(Yes, the picture is technically inaccurate, as you shall see.)
Last month I wrote about surviving without electricity or internet, in the midst of my eight days with very unreliable internet.
Which brought me to roughly 3:40 this afternoon.
At 3:40 the phone in my bedroom made a funny noise and displayed a message that the power was out at the main handset.
Oh, and my clock wasn’t displaying the time.
So, how about that router light?
- When wi-fi is available, the router light is blue.
- When it isn’t, the light is red.
- This afternoon, there was no light at all.
I’m a Southern California Edison customer, but I had problems getting to its website on cellular. The power outage affected a good swath of northwest Ontario, so I guess everyone was trying to use cellular internet.
My Facebook app could (somewhat) connect, and people on the O.N.Z group were reporting estimated fix times between 5:30 pm and 9:30 pm.
Then I received a text: not from SCE, but from my Internet Service Provider.
“There is a service outage affecting your area. Restoration estimated by 9:30 PM.”
How would they know? It wasn’t the ISP’s problem.
A second text followed.
“The service interruption affecting…services in and around your area is being caused by a power outage. Restoration estimated by 4:40 PM.”
By this time I had left home to go to a place outside the affected area…with air conditioning. But I continued to monitor O.N.Z. (a private Facebook group, so no links or quotes). And someone reported that power was back.
So I checked my ISP and thermostat apps and confirmed this.
A technical problem can have so many causes…including a loss of electricity that affects all things power-dependent.
Bredemarket 