If There's One Thing I Learned From Power Outages.

I think I mentioned it here in the blog not too long ago, but didn't expand on it...

So the day after Christmas, some of you may have heard, but O'ahu had an island wide power outage. Although I didn't get the full story, I think one of the substations was struck by lightning and because of "safety settings", the entire grid shut itself off.

Nicole, Sean Patrick and I were at my cousin Jade's house when it happened. We went about our scheduled dinner and chatting for a while until my brothers left and Nicole and I stayed and chatted for a while longer. Just before we about to leave, my cell phone rang with the caller ID telling me it was my dad's house. It was my brother Matt on the other end telling me the entire island was in darkness and to just spend the night at my dad's instead of trying to get to the hotel and lugging the kid up 5 flights of stairs.

He also said he'd been trying to call me on his cell for quite sometime but wasn't able to get through, and was surprised my cell worked. Matt had called me from my dad's "land line" which also still worked.

At this point I'd like to send a shout out to T-Mobile and their ability to have there cell towers working in a black out and a big, HA! to AT&T for their inability to have their towers up. Love the iPhone (don't own one), but HATE AT&T. Another blog, another time.

I've always liked the Alexander Graham Bell invention. Just ask my dad. When I was a teenager, I was on the phone all the time. Worse than most girls. I was on it so much, my dad had to get that new fangled technology of the time, "call waiting". In 1990, I got around to buying my own phone. My dad didn't have cool phones, and I wanted a cool phone, a "business" phone.So I went to Sears and bought this phone for right around 60 bucks I think. What made this phone so cool? The orange button on the bottom right, "Speaker phone". That was the latest technology back in 1990.

Yesterday, I went out and purchased a new cordless phone for the house. The one my dad gave us all those years ago has finally lost it's legs.I was standing in Best Buy, my head spinning with the multitude of choices out there, when this phone jumped out at me. It looks like your basic cordless phone, but it's got one piece of techno-weeine gadgetry I had to have... It's Bluetooth enabled. All that means is Nicole and I can "pair" our cell phones to it, so when ever our cell phones ring, we can answer it using the cordless. How cool is that? We never have to go running for our cell phones as long as we have this handset near us, we're styling. Added bonus, it comes with TWO handsets! Now I have one and Nicole has one. We are the modern family now.

And yet, I have my 1990's phone still plugged into the jack in the bedroom, taking up valueable nightstand space.

If there's one thing I learned from power outages, I'm never giving up my land line. As long as technology doesn't leap forward and forces everyone to have VoIP (Voice Over Internet Phones), or some other "bundled" service, my land line stays.

Why? Because it still works (more often than not) in a power outage. If you have VoIP, and the power goes out, out goes your modem, out goes your internet service, out goes your phone. For a while there, you could rely on your cell phone, but as this recent power outage demonstrated, that could also be compromised. Not to mention once your cell battery goes flat...

Same goes for my new fangled cordless phone. Power goes out, base station goes out, cordless phone stops working.

But 1990's phone, will keep working. It's got a cord and no batteries. It plugs straight into the wall, and I can only walk as far as the cord will let me. Doesn't matter, I can still call my dad and let him know we're ok.

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Just a quick aside for my dad... Guess who can hold his head up while on his tummy...

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