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brownout
Saturday, March 3 2018
This morning there were enough electronic noises in the house to suggest that the power was already back on. But this was an illusion. The tip-off that something was amiss was a constant chirping from our microwave oven. It kept flashing 12:00, beeping, and then pausing a moment to repeat the cycle endlessly, I went down to the basement to turn off its circuit breaker and noticed that there were strange things happening with the lights, which were blinking a lot and dimmer than usual. When I tested the power provided by an outlet, it was a little over 50 volts. Soon thereafter, it dropped to 44 volts. As you might know, the voltage at a 120 volt outlet is supposed to be somewhere around 120 volts, so it made sense that devices were behaving unpredictably. Most electrical devices seemed more or less useless at this voltage, but there were some exceptions. The refrigerator was humming away, and when I opened it up, it seemed cold in there. Also, most of the WiFi hotspots seemed to be up and working, though I never tested the quality of the internet. One odd result of the brownout was low household water pressure, suggesting that the voltage was too low to operate the well pump while the pump enough to open the foot valve, causing pressure in our basement water tank to drain backwards into the well.
It being Saturday morning, I was able to grind coffee beans in the grinder, though the power available to do so was much reduced and the blades kept stalling in the beans. Gretchen couldn't boot up her desktop computer, though the printer seemed to come on when I flipped a switch. As I tried to attach a laptop to the printer, I realized that all power to the house had died, and there wasn't even a brownout under way any more. But the power outage didn't last long. While Gretchen was out giving Ramona her proper walk (Neville still isn't allowed to go on those), the power came on with a full 120 volts at the outlet.
I eventually tracked down the source of an electrical-fire smell coming from the laboratory. An old tower computer, one built around an ancient athlon 64 3000+ (which is less powerful than a Raspberry Pi 3) had suffered some serious problem in its power supply, which was clearly where all the acrid stench was coming from. I removed that power supply and put it outside.
Shortly thereafter, Gretchen tried to use the printer (a trusty old Brother Laser Printer) and could not get it to work. Usually at that point, I open and close the various doors and hatches and it comes back to life, but not this time. The lights kept flashing and the errors couldn't be cleared. Evidently being powered up during the brownout had killed it. Gretchen immediately bought an exact replacement (used) on eBay for $85, complete with shipping. (It made sense to stick with what we know, especially since we have two toner cartridges for it). Later I took apart the old one, mostly to marvel at (and hopefully salvage) its complex array of intermeshing plastic gears.
[REDACTED]
This evening, Sandor and Eva invited us to meet them (and others) at R&R, the beer & wine place near where Route 375 meets Route 212 in Woodstock. I arrived a little early and began drinking a very good IPA whose name I've forgotten (and I would go on to drink two others). The first to arrive were Susan and David, soon followed by Eva and Sandor and then their neighbor Ben (that minor real estate mogul) and his witchy girlfriend Neekole. Also at R & R tonight was our friend Rebecca's boyfriend, whose name I couldn't remember. So I tried paging through Rebecca's thousands of friends on my phone to jog my memory. When that didn't work, I sent an instant message to Gretchen, who responded with "Brian" within a minute. Social awkwardness avoided!
In addition to telling the fabulous story of my 50th birthday in California, I had a long conversation with David about our respective fathers' World War II exploits. My father had served in England, France, and Germany, whereas David's had come up from Algeria through Italy. Both were at or near the Battle of the Bulge, though David's was captured and held as a prisoner Kurt-Vonnegut style (fortunately for David, in a German city that was not fire-bombed). David knew all the details about division numbers, whereas all I had were little disconnected anectdotes, such as the time my father's sergeant tried to scam him out of his much-needed furlough. Or that other time when his vehicle in the convoy just cleared a bridge that was then destroyed by a German mortar.
Ben said something about arranging to go on some nature walk with a woman in Woodstock who would be teaching him and others about trees. "I can do that," I replied, adding, "I even know the scientific names." So then David started quizzing me, which was a little unfair because I'm unfamiliar with west coast trees like the Douglas Fir (which came up early). I'd also forgotten some things, such as both the genus and species of American chestnut.
Vegan food options aren't great at R&R, though they could veganize their nachos, so that was pretty much what I had for dinner tonight.
After I returned home, I stayed up extremely late, having a one-person party that included some watching of Upstream Color, the second movie by Shane Carruth, the cinematic wunderkind who produced Primer on a $7000 budget.
When I went to sleep, I did so in the basement guestroom with the door shut, meaning Oscar would not be bothering me. By then it was 4:00am, and I knew I would be needing uninterrupted sleep.
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