We had an “incident” at work – the power company, in their continuing crusade to keep tree limbs off their wires, had hired a contractor to trim the trees – a contractor who naturally enough drops the upper half of a pine not just into the power line (no, that would be too simple) – they dropped it into a main line feeding a substation.

Bam, zoom, we can hear the transformers let go from two blocks away. Power doesn’t even blink – it just goes. We’re two hours from deadline for our west coast guys’ presentation, the packages are THIS >< close… and we have no power, no networks… what do we do?

We pack laptops and go THERE . Free wireless internet, caffeine for the rest of the team, and a four-person table open in the middle of the business day. It’s five blocks away, on the other side of the main road, so it’s on a different substation – they still had power. And lights. And machines that torture milk and water and grind up innocent beans that never hurt anybody.

And there she was.