity I couldn't open the garage door.

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#175305 - 15/08/2003 16:15 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: jasonc]
V99
member

Registered: 12/01/2002
Posts: 192
Loc: Phoenix, AZ
Every opener I've ever seen has a disconnect cord or lever to separate the door from the motor so you can pull it up manually...

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#175306 - 15/08/2003 17:24 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: lectric]
robricc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
Not to mention really crappy AM reception.
Last night was the first time I really used AM on the empeg tuner (news in the US is commonly on AM stations). When the VFD is up to 100% brightness, the reception is pretty poor. When I turned on my headlights (causing the VFD to drop to 50%), stations came in much better. You gotta love it.
_________________________
-Rob Riccardelli
80GB 16MB MK2 090000736

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#175307 - 15/08/2003 17:25 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: Laura]
robricc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/10/2000
Posts: 4931
Loc: New Jersey, USA
but I turned out OK
You sure about that
No.
_________________________
-Rob Riccardelli
80GB 16MB MK2 090000736

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#175308 - 16/08/2003 11:29 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: V99]
jasonc
member

Registered: 08/12/2001
Posts: 109
In reply to:

Every opener I've ever seen has a disconnect cord or lever to separate the door from the motor so you can pull it up manually...



Of course, on the inside of the door. The regular(small) door to the garage has a deadbolt that we dont have the key for, the previous owners had lost them. Until now we didn't even think of this as a problem as we always just use the main garage door. I've since replaced the lock.

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#175309 - 17/08/2003 19:02 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: robricc]
lectric
pooh-bah

Registered: 20/01/2002
Posts: 2085
Loc: New Orleans, LA
Hmmm... really? That would definitely affect my plans to purchase a tuner. If / When I ever listen to the radio, it's always AM. Anyone else have this issue?

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#175310 - 19/08/2003 15:51 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: g_attrill]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
Yep, as people found out, the server is in New York. The new servers are coming along nicely, and will be in Austin, TX, where they can be monitored better. I may start work to get the board moved this weekend if nothing else comes up.

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#175311 - 21/08/2003 09:15 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: g_attrill]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
Blackout from space:


Attachments
174862-image001.jpg (77 downloads)


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#175312 - 21/08/2003 09:18 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: drakino]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
That's pretty cool looking actually. The west coast is quite dark in comparison to the east coast. Lots of countryside around there or something?

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#175313 - 21/08/2003 09:39 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: tman]
pgrzelak
carpal tunnel

Registered: 15/08/2000
Posts: 4859
Loc: New Jersey, USA
A combination of population density (or lack of it) and terrain.
_________________________
Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs

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#175314 - 21/08/2003 10:04 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: drakino]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Tom: Your source for that photo? I suspect it might be faked. If you put that picture into a photo editor and increase the gamma, it looks like someone just took a black airbrush tool and sprayed over that part of the image.
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#175315 - 21/08/2003 11:27 Re: Ok, so who out there *hasn't* got power? :-) [Re: tman]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
mountains and desert. LOTS of desert.

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