As I arrived at work the sky was darkening. Bright streaks of lightning connected clouds and ground. It was going to be an interesting morning! Soon after I entered the building the rains came. The intense downpour flooded the court garden and began to come into the building under the doors. We got about three inches of rain in around an hour! Then the lights clicked off and on… more than once… for about a second each time… deadly to computers! The recently-rebuilt server went down and stayed down twice — an indication that its backup power supply (UPS) had failed. After the second system stop I shut off the old UPS and moved the computer's power connections to a neighboring, known-good UPS. The usual glitches developed around the building; things that happen when the power is interrupted. There was only one PC fatality. Apparently the computer was booting up during one of the brief outages and a Windows file was corrupted. I hope I can repair the OS damage tomorrow without a full reinstall. Then Finance descended upon me: Inventory time! That led to a culling of obsolete and broken equipment for sale and disposal. Most of the stuff is of very little value and the costs associated with staff time will far exceed any money brought in by the sale of that crap. Policy rules, however: So it is written, so it shall be done.
Mom-in-Law needs more time in the hospital {duh!} and will be staying there a couple more days. She officially needs more time to recoup from the surgeries and be evaluated for post-hospital care {duh! and duh!}. Whew! I suppose even older folk vary as to how quickly they recover from any given medical procedure. But this sweet, frail elderly woman just showed no potential for going home the day after having her procedures. So good sense did prevail in the end and Mom-in-Law is staying in hospital where she belongs.
Late-Night P.S. — We had more storms tonight. While at home we had heavy rain around 8:30 or so with nearly constant lightning. Very impressive! As the storm (we were at the edge of a line of more powerful storms that swept through) passed, I looked out the west window. What should I see but clouds lit by occasional flashes of lightning and a large clearing at the fringes of the maelstrom. And in that clearing a star shown.
PhotonStopper 