[FFML] [ADMIN] Notice of possible outage(s) over the next week

[Dennis Carr]

Hey, gang.

First, tl;dr: power outages at the server site predicted over the next
few days - we may drop offline at any given time but will see service
restored when we're back.  Please don't ask if we're down during that
time as per usual.

So with all the occasional glitches that happen here due to
circumstances outside of my control, I now have one with a distinctive
warning.

For a bit of backstory, you probably already know that 10% of the state
of California is on fire at any given moment.  Well, that's an
exaggeration, I suppose, but you get the idea - and this year's still
got an extended fire season.  You probably also know that the power
utility in the northern half of the state (Pacific Gas and Electric)
is...well, frankly, it's bankrupt, let's just leave it at that.  

This server lives in a town called Sebastopol, California - not
horribly far from where it was brought up in Oakland twelve years ago
- and aside from worries about a major fire two years ago and the
occasional power issue my host has had, things have been fine. But
here's the problem - Sebastopol is a) north of San Francisco, b) 30
miles south of the Kincade fire which started in a small town called
Geyserville, c) very much within PG&E's territory, and d) facing a 24
hour high wind warning.

There is an excellent chance we are going to see power loss - and
therefore we will be down if the power goes out.  

To wit, I've been informed that a generator is pointless: the uplink is
down the road in Rohnert Park on a decent sized Comcast Business
circuit, but Comcast apparently does not run generators on the switch
that my server host is on.  So he *could* run a generator, but it would
needlessly eat up wattage that Robin could use for his refrigerators.

You are welcome to post in the meantime, but if your post does not show
up...well, you know in advance what's going on. =)  As per usual,
though, please don't post asking if the list is up - quite simply, we
can't say no, and we don't want to face that barrage of emails when we
come back to life.  We'd rather see your stories instead. =)

Once we're clear of this, I'll post an all-clear.

-Dennis