damned drunken idiots
So, I was sitting here, foolishly editing away at Futakoi Alternative episode 1, when all of the sudden the power goes out. “WTF??” I said to myself, and then I grabbed my cell phone, used the glow of the screen to find a flashlight, and walked outside. My entire building was dark, but the buildings next door on either side were lit … except for some apartments in the building next door, and their entryway.
So, anyway, there it was. Power out, no idea why, but it’s isolated to the building. So I came back in, and thanks to the UPS’es I picked up toward the end of summer, I had enough time to wander outside, look around for a few minutes, talk to another power-out guy, and wander back in, plug the lcd into the UPS, ssh into the fileserver, issue a poweroff, wait for the poweroff to finish (while saving and closing stuff on the desktop), and cleanly shutdown the desktop. The money was well spent, just for that.
So, I wandered back outside … with the flashlight, went upstairs, helped some people down the stairs … confirmed the whole building was out of power … bleh.
Then I walked outside to check other buildings, and sure enough, they all had power.
Walked back and walked a lap around the complex to see if I could figure out rhyme or reason to it. Got out behind the building in the parking lot and decided to take a look at the power meters. Got closer to them, and there’s the mains breaker cabinet, hanging open. With the latch somewhat mangled, and the switch turned to “off”.
Turned the mains breaker back on. And OH MY GOD! IT’S POWER AGAIN!!
Normally I’d have called the cops first, to make sure that it’s safe to turn on the mains breaker. But when the latch (not even a lock) has so obviously been forced, and so clumsily, and there’s no discernable reason for it, no emergency vehicles in the area… yeah, I think it’s just drunk college prankery.
FRUSTRATION though. ARGH!
In related news, I’m amazed how many people in this building were conscious, and decided to sit there and do nothing, or wander around in a daze, or whatever… I think it’s a sign of the times, but I know when the power goes out for just my building, I get very …. curious about it, and investigate. These people would have sat there in the cold and dark all night, and never even thought to investigate their own breakers, much less the building mains breakers …
I guess it’s a personal call to continue to take the active, investigative stance … because someone has to. I will not go gentle into that cold, shivery night without my computers.