Well, not entirely off-line, since the office is back up and running now, but certainly off-topic. I don't know that it made the news much outside this area, but Memphis and the surrounding region experienced a pretty freak storm Tuesday morning. Heavy rain and straight-line winds that were reportedly between 60 to 100 MPH (sustained, not gusts), with pretty much no warning. Sort of an unannounced inland hurricane. Power went out at the gonk homestead at almost exactly 7:00 that morning, accompanied by lots of wind and rain. By the time we left the house to check on my office and some family around 8:00 or 8:30 the sun was already coming out, but there were over 300,000 homes and businesses without power. There are still around 190,000 out. It's pretty crazy. The stop light manufacturer is back-ordered -- there were 700 or 800 lights damaged, many of them ripped to pieces. The only bright spots have been that there were few injuries or deaths (although there have now been four deaths linked to the storm) and that the same cold front that caused it all has lingered for a few days of completely un-seasonal cool weather.

I've taken a few pictures (missed some really startling ones -- like the manhole embedded in the roots of a fallen tree -- because the camera was at home) and finally got them off the camera today -- they are here . Thankfully, the gonk family is unharmed, albeit a little warm and still flipping light switches occasionally, and I'll be around some during the work days, but not on weekends or evenings until probably some time next week.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Glad to hear everyone is well...we had a freak storm like that in few years ago but with a Canadian flavour...Ice Storm. There was enough ice and wind that powerlines snapped from the weight, people were without power for up to a month (frozen ground, icy roads make for hard repairs). Best of luck, I hope your Outlaw Equipment survived well too!

Gonk,

Can't you design some duct-work to channel that stuff around your house?! Seriously, glad no one was hurt.

BTW, here in Oklahoma, we don't call it an "inland hurricane"--we call it "spring."

Oaf -- we actually had an ice storm here, too, back in '94. It took up to two or three weeks to restore power everywhere that time. I missed that storm, since I was at college at the time (about three hours south of here).

michaelstano -- not a bad idea, but the seismic bracing is a bit of a stumper. We were joking late Tuesday about the fact that the sirens never went off -- there was never any rotation in the storm, no tornado in sight, so no tornado watches or warnings. Just some wind...

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

[This message has been edited by gonk (edited July 25, 2003).]

We've been having some freaky storms here in Ohio lately. being near Cleveland, we catch some strong lake Erie effects. Some Tornados touched down in a city nearby..and the winds themselves are just brutal.

I have never in 29 years, heard such deafening thunder as I have this summer.

Good to know everything turned out alright gonk

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Play it LoUd!!

Electricity is a wonderful thing. It'll be even more wonderful when I have it at home again.

Still out of luck at home, and the weekend brought back the typical Memphis summer weather (mid-90's). No word on when to expect power back, but I've got a feeling that it'll be late this week at the earliest. I just bought the next-to-last generator that Home Depot had (still stinging a bit from the cost, but it's probably a good thing to have anyway this close to a fault line). Going to have box fans, lights, refrigerator, microwave, and probably the small TV tonight.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Electricity is a wonderful thing

Do you still find yourself moving through rooms after dark trying to flip a switch occasionally?...its amazing how ingrained....

..a bottle of wine, candles....Oh ! but hard to make the most of the pre-edison, when its that hot..modern homes are not built to make the most of cross breezes.

.....Gonk, seriously, I'm so sorry what a mess...impressive pictures...it's humbleing when Mother Nature says,,,,you just think you have it all controlled!

Heh-heh. For some reason, the bathroom light switch is the one that none of us can quit trying. And for some reason, I keep staring at the remote (an MX-500) and wondering why its LCD display is working -- as if it would realize that all the devices it controls are powerless and go blank in sympathy...

The local paper reported that the death toll has risen to seven now, from a combination of tree falls, a fire, and carbon monoxide from generators. The power company has about 81,000 customers left to restore (originally 305,000 or 306,000 out a week ago), but the progress will be slower from here on out. I'm pretty sure our house will be out for the rest of the week, but my sister-in-law's apartment got power back around 8:00 last night (and we promptly returned her cats to her, along with ours as well) and my father-in-law's house got it back around 6:30 (although a transformer blew around 11 and it hasn't come back up since -- we stayed there last night and relied on power from a borrowed generator, while my parents are using the generator we finally bought yesterday afternoon). We've shifted over to nomad mode until our house comes back up -- I'm going to find an air mattress at lunch today so we can crash at the sister-in-law's tonight.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

It's amazing to me sometimes how events like this are reported in the national media. The day of this storm, I did see some reports about it in the national media, but nothing too special. I haven't really seen a word about it since. Then you hear about somebody with a local connection to the event, and all of a sudden, you realize how big an impact it had on their area.

In May this year, there were severe tornados in the mid-west. I was watching the news reports, and they mentioned that a tornado touched down near my roommate's hometown. After getting her up to watch the news, we then watched in horror as they said her town was one of the ones that was "leveled". After a few frantic phone calls, we were relieved to hear that her family was ok. Her town was indeed %90 destroyed, but there were, thankfully, very few deaths. After the next few days, I barely saw any mention of this storm in the national news. Crazy...

Gonk, glad to hear that you and yours are all ok. Hope to hear you're fully back online soon.

I am also in that group of 80K without power. I walked into my house yesterday - looked at my thermostat which said 86,turned right around and went and found a hotel for the night.
On the plus side, some of those drugery chores that always keep getting put off are easily accomplished - turns out cleaning the fidge is so much easier when there is nothing in it..

I was wondering how you had faired, TurnerF. Glad to hear that you are OK, and hopefully you'll have power back soon. I think the thermostat at home read about the same when we left yesterday evening. I think my sister-in-law's apartment was somewhere around 95 Sunday evening when we collected her cats -- second floor apartment in midtown, no insulation to speak of.

Fridge cleaning does take on a different sort of approach, doesn't it? It looks like ours was just delivered to us, rather than being three or four years old. Spotless and completely bare. It should also make the next trip to the grocery store easier. "Do we have any of this?" "If it lives in the fridge, then no." Vacuuming poses a bit more of a challenge, though...

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

[This message has been edited by gonk (edited July 29, 2003).]

I can appreciate your frustration. I live in Rockford Il. On July 5 at 4:30 am we also had a severe storm. In a town of 140K people 80K were with out power. We went 4.5 days with out power. We were all lucky as no one was hurt. Our community had much damage from downed trees and we are still cleaning up from the storm.

Well, we may get a good (or bad) demonstration of the capabilities of a Panamax MAX5100 whenever MLGW decides to send somebody to east Memphis to start restoring power around my house. I had a co-worker in midtown with a very nice older two-channel rig (Spectral Audio pre-amp and amp, along with I believe a Meridian CD player and a new pair of B&W Nautilus 805's) and found when his power came back Wednesday that a good bit of it was dead. It sounds like the amp may have survived and I haven't heard about the CD, but the pre-amp, VCR, and TV were completely non-responsive. Then I discovered this morning thanks to my little generator that my microwave suffered a similar fate (the display lights up, but it scrolls gibberish and the buttons don't do anything). The home theater's on a dedicated circuit and protected by a Panamax MAX5100, so we'll see if any of it was damaged once I get power back. It may be a bit of a wait to find out, though, as I don't much like the idea of putting the HT on a generator and after over ten days (we're now at 242 hours since the power went out at home) there's still not been any utility crews in my neighborhood. The school across the street is back, but once that was done they pretty much disappeared, and not once has the utility company's list of areas being worked in included our area. As of last night, there were still 59,000 customers out. They've averaged 5,000 to 10,000 a day all this week. My math says that means they've got at least another week's work to do, possibly ten more days. Not good...

Oh, we did get declared a federal disaster area late Tuesday.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

[This message has been edited by gonk (edited August 01, 2003).]

Gonk,

That’s an amazing storm to take this long to restore pwr. My tendency is to crack jokes over those hard to live with situations but your posts are sobering when I reflect there was loss of life in this storm.

We had one like your pics years ago and the neighborhood next to me with 200 yr old trees looked for all the world like a war zone. All streets were impassable through the area for days and tree crews were running all day and night. This too was “straight line winds” Does it really matter if its a circular rotation or straight when they do that kind of damage? During that storm we did not lose a tree but at one point I saw all windows in line of sight, - suck in and bow (without breaking) during a gust. Very impressive.

I will be waiting with bated breath to see how your Panamax handled it. I still have only the P5300 (same protection level as yours) guarding my system, of course each neighborhood in your area could have had different levels of spike depending on what came down the line when the power failed. Your microwave loss (like mine during a storm) is what sent me scrambling for some protection when I first purchased all the new Outlaw gear. But I still want more,….I hope sincerely the Panamax was the stopgap it needed to be for you.

I’m usually not a ‘mail order’ type, (amazing I wanted to demo the Outlaw bad enough to overcome this reservation). Most “ship from” companies don’t have the excellent level of after sale support that Outlaw sports. I keep thinking I’ll get around to finding some shops in town where I can pick up some additional protection (Panamax for parents/friend/ Brickwall for me). I need to get on it and just pick some web-sites to bulk order from.

SLL,

It's interesting that the admittedly more common tornadoes and hurricanes get a lot of attention and research, but these thunderstorms and straight-line winds just sort of pop up and tear stuff up (which they do very effectively -- I've seen the results of one similar to what you describe, where a single neighborhood is thrashed, and it's equal parts humbling and horrifying to see) with almost no warning or discussion afterward.

As long as you're waiting for word about the Panamax with bated breath and not held breath, we should have some good info for you one of these days -- but probably not before holding your breath would get uncomfortable. The lastest web update from the utility indicates that they finally noticed that one corner of town inside the loop is still heavily damaged and decided to start sending some crews over there (you know, after only ten or eleven days). They indicate that my general area has 8,000 of the remaining powerless customers, in what they call "pockets of outages" (funny, I call it entire neighborhoods). The work crews and police have done an absolutely excellent job of restoring the city to some semblance of normalcy, but after watching the utility company management direct crews to every corner of the county except the several square miles in which I live I've begun to lose patience with them (as my posts today may have hinted at). Oh, well, I'll just sit at home with fans, a refrigerator that works, a lobotimized microwave, a snake-pit of extension cords, and a DVD player hooked up to an old 10" TV until they hook us back up.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Some good news here. Work crews rolled into our neighborhood yesterday afternoon, and at around 7:45 last night they turned our entire street back on. Cable's still out, so I'm posting from dial-up on mrs. gonk's laptop, but I just really can't bring myself to be bothered by that little detail. I'm just glad to have air conditioning and lights back. There's still a lot of damage along one major street near us (Walnut Grove), but they started working on a two or three-mile stretch of it yesterday.

The Panamax did a good job. The home theater gear came through without so much as a hiccup. The microwave actually works too, as it turns out, if you don't mind not being able to read the display. We'll deal with it once we recover from the storm.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

The Panamax did a good job Un bates breath, timely, I was turning a lovely shade of blue!

Is the Microwave LCD scrambled or blank?. I had an LCD on an early generation programmable thermostat that in the winter would scramble if you forgot to discharge static electricity before touching the unit. (which in turn took the furnace off-line!) Additionally storms scrambled it a few times, usually this condition only lasted hours although once overnight but then returned to duty before we replaced it. Finally a big storm took it out, which roused himself to replace the finicky thing.
Another year a coffee maker did the same with the LCD at first blanked out then coming back on line after days. First it was gibberish then sorted itself out to the correct display. Did this a couple of times

Welcome back to the modern world of artificial illumination and automation!

I gotta question for you...now that your system survived (woohoo!) and the Panamax undoubtably took a hit...is it trustworthy for another hit? Does it degrade or fail outright?

In the Microwave...if you did plan on replacing it if the LED does not work, you have a few interesting options...there could be some capacitors that retain charge that are keeping it from re-setting itself. Try a long period of unpluggedness...if that does not work, you could crack it open in manually discharge the caps (if you know how to do it safely) but that may fry what is left of the electronics. All and all, it seems that you and your family made it through as well as can be expected and I am sure your extented Outlaw family is glad for you!

Did not realize you were from Memphis, gonk. That is where I grew up. My dad and brother are still there. My brother had very bad damage to his yard and house in the same storm. Heis in the Germantown area. Good luck getting back up to speed. I lived without electricity when I lived through Alicia in Houston. Kids loved it; ice cream was melting so I stuck a straw in two one gallon containers and told them to go after it. That was more fun than listening to my 950.

Like Smart Little Lena's thermostat and coffee maker, my microwave has recovered. It took a couple of days, but by late Sunday (just before our part of town was turned back off for an hour, presumably to complete repairs in the area) it was back to normal. We started to re-stock the fridge Sunday -- and enjoyed noting the items that were hard to find at the store, like mayonaisse. Cable TV came back Saturday night, too, so once we get the yard cleaned up and the house back in order we'll be more or less back to normal. The brush piles stacked in front of almost every house in town will probably take at least six weeks to get collected, and there are still around 9,000 customers without power (from an original total now placed at 338,000 rather than the 306,000 reported at first).

Now that the power's back, I'm starting to experiment with a new gadget -- a Panasonic DMR-E80 DVD recorder. And enjoying air conditioning, lights, refrigerators, and all the other little conveniences we are so fortunate to have.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Gonk, when you finish stocking the fridge and can see past the brush piles. Let me know what you feel about the DMR-E80. I have not made that purchase yet, but still intend too. So I’d be very curious as to what you think!

Hey Gonk

Glad to hear you had your power restored, finally. I work in a elec. utility, a dispatch and control room, so I am very aware of the issues behind the scenes, trained field crews, enough equipment, sourcing parts, poles, cables, wire... The main issue, though, at our utility is trained crews.

Your posts give me a some insite to the difficulties you and our customers have when the power is interupted. Yesterday, I had to switch 3200 customers off for 5-6 minutes to remove a failed peice of equipment from service. All I could think of is all those VCRs and alarm clocks flashing 12:00.

Thankfully no one in the Gonk house was injured, some suffering perhaps, but no one hurt.

I appreciate all of your posts, and I admire Ms. Lena's posts as well, all well written and entertaining. Thanks

Now I'm nervous - I was just catching up on some online stuff - saw this post and thought Doh!! I haven't checked any of my HT equipment. It's currently in an upstairs converted attic room that got so hot during my 9 day outage I closed the door and forgot about it. I'll be anxious all day till I can get home and test it.

I haven't checked any of my HT equipment

WHAT! ... "I'm beginning to seriously doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion" Donnie Darko

By the time I got back from an overnight business trip to east Tennessee last night, everybody had their power back. The last few hundred people went around 16 days or so.

TurnerF -- Glad to hear that you got power back. Hopefully your gear came through the storm unscathed.

tak9 -- It's remarkable how much we have grown to rely on electricity. The crews around here did an excellent job dealing with the damage that was done.

Smart Little Lena -- I've been poking at a review of my E80 for a while now (gathering notes while researching it, figuring out how I wanted to hook it up, ...), which is now pretty much done. Panasonic also just posted the manual for the E80 in the last day or so; it's a decent manual, although not as clear or complete as I would have liked. I'm still getting comfortable with it, but so far I'm pretty satisfied. My TV is not the greatest way to torture-test a DVD player (27" Mitsubishi without component input), so I can't offer much thought on the progressive scan performance. Rrom what I can tell, though, it's a respectable but not "reference quality" DVD player. And it's definitely better than recording to VHS.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Smart Little Lena -- I've got the Panasonic DMR-E80 pretty well squared away now, and if you want to read entirely too much about it you might want to skim through my notes on this page . The E80's not perfect, but all in all it's a pretty nice piece of equipment and I think it could reasonably serve as the only DVD player for someone casually into home theater. The E100 is due out in less than a month (120GB hard drive, DV input), but it retails for almost twice as much -- $1200 or so -- and the cheapest I've seen it online so far is around $900. The E80's going for as low as $525 or so online. Dad's starting to sort through his old tapes and is planning to drop some off at the house this weekend.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Gonk,

Your unbelievable (in the best way). I hope we cont. to have some of the same leanings towards purchases so that I can (coat-tail in) benefit from the umbrella of your considered reviews.

If I just want to buy something ….can I send it to you for a demo first??? (are you for hire...have you ever considered a secondary income as a professional reviewer?! )

Will be reading this tonight after work when I have time to do it justice. THANKS for the heads up!