Hot! No, Wait, It's Not

Keeping My Promise Not to Complain

Yes, it's hot. Temperatures are nearly at 100F here in New Jersey. But I swore after the past winter I was not going to complain about the heats. So I'm not complaining. I am just noting that it's hot.

This morning, I woke up to the sounds of my computer printer making strange noises. Then I realized it was because the power was out. No electricity is not a good thing under any circumstances, but in extreme weather, it's even worse.

The house was relatively comfortable because the AC had been working all night. But here in the country, no electricity means no water. Again, not an issue short term as I have bottled water, but what about the horses?

It would have been OK if I had filled the water trough before going to bed last night, but I hadn't. So, here we were with a power outage, temperatures heading up and only about four inches of water in the trough.

Not to panic. I called the power company who had no idea we had no power--not a good sign and headed out to feed the Boys.

Now was the time to try out my new generator set up. I'd paid a handsome sum of money to get things installed so I could run a power cord from my new 8000w generator in the garage to the house powering everything in my electrical panel. Then, I'd finally managed to get a super good battery for the generator and also paid to finally get the darn thing up to spec as far as power output. Now was the time to put it all to the test.

Took a bit more work than I expected. Had to drag the generator to the front of the garage--the handlebar for the wheels don't lock in place--then I had to lie down in the grass to see how to plug in the power cord to the house. Then I had to fiddle with the circuit breaker on the panel to keep it from tripping--it was set up so the main had to be off before the generator could power up the panel. But with a little extra ingenuity, I worked it all out. My nifty generator started right up and KAZZAM!  I had power, and more than enough to run the pump in the barn so I could water the Boys.

Power was out for several hours, as it turned out a tree had fallen on the wires down the road.  In fact, I ended up going to the pool for a nice long swim before it came back on. (I shut off the generator when I left the property.)  BUT, in the meantime, I guess the tree had also knocked out all my Comcast connections.

Bummer. That meant no TV, no Internet, and no telephone. So again--cell phones be blessed--I called Comcast to report the outage. They set up a service appointment for tomorrow, but in the meantime were going to send repair crews out to see if the wires were damaged.

Home from swimming, powered up again, I discovered that at least my phone service and TV were restored as well, but my Internet was still not working.

I then spent at least 45 minutes on the phone with a Comcast tech trying to connect only to come to the conclusion that I needed a new modem. Guess the power outage had fried something. Headed off to the Comcast service center about 5 miles away and got a brandy new modem, no questions asked.

Took a while to get it working, as it had to set itself and then, when I finally did get Internet service I had to go online to set up the rest of the connection. It was actually surprisingly easy--so far, at least.

Just got an automated call from Comcast checking to see if I needed the technician to come out, but I canceled. For once, I was able to get things working all on own.

So, good things come from bad. I discovered that my generator is a gem, the system works just fine with the little glitch of the tripping switch, and I succeeded in my own technical troubleshoot.

Well, add in the swim, and my adventures took up the entire day.

Can't say I was bored today, that's for sure.