Power Cut

Everything seems back to normal now. We had a pretty epic power outage last week, starting on Wednesday afternoon and not back on until about noon on Thursday. From beginning to end:

1) About 6pm, 2/3 of the machines in Studio suddenly blank out. It’s like the scene from Jurassic Park where they shut off the mainframe. Pheeoouummmmm.

2) Various people say they can smell burning coming from the fuse box

3) An electrician chap fiddles with a couple of things, and then the remaining machines go out. And the lights. He insists the two are unrelated.

4) The next morning, everything is still dead to the world. We start unplugging everything to see if we can at least get the lights back on.

5) There is now a new electrician chap, with a ponytail and a screwdriver. This brings a renewed sense of optimism.

6) Finally, he seems to have found the problem. There was a broken bit of wiring under the floor, which was arcing between the live and the neutral and finally broken connection completely. Everyone agrees that they’re not sure what that means, but that it sounds bad.

7) By the afternoon, most of our systems are back up and running. It’s actually been rather nice – sitting outside, planning, making lists, with this sense that anything you can get done is a bonus. I’d recommend it sometime – just shut everything off, and see how useful it can be!