Geek in the dark

Even if you’re not in Hawaii, you probably heard by now about the massive power outage that occurred this past Friday by virtue of how it included the vacationing President-elect.

On this particular evening eGeekette and I were checking out the after Christmas sales down in Waikiki when we thought we saw the flickers of lightning in the sky. Since we didn’t hear thunder we figured the storm (if any) was far away and kept on window shopping. Little did we know…

Waikiki is one of those places I imagine is always brightly lit – kinda like Las Vegas – so you can imagine my surprise when everything all of a sudden went dark. No streetlights, all the stores blacked out. After a brief ohshit moment I had to take a couple pictures. You can’t really see what’s going on but that’s pretty much the point.

There were people all around us but the only lights were from the passing cars and tiki torches down the street. I won’t be complaining about Hawaiian hula kitsch any time soon!

The next thing I tried to do was post the photo to Twitter and discovered that AT&T was offline (uh oh!). Good thing text services were still running as I began to get SMS updates from a conscientious buddy. Island-wide outage baby!

We made our way back to the car by the light of the iPhone (still useful even without service!) and began the perilous trek out of Waikiki. Not sure if everyone forgot or just didn’t know about the four-way stop rule when signals are out, but crossing every intersection felt like a game of chicken. Making matters worse were the ninja pedestrians jumping out of nowhere and darting across the street at random intervals.

Once we made it home AT&T was back up and I was able to track the unfolding news of the outage via Twitter in real time. Updates from the Twitterverse were often more current and relevant than what was on the radio. Things got even better when @Hawaii set up the #hipower hashtag that allowed everyone to follow all outage related tweets on Twitter Search.

Another lifesaver was my recently acquired Lenmar PowerPort universal battery. With the included adapters, we had juice for both my iPhone and eGeekette’s Palm Centro throughout the entire outage. Originally purchased as backup power for videos and music during air travel, it came in handy sooner than expected. Lenmar PowerPort FTW!

So where were you when the power went out?

HIC!

‘Twas the morning before the marathon
And all through the state
Not a runner was stirring
Most not even awake…

So today is the Saturday before Honolulu Marathon Sunday. Since I’m NOT running the marathon, I figured today would be a better day to get on the road since it will probably be a little too crowded to run tomorrow. Just a little…

I think during my whole run I saw a grand total of two other runners on the road, not counting eGeekette. Guess they weren’t planning on doing the marathon either.

It’s just as well, because it turned out to be a less than great run. Although it wasn’t actively raining, the recent storm soak and Kona winds made what should have been an easy run in relative cool a slog through humidity instead.

To make matters worse, I developed a maddening case of hiccups just past the midway point. Hic! Hic! Eight steps – hic! Twelve steps – hic! Three steps – hic! GAAAAAH! In case you were wondering, there is NO way to get rid of hiccups while you’re running. I made dogs bark and pedestrians jump all the way home.

Like all things, both good and bad, the run finally ended and the hiccups finally went away on their own. No matter how bad it was, I’m sure I’m feeling better than any of those folks running tomorrow.

No raindrops on roses

For better or for worse, Christmas is a time of stuff (both giving and getting). What gadgets/toys/things do you own that you absolutely love?

Here’s my top three:

1. Garmin 305 Forerunner (aka “the Anchor”) – GPS, pace and heart rate monitor. It’s like having a coach on your wrist.
2. iPhone –Twitter, Facebook, email, mobile internet, all in my pocket. I’ll never be bored again.
3. Jiffy J-2000 steamer – Because ironing sucks.

Your turn!

Free shipping day

One of my biggest peeves when shopping online is shipping charges. All too often sites will charge extra to ship to Hawaii, exclude us from free shipping offers, or won’t ship to Hawaii at all. However, this isn’t meant to be a rant, so I’ll save it for another day.

Freeshipping.org is a site that lists codes and offers for free shipping for a number of sites. They’re promoting Thursday, December 18, 2008 as Free Shipping Day, “when participating merchants give free shipping to online shoppers with guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve.”

No guarantees if these companies will remember that Hawaii is in fact part of the United States, but it’s worth a look if you’re doing some last minute shopping.

No bailout for you

Today I’m introducing a new blog category: Simplistic solutions to complicated problems (SSCP), where I’ll propose my solutions to the big issues facing the world and then you all can tell me why they wouldn’t work or even better, what it would take to get it to work. I generally have only a superficial understanding of things so hopefully this won’t devolve into name-calling too quickly.

This whole auto industry bailout thing has been bugging me lately. Some up front disclaimers: First, I live in Hawaii – there are no automobile manufacturers here, except the guys that build drift cars in their garages. Second, I have never owned an American automobile – the ones that I have driven as rental cars convinces me that this is not likely to change anytime soon.

Accountability is a big thing to me – you make a mess, you fix it or suffer the consequences. (The shorter version of that is one of my mantras: “Plan ahead or suck it up”.) It seems to me that these companies screwed themselves up by designing and building vehicles that people don’t want. Even though gas prices have fallen, people have realized that rolling behemoths aren’t sustainable and are a bad idea in the long run.

For any other company, if you’re selling something no one wants to buy, you go out of business. Instead, the big three American auto makers are asking the government for $34 billion dollars to allow them to keep on doing what they’re doing, just for the sake of staying open. Even if they get the money, they still need to sell cars to make money to pay the loans back. Last time I checked, economy still sucks – who’s going to buy any cars, especially ones the public has already shown they don’t want?

I get that there are a lot of jobs on the line, but how is that different from everyone else’s risk when they choose a profession? Say you’re an accountant and your firm goes under – you find another job. Same thing if you’re a mechanic, or a pilot or whatever.

So anyway, my simplistic solution to rescuing auto companies is this: Instead of handing over money to the companies that have already demonstrated poor business sense, the government offers rebates to people that buy vehicles that meet some fuel efficiency standard from said automakers.

To put it in perspective: For $34,000,000,000.00, the government could rebate $20,000 per car for 1.7 million cars.

This would incentivize people to buy American cars, make purchases that they may have been putting off, as well as make more sustainable vehicle choices. While not getting free money, the auto companies in turn should see increased sales and have incentive to design and produce more fuel efficient vehicles.

Yes? No? (Putting on my asbestos suit…)

Get yer gear NOW!

A couple months ago I blogged about gear clearance sites Steep And Cheap, Whiskey Militia and Chain Love here. Now there are a couple ways to keep up to the minute so that you don’t miss the latest deal.

Instant Messenger alerts
You can now subscribe to AIM alerts by adding “steepandcheap”, “whiskeymilitia” and/or “chainlove” to your buddy list and IM the word “subscribe”. You’ll start getting IMs whenever a new item is posted on one of the respective sites.

Twitter
Follow gearhunter on Twitter and you’ll get a tweet whenever any of the sites posts a new item. Get all three for the price of one. …which is still free, but you get the point.

Happy hunting!