The Last Straw

Our tiny power failure yesterday convinced us that the time was past to get a UPS for the home office. Using a Kill-A-Watt gadget that I bought a few months ago after seeing it used on MythBusters, we measured the power demands in this room by the expedient of turning off and unplugging the three power strips, then plugging them in to the Kill-A-Watt, turning the strips back on, and turning on every device on the strip. This gave us the maximum power demand on the circuit -- about 300 Volt-Amps. During our shopping today, we went by Fry's and bought a UPS rated at 330 550VA. We figure this should cover us, given that we rarely have all of the computers and associated stuff turned on at once. I haven't set it up yet, but will do so this evening.

We can't plug the lamp into the UPS, though, because it's plugged into a wall switch and is the main light in the room. Cheryl points out, however, that in case of power failure, we'll be able to see by the glow of the computer screens.

Update, 21:50: Error in VA rating corrected.

Fine Dining in Fremont

As we did about this time last year, and for the same reason (a farewell dinner, as she heads back to the UK this week), Cheryl and I went out to dinner tonight at Papillon, a nice fine-dining restaurant hidden away here in suburban Fremont. This place is nice. We did the whole meal from starters to desserts. (I'm going to take a blood test in a few minutes to make sure my blood sugar didn't spike too badly after having had a pumpkin crème brûlée.) They also do table-side flambés, as we witnessed when a family sitting near us ordered one.

I started with lobster ravioli, and had one of this evening's specials: mahi-mahi with sweet potato mash with a lobster-shrimp sauce. Both were excellent. Cheryl started with oysters and had seafood Wellington, which she said was also good.

The restaurant's owner is a garrulous older gentleman who comes around and talks to all of the customers, makes wine and dessert recommendations ("I've picked every wine we serve; I have to keep up the quality control," he said, brandishing a glass), and so forth. The formally-dressed staff seem to have been with the place a long time. They were attentive without being smothering. And although we were the last customers of the evening -- we arrived at 8 PM and were finishing coffee at 9:15 or so -- we never got the impression they were trying to shoo us out so that they could close.

As I said, it's a nice place, and something that the foodies among us here might enjoy. It's pricey -- $125 for two people including gratuity -- and thus not something we can do that often. But it's a nice treat once a year or so.