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Whee, power's out (again)
Sep. 30th, 2005 08:21 pmWell, that was a surprise. The electricity at the library went off about 2:15 this afternoon. After several fitful restarts, each lasting about five seconds, it stayed down, leaving UPS alarms beeping, the burglar alarm apparently triggered at the police station, and the fire alarm started a mournful bleat every ten seconds or so. Several phone calls made while the UPS on the digital phone system was still live revealed that either a transformer was burning or there was a line down in the high school parking lot several blocks away. No idea when power would return. We went around switching stuff off, and when it still wasn't back by 3:00 we locked the doors and put up the closed sign. So much of our usage is computers, and they were out. There was enough daylight to see, but checking books out would have to be by writing things down by hand for later entry into the computer system. At 3:30 the boss decided to just close early for the day and we all went home. Hopefully I got enough things shut down so that they won't restart in the middle of the night or whenever power is restored.
It's rather amazing, really. Here we are in a supposed first world, highly developed country. Yet in this area, power outages ranging from a few seconds to several hours are commonplace. Phone service is shaky at best. High speed internet is unavailable unless you live in one of the wealthy yuppie suburbs on the east end of the county. At home we don't operate computers without battery backup that at least lets you do a safe shutdown rather than two or three crashes and restarts as the power has fits over a one or two minute period.
The nearest city of significant size has no hospital. Two smaller ones at about the same range do have medical facilities, but the big one does not. Every town has a video store, of course, but the nearest bookstore is over 20 miles away.
Nope, I'm not describing central Wyoming or Montana or something like that. This is Northern Illinois, an area that has been settled since the 1820s, nearly 200 years. The population density is probably ten or twenty times that of rural Nevada or even Colorado, yet the infrastructure of utilities and services is almost as bad as what you'd find on an Indian reservation out West. This appears to be a combination of unwillingness to spend tax money on infrastructure (not glamorous enough I think) and resistance by corporate utilities to making improvements that will take years rather than months to pay for themselves.
It's rather amazing, really. Here we are in a supposed first world, highly developed country. Yet in this area, power outages ranging from a few seconds to several hours are commonplace. Phone service is shaky at best. High speed internet is unavailable unless you live in one of the wealthy yuppie suburbs on the east end of the county. At home we don't operate computers without battery backup that at least lets you do a safe shutdown rather than two or three crashes and restarts as the power has fits over a one or two minute period.
The nearest city of significant size has no hospital. Two smaller ones at about the same range do have medical facilities, but the big one does not. Every town has a video store, of course, but the nearest bookstore is over 20 miles away.
Nope, I'm not describing central Wyoming or Montana or something like that. This is Northern Illinois, an area that has been settled since the 1820s, nearly 200 years. The population density is probably ten or twenty times that of rural Nevada or even Colorado, yet the infrastructure of utilities and services is almost as bad as what you'd find on an Indian reservation out West. This appears to be a combination of unwillingness to spend tax money on infrastructure (not glamorous enough I think) and resistance by corporate utilities to making improvements that will take years rather than months to pay for themselves.
