Article Discussion: Programming in the Dark: An Interview with Our Favourite Canadian

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Just figured i'd throw in my two cents...

I spoke with an employee company I worked for last summer (large financial institution) and he said that they didn't skip a beat. The entire building is designed to run off of several deisel powered generators. Everything was business as usual and not a single server went down. Apparently no one inside even knew about the events until shift change.

Regarding supermarkets, I work part time for a large grocery store. I happened to work the day of and the day after. The day of, we tried our best to keep frozen foods from thawing and meat from expiring. We covered all the open refrigeration bunkers with cardboard, plastic, and anything else handy we could find. The meat and milk was quickly pulled into the freezer and the doors kept closed (ensuring all cold air stayed inside).

The next day only certain milk had spoiled and a few slabs of meat were discarded. As it turns out, our power was turned back on at 11pm (making it a little over five hours of darkness).

On a personal note, my power was up at 6am the next morning... it then turned off again around 7:30am until well after 12 noon.

Anyways, the entire weekend, grocery shopping was crazy! Everybody was trying to stock up for armageddon; buying a LOT of bottled water, canned goods, and batteries.

Well, guess that's my story.