This thread reminds me of an event almost 25 years ago. May not be totally relevant since the computer problem was due to a general power outage. Anyway, just read.
Back in July, 1993, I was attending the Ruan Grand Prix in Des Moines Iowa with my 3 best friends (it's a car race). Yhis was our 4th year at the event which ran Friday through Sunday so we were well acclimated. sometime on Saturday we noticed some pretty intense lightening to the NW and started wondering if we were going to get wet. This was an enclosed street course and we hadn't brought any rain gear in with us in the morning. Turned out the races finished up without rain and we headed back to the Holiday Inn planning to go out to eat later. Shortly after we got there it started raining hard so we ordered pizza stayed in, ate pizza and drank some of the booze we'd packed with us. We watched TV as they reported on the rain and the flooding that was occurring around the city. We watched as they showed the restaurant we had planned to go to filled to knee-deep with water. Then they started talking about cancelling Sunday's races and later actually cancelling them which really annoyed us. Cowards! So we went to bed knowing Sunday's races were cancelled and planned to sleep in and travel home at our leisure.
I woke up about 7:30 Sunday with a fair hangover and a desperate need to hit the bathroom and get a drink of water, not necessarily in that order. Flipped the light switch in the bathroom and nothing happened. Not good. I tried for the drink of water but when I hit the faucet, nothing was there. I was baffled but really needed to take a whiz so I did that and, unfortunately, flushed the toilet. That was the last of water in that hotel room. I was desperate for some coffee and looked at the little Holiday Inn coffee maker and decided to go to the ice machine down the hall and get a pot full. Got back to the room and realized that even if I figured a way to melt the ice, I couldn't make coffee without electricity of which there obviously was none. I started slurping on some ice chips while I was looking out the window (we were on the 8th floor) and I spotted a 7-11 about a block and a half away. I thought COFFEE and was about to head out until I took a longer look and realized they were dark, too. Bummer.
About that time my roommate woke up mumbling something that sounded like COFFEE and I said, "Sorry ol bud. We got no water and no power." Took him a while to process that information but I eventually mentioned FUBAR and he understood that. About that time our other friend was pounding on our door hollering, "Guys! Get up and get packed! We gotta get out of here." We already packed the night before so it didn't take long. We took the stairs down to the lobby and that's where the computer came into play.
We got to the lobby and there were already a couple dozen people hollering and waving their arms. Without power, the computer was down and the manager said to check out he had to process credit cards the old fashioned, imprint way. One particularly noisy guy at the head of the pack was insisting that if they couldn't do it via computer, his stay should be free. The rest of the crowd were being good quiet sheep. My buddy Rab said, "This is not good"
(A word about Rab. Think of a guy about 6'2'', 280 lb. with most of that 280 in his shoulders, arms and chest with a blond Afro and thick glasses.) Rab pushed through to the front of the crowd and asked the noisy guy, "Do you mind if I talk to him for a minute?" Noisy guy says something like well yeah OK. Rab goes to the counter and hands the manager his credit card and says, "Can we take care of this?" Manager says yeah, imprints the card, Rab signs the receipt and tears off his copy, thanks the manager, looks at the rest of us and says, "We're outta here!" I will always remember the bewildered looks on the other people in the lobby.
Aftermath: We left Des Moines eastbound on I-80 headed for Iowa City. About 30 miles east of Des Moines I80 crosses the Skunk River which was well out of its banks. The westbound side was down to a crawl because the right lane and about 1/3 of the left lane was under water. Rab said, "That's what I was worried about."