So I'm sleeping the sleep of the not-as-just-as-they-should-be, when I am awakened by an alarm. A beeping alarm. Except it's not my alarm clock, and it's not loud enough to be a fire alarm. I look at my clock- which is dark. Hmm. That explained it: the beeping was my computer's Uninterruptible Power Supply, a battery that keeps my computer from crashing immediatly when the power goes out. The power had clearly done just that.

My computer was in sleep mode for the night, but the UPS was not only beeping audibly, it'd sent a distress signal to the computer it was connected to. So the computer had to wake itself up to shut itself down fully. (Sleep state draws a small ammount of power; when it rolled onto the battery backup, my PC is set to go to hibernation mode, which uses no power at all.)

There was some light coming through the window, so I wondered what time it was. I couldn't find my watch, and was too sleep-mazed to find my glasses to look for the watch. Finally I found my cell phone, and discovered it was 6 AM, an hour before I was intending to get up. So I silenced the UPS alarm, set my cell phone's alarm clock function, and went back to bed.

When the phone woke me, it was colder, as my apartment has forced-air heating. The heat comes from natural gas, but the blower needs power. Grumblingly, I took a flashlight with me into the bathroom, showered, shaved, and dressed. I had a quiz first thing that morning, and I'd been thinking of brewing some tea before I left. But I had no way of lighting the gas stove. I wrote "matches" on the grocery list, grabbed my backpack, and headed for the bus stop.

The apartment complex's community building was well-lit, with a backup generator humming on a pad outside. I suspect the backup is necessary because if power stays out too long, all the apartments get unlivably cold, in which case we'll all pack into the community building.

Anyway, I had to get off to class. First thing: a statistics quiz. I finished in twenty minutes, then rechecked my answers, feeling very suspicious. I've been straggling on previous quizzes, so what was I doing being first one done this time? I'm glad I rechecked, because I found one error that I corrected.

In my history recitiation I got my US History II test back, with the comment on it that I had the highest graded essay in the (200-person) class. *blush*

Then there was a boring lecture. I dutifully took notes.

When I got home in the afternoon, the power was back on. Why did it go out? I doubt I'll ever know.

And now, I've got to complete my weekly homework for my internet-only class.

Posted by: Boviate at 07:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 479 words, total size 3 kb.