Gradually regaining sanity...
Being without my internet drives me absolutely batty!
So yeah... we had this power outage thing happen. It was a whole world of no fun. The powere went out a bit after 4pm yesterday. I was at work. The fire safety director of the building kept saying they were trying to restore power and that everyone should just stay put. Okay... whatever. Then the firm manager sent a broadcast message telling people that the generator had maintained power on the floor above my, where the cafeteria is. And so the looting began... attorneys and paralegals cleaned out that cafeteria. It was quite entertaining. And they were handing out large bottles of cold water to anyone planning to walk home.
Anyway, I stuck around for a while... hoping that either the power would come back on, or I would get offered a ride home. At 6:45, an attorney from my area of Brooklyn said a friend from his neighbourhood owns a taxi and was headed toward our area of the city. We began our trek... down 46 floors of 1 Chase Manhattan plaza, then a nearly 2 mile walk uptown to meet the taxi as he was stuck in traffic on his way to the Brooklyn Bridge. We got in the taxi around 7:15pm. The sun was still shining and it was very hot outside, so just sitting in the car was a real blessing. At that point, I think we were about 7miles (maybe a little more) from my apartment. By the time we managed to cover the 2 miles to the Manhattan Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge was just impossible to get to) is was past sundown and nearly impossible to see the pedestrians who were walking when and where they pleased, regardless of the number of cars on the road and the fact that there were no working traffic lights or streetlamps. By the time we covered the full distance to my place, it was nearly 9:30pm. They dropped me off across the street from my building. I was lucky to find a guy at the crosswalk who had a flashlight and helped me across, then shined the light at the front door so I could get inside. In the lobby, there was a family heading out who kindly shined their light up the stairs for me so I could get inside.
I grabbed my own flashlight and my cell phone (some cell phones were working) and headed outside to see if I could get enough signal to call home. Sadly, my phone was one of the ones that *wasn't* working. No signal at all. VoiceStream was down. So I figured I would be nice and do a short shift at the crosswalk with my flashlight to help people navigate. When there were no more people around, I came back inside and decided to see if my roommate's phone relied on the power (mine does because it has a built-in answering machine). His didn't require electricity! So I tried to call home... seems someone forgot to pay his phone bill again because I got a message saying the phone could only be used for 911 calls. So I disconnected his phone and brought it in my room for a swap, called home and had my sister send email to Ash, then swapped the phones back and went to bed... using my nearly useless cell phone for it's one redeeming feature... as an alarm clock.
I woke up when I heard my cell phone beep as if the alarm were about to go off. When I picked it up, the clock on it read 3:47am... and it had a signal! Then I noticed that my regualr alarm clock was flashing 12:00am... woohoo! Power back! So I set my clock, and kept the cell phone set just in case. :)
At 6:15am, I woke up to my regular alarm clock playing the classic rock station... but they were broadcasting from an alternate location because there was still no power to the Empire State Building. I turned on my computer and attempted to get online. DSL was not working... damn! Not that I needed to do this, but I decided after a couple of unsuccessful reboots of both computer and modem to call my voicemail at work and see if they had power back. They didn't. I tried the local internet cafe... no luck. I've been wanting to get online all damned day and the modem just refused! Finally, about an hour or so ago I tried again....
You have no idea how wonderful it is to hear James Earl Jones' voice saying "Welcome to Verizon" after so many hours of not hearing it. :)
For those who are wondering, there is *still* no power at the building where I work. And once *all* power in NYC is restored, it'll still take 6 hours to get the trains running again. What a mess!
So yeah... we had this power outage thing happen. It was a whole world of no fun. The powere went out a bit after 4pm yesterday. I was at work. The fire safety director of the building kept saying they were trying to restore power and that everyone should just stay put. Okay... whatever. Then the firm manager sent a broadcast message telling people that the generator had maintained power on the floor above my, where the cafeteria is. And so the looting began... attorneys and paralegals cleaned out that cafeteria. It was quite entertaining. And they were handing out large bottles of cold water to anyone planning to walk home.
Anyway, I stuck around for a while... hoping that either the power would come back on, or I would get offered a ride home. At 6:45, an attorney from my area of Brooklyn said a friend from his neighbourhood owns a taxi and was headed toward our area of the city. We began our trek... down 46 floors of 1 Chase Manhattan plaza, then a nearly 2 mile walk uptown to meet the taxi as he was stuck in traffic on his way to the Brooklyn Bridge. We got in the taxi around 7:15pm. The sun was still shining and it was very hot outside, so just sitting in the car was a real blessing. At that point, I think we were about 7miles (maybe a little more) from my apartment. By the time we managed to cover the 2 miles to the Manhattan Bridge (Brooklyn Bridge was just impossible to get to) is was past sundown and nearly impossible to see the pedestrians who were walking when and where they pleased, regardless of the number of cars on the road and the fact that there were no working traffic lights or streetlamps. By the time we covered the full distance to my place, it was nearly 9:30pm. They dropped me off across the street from my building. I was lucky to find a guy at the crosswalk who had a flashlight and helped me across, then shined the light at the front door so I could get inside. In the lobby, there was a family heading out who kindly shined their light up the stairs for me so I could get inside.
I grabbed my own flashlight and my cell phone (some cell phones were working) and headed outside to see if I could get enough signal to call home. Sadly, my phone was one of the ones that *wasn't* working. No signal at all. VoiceStream was down. So I figured I would be nice and do a short shift at the crosswalk with my flashlight to help people navigate. When there were no more people around, I came back inside and decided to see if my roommate's phone relied on the power (mine does because it has a built-in answering machine). His didn't require electricity! So I tried to call home... seems someone forgot to pay his phone bill again because I got a message saying the phone could only be used for 911 calls. So I disconnected his phone and brought it in my room for a swap, called home and had my sister send email to Ash, then swapped the phones back and went to bed... using my nearly useless cell phone for it's one redeeming feature... as an alarm clock.
I woke up when I heard my cell phone beep as if the alarm were about to go off. When I picked it up, the clock on it read 3:47am... and it had a signal! Then I noticed that my regualr alarm clock was flashing 12:00am... woohoo! Power back! So I set my clock, and kept the cell phone set just in case. :)
At 6:15am, I woke up to my regular alarm clock playing the classic rock station... but they were broadcasting from an alternate location because there was still no power to the Empire State Building. I turned on my computer and attempted to get online. DSL was not working... damn! Not that I needed to do this, but I decided after a couple of unsuccessful reboots of both computer and modem to call my voicemail at work and see if they had power back. They didn't. I tried the local internet cafe... no luck. I've been wanting to get online all damned day and the modem just refused! Finally, about an hour or so ago I tried again....
You have no idea how wonderful it is to hear James Earl Jones' voice saying "Welcome to Verizon" after so many hours of not hearing it. :)
For those who are wondering, there is *still* no power at the building where I work. And once *all* power in NYC is restored, it'll still take 6 hours to get the trains running again. What a mess!