Some Days You're Good, Some Days Just Average...

I've got to work tech support for a college football game tonight, so thought I'd get away from the house to get some shots from the lake that I didn't get yesterday due to lighting. Just as I was got back to the car and put up the camera, the rain started.

I'm thinking to myself ... I couldn't have timed that any better if I knew it was going to happen.

Just as I got to the house I see the gates to the subdivision opening as the power has just been knocked out by the storm. Again I'm thinking ... great timing, don't have to wait for the gates! Then I get to my drive way and it sinks in...

No electricity means I can't get into my garage. And no electricity means my computer isn't running so game day support is going to be a bit challenged. Now if only AT&T would stop having cell issues so my data plan would stay active through the phone!

They can't all be winners...I watched my brand new $300 Oakley sunglasses (the last ones they had in the store) fly off my head and bust into a million pieces snapping this picture today...

We keep tropical fish, so to protect against power failures, we have some UPS units & a generator! It's over-spec'd enough to run some home comforts too!

I've got 4 UPS units upstairs in my office ... two for servers, one for my desk, and one for the network gear at the broadband connection. Unfortunately, the 3 monitors on my desktop suck that UPS down in a hurry.

When we loose power I just enjoy listening to the kids go into web associated melt down due to low levels of social networking/gaming.

Good stuff! The UPS is great for short term power, but the generator is useful for longer-term cuts. You can wire a generator directly into the mains supply for the house, but the switching equipment to do that is pretty expensive. We have one of the UPS units to send a warning email to my phone, so I can get back & manually set up the generator. Each tank or tank system has 2 UPS units, one pure sine-wave for the impellers & one high capacity stepped sine wave for the heaters. As it is, we can only keep going for 2 hours without the generator. I ditched my server & use Cloud services for most of what it was doing. I use the old server UPS to power my pc & the router - plus a small fish tank in my office.

You have my sympathies. Our phone line went down on Friday morning. We have no phone service, no internet either. Kids were so annoyed at the start. I'm getting annoyed/worried now. Mum has cancer and we like to be connectable in case the gospel try to ring to move appointments. And I'm supposed to be working from home tomorrow so I can take her for an appointment... Can't do that if I can't dial in to get my CAD license and pick up my drawings. Grrrr