Power outage in Saskatoon (flashlight fun)

There are severe thunderstorms passing over central Saskatchewan
today. Even reports of tornadoes this afternoon. This evening they
arrived over Saskatoon and our power went out around 9pm for
about 1 1/2 hours.

We were all in the garage getting things ready for our garage sale
tomorrow when the lights went out. I pulled my Arc AAA-P out
of my pocket and turned it on. My oldest daughter and her friend
were sent to get the two yellow Dorcy LED flashlights I knew were
on the family room couch (my son had been playing with them
earlier).

Then I went up to the bedroom and got my EverLED maglite. From
my son's toy workbench I grabbed a plastic 2C flashlight and a toy
trouble light that also runs on 2 C's. Then everyone had a light.

We finished up in the garage by flashlight. I mostly held my Arc
in my mouth so I was glad for the headshrink I have on it. After a
while I wished I also had the o-ring mod someone on CPF mentioned
that allowes it to clip onto the arm of your glasses.

My wife and son went to bed. My two daughters and friend played
cards by flashlight and sat in the dark and talked.

I got my 3-cubed Mag mod from my workbench drawer in the garage
and started using it. A long time ago I managed to wreck the reflector
while trying to sputter it (got too much spray on it and made the light
into a flood beam). So for yucks I had painted the reflector with cyan
glow paint which made it even more into a flood beam. Anyway, I used
it, mostly on bright, to dig through closets looking for baby things and
other stuff to sell. The even beam was very nice for that, but I suspect
I had to use the brightest setting because the beam is so flood-y.

I also dug out my Cabin Light Panel (a little thin 4x5" lightbox for
viewing slides). After putting some fresh AAAs in it I had a ceiling
bounce /area light that I left running in the kitchen.

I never did need to run to the car for my nFlex mod. Didn't need it
enough to get wet or struck by lightning.

Then the lights came on and the fun was over /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif

After I had typed about half of the above, the power went
off again for about 10 minutes. So when it came back on
I had to type it in again. But this time I used Notepad
and did a Save every paragraph. I wasn't going to type it in
three times! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Greg

Congratulations on being well prepared /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif Glad to see that everybody had a light to use.

All you need now is a UPS for the computer. Inexpensive UPS cost something in the region of $50, and will run for ~10 minutes, enough for you to safely save and shut down. Good trick with Notepad - it's timeless, ageless, and still bears repeating. One more tip: Ctrl-S in Notepad will save your work without you having to reach for the mouse. The two keys fall under your left hand so just move it slightly to hit them, and your work is saved. It's spared me the re-typing many a time. Works in most other applications too.

Thanks for the tips. I use control-S in Word all the
time, but for some reason I thought Notepad didn't
support it (they don't show the shortcuts in the menu).
But I just tried it and control-S does work.

Greg