Thursday, October 13, 2011

Our Adventures Continue - Overheating All Day

Yesterday, work for me ended abruptly when the power went out for a large fraction of our facility. Apparently, one of the underground lines bringing in power shorted, and caused a transformer to overheat.

I managed to talk on the phone until the battery back up died, and then had a conference call the in the administrative building, which, unlike the laboratories and most of the scientists offices, has a back up generator.

We were given "administrative leave", and all but told to go home while they fix the power, and, oh, by the way, call in the morning to see if it's fixed yet.  (As of 6:20 AM it's not).

Georgia and I had tickets to see Leo Kottke at the Ramshead in Annapolis 8 PM.  On our way to the concert, our 14 year old Subaru overheated, and we crawled into Edgewater.  Under the engine, there was a mixture of water and oil, which strongly suggests a head gasket.  We made a flurry of phone calls, and arranged to have the car towed to a local dealer.  Meanwhile, we contacted Georgia's boss, who was still at work (in the admin building), and arranged for her to pick us up.

The tow truck came for the car around 8:20 and we decided to see if we could all get in to see the tail end of the show.  It turned out someone had been trying to sell a ticket at the show, so they let Georgia's boss in to buy his "spare ticket".  We got to see maybe the second half or last third of the show.

Kottke, of course, was awesome as always.  He must have invisible fingers, because I can't see where all the notes are coming from.  He great stories while he picks and tunes his two guitars.  I can't really show you what we saw last night, but this is one of the pieces he did.  The video is an older version of Kottke doing "Little Martha" a song that Duane Allman claimed to have written based on a dream.  The version he did last night featured a long passage in a minor key, not original to the Allman brothers version. Turn it up, the sound is rather soft on this video.



So, I guess I'm working from home today. Though the miracle of the internet, I should be able to get to all my work files.  As for the car; I guess we'll fine out later.

1 comment:

  1. I'm gonna use the phrase a large fraction of our facility in casual conversation this week. Just to see how others react.

    ReplyDelete