12-11-2002, 01:57 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 3,060
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Back In the World of the Connected
I don't know if it's been much of a news story where you live, but I've just spent the last week marooned by a huge ice storm, finding out what it would be like if Hell froze over. Ice storms aren't very common in Durham, North Carolina, so our entire world came to a screeching halt (I guess the area just has too many trees, too many above-ground power lines and not enough sane automobile drivers). Millions of us in the area have had to get by without electricity, landline phones, mobile phones and -- gasp! -- Internet access.
After the storm hit last Wednesday and knocked out the power, it was kind of exciting for the first couple of days. My family and I would sit huddled around the fireplace, playing games and listening to MP3s with our Pocket PCs. We even watched a couple of movies on my Pocket PC in the evenings, using the battery extender I had built. As you can guess, though, for such a gadget-focused, Internet-loving, wireless-centric, technology-hungry geek like me, the adventure lost its excitement once my various batteries went dead and it became clear that the wireless towers would not be fixed anytime soon. Never mind trying to keep warm. Never mind keeping the house's pipes from freezing and bursting. I WANTED TO BE CONNECTED AGAIN!
The good news is that my family and I finally got electricity after five days and Internet access one day later. I hope nobody has to go through such an experience again, but it made me wonder...
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