Were You Powerless for a While?
So was my family. It was a minor inconvenience. I'm writing this in past tense even though I'm writing on Friday after the Sunday storm and the house is still without power. But if the situation in Houston would be compared to a broken arm, this is equivalent to a scratch from a month-old kitten. First of all, we had little or no rain before or after the wind storm. For the entire week, the weather was gorgeous. There was no need to deal with heat, cold, rain, snow, or flood waters. Yes, it was an inconvenience. But let's keep it in perspective. Today's report is only partially about technology and I hope you'll forgive me for the lapse.
I heard from a long-time acquaintance in Houston. Here's her greatly abbreviated* report: Galveston Island is heading into a major public health crisis. No water, no operating sewage system, no power. One operational emergency room. People are coming down with diarrheal illnesses. Ten thousand people are still on the island, and for the first time I am beginning to understand why they ignored the "mandatory" evacuation order. Those who left can't come back. If you left with three days worth of clothes, and can't get back to deal with flood damage to your house immediately-well, your house is basically gone, because the mold will have destroyed the interior. We were told that FEMA had supplies pre-positioned four hours away. Two days later we were being told the trucks were "on their way". I won't bore you with the details. On the other hand, if SYSCO is a publicly owned company, buy their stock. They distribute groceries. THEY had their route managers making their standard order calls Monday morning! And delivering! If a restaurant has power in this city and is a Sysco customer, they're serving.
*If you'd like the full report, you'll find it here. I hope you'll read the account because it's the kind of information that you'll get only from someone who's there, who's been there, and who knows the the area.
If you're in central Ohio and you were feeling sorry for yourself, maybe you now understand just how fortunate we are here. For those readers who are elsewhere, read the report from Houston. And then think about how well prepared you want to be for when something like this hits your area.
You may have noticed some of the same things I did:
- We've become dependent on the Internet. When I needed a phone number, I had to search for a phone book. There was no quick, easy way to get directions to anything. Information that's normally easy to find suddenly became impossible to find. Some of us even went back to reading newspapers (actually, I haven't stopped doing that yet).
- We realized just how clueless the talking heads on radio and television are. "Check our website" was a common refrain. If you're listening or watching a battery-powered device in a neighborhood that's without power, you're going to have a problem checking the website. Yes, you could check the website on your cell phone if you have one that has Web access. Mine does, but I don't use it and won't because the speed and quality are so poor.
- Driving along my residential street on Thursday after the storm, I decided that all the dead brush and tree limbs made it appear that everyone had planted strange-looking bushes along the curb. And then I had a flashback to 1978 and tall mounds of snow along the streets following the January blizzard.
- Some streets where houses on one side had power and houses on the other side didn't were crisscrossed by extension cords. I know that this violates city, county, and state electrical codes (and probably some local laws) but police thankfully seemed not to notice the cords.
- The city of Worthington's municipal building had no power so the city's website was down (might they consider a $100 per year hosting service to avoid this in the future?) The community center was open, though, and had dozens of power strips--one plugged in to every outlet--with signs that said "Recharge anything." And, once power was restored to the Worthington library, WiFi and outlets for running your gear were widely available.
That's not to say that other communities didn't have similar responses, but I live in Worthington, so that's the response I experienced.
The Old Worthington Public Library
Taking a vacation day on Friday, I knew that I would have no Internet access at home, but I took my Apple Ibook to the Worthington Library, where I could use the city's free WiFi service, which is available at libraries and along High Street.
As with most WiFi systems, users need to attempt to navigate to any website. The system will then display the licensing agreement. After you agree to the terms, you have access.
The first thing that I found was that Apple wanted to update several applications. I allowed that to happen.
At the left, you'll see the updates happening while I'm connected (via secure shell) to my webiste. And yes I did tell the Worthington librarians how much I appreciated the WiFi access.
On Saturday, when I went to the library to upload updated Web pages for TechByter Worldwide and for some clients, I found a WiFi signal, but no connectivity. One of the library employees confirmed that there was a problem with the service, so I headed for a Panera Bread store where the WiFi is free (and the food is good).
I'd already had lunch and, at mid afternoon, most of the tables were empty. Still, if you're going to use the company's free WiFi, I feel you should at least buy something. So I bought a coffee. Or tried to.
When I reached for my wallet, I realized that I'd left it at home. "Wait!" I said. "Let me look in the car to see if I have any money there." I had 24 cents (2 dimes and 4 pennies). No problem, the Panera clerk said with a smile, it's on us. She handed me a cup. So for the next couple of hours I enjoyed Panera's free Internet WiFi with a free coffee at hand. Before today, I liked Panera. Now I love Panera. The cost of giving a forgetful idiot like me a free cup of coffee was minimal, but it made a huge impression on my understanding of Panera's corporate values.
When you have a choice between Panera Bread and some other restaurant, I hope you'll keep this story in mind.
Old Technology
Because the Internet wasn't available from my house, I fell back to some old technology--a battery-powered short wave radio. It's been years since I listened to international short wave. I used to spend a lot of time listening to the BBC, Radio Moscow, Radio South Africa, China Radio International, and others. Being a student of propaganda, I found the communist stations interesting. Coverage was predictable and repetitive. To the Chinese, the the West was always referred to as "the Yankee imperialists and their lackeys (or running dogs, or some other equally derisive term.) The propaganda was broad brush and none too subtle. But it's been 30 years or so since I've listened to China Radio International, which I believe was called Radio China International in those days.
Note to the FBI: I didn't believe them then and I don't believe them now, but I recognize the techniques used by CRI as those used by Fox (aka "Fux" or "Faux") News (aka "Propaganda" or "'News'").
This week, I happened to run across a CRI broadcast and was astounded. First, there was far more truth: The reporter (a man who had an American-sounding name and a near-American accent) noted the melamine-contaminated milk scandal and the story was factually accurate right down to the report of 3 deaths. Then there was a long-form discussion with a professor from Hong Kong and some European railway planners. The subject was construction of high-speed rail transit and the propaganda component was breathtaking well done. Far more subtle than anything I've heard from China in the past.
Given the state of talk radio in the United States, I suspect that broadcasts such as those from CRI would fool a lot of people here. Just like Fox Radio and Fox Television.
New Technology
I have sleep apnea, so I need what's called a CPAP machine (continuous positive airway pressure is, I believe, what the acronym stands for) to sleep. Without it, I doze off, stop breathing, wake up with a snort, and fall back to sleep again. The process is repeated about 60 times per hour, which isn't a recipe for a good night's sleep.
Monday morning I decided I wasn't going to get any sleep and went to the office about 4am. Tuesday morning, I decided the power wasn't going to be back on before morning, so I took the CPAP machine to the office at 1:30am and slept on a sofa. The story was the same for the next two nights. Then I borrowed a power inverter that could deliver power to the CPAP machine. That solved the problem until the power came back on.
Ironically, the CPAP runs on 12 volts DC, but trying to run 12 volts DC 50 feet or more from the car to the machine wouldn't have been a good idea. DC doesn't travel very well and, even if it did, I didn't have the kind of power plug needed. So the inverter converted 12 volts DC to 110 volts AC, which I could easily deliver to the bedroom by feeding an extension cord out through the window and down to the car. Once I got 110 volts AC to the bedroom, I could plug in the CPAP's power supply and convert 110 volts AC back to 12 volts DC.
Don't laugh. It worked and the orange cat was happy to have me home. My wife may also have been happy to have me home. I'll have to ask.
Actually, this isn't exactly new technology, but I've decided that it might be a good idea to have my own inverter. One large enough to power a device such as the CPAP machine or a laptop computer costs no more than $50. One large enough to run a refrigerator can be had for $100 or less. Be aware, though, that running a refrigerator on a power inverter will quickly drain your car's battery. If you really want to be able to run a refrigerator long enough to keep food from spoiling, you need a generator.
Still, when power was restored, I stopped by Batteries Plus and purchased a 400-Watt inverter for about $40. It has sufficient capacity to run a few lights and a computer (although Internet service won't be available), or the CPAP machine at night, or the refrigerator (off and on enough to postpone spoilage for a week or more) when this happens the next time. And it will, you know. Global warming is not a myth. It's not "bad science". Anyone with two eyes can see satellite photos that clearly show the erosion of the polar ice cap. You can choose not to believe the science, but that doesn't change the science.
American Electric Power
You might expect that I would use this opportunity to condemn American Electric Power. True, I have complained about an ongoing series of power outages where I live, where one side of the street has reliable power and the other side might as well be in Bangladesh. But no system in this part of the country is built to withstand 75 mph winds. A lot of people were without power and, a week after the storm, some people still are, both in Ohio and in Texas. The difference is that most Ohioans will have their power restored in 10 days or less. The situation in some parts of Texas will continue for weeks.
No, I'm not going to criticize AEP. By the Tuesday following the Sunday storm, crews were arriving from distant states. The crews that worked my neighborhood were all from North Carolina. Others were here from Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and several other states. The response was organized and timely. Electric utilities use a triage process to evaluate outages and restore power: Correcting those faults that will restore power to the greatest number of people receive priority. After that, at least in this case, crews seem to have been dispatched in large numbers to specific areas.
My area was one of the last to receive attention, and I have no problem with that. Someplace must be first and someplace must be last. Had this event occurred during the hottest days of summer or in the depth of winter, of if I hadn't been able to sleep at the office where I could power my CPAP machine, I might have been a bit less understanding. As it was, the outage was little more than an inconvenience.
Postscript
Power was restored about 7pm on Friday, but Wide Open West's Internet service wasn't available until Saturday at 7pm. In fact, when I called WOW about 30 minutes after power was restored to see if they had an estimated time to repair, they didn't even know there was a problem. Apparently network supervision isn't particularly important to WOW and the person I spoke with seemed genuinely surprised when she tried to reset my cable modem from her end and was able to get no response at all.
So, if you signed up for one of those cable TV-Internet-phone deals, what do you think now? Maybe it was a big deal for you not to have land line service for a week. Maybe it wasn't. Everyone in my family has a cell phone, so maybe POTS (plain old telephone service) isn't important anymore. Except that power outages, tornados, hurricanes, and the like can take cell towers out of service, too.
I remember September 11, 2001. I was in Boston with a cell phone and calls between there and central Ohio were difficult at best because the system was swamped. For all its faults, Bell Telephone had network management capabilities that almost always managed to get calls through. Network management doesn't matter when lines are down, though.
Bottom Line: In an emergency, there's a good chance that whatever you use to communicate with friends and family won't work. And you'd better be prepared because there's not going to be much in the way of help.
Nerdly News
You Missed the Iphone, so How About a Google Phone?
No, thanks. I'll wait for the next version. Google's phone will cost $179 and you can buy one starting on October 22. The G1 is purported to be cheaper and more flexible than Apple's phone. It's the first phone with the "Android" operating system, but it looks a lot like T-Mobile's existing Sidekick phone. And who sells it? Oh, that's right. T-Mobile.
Cheaper than the Iphone? Yes, by $20. The way things are going with the US economy, that's the equivalent of 1 or 2 gallons of gasoline by the end of the year. The Sidekick with a larger screen comes with a big bonus: An extra key for Internet searches. WiFi and GPS are built in. But Google says it will function as a full personal computer. Yeah, I'll bet I can color-correct and edit photos on the phone. Or design publications.
Google large cheese Sergey Brin says he's excited by having a phone he can play with and modify. And that probably will make the phone a hit. Early PC adapters liked being able to make those boxes of ICs do things we wanted them to, and that spirit remains. Google says it will continue to develop and enhance the phone (hence my decision to wait at least until the next version) but that development will also be open to third parties.
The G1 includes maps, e-mail, and instant messaging. As with most phones today, it's also capable of playing music and performing as a camera. several third-party applications are already available.
Gov.Palin@yahoo.com No Longer Exists
Who's dumber—the kid who may have been involved in a hack of Sarah Palin's Alaska state governor Yahoo e-mail account or the governor who thought it would be a good idea to use a Yahoo account for state business in violation of the law? It's probably a wash. The 20-year-old son of Tennessee Democratic state representative Mike Kernell was one of the prime suspects in hacking the governor's Yahoo e-mail account, but a federal grand jury in Chattanooga refused to return an indictment against the University of Tennessee student, David Kernell.
Kernell was reported to have an interest in the e-mail account from which a confession was posted to an online forum. The FBI is involved and will probably identify the real culprit eventually.
Wired.com reports that the IP address used to access Palin's Yahoo account belongs to Pavlov Media, which is the ISP that provides Internet access to the building where Kernell lives. The group that claims responsibility for the hack calls itself "Anonymous". It's believed to be the same group that hacked the "Church" of Scientology's site earlier this year.
The McCain-Palin campaign called the hacking "a shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law," but didn't mention that conducting state business via a Yahoo account would also be a violation of law.
Images from the e-mail account are posted at WikiLeaks. The list of correspondence and screen shots appear to corroborate changes that the governor was illegally using Yahoo to conduct state business.
Security experts have called the use of private e-mail accounts public officials such as Palin incredibly dangerous because it circumvents security policies the state's IT department would have in place. The practice is illegal because it violates rules regarding retention of public documents.
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