There was a major blackout in California, Arizona, and Mexico on Thursday. Millions of people were left without power when the lights went out around 4 pm. Power was restored at around 2:18 am on Friday. During this time, people were forced to do without most appliances. Needless to say, this encouraged people to find creative ways of lighting their houses and entertaining themselves. Some people gathered at any stores or bars that were still open and chatted the time away over some drinks. Others stayed home and dealt with the higher-than-normal heat without the comfort of air conditioners. Dinnertime was accompanied by people firing up their grills. I encourage you to add your story and/or thoughts.

Personally, I brought out glow sticks, a glow cube, a headlamp, a miniature lava lamp, and a battery-powered glowing crystal and used them to light my house up while I read a book and played Dragon Quest IX with the help of my multiple DS systems. I even got to watch some Doctor Who episodes with the help of my radio that had a built-in movie player. Dinner wasn't too exciting, and I was forced to go without my usual hot-weather ice cream sandwich. Still, I managed to get through it, and now I get today off from school! Plus, this is a real case of where I LITERALLY could not do my homework. I've always wanted to say that.

Sounds like I would have had fun. Does anyone know what caused the blackout in the first place?

Nezumi : What part of California did it hit? It didn't affect my area, that I know of anyway.

Well, from what I've read and heard, it affected places as far north as San Clemente and as far south as Tijuana, but I heard on the radio that there were some areas in that range that were unaffected. The newspaper says it affected the whole SDG&E service area, but there might have been pockets that still had power.

As for what caused it, the current blame is replacement of faulty equipment (and possibly the overly hot weather), which knocked out major transmission links on the power grid.

Nazumi: Oh wow. Do you know how long people are going to be without power?

It didn't affect my area in CA. I'm in the Bay Aea. Though that is interesting. Sounds coolhanging out like that. Gave people a chance to whip out the candles.

Oh, wow. I didn't hear about this. I'm way up here in Oregon though, so it didn't affect me. >.> 

But anyway, glad everyone is okay. Sounds like you were able to entertain yourself just fine though, haha. [= 

The last blackout I had was about a year ago. Not nearly as much fun. =| I was bored and all by myself in the dark at like midnight. Bleh.

cough cough we had a worse blackout a couple weeks ago cough cough.

Thanks to Hurricane Irene (downgraded to Tropical Storm Irene), I was without power for what seemed like forever, it was only like 4 days, but it hurt us pretty bad.

Luckily I lived, on the power of my cell phone and a car charger =|

The main issue that I can think of is that this basically hit the San Diego area during a really hot period. Do you know what happens when the air conditioning in all those old folks homes goes off and it's that hot outside? Yeah.