While I can't speak to the cable box, there is a life-hack for future evacuation use regarding the freezer.
Freeze a cup of water and place a quarter on top. Upon return, if the quarter is at or near the bottom of the cup, the freezer has refrosted. (The middle of the cup is a gray area.) For your current situation, I'd ask if you can pull individual cubes from the container. If you pull out an abstract ice sculpture instead, it has melted and refrozen. #ymmv Sent from my iPhone > On Oct 11, 2017, at 10:21, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > > It is hard to tell from my vantage point if this is being covered much on > national TV. I live in the Upper Napa Valley (actually, in the hills above > the Valley). Our community is kind of in the middle of the three largest > fires, but so far does not seem to be directly threatened by any of them. But > our friends and neighbors down the hill to the north, west and south have > been devastated; thousands are homeless. Locations we have all grown up with > and enjoyed over the years have been damged or destroyed. Last I heard about > 17 of our neighbors in the two Valleys (Napa and Sonoma) have been killed. > This morning as I prepare to leave for work (about an hour south of here, > requiring driving along side some of the most effected areas) I am not sure > what the winds, reported to have kicked up and strengthened, are going to do > to road access. I may be coming back with a crew later today from work to > provide mental health services at some of the relocation centers. It has been > scary, exhausting and very difficult to breathe. > > I do have a TV-related question though: We were without power or cell phone > service from around 9:50 pm Sunday night through sometime Tuesday afternoon > (power was back on when I got back from work at 7:30 pm). The ice in my > freezer (not in trays) was still in pretty well shaped cubes from the > automatic maker, and the drinks in the fridge were cold. We are trying to > figure out if the perishable food in the fridge can be saved, and wondering > if somehow the power was not out as long as we were told in our house (I > spent Monday night near the clinic where I work to make sure I could get back > to work the next day). > > When I looked at my DVR recordings (Comcast Xfinity X1), several programs > that I had scheduled to record on Monday evening were, in fact, there (e.g. > Monday Night Football, Colbert). This seems like evidence that the power was > actually on in my house Monday night, even though PG&E and many neighbors > report there was no power in my area. Is it possible that, even with the > power out, Comcast somehow recorded my programs for me and delivered them to > my DVR when the power came back on? And if so, does that mean I could turn > off or even unplug my cable box when I am not actually watching it and still > have all of my programs recorded and available when I want them? (If so, I > never knew that). > > If it is possible that the recordings were made even with my power off, then > I will have to assume we lost power for about 42 hours - and from what I have > seen from a Google search, food is only kept cold enough in a closed fridge > with the power off for about 4 hours (more like 48 in a freezer). My wife is > telling me to just through all perishable food out and not even risk it, but > for a couple of reasons the idea of throwing out so much food that looks and > mostly smells good is making me sad. > > -- > Sent from Gmail Mobile > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
