Raptor Ravages Radio Reception – Reminiscent of Rodent-wreaked Resistor Ruin

(If I'm ever to become a better writer, I'm going to have to abandon this fascination with alliteration. Oops.)

Thursday's addendum to our ongoing saga of multiple power outages fried my stereo receiver: a wayward bird was able to take down practically the entire city's electrical supply. At first, the pre-blackout spike seemed to reprogram the AM tuner so that it couldn't pick up the standard frequencies: instead of tuning to 560, 570, and 580 kHz, it insisted on stopping on 556, 573, and 584 kHz. That made CBC Radio One Whitehorse a little more fuzzy than usual. After cycling the power, the radio recalled its traditional decimal tuning points, but the signal is now so distorted that it's unlistenable. The CD player's audio output is still fine though, so the damage seems to have been restricted to the radio component.

A similar outage from last year -- caused by an inquisitive squirrel as I recall -- incapacitated one of my surge protectors.

The icy 2006 blackout burned out another protector and also boat-anchored a computer.

Thankfully, my many surge protectors are often willing to sacrifice themselves for Yukon Electrical/Energy's habitual failings, except, apparently, when the protectors determine that they're actually more expensive than the devices they "protect." I guess that's a good thing.

Yet at some point, one of these spikes is going to blow something truly expensive, perhaps on the premises of a local business: Boston Pizza suffered a host of outage-caused damages earlier this year. I'm sure that there's some six-point type somewhere that indemnifies the utilities from my piddling damages, but a big enough circuit blast might inspire litigation from a larger upset customer. It's not as though these two utilities can claim years of steady and uninterrupted supply and distribution in their defence.