Power outage

The power went out at work today for over an hour. It was the most exciting work moment since a large box toppled over in the closet last fall. As soon as it happened I managed to save my work before my battery backup gave out. The last outage I remember losing power then triumphantly announcing to everyone my backup was still working. As soon as the words left my mouth sure enough the 10 year old battery backup died and I hadn't clicked save.

The next couple minutes we sat around just talking about the sounds our backups are making. We got up out of our chairs and looked to see if each other's computers were still on. We now had about 30 minutes left of power but the network was down so we really couldn't do work anyway. So we all huddled together and talked about the times the power went off before and how this was the longest time the power went off.

After about ten minutes of talking in the near dark we moved into a senior Developer's room and started playing HORSE on the mini basketball hoop. We probably played for near half an hour. Then we started talking about other games we could play cards, cubicle baseball, hide and go seek. We were mid fantasy conversation when finally the lights came back on. Talk about a sudden surprise and feeling of gloom. We just stared at each other for the first 30 seconds waiting for some miracle to get the lights off. Unfortunately the electrician must have known what he was doing because the lights stayed on. Return to boringness.