Meh

[altivo]

Power is out here. Thank goodness for oil lamps.

Comments

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

And wood-burning computers? I assume you have a U.P.S.

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

Ooh, ooh, you could be using a laptop. I got to get me of those new-fangled things one day.

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when the power was out here in August due to that storm, I used my computer in the car with an inverter.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The problem with laptops is crummy batteries. Invariably the batteries quit taking a charge or only take enough to run for 30 minutes or so. I have two laptops here, both in that state. I decided not to buy any more. The replacement battery costs way too much and after six months it's yet another piece of toxic waste.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No wood-burning computers. We have three UPSes in fact, but none of them is large enough to actually sit here and use the computer. They are enough to weather a short glitch in the power, which we get almost daily, and allow you to shut things down properly if a longer failure occurs. That's all. In the two failures yesterday, I found that one of them is no longer doing its job.

Power was out from 7 pm until midnight last night. The one line post above was made from a cell phone.

[doco.livejournal.com]

Oil lamps? How quaint. :)

I just got a bunch of these whenever I need to go and do something outside in the dark. They cost me 9.99 a piece and light up brightly for 24 hours without the need to recharge.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We have battery powered lamps and hand-crank charged lamps. They are good for portable use. But the waste of battery capacity to sit and read a book is excessive when an oil lamp will do. Lamp oil in a sealed container remains good for centuries. Batteries go bad even when they aren't being used.

[susannag.livejournal.com]

Hope your power comes back soon!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It did. At midnight. The biggest irritation was that I was just about ready to put home-made pizzas into the oven. The oven was hot and I stuck them in anyway, but it cooled off too quickly. Now I have two half-baked pizzas in the fridge and have to figure out how to finish the job. ;p

[tinbender.livejournal.com]

Blogging by oil lamp, gotta love it : )

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yup. And the oil lamp works more reliably than the cell phone I used to send the blog entry.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

I would imagine you have a woodstove, yes? I keep a deep-cycle batter on standby charge in the barn. Using an inverter, it'll run a 15W fluorescent lamp for quite a long time.

(Edit: And it'll charge the iBook and run the DSL modem)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Woodstove yes. We have various battery and hand-cranked portable lights, but I still find the oil lamp most practical for stationary lighting when the power is out. It's safer than candles, burns longer and cleaner, and doesn't require batteries that go dead even when not in use. We have nearly as many oil lamps and lanterns as we do battery lights.

Cell-phones will charge from the hand-crank lights or radios. Of course in a prolonged outage, the cell towers nearby go dead anyway. I can operate my ham radio equipment from batteries and since I'm entirely QRP, the gel-cell type that powers emergency lights in high rise buildings works just fine.

No iBook or i-Anythings here. And DSL is for city folks, they don't offer that where we are at all. Wireless broadband doesn't reach us due to terrain and trees. Satellite (expensive) and dialup are the only available connectivity. You can use the Sprint cellular phone network but it's slow and pricey.

[heavens-steed.livejournal.com]

Well, at least you're looking at the "bright" side :P I happen to think that there is something nicely nostalgic about working by light produced by fire, whether it be candles or old lamps. But only for a little while. Eventually the desire for the comforts of modern technology takes over again.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Lights and heat from the woodstove are easy. The lack of running water however becomes unpleasant in a hurry.

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

Sounds romantic. Snuggle up under blankets with a loved one. Oil lamps. Being in touch with the cycles of day and night.

Hope it comes back on soon.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It came back on at midnight, about an hour after we had bedded down in the living room near the woodstove. Sometimes a power outage can be romantic, as you suggest. This one was an irritation though, because I was in the midst of making dinner and looking forward to an online gathering, both of which I missed.

The home made pizzas got put into the oven anyway, but it didn't stay hot long enough to finish them, and they are now half-baked in the fridge. Hopefully I can finish baking tonight with little loss in quality. Sorta like those frozen half-baked ones you can buy at Pizzaria Uno, I hope.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

I'll keep my claws crossed for you so it'll come back soon.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It was out for five hours, and came back at midnight.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's good at least.

[wolfgrowl.livejournal.com]

We have a fisher-price horse flashlight that whinnies when you turn it on :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

My cell phone has a flashlight in it and the ring tone is a whinny, does that count?

[keeganfox.livejournal.com]

What sort of oil and lamp do you use? *curious*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We have several, but the ones I use for plain old reading or knitting or something are the old fashioned glass reservoir type, with a chimney. The oil is easy to find in rather obnoxious "scented" versions. The best is the unscented kind which is hard to get. The worst is plain kerosene, which burns well and brightly but smells pretty awful. All the oils are petroleum derivatives, but I guess some vegetable or animal sources can also be used.

one little change... sounds like an emo poem :P

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

One little change... and suddenly, we're back in the dark ages.. this is how fragile civilization is :)

Re: one little change... sounds like an emo poem :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, not quite the dark ages. I could still listen to the radio weather report, for instance, and did so. One of the portable lights is a lantern that uses LEDs for light and produces quite a bright light. It has a hand crank generator built in, and will run about 30 minutes on 10 minutes of cranking. It also has regular batteries, and can charge a cell phone. Pretty versatile tool that would have gotten you burned at the stake in the dark ages. My one liner post was done with my cell phone. I don't find it very convenient to use, but it can do the job, sending e-mail and receiving it, posting to LJ, and like a Swiss army knife, has a built in flashlight. ;p Not a dark ages tool at all.

You're right about the tenuous nature of our civilization, though. The Hurricane Katrina disaster emphasized that very effectively.

Re: one little change... sounds like an emo poem :P

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

I went through a hurricane experience a few years back- before my Pensacola debacle, so I had my own apartment- and I had to go through a week with no power. Sucky, to say the least.

Re: one little change... sounds like an emo poem :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We tend to take continuous availability of electricity for granted now, and forget that it's pretty much a newcomer on the scene. Reliable electric power is really less than a century old, compared to the several million years of human existence.

I was quickly reminded by a friend who lives in Madagascar that much, perhaps most, of humanity and virtually all of the rest of the species on earth survive very well without electric power and all that it entails. Certainly I'm inclined to agree that television and video games are probably no loss. ;p

Living in an area where we can't really rely on the power always being on, we are at least prepared for short outages like this. It's just Murphy's law that they always come without much warning and at the most inconvenient of times.

Re: one little change... sounds like an emo poem :P

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to lean that way myself... I've given up TV entirely, and only occasinally use someone's to watch a movie. I'm tired of crap & clutter *shoves it aside, making several small crashing sounds* Weak crap.

[rrwolf.livejournal.com]

A good ol hit or miss engine generator or steam engine generator would be a good back up.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We have a gasoline engine generator. Thing is, setting it up and switching house circuits onto it is not something you do casually. Generally we do it when an outage lasts more than 12 hours so as to pump water for the animals and let the freezers cool down again. That setup cost me about two grand. One that automatically kicks in on a power failure would be more than ten grand. (And, as we see in our neighbor who has one, prone to a lot of failures and problems.) For shorter durations, it's easier just to break out the flashlights and kerosene lanterns.

Oil lamps??

[bladehorse.livejournal.com]

You actually have them and know how to use them????:p
hehe.. They also heat the house allong with the light:)

Re: Oil lamps??

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Not only that, but I know how to squeeze olives to get the oil. Trouble is, olives are expensive.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

And a generator, you still online dude!

I can't believe I just called you dude.

*facepaws*

Yeah, oil lamps are great, I love 'em. I've read by 'em,
I've checked the sump pump with 'em.

XD

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No generator. That involves rolling it out of the garage, checking to make sure it's in running order, hauling it over to the electric meter on the other end of the house, plugging it into the generator socket there, getting it started, and then, the worst step of all...

I have to get the closet open in my study, where the electrical circuit breakers are, and switch the needed circuits over from power mains to generator mode. The switching is easy, getting into the closet never is. It has folding sliding doors, and the warping board for my looms hangs over them. That has to be removed, along with a dozen or so big cones of yarn that hang on it, and maneuvered to some other place before the doors will open. Usually there's a box or two of stuff on the floor in the way as well...

I'm a cluttery worker.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

They showed me how to do that at work. All I
remember is to turn off all the circuit breakers
and then try and start the generator. I'm sure
I'll be out their, with a flashlight, cursing
the dark and lighting a house.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Sounds like there's no transfer switch. That would make it absolutely essential to turn off all the mains power before running the generator. You do not want an unsynchronized generator trying to push power into a system that is drawing from the power utility at the same time, and you don't want the mains power to come back on while the generator is hooked up. That's why they say turn off all the circuit breakers. It's important.

We have only specific circuits in the house (one in the kitchen, one with the sump pump and my ham radio stuff, one with the freezer, one with the well pump) that can be run by the generator. Those go through a special row of switches that allow each of them to be set to either the generator or the electric meter as their source. That switch and the generator both hook into the main breaker panel. This makes it impossible to have both the generator and the power mains online at the same time in any circuit. It's one or the other. It is possible though, to run some off the mains and others off the generator at the same time, which lets us test things whenever we like.