Me, I want to wire the house so I can throw one main switch and be running on generators. I've tried to explain this to a number of contractors, and they all look at me as if I'm crazy. To me, it seems like a perfectly reasonable feature that a home should have.

My dilemma is heat. I run oil, but my furnace doesn't work unless it's got power. So I lose power and I lose heat -- which to me makes no sense, because I've got a fuel source sitting in my basement. I should be able to throw a main and have impulse power come up.

My contractors don't get it. I try to explain why I want it in terms of either Charlton Heston's "Omega Man" or Edgar Allen Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" but they don't seem to get it.

What can I say; they're idiots.