When the power went out yesterday (bzzt on off on off on off bzzztt zip zip off) we quickly learned, by looking at the laptops that this wasn’t just a local problem. Ah the power of the ‘net. I was off at 5 so I hit some slow going but having a state trooper car in our pack probably made for more civil driving. Once I got past exit 5 of I-90 it was pretty smooth going. The main problem earlier was jam ups on the off ramps as people waited, having no traffic lights to organize the flow.

When I got home, I organized my recently restocked batteries and made sure I knew where the matches were. I gave the cats their meds before it was too dark to see. I even enjoyed a dinner a fresca albeit with mosquitoes. The power came on for just a few minutes after dark and I ran around turning things off because the noises coming from the frig made it clear it wasn’t full power.

I think the power came back around 3 am, although I’ll confess I was pretty much asleep. Ron got up and turned some lights off or something.

Since I’ve been home today it’s been pretty much business as usual except for being ready for rolling blackouts as they turn on power to other areas. So far none have happened.

Despite the brutal heat, I finished all but a few tweaks on the quilt of Rachel. I’ll probably do a little fine tuning, but it’s mostly done. Click above for a full view, and here’s a detail.

Link via a post to QuiltArt: Gotta love this new quilt from Ruth McDowell. I don’t know how you could mistake her work for anyone else’s no matter the topic. Nice!

Update on KnowSpam: First off, I just had an email from them wondering if I was still nervous (see below, which he had read! Yes you read that right — he read my web site) and did I have any questions etc. Now THAT’s service!

The answer from me? Nope – apparently my assessment that it was just an incredibly slow email Sunday was correct. Sunday night mail started picking up and today things are getting towards normal numbers. I noticed some quite old emails arriving, so I’m thinking that there was a slowdown on the bigger ‘net somewhere during that time frame.

No one I know has had any problems contacting me and I’ve added a few people/lists/services as their emails turn up in the held mail category. I like that I get an email every four hours along the lines of: ‘you have some new held mail (or new unknown recipients) – here’s the sender’s email and the subject line in case you need to accept the email.’

Gives me a lot of control in a reasonable way and with a very nice interface. If I go to the held mail page it lists the same info — date/time/sender/subject — and I can accept or decline each one or use check boxes and decline the checked emails. How cool and easy is that?

So I fired back an email right away – nope, I’m not nervous anymore. And where do I go to sign up for a year?

OK I’m a little nervous.

I turned on knowspam last night. It is an anti-spam service that seems pretty cool and came recommended. Two week free trial period even. So I set it up. You can enter email lists and individuals as known good senders and email lists. You can also designate domain names as OK. Basically, if an incoming email doesn’t fall into one of those categories, knowspam sends them an email saying “please prove that you’re a human by clicking the link in this email and answering a question on the resulting page.” What they have to do is copy four numbers into a box. Once they’ve done that they’re on your “good sender” list. If it’s a bot-generated email, there won’t be anyone home to reply so they get deleted.

So, why am I nervous? I don’t seem to be getting much mail AND I don’t seem to be getting much feedback that there is a lot of spam getting stopped. Hmmmmm. Maybe Sunday isn’t the day to start spam fighting measures? We’ll see.