The power went out at midday

Yesterday we had a brief power outage that could be attributed to something that happened in our building, not the wider neighbourhood or power grid. There’s a lot going on in our block concerning power, hot water, painting, and whatnot, which has brought much… fun into our lives over the last month! The good news is that the most recent power failure happened almost on the dot at midday. I say “good news” regarding the timing, but can you think of why? While you ponder that over your Sunday morning coffee, it’s interesting how so much of our lives are governed by NTP servers. I feel like if you wanted to cause real mischief, you’d exploit a series of these and set everyone’s clocks wrong. The pandemonium that would ensue! Granted this would be easier said than done, given the distributed nature of the protocol, and how much of the time is derived from sources such as satellites. It was a plot device in one of my teenage sci-fi novellas that, hopefully, never sees the light of day.…