Time was that regular wired POTS had its own power generation system, separate from the grid. How wrong am I about this?

Eh, I'm being a Cassandra in my last post. This is still true. For the time being.

The new fresca is non-caloric and uncaffeinated. Me, I find the taste too light to cover the faint (splenda?) aftertaste, but if you can deal with that, it's a nice compromise. I mean, I like ginger ale, but-- too many empty calories.

They changed Fresca? I thought they just expanded the line? And wasn't it always without calories or caffine?

Eh, I'm aware that the phones make use of the magical electron fairies, but the fact remains that 90% of the time when the power is out at my house, the wally-phone still works and the other one doesn't. Not perfect in case of a nuclear war that really truly knocks everything right the fuck out (but in that case, who cares?), but it's good enough when a tree limb comes down.

I feel pretty confident assuming that the phone company has better business continuity than my apartment, and even if they don't, it's been a hell of a long time since I've been in an outage that large.

Yes. This. I think I've only had the land line and the power out at the same time once in my life. The cable used to go out whenever the wind blew the wrong way (though it's been years since outages were that rampant) and it certainly doesn't work without power.

Cell phone technology isn't redundant enough to ensure adequate service like POTS (that's plain old telephone service).

POTS still has its own 'lectric generation system.

Okay, now. Let's call somebody. All your buddies are on cell or 'net. The gob'ment ... they work for the FEDA. You are fux0red.

(and here I was wondering what the "T" was for)

Is it cheating to take painkillers before a biofeedback session? I think not, since I'll be hooked up to devices to measure my magical control of myself.

I think I'm going to walk down the hill to get ginger ale. I need a change.

Let's call somebody. All your buddies are on cell or 'net. The gob'ment ... they work for the FEDA. You are fux0red.

Well, Jesse's on cell. I can call all my sensible friends. Or I can use my laptop battery and dial outside the blackout zone and connect to the internet that way.

Not that I've ever done that in a blackout.

Or I can use my laptop battery and dial outside the blackout zone and connect to the internet that way.

That's how we figured out what the heck was up with our power outage last month. We have an emergency dial up connection for just that sort of event.