Radke Land

At about 3:30 AM, Saturday August 11th, a very violent wind/lightning storm passed through our neighborhood, and knocked out power (to Radkeland as well, just in case you were wondering). Power was (finally!) restored at about 5:30 PM on Sunday, August 12th.

Spending 38 hours without power was quite an experience. It's really quite amazing just how dependent we've come to be on having a constant supply of electricity to the house. In the end, there was nothing terribly trying, as power was up in the surrounding areas (stores, etc.); but one wonders ... what if whole sections of the city went down? Would we be able to purchase Ice/Dry Ice? Would the grocery stores be able to stay open and process transactions by hand? Would we have access to our monies stored in the bank?

I did (briefly) consider just joining an Amish community. The older I get, the more I see the attractiveness of that lifestyle, and the benefits to my children.

In other technical matters: Don't worry about not receiving email sent to you during the downtime ... RFC's require that mailservers continue to try to deliver mail for three days (less than the total downtime). If I wanted to ensure Radke Land could stay up during future outages, it would require at least 400 watts of consistent power, and some gas engine that could be kept running during that time (a 12 volt source would be tapped before too long at that draw). I'll think on this, but the real solution is off-site hosting; and since Radke Land doesn't really have any 'customers' right now, I don't feel any pressing need to spend more money.