Power Goes Out, Light Bulb Comes On

The other day, randomly, whenever I launched Media Center it would come up with a message shortly thereafter informing me that my battery is low and that I should plug my computer into an external power source or else any current work may be lost.
That would be interesting, and something to act on, if my computer were a laptop.
I’ve checked all of my settings to try to figure out why Media Center thinks my already-plugged-in desktop is an unplugged laptop with a totally drained battery, and there’s no obvious answer there.
And given that, when you most need it to not suck the Internet will suck, I haven’t found a solution there, either.
Then today there was a power surge, and rather than failing over to UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) power, like Munin did in the kitchen, Hugin simply shut down.Ironically, it was when the power went out that the light bulb came on and I thought, “Aha! Media Center means the battery in my UPS.”
The UPS was pretty old, and I did get a message over a year ago – I think it was when I was still in Ashburn – advising me that I might want to replace the battery in my UPS.
So after going to the comic shop, I stopped at Best Buy and picked up a new UPS. I thought about getting one of the big fancy (and pricey) ones, but opted for a solid mid-priced one that was comparable to my existing UPS.
So I came home, hooked it up, installed the new Vista-enabled power management software. All systems appeared to be go, so I launched Media Center and learned that my battery is low and that I should plug my computer into an external power source or else any current work may be lost.
So, $60 later, I still don’t know WTF it’s talking about.
Not too big of a deal, as it’s just a matter of clicking “OK,” and I really did need a new UPS anyway, but still annoying.
Last week the new season of Big Love started, and I’d watched the second episode of the season this morning before heading out into the world.
I think the show’s focus – polygamy – may have been coloring my view, as when I was at Best Buy I saw a group of women who were all roughly the same age getting into the same van together and I wondered if they were “sister-wives.”
At the comic shop I picked up Fables: Sons of Empire, the latest trade collection of the series, which actually brings me fully up-to-date on the series. I now have, in trade form, everything that came before the first regular issue of the series that I bought.
I’ve mentioned Fables often – and will do so again in the future – and I could easily write at length about why I love the book so much and why I think that people who don’t read it might just have something wrong with their so-called brains, but I’ve decided to keep it simple, and a little less insulting.
So, starting now, I will periodically post entries titled “Why I Love Fables,” designating each entry with a random reason number, that have some small bit of dialogue or an image from the series that in some way demonstrates why I love the book so much.
The numbering isn’t any sort of ranking, and won’t be done in order. Basically it will just be there for the sake of having a number there.
In celebration of my latest Fables purchase, here is the first in the “Why I Love Fables” series, an exchange between members of a hypothetical U.S. military force invading the Fables Homelands in theoretical retaliation to a proposed attack by the Empire, taken from one of the stories collected in the trade:

Why I Love Fables Reason Number 134:

“So who’s the enemy anyway?”
“Any stinking Meevil you find.”
“Meevil?”
“Short for Medieval People. I heard someone over at Division HQ call them that.”
“I heard the rules of engagement are wide open this time. Anyone not fully and convincingly prostrate in total surrender is a qualified target.”
“That’s true – even if they don’t seem to have weapons. Because some of them can do magic.”
“How can we fight magic guys, Sarge?”
“Simple. Drop them from 300 meters away with a five-point-six-two round traveling at 3282 feet per second. I ‘spect that’ll interrupt their mumbo jumbo just fine.”
“But nobody shoot the giant wolf. He’s with us. ‘sides, I heard all you’d do is just make him really mad.”

--From "Over There," Chapter Four of Sons of Empire