cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, & Maxine Shirts
"When I was growing up on the farm we often had power failures. We were prepared. There were kerosene lanterns, and when the power went out we would all get together and light a lantern. Power hits were not as devastating as when the water pump went out. We lost the water pump about once a year, and it got to where when it happened, Mom would pack up Sara and me and move to a hotel in town until it was fixed. But that's another story. This one is about power failure.
In addition to the problems of wind and power plant problems, there was also the problem of kids. For instance, one night when Mom was in Seattle for an insurance meeting, Charlie Garfield came by to help me with my chores. It was probably a Thursday night, which would have put Dad making his meat deliveries to Kanaraville, Hurricane, Washington, St. George, and Santa Clara. Anyway, I remember Charlie and I learning how much bailing wire acted like a frisby on this particular evening. You could take an open loop of bailing wire and throw it the length of a football field. Then we decided to see how accurate we could throw it. We wondered what would happen if the bailing wire landed on the power lines that ran through the farm just north of the barn.
This was the night I learned that the power for Enoch and Grimshawville and all points in between ran through our farm. We were able to get a bailing wire to land on the power line. We had not thought through the consequences. The arc almost went all the way to the ground as the bailing wire dissolved before our eyes. It was really pretty neat. And then we got really scared that we were going to get caught. It turns out that one of the Murry's had seen the arc, just before all of the lights in the valley went out. He had called the power company, and pretty soon they were at the farm looking at all of the power lines. They were trying to see if the wind had blown the wires together. However, we confessed. They didn't do anything to us, probably because we confessed and were so afraid of being punished. When I got back to the house, the lady who was staying with Sara and me said that she must have caused the power to go out, because it happened just as she plugged in the iron. I smiled and said I didn't think so. I think this was an important lesson, a time when I learned how our egos take responsibility for things that have nothing at all to do with us or our actions. I've tried to remind myself of this fact when things have gone south of bad.
When I worked for Landmark and spent a lot of time in Zhuozhou (it was Zhou Xian back in those days), they had placed the first Landmark system in the new Beijing University, 5 km south of the BGP's main offices. We had power failures about twice a day. Seems to always happen when there is a lot of construction. I recall having systems maintenance guys on the phone, pulling apart the computer, and attempting to recover the system from some of those power failures.
We have had semi-regular power failures in each house I have lived in. In fact, when I called Andrea from Los Angeles to get Ben's cell phone number, she could not access the files on the web because there had been a power hit and the web was down and she did not know how to fix it. Oh well! Turns out I had transposed two of the numbers on Ben's cell phone number and he called right after I hung up from talking with Andrea. Everything worked out, despite the power failure on Saturday.
When I went into the office on Monday, I learned there had been a three hour power failure on Friday. A main power cable had been cut by construction, and several folks had walked down 21 flights of stairs to get out of the building. On Wednesday we had a fire drill, and they counted all of us at the stairwell, and then let us go back to work. There were several messages over the building loud speakers. Then on Friday at 1:30, there was another power failure. My PC had enough battery that I just kept working through the whole exercise. However, I'm in an inner office, and it gets very dark when all of the power goes out. Ken Butler and Richard Verm were in the basement, and they couldn't get up the elevator, so they walked up the 21 flights of stairs and then beat on the door until someone opened it and let them in the office.
Through all of the power hits this week, it has come back to my mind how I have always wanted to have a portable generator and enough fuel to keep it going for a few days, as part of my emergency preparedness materials. Oh well! Maybe someday we will get ahead enough that we can afford to spend money on this kind of a luxury. It is not a bad idea for each of you to consider what happens in your world when the power goes out, and what steps you will take to preserve food, and take care of yourselves.
I had a busy week at work. We have been working on prototyping how the GDC databases can be repackaged and sold to oil and gas explorers. There was a lot of effort this week getting examples together and working on building a process that can become the basis for some new products. Pretty pictures, and since none of you are into reflection coefficients, reflection angles, n-dimensional cross-plots, and the like, I won't try to be specific about the week.
Yesterday we had planned on going over to Vidor to help Melanie and Jared paint. However, we never heard from them, and Andrea was in the middle of painting the front entrance of our house. So we stayed. I went for a run, typed in the passages from The Fountainhead for the previous thoughtlet (0421.html), and worked on some patterns from words from the Book of Mormon. In the evening I watched two John Wayne movies, one about the Civil War and one about the Philippines. I do enjoy those type of movies. They had several advertisements for Tarzan movies all Thursday night. Guess I know what I'll be doing this Thursday. Andrea is very patient with me, considering I didn't do much to help her with her painting project. I did buy her some pink roses and a small Wendy's Frostie. Although the reason was because I forgot to buy the roses on Friday, not because I wanted her to forgive me for not picking up a paint brush to help her.
There were a lot of folks gone on vacation at church. There were good talks at sacrament meeting, and I wrote three possible stanzas for Prime Words:
Matt had recovered from the High Adventure trip to
South Padre Island and then to a graduation party for
Andrew's older sister. He told us all about his trip,
and it seems like he had a very good time. He was
very pleased to learn he passed the TAKS Test (Texas
Assessment of Knowledge and Skills), which is required
to graduate from High School. This afternoon has been
spent writing two Thoughtlets, and hoping there will
not be another power failure."