Welcome Back To Dialup Internet

If we're interpreting this map correctly, the orange represents power outages in Seattle. Last night while we were dodging shingles and trying to tie down everything that could possibly blow away we couldn't believe we still had power. Today we're still incredulous - How can any of our infrastructure survive that? Well, as we're coming to find out, basically, it didn't.

While it's not a problem for Seattlest specifically (our cell phone was happily charging all night) this kind of event does bring up an interesting drawback to our modern communications structure: No power = no love from wireless networking gear, cordless telephones, cable internet modems, etc. If the lights are out you can communicate with the world only as long as your cell phone battery clings to that last bar of power.

Plain Old Telephones still work when the power goes out, though. Good ole Ma Bell did good. Enough electricity comes over those wires to power a phone and if you've got a laptop with some juice (and an RJ-11 modem) you can still get around a little. This might not do any good immediately because if you have no power you have no power, but Nocharge.com has dialup access numbers in Seattle that don't require a subscription. (206) 495-1000 is one of their numbers - The rest are listed here along with connection instructions. Any port in a storm, right?