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4.4.06

When the power goes out 

Over the last seven days, there have been a few glitches in . Parts of went without power. Last week, Sky TV subscribers got blank TV screens.
   The reports rolled in on the radio and even the blogosphere: people went out. Parents talked to their children. People discovered they could get by without these toys for a night and had a good experience as a result. No one went .
   While it’s important to have shelter and warmth, which brings us, these faults are fairly pleasant during the mild weather we have. And bringing things back to first principles of —people connecting with people—seems rather nice.
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I agree with you, sky going out for the night was lovely, no blaring tv - just peace and quiet. If I had my way I'd get rid of my tv altogether. Funny how we can get so dependant on things tho isn't it?  
it's amazing, after the inital panick at not having these things that we have come to believe are essentials, we realise that there is life after dark.  
I hardly watch telly these days and never got Sky. It was only more channels to surf through before finding out there’s still nothing to watch! I guess if I didn’t have such a love for media, I would not have a telly either.
   Markoos, I remember one time we had an outage in Wellington around five years ago. A serious one: no traffic lights either. Yet all was fine. No car accidents, nothing. People just drove carefully!
   Dad and I went to get a burger in a suburb with electricity and we met others who were surprised to learn why there was an influx of people from our part of town. Just good ol’ human connections, rather than interfacing with a light-emitting tube—or LCD screen, as the case may be today!  
"And bringing things back to first principles of human relationships—people connecting with people—seems rather nice."

What I find most sad, particularly in my own life, is how often the above reminder seems like a new and fresh idea. I had a similar experience a year or two ago when the neighborhood I lived in blacked out for the evening. Normally my wife and I would be plodding away at computers, and for the first 30 minutes or so we had a shared sense of impatience as we waited for the power to come back on. Finally, accepting the fact that we might not be able to get any work done that evening, we hopped in the car and drove around for a while (I think we also went to the beach, but that's beside the point).

What struck me, somewhere along the road that evening, was that our drive was the first time she and I had taken a real break (where we talked about life and fun things, not business) in months. We're a bit better now at taking breaks, but I would still welcome some periodic intervention by nature to help us out.  
Do you know what caused it? I have a buddy who is down in Auckland, I think I have seen him online. But he's at the university. So that could be a factor.  
Peter, I thought something similar when in town today. In fact, prior to that, I was walking along and got in someone’s way. We tried to avoid each other and went in the same direction twice. We both laughed. Then I saw two people who had run into each other, probably neighbours, and they were smiling broadly after a brief chat about nothing.
   We all went about our business and we would have accomplished our primary purpose without distraction. But we would have been poorer for it, having been automatons. Smiling, laughing at our own clumsiness, feeling upbeat if only for a moment, gave that experience humanity and a bit of joy.
   Television does the same to us, I believe. We are just there interfacing with nothing; perhaps feeling some emotion, but it is from within us. We did not exchange real energy with a live human being and had a richer experience.
   Those real breaks are great, and you are right: all too often we need something to intervene to remind us of it. Internet outages, power outages, illness in some cases. We really need to schedule these times in for ourselves and other people.
   Ryan, the Sky TV outage was a satellite fault, but I am not sure what caused the electricity outage in West Auckland.  
I am not a big TV guy, so I couuld bhasically care less about the TV. :-P

Give me a computer and a connection, and I am happy. No I am not talking about the 486 or whatever.

Did that one thread at my blog finally die? *tear*  
I was hoping C. would comment about her photograph! I want that thread to live on: it’s number one in coComment. We shouldn’t count Dennis Howlett’s one, as most of the comments are due to coCo grouping them all under one thread when in fact they are not.  
You should be like C, C...
Is the Dennis Howlett's the devorced after 24 years one. I havent checked that thread. You can always can mod the coComment ID and point it elsewhere.  
Yep, it’s the ‘Divorced’ thread. Dennis’s stuff is actually really good, but there’s some glitch in coCo. Most people, sadly, are too lazy to bother changing the fields (I always do, to make sure my comments go to the right topic—otherwise there’s no point to coComment).  
YOu actually slipped on Nicole's post.
I havve seen people claim the same comment multiple times.  
Yeah, I know. Pretty bad that coComment didn’t pick up the right one. I was too busy putting in keywords (which no one else seems to).  
if you think of it, coComment is just a carbon copy of comments. So you can make copy after copy. I wasn't talking about you about the multiple comments... I know why I don't use tags, because, I don't know what to use as tags most of the time.  
You are right, Ryan; also, it’s cool. I knew you weren’t dissing me. I know how you feel about tags. After making the comment, it’s like having to cook up a summary of those words, and if it’s a throw-away comment (a casual, brief one), then it’s almost impossible to come up with meaningful tags.
   I quite like the tags so I can see how the cloud grows.  
Hey Ryan, I checked my coComment box before submitting on Nicole’s NicoleMart blog today. The details were all correct, and coCo still groups them into that old topic. It’s not like Dennis’s blog where it collects the wrong info—as far as I can tell, it collected the right info. Might let them know.  
Can you try once more, and get a screenshot. You should know my email. I only had an issue of it not going to the proper post but pointed to her main blog.  
I know the permalink that was originally there when captured was for her main blog (so I changed it), but for some reason the wrong subject name still appears. If I remember, next time I will grab a screen shot for you. I’ve also told Merlin at coCo so he can follow it up.  
ok, cool.
That is a weird bug.  
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Entries from 2006 to the end of 2009 were done on the Blogger service. As of January 1, 2010, this blog has shifted to a Wordpress installation, with the latest posts here.
   With Blogger ceasing to support FTP publishing on May 1, I have decided to turn these older pages in to an archive, so you will no longer be able to enter comments. However, you can comment on entries posted after January 1, 2010.


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