The Squamidian Report – March 26 / 16
 
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Issue #722

Including:
The Ontarion

Hi All,

As you may know, weeks are made up of days. One of those days is Wednesday and this past weeks Wednesday was a bit of a right-off. You see, our electrical power was off pretty well all day, from 9am until 6:30pm. It was a planned outage as the hydro company apparently needed to remove a couple of old transformers that were part of the grid system for the area we live in, and replace said transformers with new ones. We had been given notice a while back so we could be prepared. That meant we could have all our electronics such as TVs and computers powered off as well as all our lights etc. So that part went well. What didn't go so well was that last Wednesday turned out to be the coldest, stormiest day since January. Needless to say, by the time the power was back on, the house was cold, well, cool enough to require wearing a sweater. I must say, it was nice when it came back on and the house could warm back up and I could restart the computers and network systems.

I spent part of the day simply not being here. After walking Willow I left and went up the gondola and relaxed by the fireplace, made use of their WiFi and watched the rain blow by. Willow had to put up with being left at home but all she does is sleep most of the day so she probably didn't notice all that much. I got back home about noon. From there on there really wasn't much either of us could do because it was so icky out making any outdoor activity out of the question. Its amazing how totally dependent we are on our electricity. The house was a bit too cold for me to play my guitar, which I could have happily done all afternoon if it had been a warmer time of year. All I could actually do was read by a window or play Sudoku on the iPad, that doesn't require Internet access. The notice for the power outage had said it could go as late as 9pm and to that end I'd set out some candles and had even lit a couple of them. By 6:30 its starting to get dark and its easier to do that kind of thing ahead of time when you can see than be poking around with a flashlight trying to find things. The lights came on, the house warmed up and all was well.

Then, and without any notice, the power went back out on Thursday evening at about 8:30. I was busy at the computer, burning some CDs to be exact and so it was rather inconvenient and potentially damaging. There was a CD in the burner, being burned at the time and it was toast. But at least the external burner itself and the computer came back up ok when the power came back on at midnight. An hour before the power went off I had been finishing up recording a song. It would have been not good at all had it happened then. I 'save' often but I'd not want to lose any data regardless, and there are times when I don't 'save' until I've worked something out and that can represent a lot of work.

Interestingly, our power almost never goes out. Many parts of the Lower Mainland and Island seem to loose their power ever time there is a wind storm but up here in our area we very seldom ever have it flicker, its been rock solid for several years. However, when we first moved here the power was out for anywhere from a few seconds to several hours almost every day. I never did figure out why, but that all cleared up about 6 or 8 years ago when they ran a new, underground feed, to this part of town.

And getting back to that song I was working on... I've now got 8 new numbers since the last time I did a CD. These 8, burned to CD, would technically be ' Original Songs Volume 3'. So, if anyone would like a copy, just let me know and I'll be happy to send one. I'm not sending any out to anyone who doesn't care enough to actually request one. Russ, I know you'll want a copy and therefore your copy will be in the mail as soon as the post office opens next week after this long weekend is over. In the mean time, heres a link to that last number I was working on.
Theres A World Out There
doug
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Have a good one..
the doug
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