Power Failures and February Plans
Two power failures in less than 24 hours, each of them lasting four hours and ten minutes. And this is otherwise a reasonably good area as far as the power grid is concerned, not showing up on any of the maps that highlight the places where such problems are frequent. But, of course, such things are to be expected when there are unusual weather conditions and the grid is as old as it is, though so far it was far more common for it to happen during summer. Then again, it’s been quite a while since we had such cold weather in Bucharest, most of the past decade’s “winters” hardly being worthy of the name.
The strange thing, however, is that the coldest days are behind us for now, with today’s temperatures hardly being unusual, so I’m wondering why did it happen now if the grid somehow held together when it was worse? At the same time, if it did happen now, what should I expect for next week, when I see that the temperatures will again drop to values that were quite common in the dead of winter when I was little but have rarely been seen here for the past decade?
At least I can finally say that I more or less recovered from that cold. No longer feeling so hungry all the time either, which should mean that my body has recovered most of the reserves it used during that time, though now it once again has to make an effort due to the cold, seeing as this place is poorly suited for cold weather and I’m freezing most of the time. But there’s nothing unusual there, because my ideal temperature range is still just as high and when it wasn’t so cold outside there was also less heating, so freezing during the cold part of the year is unfortunately the norm for me. Doesn’t make me like this kind of weather any less, but I sure dread the fact that I can hardly ever get warm enough even while inside…
Still, recovering from that cold means that I should finally be able to poke my nose out a little more. Carefully, since I don’t want to start all over again, but I do want to take a few longer walks while there’s still plenty of snow and it’s cold enough for it not to melt. Plus that there’s a protest scheduled for next week that I’m interested in. Obviously doubt that I’ll actually participate, but I’d like to at least have a look and perhaps stick around the general area for a while, as I have done for a few others in the past.
Otherwise, February has been, for the past few years, the “action month” for the Global Population Speak Out project and I plan to write a post on the topic this month as well, though this time around they have an ongoing call for action that started some time ago and won’t end until April. However, what I can already tell you is that the post won’t be in favor of GPSO in any way, but quite firmly against what it has turned into, as well as against anyone else who claims that purely voluntary measures could be enough or even that stabilizing the population at the current level would be a worthwhile goal.
This movement had a much stronger radical element and some amount of potential when it started out, but now it got watered down to this politically correct but completely useless rhetoric that does more harm than good whenever it rears its ugly head, dissipating energy that could otherwise be put to use in ways which could perhaps have some sort of chance, tiny as it may be, of actually solving the problem before it’ll be way too late… But I think I should stop here for now and leave the rest of the comments for the post in question, as it’ll probably be hard enough to write even without needing to come up with even more things to say because I already posted the first ideas somewhere else.
On a lighter note, I did end up putting Empire Earth aside after all and started going through some of the free games that I was curious about. Unfortunately, the first one was a huge disappointment, but at least that was just a minor curiosity and I’m only now getting to the ones that I have higher expectations from. Or, more exactly, I’m now getting to the first of them, namely Battle for Wesnoth.
I guess there will be a review coming at some point, though that’s not all that certain because I’d want to write it after finishing all the campaigns included in the game and I’m not sure that I’ll be able to do that. I just went through the three “novice” campaigns other than Heir to the Throne so far and have already gotten disheartened a few times. Recovered almost right away and kept pushing ahead, so now I started the first “intermediate” campaign and am rather close to finishing it, but I have been shocked a few times by the sharp increase in difficulty, so I’m not sure if I’ll manage to keep it up long enough. There are 16 campaigns, after all, and five of them are listed as being of “expert” difficulty…
Still, what I can say right now is that this game is clearly better than plenty of commercial titles. It can be considered dated by some and certain concepts, such as the amount of luck involved in determining who hits and who misses and the turn limits, bother me quite a lot, but there are lots of games that developers and publishers would want us to pay good money for even though they’re clearly worse than this. That makes the fact that it exists a very good thing and I’m happy that I stumbled into it.
That said, I’ll probably be getting back to playing now, though I should in fact go back to bed. Slept a total of some seven hours over the past two days, but I don’t exactly feel particularly sleepy and I’m thinking that if I do go back to bed the UPS will wake me up yet again when it’ll start beeping because the power failed for a third time, which at this point I’m pretty much expecting to happen. So I guess I’ll try to make the most of this time and nap later, because tomorrow I really should do something about this week’s non-personal post, so I really can’t leave catching up on sleep until then.
