So today I woke up very early. Why? Because the power company decided to shut us down again.
It’s not unusual, the Italian ENEL is known for these service problems. It should be enough to say that the nominal voltage in Italy is still 220V, which allows them to provide, within law limits, down to 198V; while a lot of modern hardware handle 110 to 240 V, not so recent hardware doesn’t really like being served less than 200V in their European models.
So, one of the three UPSes I have is currently disconnected and shut down, as I was cleaning up the office, where I currently have just Enterprise and the WRT router. This left me with two UPSes screaming for their power. One in the office and one downstairs. The latter is even more obnoxious because there is no way to shut it down.
When I was able to get up the bed I was able to shut down the one in the office, an APC SmartUPS. It has just what you need: a power-off button. Simple as that. The Mustek downstairs doesn’t have but a “test” button that moves the sockets to battery even if the cable is inserted and has power.
Now I’m just waiting for the Mustek to die and shut down the network. Then I’ll be left playing Pokémon on the DS, and listening to podcasts and music on the iPod…
