Security, KJ, and a Power Outage

I had an interesting experience today. I was at the Santa Ana airport, going through security, and I was stopped because my carry-on had the old tape measure in it. You know, the tape measure I carry around to ascertain whether I can see cards clearly at an adjacent blackjack table.

Anyway, just as the TSA official was about to go through my bag, he asked, "It looks like a tape measure?" I said, "That's what it is." And then the power went out. Everything shut down -- X-Ray machines, conveyor belts, giant wall clocks. It took more than 20 minutes for the power to come back on. During that time, everybody just froze in place and waited. I had to wait for the scanners to come back on so the TSA guy could coordinate the scan of my bag with his hands-on search of the bag.

Anyway, I learned this -- when power goes out in this airport, the giant wall clocks stop. But when it kicks back on, the clock automatically reroutes to the actual current time. I missed the giant hands moving -- oh well. I was looking at the scanners and dealing with my bag.

I had never experienced a power outage while going through security before. It seemed very Ocean's 11-ish.