Random memory: "Brownouts, build another power plant!"

[pne]

In school, I occasionally played SimCity 3.

I remember one of the messages you sometimes got alerting you to the current situation was, "Brownouts, build another power plant!".

Only years later did I learn that a brownout is a kind of power outage where the voltage level is below the normal minimum level specified for the system. I always used to think it was a made-up insult: "Yo, stupid, build another power plant already!".

(Though now that I think about it, if they had used a semicolon—as I think they should have anyway—, I would probably not have taken the word for a vocative.)

Comments

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

I liked that game. Fun, but not as addictive as the current Sims. I enjoyed turning on Godzilla mode sometimes, too, when one of the "natural disasters" that could strike my city was Godzilla.

[lexabear.livejournal.com]

From my understanding, brownouts are like blackouts, but when you don't have enough electricity, instead of because of some mechanical problem (e.g., lines down).

[leighbug]

I remember SimTower, SimFarm, SimCity2000...so much fun! And then we lost the discs.