I had the dubious honour of being one of the many people in Ontario and New York State, and many other parts of the US, to be hit by the biggest blackout in history.

As annoying as it was, it didn’t really panic me. In a bizarre way, things like this almost always end up being a lot of fun – you get to meet a lot of people in your building (I live in a condominium) and on your street with whom you wouldn’t normally talk. It’s a big social event. Plus I got to walk up and down a pitch black stairway – luckily only three floors – with only a flashlight to keep me company. In the end, the only thing still working in the building was the deafening lobby alarm indicating a power failure.

Ironically, I was in the middle of a backup of my server and workstation when the power went out. Everything seems to be in order now – except that I can no longer login to my backup software! (Go figure.)

I haven’t turned the TV back on again, but for a while none of the Toronto based stations were working – I had to watch American news. (Not a bad thing in this case.) Although we had cable, we didn’t have an Internet connection for a while – but that’s now back up again too.

I just love the fact that nobody seems to know what caused any of this – and every official seems to be pointing the finger at somebody else. Mostly cross-border too. (The Candian politicians blame the States, the American politicians blame Canada.) Personally, I don’t really care what the initial trigger of the event was – I’d just like to know how it could possibly have cascaded as far as it did. I’m sure that there are going to be some serious “back room” discussions, and probably some political face-saving firings over the snafu.