You've already seen these:
Here are some additional photos from the first day of the ice. Google is auto-cropping these again, even though they're in the Blogger-friendly 800x600 format; click each photo to see the uncropped version.:
When it became clear the power outage was going to last a while, but before I got desperate enough to roll out a portable generator, I got things running on batteries:
The above is a flash-lit photo showing an old motorcycle battery connected to a DC-AC inverter. My laptop's power supply is plugged into the inverter.
Here's what it actually looked like without the flash, and with candlelight providing the main illumination:
By day 2, my camera batteries were dying and my, um, enthusiasm for recreational photography had also somewhat diminished. I was cold, dirty (no running water), and was essentially camping (in full outdoor gear) inside my house.
By day 3, I was fully unfit for society's gentle embrace. My house was a wreck: Cold, dark, with power cords everywhere, dirty dishes up the wazoo, clothing and blankets piled in nest-like retreats in several essential locations around the house and an unshaved, overripe grumpy troll living in the midst of the clutter and mess: Moi.
When the power came back, light and I regained feeling in my extremities, I discovered that one of the main power surges (either when the power was going out or coming back) had fried my primary PC somehow, despite being on a UPS. I didn't know what was wrong, but that PC--- with all my live, essential files on it--- was unresponsive. I could hear the fans turning but the system would not start its boot sequence. Motherboard? Power supply? No way to tell without swapping out parts. But no matter what the cause, I couldn't get to my files.
And that led to the next adventure, which I'll pick up in a day or so.
In the past, I have run a large Honda generator outdoors with a thick ext cord coming into the house that plugged into a large pair of UPSs (150#) which I then drew power from. Worked great, never had a problem.
ReplyDeleteThat's a bit urprising that the surge got thru the ups. I have used a series of UPSs to provide more protection. I had a friend whose new six story office building got hit by lightning and it fed thru the building into his office on the 3rd floor and burned a one inch hole in his motherboard ~1984.
I used to run my alarm clocks thru a ups so that i never had to worry about a power outage, short or long, messing up my alarm; I also never had to reset the time when the power would be interrupted. Now I use my cell phone.
Here in paradise, we don't have power outages. Other than that one 2 years ago for a week.
:D
Fabulous pictures, Fred. Let me point you to another geek with a camera. You might enjoy Jay's photos. http://www.baldheretic.com/
ReplyDeleteThe irony of it all. You take DC current convert it to AC so you can convert it back to DC.
ReplyDeleteThe bird feeder photo is especially good, though we (in Dover, NH) suffered through much of the outage.
ReplyDeleteAt my house power was out for 81 hours, though I have a generator. Purchased it in 1995 and it had 11.8 hours on the meter just prior to the storm, in all those years.
Longest payback of any investment I can think of, to date.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete