Online during power outage...

[Andrew Grall]

Kind of weird...

I'm posting to the forum during a brown-out. Lightning nocked the power out. Brown out actually... Almost everything is out except a few dim lights, and the cable modem and router. So, I'm posting via the laptop on battery power!

Weird...

 

[JohnS]

Are you getting severe weather?
Tornado watches or anything??

just curious

 

[Andrew Grall]

Yup...

Tornado watch... Severe Thunderstorm Warning... Flood warning...

Radar looks nasty.

http://www.weather.com/outlook/recre...red&lswe=48072

 

[JohnS]

Thats cool.
I miss that type of weather, being from Omaha, Ne

Now I don't get any of it living in Vegas

 

[Andrew Grall]

This is getting boring now...

I would like the power back, please.

 

[Andrew Grall]

OK... This officially sucks. We are still without power this morning...

 

[Scott Merryfield]

You can have some of our weather. I'm starting to build an ark.

 

[brentl]

"OK... This officially sucks. We are still without power this morning... "

Welcome to last July for many of us. Only another day to go!

B

 

[Mark Shannon]

Ha, Amen to that.

Here in Toronto we had a couple power surges from the lightning last night, but the power came back instantly every time. I really hate blackouts.

 

[Johnny_M]

In sacramento CA today the forecast is 78 degrees!!

-does that make any of you feel better?



Johnny

 

[Andrew Grall]

Actually, we got to enjoy that too... It spread all the way to the Detroit area.

 

[Seth Paxton]

Yeah, we had some nasty storms too last night.

BTW, does the cable modem require wall power or does it get all its 'tricity from the line? I have DSL so I don't know (wall power).

Laptops are really nice on power outtages. My wife uses that as her desktop CPU and I always envy her when she keeps on going on a power drop while I lose any work I hadn't yet saved. It really sucks because we get clear weather drops in the downtown area I live in all the time, a real pain in the ass.

 

[Jim_F]

Cable modems need at least a trickle of household current. Mine's connected to the UPS along with the wireless router, so I can play poker on the notebook for a while before I revert to the Bronze Age.

 

[Jason_Els]

Seth man, then get an Uninteruptable Power Supply (UPS). Inexpensive ones can be had for under $100. and while they won't keep you going for more than a few minutes it's more than enough time to save your work and shutdown properly. Some UPSs have USB ports that allow the computer to be alerted to power outages and automatically save any open programs and then shutdown the computer. They're really useful and also act as a surge suppresor. If it happens that frequently then they're just what you need.

Somewhat more expensive models can also keep your cable modem going but that won't do you much good as the cable system gets its power from the power lines in the area. DSL lines don't. On the other hand, you could get a router with fail-over to dial-up modem but routers like those are comparatively expensive and it's kind of pointless because the equipment would take too much power to run for any useful length of time.

 

[Philip_G]

or you can build your own using a couple deep cycle marine batteries, a trickle charger, and a switch. I've seen people build them to run their fish tanks if the power blinks