"We're gonna turn it on! We're gonna bring you the power!"

It's been six days since the derecho event last Friday night crippled electrical infrastructure across the East Coast. My girlfriend Kristen had been one of those afflicted: at one point there were more than 20,000 people without juice in Roanoke County, Virginia but thankfully earlier this evening her lights came back on (along with the air conditioning :-)

Okay well, this isn't really something designed as a tribute to those brave souls who have been laboring like mad to replace snapped-apart power poles and fixing transformers, but at least the song itself fits. From 1971 it's the original intro to PBS's hit series The Electric Company!

Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno together on a children's educational TV show. Those were heady days, dear readers...

Seriously though: many, many thanks and thoughts of appreciation to the thousands of electrical workers who have been striving through some of the most brutal heat on record to restore power back to millions of people who got slammed by this thing.

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Color me officially intrigued by Bloom Energy

Heaven only knows how many alternative energy schemes have been proposed over the years, only to watch all of 'em that come to mind fail to deliver the promised goods of cheap, clean power.

But having read about it for the past few weeks, and now seeing what was unveiled yesterday by the company, I think there's a LOT of potential in what Bloom Energy has come up with.

Imagine ten years from now, having a brick-sized energy server supplying all of the electricity to your house. No power lines or anything. A few weeks ago my house went 22 hours without power during a severe winter storm, along with 43,000 other people in this county. That would be a thing of the past, along with monthly bills from the power company.

Well, possibly. PCWorld's website has ten questions about the Bloom Energy Server that lots of folks will probably be asking.

Can't wait to see how this unfolds :-)

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22 hours without electricity

More than 43,000 people here in Rockingham County have been without power since last night because of the winter storm. The precious juice stopped flowing to my own house at just after 7:30 p.m. yesterday evening.

I've been hunkered down under four blankets and a Boy Scout sleeping bag for most of that time since, trying to stay warm.

Give it up for the lads (and lasses) of Duke Energy though! They restored electricity a short time ago to this road and from what I'm hearing, about 11,000 are still without power and hopefully they'll be back on the grid by first of the morning at the latest. So Lord willing, Rockingham County won't miss the Super Bowl "big game".

Got any weather-related stories? Feel free to post in the comments! This is gonna be one to tell the grandkiddies about!

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Death by Twitter

A seventeen-year old girl is dead after being electrocuted in her bathroom in a freak accident while plugging in a laptop computer that she was using to Twitter.

Maria Barbu of Brasov, Romania was found by her parents laying next to the laptop, and police think she "may have tried to plug in the computer's mains power lead with wet hands after the battery ran down during a long Twitter session".

Here's what I have to ask in case no one else has: why was this girl Twitter-ing from a bathroom to begin with?

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The electrician is still scratchin' his head ...

This brings whole new meaning to "squirrel power". And no, he did not survive...

Good friend Matt Smith works on a bulletin board and found this posted by a radio engineer in Tennessee. Thanks for forwarding it this way Matt!

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