Farcebook

Something’s very wrong with the power here. It went off again this afternoon for about ten seconds. Just long enough to mess up all the computers and screw the Internet.

Then it worked for an hour, before doing it again twice. So now instead of sitting in a dark room with no power, I’m in a lit fully working room just with no working network.

I’m writing all this on my Remarkable 2 with its keyboard case. It’s quite pleasant to type on, I should do this more.

Last month I switched my mobile phone from Smarty (budget Three) to Lebara (budget Vodafone) since I noticed our cheapo work phones on Lebara always seem to have signal, and my phone on Three/Smarty didn’t. They do seem better, but it feels like Lebara gets a lower priority on the network than Vodafone. Earlier my phone had a signal but no data, the little signal meter had an exclamation mark in it.

I get to go home in 20 minutes. Today hasn’t been the most productive really.

Update

So it turns out where I work has quite a severe power supply issue. The main cable connecting us to the local substation has failed and it’s causing the power company some issues finding the fault.

We have been running off generator power since the weekend, and the network failed because none of the switches in our building have any power. I’m guessing they use PoE from another part of the building that currently doesn’t have power, or has tripped offline due to the repeated power cycling that’s been going on.

So I’ve been thinking, this power cut is a bit inconvenient since I’m at work and supposed to be working. Ultimately though I don’t really care, it’s not my problem to fix. It’ll come back on and in a day or two we’ll forget it even happened.

The school is a bit like a scene from a horror movie though, all the magnetic fire doors have released and the corridors are lit by emergency lighting. Lurking in the shadows are small fast-moving shapes, but I’m told that’s just the little kids.

At home I rarely get powercuts caused by things beyond my own doing. If the power goes off at home, it’s usually followed shortly by me going “ohshit. Well the RCD works then, good”. The estate is new, the substation was upgraded about two years ago and for a weekend the entire estate was being run from a single large generator.

In my house is 10kWh of battery power and 3kW of solar panels. I have a lot of battery devices, and on my driveway is my car with its own 50kWh battery pack.

Except I can’t easily use that to run anything. It’s not wired up to power the house in a powercut. None of that energy is available outside the device containing it. The house solar doesn’t run without a grid connection either. My shed has its own batteries and solar panel and can work off-grid, but not for that long and it’s no good having power in there and nowhere else.

Is this how you start out on the path to becoming some sort of crazy prepper? One minute you’re looking at generators on Amazon, next minute shotguns and tinned ex-Russian ration packs?

It’s warm in here with no AC running, and the open windows do nothing to create air flow. Briefly I considered bringing a fan from home, but that wouldn’t be any use!