In the interests of accuracy

Today's local daily reports that "some parts of Austin were without power for as long as three hours." "As long as three hours"? That's kind of rounding it down, isn't it? The outage here was very nearly three and a half hours, and nobody at 3-1-1 or at "Austin Energy" could or would provide an estimate of how soon restoration could be expected, what areas of town were suffering the extended outage, or any other useful information. The problem was obviously not with the local transformer. When we asked whether power would be restored before dark, no one would provide a guess. Before morning? No response. "People might be disappointed if we didn't meet the estimate." Toward eight o'clock we could see a traffic signal in the distance return to life. Then could be seen some lit luminaires a little way off. Eventually surrounding areas brightened in all directions off in the distance, but closer to us quite an extended area in all directions from us and including us remained dark in the returning brightness and then at last had power restored all at once, including the households of all those idiots who bathe their homesteads in ugly-spectrum spotlights from dusk until dawn every night of the year.