As I write this by cover of darkness, sequestered here in my office, the entire Island is without power. CBC Radio had a brief announcement about this on the 10:00 a.m. news, and then went on with regular programming, presumably based on the assumption that we Islanders would rather be lulled to sleep by Shelagh Rogers than informed about a power calamity. Fortunately, due the good offices of my powerful landlords, the Reinvented server still has power, and is humming along one floor up. Not that it has anywhere to go: our upstream Internet is dark, so I’m writing to an audience of no more than one.
There seems to be a lot of siren traffic around the city: perhaps people are trapped inside elevators, or have tried to use propane furnaces to brew coffee? On the way here in my car, intersections were well-behaved, and everyone was observing the 4-way stop rules one is supposed to observe when traffic lights are out (I know this because CHTN told me so).
I made a horrible discovery this morning, courtesy of the same CHTN: I am now a candidate for “golden oldies” radio. I always thought of CHTN as a bastion of music by groups with names like The Platters, and The Rondelles, with little bits of Elvis for effect. But CHTN now plays Bruce Cockburn and the Doobie Brothers: the same music I listened to with the crystal set under my pillow on CKOC Hamilton thirty years ago. Thank goodness nobody else, especially the hipsters upstairs, can read this; who knows what mocking might result.
I’m off to a meeting uptown. I imagine it will be at least supper time before the full-fledged looting begins, and perhaps Friday before we have to arm ourselves. Stay tuned.
Update: the power came on 30 seconds after the above was posted.
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I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
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Comments
Power outage may throw some
Power outage may throw some hairballs into Aliants net, helping the strikers if service suffers.
It must be tought waiting on a picket line for a machine that only fails .00001 percent of the time to fail. So your services will be missed.
It’s not exactly health care type urgency, where people suffer directly during a strike.
In fact, I have a theory that by stopping wages during the strike Aliant saves about $1000/wk per employee, which is millions of dollars! Strike on, while Aliant saves!
Revenues still pile in during the strike.
Also, I heard some facilities were sabaotaged in the maritimes, police are investigating. I guess that would make .00001 % failure rate up!
What happened to your site? I
What happened to your site? I couldn’t hit it for a couple of hours.
Find out the truth about
Find out the truth about service.
www.aliantstrike.com
Re: the truth about service
Re: the truth about service,
Last night my parents were having a problem with their Aliant high-speed internet. They asked me if they should call Aliant tech support. I said the wait times were bad enough at the best of times, and considering the strike, they weren’t likely to get through to anyone without waiting on hold forever. I went to their house and tried, unsuccessfully, to fix the problem myself. As a last resort I called Aliant and settled in for the long wait. To my surprise, someone answered the phone on the FIRST RING. In all my dealings with tech support lines (and I worked in tech support for 2 years), getting a real, live person on the phone after one ring is rare. The friendly agent, with the help of colleagues in the background, was able to walk me through a series of diagnostic steps and corrective measures that had us back up and running within a matter of minutes. It was the finest service I’ve received in years from any tech support line. In the past I’ve had very frustrating experiences with Aliant support, but in this case the service exceeded what I’d expect from Aliant, even if the company’s resources were NOT stretched by the current strike.
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