Dark, Ages

This is mainly data (at least, it looks that way), so if data scares you, its okay... just turn around and quietly tip-toe back out).

With all of the rules and regulations that are out there these days, I like to get the disclaimers out front and center as soon as possible.

Now that all of the faint of heart have vacated my virtual room... Welcome! to all those who have stayed. Please form an orderly line to the right and enjoy the e-refreshments, as today (Sep 5) is my birthday! As e-refreshments are notoriously calorie- and nutrient-free, please feel free to have seconds- I've got chocolate cake (with strawberries) and a cream cheese icing. Oh, yeah, don't mind the candles- they're those silly trick ones that you blow out, and then they start up again in about five seconds.

It's officially Friday in my little part of North America (which makes it my birthday), but Thursday was a quiet and enjoyable vacation day. Jennifer and I made a trip to Sam's Cub, and then settled down to watch the last of season 2 of The Bletchley Circle. We've really enjoyed this show, and are unhappy that ITV have decided to discontinue it. So, if you are in an area of the world where you might have some influence on ITV, please let them know that viewers are disappointed in ITV's decision to cancel the show.

Fast forward to Saturday. Even though its quite the norm for me to start a blog on one day, and finish it over the course of a few days, this blog is exceptional. The original title was "Easy Access? I think not". I changed it in commemoration of my birthday's power outage. Sep 5 2014- 12+ hour power outage. I could have had a nicer birthday, I suppose, like with the pizzas we had purchased for dinner and a freshly baked dessert which we had planned, but I'm chalking it up as a "win" as we had no damage to our home, no one was hurt, we lost no food, and we were able to start our emergency generator... for the first time in three years- with three year old gasoline!

When I was a youngster, birthdays were never a big deal. I'd get a cake, blow out candles while Papa and my grandparents sang "Happy Birthday", and opened up a few presents- generally socks and underwear (it was the start of the school year); there was generally a Lego set as well, so it wasn't a total wash.

Birthdays are still- for good or otherwise- "meh" days for me. Unless, of course, there is the opportunity to have a little fun or have a little adventure or some special food. The "unless" was supposed to have happened this year- my birthday is generally on or around Labor Day, and this year I was able to take the whole week off. I should have known not to get into too happy of a mood because about a month before my vacation, I was asked if I would be available to work on the 6th. Well, since I was taking the whole week off and really had no plans, I said sure, text me if you need me. Needless to say, I got the text saying we need you. So, Friday morning, Jennifer and I had been looking at some recipes for a nice baked fruit dessert. She had found a couple of nice apple dishes, and while she was off doing other things, I took a look at some recipes and found what look like a really neat blueberry cheesecake recipe; she looked at it and decided it sounded delicious, so we made a note of what we would need and headed off to the library and Shop and Save.

At the library, I picked up yet another book on Access 2007. I'm having a tooth-and-nail fight with Access, and so far Access is wining. One of the things I had hoped to accomplish this week was to create an Access form. Access and I go back a way- at least to the 2000 version and I've always been able to create rudimentary forms- with the wizards Micro$oft has these days, any fool can build a form in nothing flat- it's almost PowerPoint-like in its ease of creation. Of course, therein lies my boggle- any fool can create a form, but only a (cue the music- the frantically upbeat piano and Elton John breaking into a rousing chorus of "Dee Bee Wizard") database wizard can create a form that is functional, easy to use and aesthetically pleasing. I'm pretty good at visualizing and creating tables that are normalized out of the gate, so to speak, and I'm not bad at creating simple queries. The problem is I've never had a need to create forms.

I digress. We finished up at the library, and as we exited the building, we saw the sky to the north was quite dark; the wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped. We walked back to Meerkat, and Jennifer suggested we park in the Municipal Garage. We were within steps of the Shop and Save entrance when the rain started. By the time we were inside, the torrents had were upon the store. The rain stopped before we finished our shopping, and when we got home at around 1530, Mr. T informed us that the power had been out since 1500. The refrigerated food got put away, and we waited.

As daylight waned, I grabbed a quick nap, and then headed off to Sam's Club- mostly to give Daniel a ride home, but also to pick up a few lights and a few bags of ice. A few weeks back, we saw these rectangular, battery powered motion-sensing lights at Sam's. We picked up a few and mounted them to the rafters in and close to the Secret Underground Lair. The SUL is typically occupied at least 12 hours per day, and generally two overhead lights are burning all of the time. With these motion-sensing lights,the overhead lights are only on when they need be. However, as they are battery powered and switchable to motion-sensing or ON and they are portable, we made extensive use of them during the power outage.

At around 2030, we fired up the generator. We had purchased it three years ago after another massive storm had ripped through our neighborhood. A word to the wise: if you have a piece of emergency/fail-safe equipment, take some time to practice setting it up and using it: it only took Jennifer and I ~five minutes to get it up and running, but it would have only been ~a minute if we had set the gasoline (petrol) petcock correctly.  After that, the only other incident we had was when the sump pump started the first time on generator, it tripped the breaker. I switched out the power strip that might have caused the problem, and we were golden until we shut it down.

Sorry, data fans- it just didn't happen. I hope you did enjoy my rousing little tale, though. Next time I hope to have some progress notes on the resurrected Forty-Two database (Keep calm and Query on?- I hadn't parodied that yet...!)

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

***Happy birthday, Yvonne! You're 30-something!