Posted by : bpburnwal on Sep 27, 2003 - 07:37 AM General

When the lights went out in Bethesda last week, Clemens Kochinke fired up his emergency generator and plugged in three things, in this order: the fridge, the freezer and the computers.
Then he put a sign in his front yard to let any laptop-toting neighbors know that if they wanted to check their e-mail, they could log on to the Internet through his wireless connection. "Internet Access. Free Access when Generator is on," his sign proclaimed.

"I felt if I were in somebody else's shoes that didn't have a generator, that is what I would want," he said. Frustrated by continued power problems in his neighborhood, Kochinke, a lawyer, started publishing a Web log, or "blog," on Saturday reporting local cleanup efforts from Hurricane Isabel.

The power outages across workaholic, wired Washington sent many folks scrambling for an Internet connection and a way to power up their digital devices. In addition to worrying about food spoilage and lost air-conditioning, residents of this wonky city went through digital withdrawal as their laptops, BlackBerrys and Web-enabled cell phones ran out of juice. Many became scavengers in search of Internet links, especially those accustomed to surfing from their home office.

Marie-Louise Murville, a business strategy consultant, has been staying on top of her projects by hauling her laptop to places with wireless Internet connections -- Starbucks, the "Jamba Juice Cafe" at Whole Foods, a friend's apartment in Georgetown. She normally works from her home office near the Naval Observatory but has been without power since last week.

"It would be completely impossible to do my job without a Web connection," she said. Working at Starbucks is "much, much less productive than being at my home office, but it's a lot better than nothing," she added. "It's also an excuse to have better coffee than I have at home every day."

After his home lost power, Tenleytown resident Jim Lo Scalzo turned his car into a makeshift office Saturday by hooking his notebook computer and cell phone up to a power adapter that plugs into a car's cigarette lighter. Lo Scalzo, a photographer, was working on a freelance assignment for National Geographic Traveler magazine and ended up spending an hour and a half in his car, parked in front of his house, writing photo captions.

"It was pretty grim," he said. "It's not a place that's conducive to work -- cars are whizzing by and people keep staring at you." When he headed to a party in Adams Morgan later that night, he lugged his PowerBook with him to recharge it.

In order to avoid such headaches, some tech workers opted to spend time where the power was still on.

"The office building was unusually busy over the weekend," said Gary Arlen, president of a Bethesda-based technology research firm, who spent extra time at his office over the weekend because it had power and his house didn't.

After losing electricity at his Chevy Chase house, Patrick McQuown and his family decided to spend a long working weekend at his mother-in-law's house in New York. He stayed in touch with his office over her cable Internet connection.

McQuown found he still had no power when he got back Sunday. He spent a candlelit evening watching a movie and listening to music on his laptop, which still had a little battery juice. He also stayed connected by reading news updates and exchanging instant messages with his wife over his cell phone.

McQuown, co-founder of a local firm that designs applications for mobile phones, Proteus, said he found the evening "utterly depressing."

"I can do without light, I just need food and some sort of access to information," he said.