[rescue] A not-so-excellent Internet Adventure

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Bryan Gurney writes ...
>
> Hmm, maybe that's what happened to Valve Software:  
> http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8139/1092/
>
> Their Steam authentication server was unreachable
> across the world for about four hours as far as I
> can tell.  I was unable to play Half-Life 2 until
> about 9:30 PM EST or so.

... certainly a real pisser, that.

It looks like my ISP was down for about 60 hours.

Lots of folks around here still don't have power, and there are a _lot_ of
houses and apartments with electric heat.  It's pretty nippy outside, so
living in a fireplace-less apartment without lights or heat is probably the
current lot of several tens of thousads of people.  

Naturally, there have been some auto-Darwinations, and attempts at same, in
pursuit of light and heat.  The newspaper reported that one chap was found
dead in his apartment, with a generator still running in the living room.
Folks are bringing their barbecue grills inside, and firing up the charcoal.
Over 50 of cases of carbon-monoxide poisoning have been treated in the
hyperbaric chamber at one of the local hospitals.

Our little island took a pasting.  Four houses substantially destroyed, but
without any injury serious enough to make the newspaper.  Big trees, big
wind, and above-ground electric service is not a good combination, and it
was a rare neighborhood that didn't have a tree across a road, a power pole
down, or both.  The electric utility guys worked their asses off; they were
on the street below us at two in the morning, hanging out of a cherrypicker,
replacing the cross-arms on a power pole that had failed to support about
2,000 board feet of Douglas fir tree.

I can't hear a chainsaw at the moment, so I suppose all the roads and
driveways in our neighborhood are clear.

-Shel