or possibly just have watched too many movies... tonight the power went out for about 3-5 minutes. My first thought: "Someone cut the power so the alarm system won't go off!" My second thought was more rational: "I can use my bike light for light" followed closely by "I wonder if the neighbor's power went out too." A quick check to the window indicated that it wasn't just my power. That's always best, because if its just your own house it usually takes longer to get fixed, and it means that I have to call... which means I have to find the phone number to call... tricky thing to do without Internet access... but wait, I do have internet access! Ironically, the laptop is the only computer to lose access (at least via wifi since the wifi router isn't on a UPS). The server has access, and my desktop (also on a UPS) has access - although no monitors without plugging those into the UPS (I don't leave them there as it causes unnecessary stress on the battery).

But, first things first... turn off the a/c. Technically my a/c unit has protective circuitry so that it won't turn on for 5 minutes after it turns off... but with a loss of power like that I'm not going to trust it... so I just switch it to off anyway. Next, I need to shut down my computer since I know that particular UPS isn't the strongest... so I move the monitors over to the UPS so I can do a graceful shutdown. I start shutting down some of the apps when viola, the power comes back.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before... but I love UPSs. Typhoon just keeps right on going, nobody is any the wiser. I should set it up to do a graceful shutdown when that UPS is almost out of power... a project for another day. Speaking of UPSs, that brings me to my question for this entry for all those who pride themselves on their grammar... what is the correct way to make an acronym that ends in 'S' plural? From what I could find, "UPSs" is proper, but it doesn't look right.