07:42 – We had a brief power failure Monday during the deluge. Our cable modem isn’t connected to a UPS, and Barbara commented that evening that since we had no phone service during a power outage she was going to start keeping her cell phone turned on. (In the past, she kept it off except to make calls or when she was expecting a call.) She asked me to remind her to start doing that, which I did yesterday morning.
Talk about a timely decision. About 6:15 p.m. yesterday, Barbara’s sister, Frances, called to tell me that their mom was on her way to the hospital in an ambulance. She’d been feeling ill for a couple of days, and was having trouble breathing. Of course, she didn’t want to bother Frances or Barbara, so she hadn’t said anything.
Barbara was stuck at the ballgame, because she’d left her car in the parking deck at work and ridden over to the game with a friend from work. I told her that from what Frances had said, her mom didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger now that she was at the emergency room. Barbara got over there as quickly as she could, and called later to say that her mom was stable and that they were waiting to see if the hospital would admit her or just pump her full of antibiotics and send her home. She kept me updated through the evening, although there wasn’t much to tell. They were just sitting waiting to find out what was going to happen.
Finally, around 12:30 or 1:00 this morning, Barbara called again to say they’d decided to admit her mom. Barbara didn’t want her dad, who turns 90 in July, to be at home alone overnight, so she decided to sleep over at her parents’ house. She’ll either go in late to work today, or take the day off, depending on what they find out this morning. If she goes into work, she’ll have to come home first to shower and change. I’m going to suggest that she pack a small bag with work clothes, nightgown, toothbrush, and so on, and keep it in her car just in case something like this happens again.
At this point, all we know is that Barbara’s mom has a nasty lung infection, possibly pneumonia, and that they have her on strong antibiotics. We’ll find out more this morning, no doubt. And poor Colin has no idea what’s going on or where Barbara is.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been working heads-down on the forensics book, while I watched our supply of finished science kits dwindle. I knew this would bite me. The good news is that we got four chemistry kit orders yesterday. The bad news is that we had only three finished kits in stock. So now we’re in a backorder situation until we can get more kits built. We’re waiting on one component, which I didn’t get ordered as quickly as I should have due to being busy with the forensics book. That component will arrive tomorrow, and we’ll build another couple of dozen kits over the weekend and resume shipments next Monday.
RBT wrote:
“Our cable modem isn’t connected to a UPS…”
May I suggest that you get an inexpensive “UPS” for the cable modem? My utility power supply seems much more reliable than yours but I got a low end Belkin a few years ago. It’s kept the Internet going during short outages. And my landline (which I have to have as part of my package) isn’t effected.
Also, I keep my cell phone switched on 24×7, seems no reason not to.
The funny thing is that I have three or four perfectly good Falcon Electric on-line (true) UPSs, including 1.5KVA and 2KVA units, but the batteries are dead in all of them. All I need to do is replace the batteries, but somehow I haven’t made time to do that.
As to keeping the cell phone on, I’ve never done so, either.
My VOIP service with Comcast has a battery in the modem that is good for about 4 hours. All but one of my phones are wireless so they are worthless in a power outage. Only the wired phone will work. If you are going to have landline phones in the house having one wired phone should be a very real consideration. Comcast recently mailed me a new battery because the modem diagnostics that get sent to Comcast indicated the battery was failing.
I keep my cell phone on all the time. There is really no reason to not keep the phone on. It just sits on the counter plugged into the charger.
If you are going to have landline phones in the house having one wired phone should be a very real consideration.
Yep, got two. One is in the hurricane box, along with the power cords for the generator, batteries, etc.
Congratulations on your new business line going well!
BTW, as the ordering season for fall studies is getting ready to start (may have already), you may be getting ready to have a deluge of orders. But you already know this…
Thanks. Yes, orders start to ramp up around now and remain at decent levels through about early August. Then they skyrocket and remain high for all of August, September, and October. Then there’s another smaller hump for Christmas and winter semester. Then it’s dead from about mid- to late January through late April or early May.
We’ll be busy from now through late July and then really busy through mid- to late October.
Yes, definitely congrats on the success of the venture, and many happy returns. Er, no, wait. That’s for birthdays and anniversaries, not for shipped orders. Anyway, congrats.
Given that you’re always touting the high intelligence of border collies, it seems there ought to be a way to put Colin to work. The lack of opposable thumbs would be a drawback, but there ought to be something. If you weren’t so busy already you could make some kind of doggy arm prosthesis, but “too busy fighting alligators to be able to drain the swamp”.