A Juneau Morning With Out Power

I set my alarm last night so I would wake up earlier then normal this morning. I had been hearing all day yesterday that we were expected to get five inches of snow during the night, and I wanted to be awake early enough to clear the snow off our vehicles so Hannah and I could get the work on time.

Well I got up and did just that. After a quick shower I strapped on my boots, grabbed my gloves and pulled a hat on over my head. Using a snow brush from my truck I cleared the piled up snow off of both of our vehicals. I then started my car and let it warm up and went back inside. I didn’t start Hannah’s because she hand a couple of hours before she had to be at work.

When I got inside the house I noticed all the lights where out and realized we were experiencing another Juneau power outage. I got a flash light out so Hannah and I could see our way around before calling some of the guys I work with to find out how bad the power outage was.

Twenty minutes later I was at work having left a little earlier then I normally do. My office was darker then normal because the power outage also affected our office. After about two hours all of our clients we service had power restored and I had my core group of guys going around helping bring up servers and implementing repairs where needed.

Photo by: Brian Wallace Alaska Electric Light & Power
Photo by: Brian Wallace Alaska Electric Light & Power

The Juneau Empire website reported the following about the power outage.

Trees fell on three different areas of power lines this morning, causing an area-wide power outage.

One tree fell on a line near the airport, one fell downtown and one fell in the Salmon Creek area, according to Alaska Electric Light & Power Co. spokeswoman Gayle Wood.

As of 10 a.m., power had been restored to the Mendenhall Valley, Wood, said, while crews were trying to remove the large tree that fell on transmission lines near the Salmon Creek area.

Wood said she expected power to be restored to all areas by 10:45 a.m., but power appeared restored in areas near downtown by 10:30 a.m.

AEL&P is Juneau’s privately owned electric utility company that has 15,500 customers.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – Book Review

I just finished reading the Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. It’s a comic book mini-series written and drawn by Frank Miller and published by DC Comics in 1986.

Bruce Wayne has retired from the Batman mantle after the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd, and becoming an alcoholic. Ten years pass, during which Gotham City is overwhelmed with crime and plagued by a violent gang called “The Mutants”. Bruce retakes the mantle of Batman after he encountered Mutant gangs in the alley where his parents were murdered. Batman is aided in fighting this menace by a new Robin, a young girl named Carrie Kelly.

This was a really hard book for me to put down. The art and the writing is very impressive and keeps you wanting to turn the page and look ahead at what is going to happen next. I flet that this book contains a lot of the things Batman fans want and like to see in a Batman story. Epic battles with friends and foes alike. How being batman affects Bruce Waynes life.

There is so much about this book I really want to write about. I could talk at leanth about several of the battles that occure in the comic because of how monumental they are. But i really don’t want to spoil it for anyone who has not read the book. Even if it is over 20 years old.

Just know the the comic is dark. The writing is dark. And the Batman is a dark character. Since he is much older in this story the Batman has only gotten darker with age.

Watchmen Book Review

I recently finished reading the “Watchmen” graphic novel. It was written by Alan More, with artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins and came out between 1986 and 1987 as a 12 issue comic book by DC Comics.

I wanted to read the Watchmen because of the movie coming out based on the graphic novel. I found most of the book very difficult to read. It’s a very wordy book with less action then your average Batman comic book would have.

Along the way of reading Watchmen, I found through out the book supplemental fictional documents about characters, or just random back story elements that really did help me tie the whole Watchmen story together. Things like this in a graphic novel really do separate it from all the others on the book shelf.

The whole thing for me really didn’t pull it’s self together till the very, very end. It truly was a mind fuck that you don’t see coming. I found myself suddenly pulled into the story and mentally putting all the mixed up pieces together. The closest thing I can compare this book to is the movie “Unbreakable“.

Watchmen is set in an alternate reality which closely mirrors the contemporary world of the 1980s. The primary point of divergence is the presence of superheroes. Their existence in this iteration of America is shown to have dramatically affected and altered the outcomes of real-world events such as the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon. In keeping with the realism of the series, although the costumed crime fighters of and the presidency of Watchmen are commonly called “superheroes”, the only character in the principal cast who possesses obvious superhuman powers is Doctor Manhattan. The existence of Doctor Manhattan has given the U.S. a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union, which has increased tensions between the nations. Additionally, superheroes have become unpopular among the public, which has led to the passage of legislation in 1977 to outlaw them. While many of the heroes retired, Doctor Manhattan and the Comedian operate as government-sanctioned agents, and Rorschach continues to operate outside of the law.