I’ve no idea whose fault it is (drunk drivers hitting telephone poles, ice breaking power lines, or activities by the power company, or whatever), but we’ve had more power outages at our house in Pocatello, Idaho in the past 18 months than we had in the entire previous five years in Colorado Springs. It’s a common occurance to come home to see the clock on the oven door blinking due to a short power outage. Most of them, however, happen at night. This past Thursday evening I woke up about 11:45 p.m. when my sleep apnea nasal CPAP machine stopped running. When that happens, I wake up within seconds (usually in a panic because I can’t breathe). Then there isn’t much more to do except get up and wait for the power to come back on.

The computers all have some kind of a battery backup, so they should be OK for a few minutes. When this outage lasted more than 15 minutes, I started shutting down the computers, starting with the two in basement (the web server and the development server) followed by the iMac Mini and my desktop Windows XP PC. I also, for some reason, turned off the Dell laptop which had a battery that should have run for another couple of hours. About fifteen minutes later, the power came back on. So, I then restarted all the computers in the right sequence and all was well — except for the Dell laptop. For some reason, the hard drive doesn’t power up. I have a spare hard drive with Suse Linux loaded on it, but the Windows 2000 drive is kaput. The Linux installation is fairly old, so today I ordered a new version of the Novell Linux Desktop. It’s supposed to work reasonably well with a laptop, so I’m leaving the darkside with yet another computer. By the way, when I went to order the Novell software, their top reseller link was to CDW. I went there and found that they didn’t have any prices on their website for the Novell products — they were all “call” pricing. I don’t call. Ever. I just did what I usually do, go to another website where the prices are listed and do my business there. So, CDW missed a small sale. Why do websites do that? Do they really think that it’s worth my time to make a telephone call and get hassled by some salesperson trying to make their quota?

I also decided that I needed to do something about being able to run my breathing machine when the power goes out. I had thought about buying another UPS (universal power supply) battery backup, but the problem with those units are that they start beeping rather incessantly when the power goes out — I guess to let me know that the power is out? Plugging the machine into one of those could be a good idea, because the battery backup would just keep working as the power went out, automatically switching to battery and then back to regular power when the power was restored. But I’d have to do some surgery to the UPS to disable the beeping noise. Meanwhile, I was at Harbor Freight to pick up a couple of tools for me and some stocking stuffers for dad, and I saw a Jumpstart unit on sale. Since I can also plug my machine into a cigarette lighter (12V), this would make a good backup and has other uses as well. So, I bought one. It doesn’t have the feature of automatically taking over if the power goes out (without beeping), but I do have the ability now to run the sleep machine should the power go out for any extended period of time. Maybe one day I’ll upgrade one of my UPS’s and use the old one as a power source for the breathing machine.

Being dependent on the machine can sometimes be a real problem. For instance, I can’t sleep on airplanes. When I doze off, a few minutes later I’ll start snoring rather loudly and then will have an apnea event and wake up startled (and sometimes in a panic). It’s just not worth it to try and sleep. So, on long overseas flights, I take enough stuff with me to keep myself occupied and just force myself to stay awake through the entire trip. I’ve read recently about a dental device that might help. I called around town and found a dentist who has had some success with this device and have had a first appointment with him. I’ll go back tomorrow to see what he thinks he can conjure up. The device isn’t covered by my dental insurance (but possibly may be covered by my medical insurance?), but having a backup device that I can also use on an airplane would be worth it. The device is kind of like a denture or an insert used to prevent people from grinding their teeth at night. It forces the lower jaw forward which opens up the air passageway. According to the literature, it is effective in light to moderate cases of sleep apnea and I’m in the moderate category.

Several years ago when I was on one of my around-the-world trips, the long leg from Hong Kong to Frankfurt was to be on Lufthansa. That airline was one of the first to equip business class seats with power for laptops and other small devices. So, I decided to take my breathing machine, hose, and mask with me on the airplane. I could put the blanket over me, plug in, put the mask on, and sleep a good portion of the twelve-hour flight. I got everything hooked up, arranged the blanket, put the mask on, and turned on the machine. It was great. I fell almost immediately asleep, turned slightly, and pulled the blanket off my head. The flight attendant saw me, eyes closed, with the mask and hose running down my body, and immediately called the head flight attendant. They woke me up and wanted to know what I was doing. The head flight attendant was actually quite angry! I hadn’t told them that I had a medical condition. Any medical devices have to be cleared by the airline. I was frightening the other passengers. etc. and etc. She really read me the riot act without once stopping for me to say anything. Since I speak pretty good German, I finally interrupted her in German and told her in no uncertain terms to go away and shut up. I put the machine away and read for the rest of the flight. I’m also not interested in flying on Lufthansa again. It was not a stellar customer service moment for them!

But, now I’ve put one more backup system in place. When the next long power outage happens at night, I’ll be able to plug in my machine and go peacefully back to sleep, no matter what the drunk drivers, ice storms, or Idaho Power does.