On Saturday morning the lights went out with an ominous clang.

My main Desktop PC was on, but since it is on a UPS, it was simply a matter of shutting it down gracefully. I have a fairly basic UPS, similar to the APC (American Power Conversion) Back-UPS ES 8-Outlet, but it suits my purposes.

After the usual checks of fuses and account payments, we assumed it was a general area-wide power failure. Later I confirmed this by phoning the local Power Authority a while later. A recorded message said the power should be back on by mid-afternoon.

That left me with a problem. I needed to mail a parcel before the Post Office closed at 1pm, and the mailing address was in an email message online. Fortunately I could access my email account with my iPhone via AT&T’s 3G network, which was up. It made me appreciate cellular data access more than ever.

It was only mid-afternoon before the power came on again, but the hours without power were quite a drag, as I still had several computer-based tasks which needed to be done.