Jeremy at American Warmonger was discussing You Might Be a Geek 001, and part of the discussion was about email, which brought about a comment from moi regarding the Ice Storm of 2002 (has to be capitalized) where had no email, no internet, no access. Oh, and no power.
Well, Avast! This weekend is the 2 year anniversary of that storm.
If you lived in North Carolina two years ago, chances are you had no power.
Saturday marks the anniversary of an ice storm that knocked out electricity for two million people.
"It was like a lightning storm, with all the flashes
and power outages and transformers popping and downed lines, hearing
all the crackling and popping of the branches and the ice coming down
as they came down,†said storm witness Aaron van Gilder.
Sure, there has been worse with hurricanes, as far as outages. However, a big difference is that it was colder then Al Gore’s black heart (just kidding, I liked the pre-insane Gore). Things stayed frozen. Only those with below ground power kept it, and not all of them, either. If a substation goes, so does everything else, regardless of whether your power lines were buried.
I lost power about 4am. Woke up and watched huge limbs falling from trees. Living in a 3rd floor apartment made it easy. The roads weren’t that bad as far as being coated with ice, it was the trees and everything else. The roads had their own problems. Trees and limbs covering the roads. There was a tree that was about 10 feet around, at least, that had fallen across a road. Power lines had fallen in the roads, most of which had no juice, since it was cut off farther down the line. I stayed with some friends the first night. I am lucky, I live on a road and in an area where the power crews will hook up quickly. The second night I went to a Bennington’s to do some drinking and watch the ECU Pirates get smacked around. Went home, pushed the couch up to the fireplace, got a fire going, lots of blankets, a radio, and a book. Figured I would have power overnight. Just got settled in, and around 11pm BAMM, power. Push the couch back, put things away, etc.
No power, no TV, no cooking, no stereo, no computer, no DVD, no internet, no email, cell towers out of backup power (plus landlines were overworked anyhow, so little mobile to landline access). Scary. What can we do without internet? Go crazy. No email? Go crazy. I did a full check of my email accounts, after a comment at Jeremy’s site"
- Corporate email, which will soon be put on a Blackberry
- 5 Road Runner accounts: main, 1 for the blog, 1 for the laptop, 1 for the desktop (let’s me email stuff between the 2), and 1 for places that will not accept Yahoo mail
- a Yahoo address, needed for fantasy sports mostly
- the address that is on the Blackberry at this time.
- 3 address’s on each of my 2 mobile phones.
That is 14 email address that I have, which doesn’t include any of those weird ones that one may get assigned from websites. And, yes, I have used all 14 at sometime or another over the past year, for some reason or another. The phone ones mostly for test purposes. It’s so terrible!
And, Jeremy has joined the geek zone for changing to Christmas colors. Have only seen a few others out there besides myself and Jeremy do it, such as Drama Queen (eye opener!) Ran across some others surfing Blog Explosion. If you see any others, send me them, and I will add them to the list.
Adding to the Christmas themes as I surf: Ogre’s Politics and Views,
We lose power here sometimes too. But usually not for very long. A few hours here and there. A few years ago we lost power for a few days, but that was before I discovered the internet, so I was okay.
I love storms. I think they are so cool.
I was in Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte having a C-section… imagine scary… there I am on the operating table in a hospital using power from a backup generator. Ugh. And three days recuping in a hospital bed with no tv, no computer, nothing to do but stare at blank hospital walls… at least I got a beautiful new daughter out of it… :) yeah, I remember two years ago very well.
When we lost power during the hurricane last year(?) the power went out but the cable stayed on for a while.
Let me throw you another “You might be a geek”.
I was thanking God for my UPS system the kept me online for another 3 hours…then the cable went too.
I had to start plaing with the fire for entertainment. It was a very bad week. I looked forward to driving into work because they had power.
Jeremy, you’re a geek. ;)
I remember that storm well. I didn’t get to sit at home and be bored — I had the only 4-wheel drive in the area, so I was the ferry service. My mother-in-law works at Wal-Mart and couldn’t imagine not working. The better half is a nurse, so she HAD to get to work. Meanwhile, back at my house, we never lost power, so I could have spent my days off playing games and surfing, but instead I was the taxi driver. :(
‘Twas a fun time. But hey, where’s my snow this year? I’m waiting… ;)
Ye Olde Farmers Almanac says no snow during December or January. Bummer.