I’ve got the power!

That is to say, my router works/all my battery powered gadgets are recharging/the food moved back from the balcony to the refrigerator/I don’t havt to do the most trivial activities at the light of pieces of swag gathered in my years of showing up at events & conferences.

As you’ve probably read, here in Washington state (namely the Puget Sound area & Seattle) we experienced a pretty impressive storm. Trees fell like twigs, we had a number of floodings, and there were victims. The power went off in the night between thursday and friday, and all the areas I’ve seen around were in the dark until about one hour ago: with the notable exception of a thin stripe of building in Bellevue, including our precious Barnes&Noble (all things I managed to see because Aldo, international PM in VS and good friend of mine, was a man of vision and got a full tank before the fuel madness begun). I’ve never experienced anything like that in a lifetime, back in Italy the longest blackout I’ve ever seen lasted 1 hour or so (I was abroad during the big airconditioning-induced one): on the other hand in my home town we’ve never got >100Mph winds, and the areas to reach with power are small enough to allow concrete pillars for sustaining the power lines. I am very impressed by the ease with which people accepted the situation and coped, without excessive noise, without trying to skip lines at the groceries. Nice.

The storm reminded me of something I’ve always known: I rely A LOT on my PC as protesic extension of my memory. I’m used to access the GAL for getting the phone number of collegues-friends, my notes & todos are there, the stuff I have to read lives mainly there, I communicate mainly via mail. I surround myself with highly efficient tools & processes, and in normal conditions this boost my effectiveness tremendously: but, when the basic preconditions fail, I pay the T-Rex tax. Luckily, I had my JasJar and a flat data plan… now, if only I had a backup battery 🙂