powerout
When I was a kid, I used to love power outages. The sudden withdrawal of a major element of 'civilization,' and the overwhelming sense of quiet as all our machines ground to a halt, gave a great sense of peace. This was before personal computers entered my life, of course, so there was never any annoyance at missing email or whatnot. I even liked reading by candlelight, and still do.
Last night's power outage, then, was a bit surreal. The house went almost dark and almost quiet. The main intruders on my childhood peace were my computer and monitoring system, kept unnaturally alive beyond the loss of their life force by the other anomaly: the wheeping, whining UPS that insisted on reminding me every 1.5 seconds that I had less than 20 minutes of battery. Mind you, I love that UPS- it gave me plenty of time to save and shut down gracefully. In retrospect, I believe I could've even checked my email- the phones were probably not out and neither, I expect, was the DSL (the modem's on the UPS like the rest of the studio). Still, I don't like working on borrowed power when I have the file open for a song I've spent the whole day recording (not to mention that abruptly running out of juice with several thousand dollars worth of sensitive studio gear fired up isn't my idea of fun). There was no way I could finish the mix and post it in fifteen minutes, especially with the damn (blessed) UPS wheeping away. So, I poked the power button on my keyboard, shut down the UPS, and got to be a kid again for a little while. Whee!
Last night's power outage, then, was a bit surreal. The house went almost dark and almost quiet. The main intruders on my childhood peace were my computer and monitoring system, kept unnaturally alive beyond the loss of their life force by the other anomaly: the wheeping, whining UPS that insisted on reminding me every 1.5 seconds that I had less than 20 minutes of battery. Mind you, I love that UPS- it gave me plenty of time to save and shut down gracefully. In retrospect, I believe I could've even checked my email- the phones were probably not out and neither, I expect, was the DSL (the modem's on the UPS like the rest of the studio). Still, I don't like working on borrowed power when I have the file open for a song I've spent the whole day recording (not to mention that abruptly running out of juice with several thousand dollars worth of sensitive studio gear fired up isn't my idea of fun). There was no way I could finish the mix and post it in fifteen minutes, especially with the damn (blessed) UPS wheeping away. So, I poked the power button on my keyboard, shut down the UPS, and got to be a kid again for a little while. Whee!
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