Blackout Stories

Want to read other blackout sagas? Here are the stories of some friends and non-friends...

• Choire on Fire Island.
• The Mighty Geek, in Brooklyn.
• Jennie, in Manhattan.
• Zeldman, in Manhattan.
• Other reports and photos at camworld.

Also, residents of Baghdad offer tips on dealing with power outages...

To celebrate the lights coming back on, I played volleyball all day on the beach, where we need no electricty, save the rush of a great dig or a big hit.

The Blackout of '03

I'm down on the Jersey Shore now, at my beach place, away from the heat and darkness that was New York City last night. It was pretty nuts. The power snapped off around 4pm, just as my company's IS department was scurrying around trying to patch our computers against the Microsoft worm that's been going around. We thought it was just our building at first, but then saw some people looking out their window across the street, and then we started hearing the crazyiest reports.

"Midtown is out, too."

"Downtown is out."

"They have no power in the Bronx." "The Bronx?"

"Westchester, too, and Bergen County in Jersey is out."

"Toronto has no power."

What the f* is going on, we were wondering. Nobody wanted to panic, but everyone was thinking it might be some sort of terrorist attack. I'm glad it wasn't. Poor engineering and upkeep somehow seems a preferable enemy.

So after an hour in the dark at work, we all went home. It was an easy three blocks for me, not so easy for people that commute via subway or train. In the streets, cars moved cautiously, though no more slowly than on a typical Manhattan afternoon. Downtown, lines of hundreds and hundreds of people waited for ferries to New Jersey. Across the island, people walked across the bridge.

When I got home, I collected my candles and flashlight, and then skated over to the gym. I figured it would be closed, but I thought I might find some other volleyball players. Sure enough, Zak spotted me and said, "I thought if anyone would come down here hoping to play volleyball right now, it would be you." So we headed down the west side bike path to the World Financial center and played some pickup sixes until it got too dark.

Back at home, I discovered that I had water and gas, so cooking was a possibility, that my phone didn't work at all without power, and that I didn't have a working radio. My cell phone didn't work at all until midday today. So I really had no news until I ran into a neighbor in the morning and than spoke to my sister Monica from a pay phone after that.

I cooked up a big bowl of pasta a la everything-perishable-in-my-fridge and later tuned my guitar up. I played by candlelight till I was too exhausted to continue.

I was glad to see that New York as a town seemed to handle it so well. Calmly, neighborly, peacefully.

I'm not sure why the PATH trains were working today when the subways weren't, but they were, and I hopped one to Journal Square where Bill, my tournament partner for tomorrow, picked me up. We made it to Surf Taco in Pt. Pleasant in time for dinner!

Move Over Ira

Move over, Ira Glass. Round the bend at Travelin' Van, Liz and Anthony have posted their first "Audio Thingie". Listening to it was the most enjoyable 27 minutes of my work day so far.

Audio is an interesting beast. It's fits better into multitasking than video does. I can code and laugh while listening to Liz interview Anthony. But it's not skim-able the way web pages are. It's difficult to quickly get enough info to decide whether to listen now, or later, or at all. There's oh so much more personality in it than text, though. The pauses. The sarcasm. The laughter.

It'll be interesting to see if audio becomes more widely used in blog-type sites.

Status

I'm working late tonight, doing some interesting stuff automating Microsoft Excel via .NET. Well, maybe it only seems interesting because the alternative is going to deal with my laundry.

Tonight is my first "free" time in quite a while. I've had plans of one sort or another nearly every weekend this summer and most of the remaining weeknights. Mostly it's volleyball that's occupying this time, so I'm not complaining.

My dad is following a path of his youth, the California coast, but now as a father, snug in a sedan with my brother and two of my sisters. I'm half-expecting to see one of them show up on the list of hundreds of candidates for Governor...

Jeanhee is off today to the lower part of that disarrayed state, attending a journalism conference.

Dylan is home from the hospital; he IM'd me today at work -- a very happy distraction!

BTW, it sure seems that breaking domino records would be a lot easier if it weren't for the damn cockroaches.

And... added to my list of airlines not to fly on: MyTravel

Weekend Update

I returned this afternoon from a bachelor party weekend in the Poconos. A dozen-plus guys helped our friend Ilio prepare to be married by shooting him with paintballs. Many paintballs. The weekend was great.

Paintball was a lot of fun, too -- strategic and adrenaline-provoking, competitive and physical. As I drifted off to sleep last night, though, I had half-dreams of paintballs whizzing by and some making welt-producing contact. It made me shuddder to think of the dreams soldiers must have after days of battle.

Tonight, Jeanhee and I went to see Spellbound, the documentary about the national spelling bee. It was great, especially the views into the varied backgrounds and family life of each of the kids they followed.

A few quick politcal notes...

Lawrence Lessig shares some good thoughts on the California recall election.

As described in this Baltimore Sun article, Howard Dean is running television ads in Texas and describing Bush as "all hat and no cattle." I love it.

Finally, signs that John Kerry is getting a bit more on the ball in his campaign appear in this NY Times article. I think that the more good competition we have early, the better candidate we'll have to vote for next fall.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." --Martin Luther King Jr.