this is ridiculous ...

Well, the whole island of Guam lost basic power service about an hour ago. I knew it was gonna be nasty because there was a long brownout, flickering up and down of lights and tv and whatnot. I'm pissed cuz I wasn't able to shut down anything subject to damage by the brownout — tv, computer, air conditioner (the big three) — before everything snapped off. Fuck. I'm crossing my fingers, especially on the comp but also the air con, because both are so expensive to replace.

Aha!, you cry, How can you be blogging if the whole island has lost power. Well, because there frequently have been long periods of time in the recent past when island power was unreliable, not to mention several times in which typhoons knocked out the system for days if not weeks or months, many home owners and especially businesses have back-up generators. And not crappy little generators, like the SuperDome where the generators barely powered the lights. I mean serious, megawatt generators.

Many homeowners do have the smaller ones to run the essentials, but anyone who can afford it has a full back-up system that powers everything. And any business that wants to stay in business has the full back-up as well. One of those places is the newspaper for which I work, because the newspaper HAS to go out daily. No matter the size of typhoon or type of devastation, my paper hasn't missed a day of publication in DECADES. Yes, I am quite proud of that fact.

So, pretty sure that this blackout was islandwide and not just my area, which is prone to funky little 30-minute outages now and then, I came into work to at least check. I planned to stop by and then hit a strip club for a bit, then Kmart to shop and kill some time, but I've still got 4 hours till the strip clubs close (yay for Labor Day!) and Kmart is 24 hours, and in these islandwide blackouts it usually take 4-6 hours before initial restoration begins (though I'm hoping for a pleasant surprise and less time), and it could take 8-12 hours for full restoration of power islandwide, depending on what caused it in the first place.

That's another reason I'm waiting around, because I will have to post the story to our Web site once we find out what the hell caused this thing and how long it will take fix.

So, instead of sitting at home and killing evil beasties on Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, or writing something pithy, humorous and delightful, I get to write about the blackout. This sucks ass.

Was interrupted there. Power spokesman called. Gotta write the story. Toodles.