Yesterday, Day Three of my Telecommuting Journey…
The power went out.
The internet also went out.
(We have two UPSs. The router & cable modem are plugged into one of them. I have about an hour, hour and a half of time working if I turn my laptop to dimmest, etc…. IF the internet isn’t also out.)
It was just after my late lunch, and I really wanted a nap, so I walked out to the middle of the road, got enough signal for gmail and Discord, emailed my boss a telegram (Power out, internet out, will contact when back) and pinged my friends on Discord.
Then I took a nap.
I mean, my entire job is online. I’d have had maybe… 20 minutes of cleaning my office if I was at work.
I did some writing when I woke up, called NYSEG just in case nobody else had (1290 people affected, we imagine it will be about 5 p.m. when we get it fixed), played some Minecraft (obv. not the shared server), ordered pizza (from the end of the block), picked UP that pizza, and played Tiles & Tales once I got the tablet with games charged up.
The power came back on at about 9.
In ordinary circumstances, I might have gone to a local library or cafe to work but… nothing’s open.
Do you have plans for work if the power/internet go out?
My usual response would be to go out to a coffee shop. In this era… for email, I can tether to my phone for email, but I’d have to skip class because that requires a lot of data. My textbooks are physical, so I could still read. I’m never going to run out of reading.
Yeah, coffee shop was my thought too.
What I told boss was, if this happens in the a.m., I can drive into work. There’s nobody there now. Of course, the new ‘work only from home’ makes that tricky.
We’re looking into a cell phone booster, but since I had to walk into the middle of the road to send my boss an email that I had no power, that’s about the only way THAT works 😀