My Half-Electrified Life
Mar. 15th, 2023 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerYesterday the Bay Area experienced a lot of really high winds, and to absolutely nobody's surprise, a lot of places lost power.
We . . . lost half of our power.
As in, half the rooms have electricity, and half do not. Which is a thing I didn't know could happen until yesterday! Current theory involves the phrase "hot leg" (which has led to me opining that somebody needs to write a hard-boiled electrician parody), and the possibility that one of the two hot legs got knocked out, but the other still works. So we have power in the rooms connected to the working leg -- or rather, to the elements that are on the working leg, since the wiring done by a previous owner of this house has left things a bit . . . idiosyncratic. The main kitchen lights and the microwave do not work, but the fridge does (thank god) and the lights over the sink. The lights in the den don't work, but the outlet the TV is plugged into does, so we can watch TV in the dark. We didn't lose internet because my husband installed an uninterrupted power supply for it a while ago, and before that could run out, we used an extension cord to plug the networking gear into an outlet in my office, which is still fully functional. The main problem, from my perspective, is that the furnace is one of the things not working and it's getting pretty chilly in here. Time to break out the space heater, the fleece, and the fuzzy socks, I guess.
No word on when this will be fixed. Given the scale of outages in the Bay Area, I'm sure they have crews working flat-out to restore power, and mine being fairly localized (it's just my block), we're probably lower-priority than the failures that hit orders of magnitude more people. I can manage for now. But it is weird, having this jigsaw puzzle of electricity vs. not.
(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/hEmChf)
We . . . lost half of our power.
As in, half the rooms have electricity, and half do not. Which is a thing I didn't know could happen until yesterday! Current theory involves the phrase "hot leg" (which has led to me opining that somebody needs to write a hard-boiled electrician parody), and the possibility that one of the two hot legs got knocked out, but the other still works. So we have power in the rooms connected to the working leg -- or rather, to the elements that are on the working leg, since the wiring done by a previous owner of this house has left things a bit . . . idiosyncratic. The main kitchen lights and the microwave do not work, but the fridge does (thank god) and the lights over the sink. The lights in the den don't work, but the outlet the TV is plugged into does, so we can watch TV in the dark. We didn't lose internet because my husband installed an uninterrupted power supply for it a while ago, and before that could run out, we used an extension cord to plug the networking gear into an outlet in my office, which is still fully functional. The main problem, from my perspective, is that the furnace is one of the things not working and it's getting pretty chilly in here. Time to break out the space heater, the fleece, and the fuzzy socks, I guess.
No word on when this will be fixed. Given the scale of outages in the Bay Area, I'm sure they have crews working flat-out to restore power, and mine being fairly localized (it's just my block), we're probably lower-priority than the failures that hit orders of magnitude more people. I can manage for now. But it is weird, having this jigsaw puzzle of electricity vs. not.
(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/hEmChf)
no subject
Date: 2023-03-15 09:07 pm (UTC)That's a fantastic image, although better if the furnace weren't also on the fritz.
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Date: 2023-03-15 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-15 09:38 pm (UTC)You mean you're not really comfortable with your nightly domestic scenes resembling the '90's shorthand for post-apocalypse? Gee.
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Date: 2023-03-16 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-16 05:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-16 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-16 03:51 pm (UTC)My office building lost power for a couple hours, and with it, internet. Also, things that depend on power: HVAC (it got stuffy remarkably quickly), motion-sensored toilets (fortunately, they also have a mechanical flush button), motion-sensored faucets and soap dispensers; and elevators (found out the power had gone out when I was on the ground floor; all my stuff was many stairs above).
Not everyone figured out the (large, obvious) push-buttons on the toilets; the men's bathroom had a post-it on the door saying "TOILETS DON'T FLUSH."
no subject
Date: 2023-03-18 03:54 am (UTC)Luckily, the refrigerator-freezer was in the part of the house with power.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-18 03:27 pm (UTC)