When the Lights Go Out…

With the recent outages, I came across this guide that should help you get a few more hours of uptime.

I’m on hour 16 without power thanks to a wind storm that blew through Oregon last night. I’m speaking to you live from my laptop, connected to my cell phone via bluetooth, using a Cingular data connection. I love living on the edge of a small town—the positives outweigh the negatives. But one of the drawbacks is that power seems to take a little longer to come back for us once it goes out, and the power even occasionally blinks on and off for no apparent reason. So I’ve had to do some contingency planning for situations just like these.

I have a few UPS’s in my house. One strictly for running my router, switch and VOIP adapter as well as fax and network attached storage. All my PC’s have a UPS that keep them running for at least an hour. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help when they kick on when you’re asleep. They’ll just drain by morning anyway.