We all know that if anything can go wrong, it likely will. Such an occurence took place yesterday on deadline day at the paper.
Without so much as a clap of thunder, lightning apparently struck somewhere in town. Our office and most of the town was plunged into darkness for 40 minutes. We had about one minute of hard rain, which stopped as thunder rumbled in the distance.
Initially I sat there with my left hand on the keyboard and my right hand on the mouse, half expecting everything to suddenly be back on as a left it. Soon I joined my co-workers congregating in a common area. I then ran home (where I had power) to grab lunch and my battery-powered police scanner.
When I got back to the office, it was still dark. My editor and I started to set up a gas generator so that we could limp along until power came on, but before we could finish, the power returned.
Thankfully I was ahead of schedule when the power went out, so it didn't mess me up too badly. It turned out that I had saved my file just minutes before everything shut down, so I didn't have to re-do too much, either.
Posted by JRC at July 20, 2005 08:55 AM | TrackBack