Brownouts, shorts, explosions and the unix pc.

[Augustine Cano]

I recently had a couple of quite dramatic power related experiences:

One day, while at the keyboard, I experienced dozens of brownouts over a
period of at least 45 seconds.  All lights would dim for periods between
1/3 second and 1 second, the unix pc power supply would whistle and then
go back to normal.  The system never crashed, even though I frantically
closed all windows, killed all processes and got ready for an orderly
shutdown.

On another occasion, the power went crazy; not in the orderly and
predictable fashion described above.  This time the fluctuations were
completely random and even more serious.  This also went on for at
least 30 seconds.  Amazingly, I could hear explosions from outside,
perfectly synchronized with the power fluctuations.  I thought a
transformer was about to blow up but everything went back to normal.
No crash this time either.  It was a rainy day so I assume some wet
branch fell on the power lines and shorted them.

No damage occurred in either instance, possibly thanks to the very old
surge suppressor I have protecting the computer...

-- 
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