Wednesday, May 24, 2006

ETC.: The roof is on fire … redux


• Check out my review of the swell new CD "Springtime Can Kill You" by sultry chanteuse Jolie Holland over here at Blogcritics! I likes her.

• I knew it was gonna be a grim, caffeine-filled day this morning when I was sitting at the stoplight across the street from work and I saw a flash of fire and sparks come out of the newspaper building's roof. Coming around the building, I was just in time to get an excellent view of a second explosion as our transformer blew its top. "Oh lord, not again," I thought. Urk. For the second time in a month, we lost power to the entire building. Needless to say, that doesn't help a daily paper meet deadline.

Nevertheless, we actually were only an hour or so late – after last month's adventure, we knew the drill of renting a generator, getting a few computers and the network server back up, and thanks to everyone's hard work we still were able to get the paper out despite 2 1/2 hours of no or limited power. That's the key to situations like this, I've learned – whenever the s**t hits the fan, take a deep breath, step back, say to yourself, "the paper's still going to have to come out," and do what needs to be done. That's helped carry me through snowstorms in Lake Tahoe, ice storms and equipment failures in Mississippi, and whatever else the deadline doom throws at you.

Oh, and I hope the 2,600 people we knocked out power for didn't mind too much. Urk.

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