Technical Difficulties

A typical Sunday night, and I sit down to check through my emails, both personal and professional.  This is what you do when you work from home.  The office stuff never gets left behind at an office, forgotten Friday afternoons until Monday morning.  Even when I am away from my home I am hooked in with my smart phone.  My husband has learned the difference between the email ding and the text message pop.  Early on in this work-from-home thing, he used to ask about what the different noises on the phone meant, but that hasn’t happened for a while.  I sometimes cringe at the dings, so that probably tipped him off.  I’ve become Pavlov’s dog in reverse; if the bell dings after reasonable hours, I associate it with more work.  It’s not that mind work, quite the contrary.  But I do like to enjoy a little time away from it as well.

However, it is not enjoyable when the systems I rely on for work decide to take a little time off from doing their jobs.  This Sunday, my internet decided to go down in the middle of the early evening.  Not cool.

I know my network pretty well.  I set it up, same as I have in the previous several places we've called home. I named my network, secured it, gave the devices access, share files between them, and have two printers hooked up (everyone needs a laser and an inkjet, right?).  But the actual service coming in through the wall from the provider is beyond my control.  It makes me feel at best uncomfortable, at times even vulnerable.  So much of my duties and responsibilities rely on that provider to provide.  I don't want to call the call center.  I don't want to read off the lights blinking on my modem.  I don't want to be treated like a simpleton.  I'm not!  I'm IT! Or at least, I use to be.  Now I'm quasi-IT.  When service goes down, it's no longer "our" service, like it was when I was corporate IT.  Now, it's "the service", provided by a big phone company that will ask me the stupid questions like "have you powercycled your modem"?

I use my internet connection for both work and home.  This particular night, I needed to access my online classes for school as well as check in on work email.  I pulled out my smart phone, thankful my online course system is more compatible with Apple products than in the past.  As I’m logging into my classes, I pull wires on the DSL modem and count off minutes to let the thing reset itself.  Once I secure my assignments through my phone, I think more about how my situation could affect my work.  I now live in a rather remote place.  The DSL is the only reliable high speed internet service we have here.  I contemplate what a day of working out of the library or Starbucks would be like, and realize it would not be ideal.  Even worse would be several days, while I wait for the provider to send out a tech.  I probably should come up with some contingency plans. 

Back when I had an office, the contingency plan for emergencies was connect at home.  We had some massive winter conditions, or the occasional server issue flair up, and those I could remedy by simply connecting in from home and working there.  If something happened when I was at home and for some reason I could not connect there, I could go to the office.  Things offset each other nicely.

Pulling the wires and waiting worked, this time.  The internet came back slow, and then eventually picked up speed to normal operation.  Today I realize I need to create another “disaster recovery” plan for long-term service provider outages.  I can only do so much from a smart phone, and some of the things I do on my team are very specific to me.  I think the first thing to do is scope out where the free public hot spots are around my new location.

Otherwise, Plan B is currently drive an hour to my mom’s house and set up shop on her dining room table ;)