Fun with electricity

Our electricity failed at 7:10 p.m. yesterday, about the time Maria plugged in the electric skillet.

Given our prior experiences, we supposed that meant the entire neighborhood was blacked out.

So I fired up the grill to cook the Italian sausages Maria had taken out for dinner. But then I decided, "Screw this! We're going out to dinner."

We were halfway out of our little subdivision when we noticed several neighbors' homes had lights burning.

Uh-oh, that meant it was just us.

I rechecked the circuit breaker panel in the garage and confirmed none of the circuit breakers were tripped. I also noted the absence of a master circuit breaker. How odd, I thought.

Then I called the Craighead Electric Co-op outage number and reported our problem.

We phoned in a pizza order to Papa John's Pizza in Paragould and I went to pick it up, with Maria staying behind to deal with the electric utility guy.

The garage carriage lights were burning brightly when I returned about 35 minutes later. Maria said the repair guy identified the problem as a master circuit breaker that we were unaware of - situated on the outside of the house under the electric meter.

She didn't ask if there would be a charge for the service call, so I can only guess what we'll pay for that bit of information about our home's electrical system.

A short time later, I flipped on the kitchen lights and one of the recessed floodlights blew in a blue flash.

And when I restarted the computers, I discovered that the D-Link wireless router was dead.

I determined the problem was a fried power brick and resigned myself to shopping for a new wireless router today.

This morning, however, I rooted through a box of computer-related cables, wires, power bricks, and remote controls and found one that was a close match. The D-Link power brick had a + core and an output of 5.0 volts and 2.5 amps. The one I found was identical except that its output was 5.0 volts and 2.8 amps. I reasoned that .3 amps shouldn't make a big difference and, even if it fried the router, a new one isn't that expensive and a new router would be sure to give better performance for my money, since the D-Link is more than 5 years old.

So I threw the juice to it and, voila! I was back online.

Oh, and the first replacement floodlight bulb I tried in the kitchen was dead.

I'm curious to see what new electrical surprise awaits me.