Well, what was probably going to be a not very eventful day turned into quite a memorable one.......as you know, the Tri state area and Great Lakes region was struck yesterday by a major lack of brightness....no, Good CHarlotte didnt play here, I mean that there was a blackout (like you didnt know)........it happened around 4 O'clock..I remember exactly where I was.....I was at work, at Hofstra in the library, in the back office.....I was talking to one of my supervisors about there not being a Volume 57 of a book in the stacks because the volumes of that particular book only went up to Volume 2......anyway, we were discussing this, when all of a sudden, all the lights and computers blinked and then came back on (and caused a chain reaction with the fax machines and printers and such to make noise that is louder and more obnoxious than Gilbert Godfred), then everything went off again.....the power went out......this startled some people, but it probably startled the most the drivers on Hempsted Turnpike who now had no working traffic lights (well, its not like they were following them anyway...in Hempsted, Green means Speed though the light, Yellow means speed faster, and Red means speed through the light, but make a hand gesture and yell obsenities)...anyway, now these drivers were confused because they werent sure if they needed to just speed through the light, or speed while yelling...so of course, they comprimised and yelled, sped, and crashed......now this would have been fine and dandy if I didnt have to drive home.....after procrastinating leaving at work, my boss said, that everyone else is leaving, so I might as well too....so with this, I walked through the hall of heros while my coworkers and supervisors gave me the good luck salute, and I approched my car....right after I got in a pulled out, a maniac (probably lost from Hempsted turnpike) came speeding through the empty parking lot, and started rushing directly for my car, and then turned at the last second and yelled "Hey watch where youre goin a!#%&*!"....this made me feel better about driving without traffic lights now....my fears though were dropped when I got out onto the California ave/Front street intersection, and were greeted by good samaritans directing traffic...these people were not police or anything, they were just normal people who were directing the flow of traffic and making sure that no one got hurt...this made me feel a little safer of driving.....well, at least until I got to Penninsula Blvd......now that was a fun ride home......I had to drive through Hempsted without any traffic lights....Im not only surprised that some idiot didnt hit me, but Im surprised that there wasnt looting in the stores (Hempsted has ALOT of crime).....anyway, I drove through Rockville Centre with their fancy "backup generator" and their fancy "working traffic lights" and their fancy "electricity" and then on into Lynbrook with their fancy "blackout" and their fancy "traffic police".......anyway, I finally made it....to my ultra-hot home.....and then I was sent to BBQ....umhmm, nothing says cool off from the heat like standing in front of a BBQ for 45 minutes....umhmm....after that, I hopped into my friends new BMW and we drove to the beach....where we encountered quite a few traffic jams.......while we were at the beach we noticed the blood red moon rising up (and this of course spawned one of my friends to yell its a sign of the apocolypse)...and we also noticed in the mist of our discussion of why Shadows of the Empire was never made into a movie, that lights were going back on in peoples homes......one of my friends tryed to call his house, and his cell phone worked! The power was back on! So, we hopped in his car and rode down Long Beach blvd....just to see all the lights go off again..while we were driving...in the dark.....thank God they went on again......after then meeting up with some other friends, we went into Lynbrook and tryed to find a place for food (none were open) and finally settled on Ginos Pizza...and then came to my place and watched "The Jerk"......well, there you go.....so if this blackout proves anything, its that Canada sucks.....its those idiots there that overloaded their power grid and blew Toranto and Ottowa, and Upstate NY, and then Caused Erie Penn to do the same and set off a chain reaction between Detroit, Ohio, Long island, Jersey, Boston, Massachusetts, Delawhare, RI, and COnnecticutt.....so, its all Canadas fault....dang those Canadians with their fancy "Canadian Bacon" and "Mike Myers"....why do they have to be different like that..it just aint right..dang them.....






so anyway, where were you when the lights went out at Hofstra...hey, thats a good parody there.....Sung to the tune of "When the lights went out in Georgia" by Vicki Lawrence:  Where were you when the lights went out at Hofstra......nah, not worth it.....

I read that the blackout cascade actually started in Ohio.  Since the USA and Canada are connected through energy dealings and physically as well (through nuclear and hydroelectric power) I think that's why Ontario got smacked by the blackout as well.

Nobody's fault really, just that the grid is really really old and nobody's bothered to fix it.

I was lucky.The blackout happened after I got off my bus coming home.The trains were running fine before 4:20pm.

Howard

The lights went out?  Oh yeah, in about half the country.  I read about it.  Not here in Vermont.  And when they flickered, we were at the computer.

I was at my friends house. ;D

Is there going to be a baby boom in NYC 9 months from now?  ;)



Cat

I was at the town pool.

Thursday August 14th - major power blackout in TriState area of USA.
Cause - ??

roll forward 2 weeks....

Thursday August 28th - major power blackout in London UK.
Cause - ??

roll forward 2 weeks...

Thursday September 11th.

I'm not usually one to subscribe to conspiracy theories but I have a feeling that there's something we're not being told going on here.

OK, call me Mr Paranoid, perhaps I'm reading too much into this. But I wouldn't call 200,000 people stuck on tube trains underground a minor problem.

Which is why I never use the things...I hate 'em with a passion...my heart bleeds for the poor sods who have to...

But LU did get the public off the crates rather sharpish, which is good news...

But, that aside, it was a trifle compared to what the papers made of it this morning...I think there were more serious casualties when we had that heatwave...

What I can't grasp is when everything ground to a sudden stop (overhead trains as well as them underground) and a power failure was to blame, news footage showed the mainline stations still lit up!...then, of course, old newt-fancier himself (Livingstone) had to wade in...(chorus of yawning all round...)

It`s a little late for this but i was just leaving my house when  the power died, on my way to West Vaginia for a week with a friend. What i really wanted to say is that i just bought a few
"I survived the blackout of 2003"  T-shirts.

I was actually on the computer...thought perhaps the cable modem had went out.
Then my friend pulled up to tell me that something in NYC had exploded, so of course I got quite scared. Only to find out later that that was false. Thanks so much.

I was somewhere were the lights were still on.  ;D