[GTALUG] Dirty Power and Wi Fi Far field effect

[Russell Reiter]

I live close to the exhibition grounds which is near to one of the city's
major grid switches. For example, they were testing the new streetcars, the
ones with three sections for navigating tight turns and they browned us
down to (I assume) 50hz. This was visible as all the lights dimmed and the
streetcar appeared to navigate the loop a short time later. As I don't have
ups I had powered down my tower. The next time I powered up the breaker in
the power supply tripped and when I reset it and booted, my 1.5v agp video
card was toasted, at least I hope its the card and not elsewhere on the bus.

So that's not so bad, there's no enterprise stuff at risk, I just hack
together another box and carry on. However, now I have a real problem and
I'm in need of a solution. Yesterday I fired up the WiFi while my SO was
drying her hair. I toasted her salon quality hair dryer. Not good. :-(
There is no gfi outlet and at this point I'm wondering if I need UPS, for
the hair dryer, if not the computer.

So my question is, does anyone on this list have similar problems and a low
cost hack they have used to deal with Toronto's iffy grid.
TIA
Russell
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