Here in my new place of residence, it's been a wild few days. Thursday a pretty big rain and windstorm blew through, knocking down trees and knocking out power for most of the region. While I'd been told that it never rained in Madison Park :) it turns out that's not true, and the neighborhood was dark from about midnight Thursday to 6 a.m. Sunday. We were pretty lucky -- there were tons of people who had trees fall on their houses, cars, etc. We had a smidge of water in our basement, and that was the extent of the damage. But like everyone else, no power. What I missed most (other than a warm house) was access to information. No network, my cell coverage was spotty at best, no newspaper on Friday and old news on Sat/Sun, the radio news (and I hesitate to call it that) was spectacularly uninformative. As we cranked the little radio on Saturday morning, NRP spent three minutes talking to one person about a tree down on the property. What a waste of cranking power -- no information that was relevant was passed on. And holy cow, the talk radio stations were even worse -- call after call from people who were only able to offer either their view of the immediate surrounding, or opine on why they thought the power was not yet on. This, my friends, is truly the wisdom of the crowds. ;).
It was a good lesson about technology and information flow, and how quickly we take for granted the ability to perceive both widely and deeply.