Power Outage Update

Before coming up to Vancouver to escape the power outage, I was thinking about ways that I might be able to figure out when the power was back on at the house. I thought maybe I could hit my home web server, which should turn back on automatically, but the DSL line that goes to the house has a dynamic IP address, and I wasn’t sure if the computer would automatically update the dynamic DNS record automatically or not, so that’s not 100%.

A friend at work had a good idea — just call the house and see if the answering machine picks up. But I’m not sure it will come up enabled, or if it was even turned on before the storm hit. If not, then it will go to voicemail regardless of whether the power is on or not.

So I broke down and called PSE on my cell at $0.69/min roaming rates. They say that their current estimate is that power will be back on by Friday at 6PM, but it might be as late as Saturday. She said they’ve seen three different estimates in the last 24 hours, and with another storm approaching tonight, all bets are off.

So we’ll head back on Saturday. With a little luck, the power should be on when we get home. If not, then we’ll hit a Motel 6. At least it’s likely we’ll be home and warm on Christmas.

In the meantime, Cindy and I are going for a Massage this afternoon. As long as we’re on a forced "vacation", we might as well make the best of it.

Updated update: According to the service alert on the PSE website, it now appears that we may not have power ’till Sunday. What “a small number of customers in the Cottage Lake area” means, exactly, is the question. Are we part of that group or not? I guess there’s no way to know without calling them. Great.

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