mandolin | Flash floods and power outages

Just a note to those who wondered why I bailed online last night...

Yesterday afternoon, Baltimore County was hit by a pretty bad storm system. So bad that there were flash flood warnings, a portion of the Baltimore Beltway was closed off, and water rescue teams had to block off part of Security Boulevard since a good deal of it was underwater. Which made my drive home VERY interesting. (A rant in

bad_driving is forthcoming about stupid SUV and pickup truck drivers who don't understand why little low cars must go through virtual lakes VERY SLOWLY.)

When I got home, I thought that was the end of it; the storm had moved on to the east. But no.

In the middle of chatting with someone, I was booted off when the power shut off. (The iMac is okay, and I am SO glad I got me a heavy-duty surge protector...) Five minutes later, the power was on again. Not a hint of a storm outside. Then, the power went off. Then it came on. Then off, then on. I unplugged the computer and failed to disable the smoke detector even though it kept going off. Got disgusted and went for a walk.

Power outages, I can handle. Power in-and-outages are insane. I counted, and in the space of four hours, the power went off and on again about 11 times. (This is not counting the 45 minutes I took to go walking.) Even with the lights and AC turned off, I could still tell when the power fluctuated because the smoke detector squawked. It did that twice in the middle of the night.

So, yes, the computer stayed unplugged for the rest of the evening.

And now I'm sitting at work waiting for the OK on a build that we were supposed to run 45 minutes ago and I'm leaving at 3. Somehow I don't think I'm ever going to actually be able to run a successful build...