The power was out at our place for nearly three hours last night. Erin and I had settled in downstairs to watch an episode of Enterprise (we’re nearly a season behind, so it’s not cancelled for us just yet ;) ) and the whole world went black. We’ve had problems with the power ever since we moved to the new house - probably two or three times as many power blips in the seven months we’ve been there than in the prior (?) years on Cumberland. It’s pretty frustrating, and even though I had the A/V equipment plugged into a very good surge suppressor, it’s always a little troubling when it happens.

We’d been talking about getting a battery backup UPS ever since the third or fourth time it happened, and last night was the last straw. We got the kids in the car, and picked up an APC BE650BB at London Drugs. When we got home with it, I spent a bit of time in the dark pulling power cords and hooking things up correctly, but of course there was no way to tell if I’d gotten all the plugs plugged in until the power came back. Just as we decided to go to bed (in fact, we were on our way up the stairs) the power came back on. I went downstairs and confirmed that I’d plugged everything in correctly, and I’d only missed one component (not bad considering I was working with just a single little wimpy AA powered flashlight.) Nothing was damaged either, which means that our luck held out yet again.

One of my co-workers who lives a couple of blocks away said his power was off until six this morning.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Could this town be any stupider?” - Snake