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On Wednesday morning ... my internet suddenly went down. The housemate was getting ready for work and hastily said something about her UPS losing its little mind and if I still didn't have access after her attempted fix, I should see if I could power "this box" off something other than "this box". So I wound up running the humongoid orange outside extension cord from a wall plug in the laundry room to the wireless router in her study. She did something else to fix it while I slept but intends to buy a replacement battery for the UPS.
That night, bleary with lack of sleep, I opened the fridge to get a bagel to chop up for my breakfast ... and the light didn't come on. I checked the icecubes in the freezer compartment and they were still frozen. So I figured the bulb had died.
At work, at 1:30 am ... the UPS that the booth-monitoring computer and TV are plugged into died a screaming death. When the customers in the store left, I locked the door and groveled on the floor, and managed to restore power to and reboot the comp, but didn't dare run the TV off the same power bar, which has a mini-fridge on it. So I was at least able to restore access to the booths. But no previews, and until I was relieved at 6:40, my ears were ringing with that piercing shriek. I suspect some of the customers couldn't hear it, but my hearing is fine to good in the upper range.
I stumbled home, my head still ringing. And when the housemate started making her breakfast, she found her frozen waffles were kind of limp. And no light in the freezer compartment, either. (I hadn't noticed there's a bulb up there too.) It's a very quiet fridge, but we dragged it out from the wall in a joint effort and she embraced it and stuck her ear next to it - no sound at all. Then she noticed the microwave was also without power. But the toaster oven was working - that's how the waffles had been cooked. I checked the circuit breakers, which, this being California, are outside the house behind a bush. I tried unplugging the microwave and resetting the emergency breaker on its outlet. She decided to e-mail in to work with house problems. Then she ran the humongoid orange outside extension cord from a wall plug in the screen room to the fridge. And called an electrician ... and discovered the phone line was dead, so she used her cell. I went outside again and looked for sky-bound shoots from the same bush deplacing the phone wire, but there weren't any. While I walked the dogs individually, she flipped all the circuit breakers in turn - rebooting my comp. By the time I returned I had figured out the source of the phone problem - I had called the house at 7 am to wake her up and as I suspected, she hadn't hung up the phone in her bedroom correctly. The electrician arrived. And showed her the magic trick to flipping the super-heavy-duty circuit breaker.
That night, bleary with lack of sleep, I opened the fridge to get a bagel to chop up for my breakfast ... and the light didn't come on. I checked the icecubes in the freezer compartment and they were still frozen. So I figured the bulb had died.
At work, at 1:30 am ... the UPS that the booth-monitoring computer and TV are plugged into died a screaming death. When the customers in the store left, I locked the door and groveled on the floor, and managed to restore power to and reboot the comp, but didn't dare run the TV off the same power bar, which has a mini-fridge on it. So I was at least able to restore access to the booths. But no previews, and until I was relieved at 6:40, my ears were ringing with that piercing shriek. I suspect some of the customers couldn't hear it, but my hearing is fine to good in the upper range.
I stumbled home, my head still ringing. And when the housemate started making her breakfast, she found her frozen waffles were kind of limp. And no light in the freezer compartment, either. (I hadn't noticed there's a bulb up there too.) It's a very quiet fridge, but we dragged it out from the wall in a joint effort and she embraced it and stuck her ear next to it - no sound at all. Then she noticed the microwave was also without power. But the toaster oven was working - that's how the waffles had been cooked. I checked the circuit breakers, which, this being California, are outside the house behind a bush. I tried unplugging the microwave and resetting the emergency breaker on its outlet. She decided to e-mail in to work with house problems. Then she ran the humongoid orange outside extension cord from a wall plug in the screen room to the fridge. And called an electrician ... and discovered the phone line was dead, so she used her cell. I went outside again and looked for sky-bound shoots from the same bush deplacing the phone wire, but there weren't any. While I walked the dogs individually, she flipped all the circuit breakers in turn - rebooting my comp. By the time I returned I had figured out the source of the phone problem - I had called the house at 7 am to wake her up and as I suspected, she hadn't hung up the phone in her bedroom correctly. The electrician arrived. And showed her the magic trick to flipping the super-heavy-duty circuit breaker.