BZZZT!

BZZZZT!

My computers shut down, the magnetic restraints on the fire doors deactivated and the doors shut. The lights went out. Yep, a power failure. Emergency power came on a few seconds later, but everyone popped out of their offices like good prairie dogs. This was at 11:50, which coincidentally is when we usually go to lunch anyway. So off we went. The cafeteria of course didn't have power either, so Syd and Jim and I went off to St. John's for hamburgers. We got back around 1:30 and power still wasn't back.

One of the few things more useless than a lock with a voice print is a computer company without power.

So people were leaving in droves. A few hardy ones were hanging out chatting, or working on their Powerbooks or hoping the power would return. But word was it wouldn't be back on until at least 4 pm, so I decided to join most of the company in taking an unexpected afternoon off. Turns out that a truck hit a transmission line and power was not going to be restored until at least late Friday, if not Saturday. Wow.

Getting out of Cupertino was fun, since many of the traffic lights were down, including those at two of the busiest intersections in the country, and at both freeway entrances. Sheesh! I took the "back way", more or less, and made it out without too much trouble.

Spent the cool-but-sunny afternoon taking care of some things around the house, shipping an item I'd sold on eBay, and doing a lot of clean-up in my study, which has really needed it for a while (especially some dusting). I'm slowly moving towards getting rid of my obsolete computer hardware, which will free up a bunch of space (especially for the nightly kitty grand prix). Not the most exciting way to spend an afternoon off, but sometimes it just feels good to clear some stuff from your "to do" plate.

In the evening we bought pizza and caught up on the first two episodes of this season's Smallville. Smallville is darned near the only TV show I'm watching now (I am watching the cartoons Justice League Unlimited and the new The Batman, but that's all; I finally dropped The West Wing, which had become terminally un-fun).

Smallville continues to be entertaining and clever, as long as you don't think about the plots too closely. (Boy, that Kent kid is either the luckiest or unluckiest bastard on Earth! And where's he been for the last three months anyway? Black kryptonite? What the heck? How convenient!) While I enjoy seeing Tom Welling as Clark and John Schneider and (yum) Annette O'Toole as his parents, it's Michael Rosenbaum and John Glover and Lex and Lionel Luthor which really make the show worthwhile for me. The interplay between Clark and Lex was a key element of the early series success, and I hope we'll see some more of it (albeit altered, of course), in this season (in which I guess Clark is a high school senior).

Erica Durance as Lois was pretty good, evocative (as some have noted) of Margot Kidder's turn as Lois in the first Superman film. By contrast, roping Lana into the ongoing supernatural aspects of the story seemed kind of unnecessary. I guess we'll find out eventually, although the series has frustratingly mostly avoided giving us the big payoffs on the Kryptonian thread of the storyline.

Anyway, it's just good fun, and as long as it stays that way, I'll hang in there.