And the Fun Never Stops!

*sigh*

Upgrade begets upgrade is the way of the world. In order to sync my calendars I have to upgrade my Outlook. Upgrading my Outlook is only $100 cheaper than upgrading my whole MS Office package, so I bit the bullet on that one today.

Tonight, we have fun with Microsoft installations :-S I'm not a huge MS fan anyway, as anyone who reads my posts on the OffAssist blog already knows, but I am really dreading this. MS installs never go the way they are supposed to. I married an engineer, so he and I have been the whole family's in-house tech support team for almost 15 years and these things never go as planned.

Wish me luck!

Oh, and to clarify yesterday's post, I am RECEIVING email regularly (actually, I'm getting 2-4 copies of everything, it's driving me batty!) I just can't SEND email. So if you need to get in touch, that's still, for the moment, the best way to reach me.

Unless you like to text. New phone has unlimited texting and a real keypad. Woot.

6:14pm - U P D A T E

Finally get all the important stuff backed up, it took ALL day. Then I couldn't get the ruddy box open. Check it out, I had to find a photo tutorial just to OPEN the box. I'm afraid now.

Update, Upgrade, Upheaval!

Ink Think is doing respectably well these days, after a long slow start, and I decided to reward myself this weekend. My old business (cell) phone has been having a harder and harder time taking a charge--the battery was fine, but the little connector thingy in the phone wasn't connecting unless you laid it down just right and held your mouth so. It was very WordPerfect 5.0!

After much thought and inner debate I decided to upgrade to a PDA. I denied myself 3 or 4 years ago when I got my last phone, unable to justify the expense for my tiny writing business. Now, though, I need it. I can edit documents while waiting for school to get out and not have to re-enter the hand edits on the soft copy when I get home. I hope. So I did it.

A cringe-worthy amount of money later me and my PDA headed home, a big grin on my face and a brand new picture of the kiddo, taken in the phone store, on my desktop.

6 HOURS later I finally got the ^&*%^# Windows Mobile syncing to work right and suddenly all was right with the world! My computer could see my phone.

Just not my email.

10+ HOURS later, and that's labor hours, real time is closer to 20 and yes, I did only get 5 hours of sleep last night, the process of migrating back to Outlook from Thunderbird is complete. Sort of. The messages are all there, and some are even sorted into the right folders, but some got lost, some ported over (a nightmarish 3-5 step process that either Microsoft or Mozilla needs to make easier!) blank, or were there but hiding in reams of code...

If you emailed me this weekend, well, it may have gotten lost in the shuffle. If I haven't replied, it's because I can't. I will be spending Monday on the phone with tech support, no doubt, figuring out why I can't seem to send through any of my SMTP servers. If you really need me, send me your Skype ID (or Yahoo, AIM, or MSN--pick an instant messenger) id in the email and I'll get back to you that way.

I wish this was it, but sometime this summer Ink Think will be migrating to a new computer, too. I must be nuts.

The Library Doesn't Open Til 10am!

and my DSL was down when I tried to check email at 7am!

The horror. I fought with it on my own, rebooting this, rebooting that, until 10am. Then I started calling the in-house tech support (my husband) at work every 20 minutes til he called me back.

"Honey, the Internet is broke."

He walked me through all the things I'd already done and a new trick or two, then told me to give up and call the ISP tech support people.

They made me re-do all the things I'd done on my own--again--then ran some line tests of their own. The line failed. Oh, no!

To top it off, their trouble ticket system was down - Could I call back in five hours and give them my case number & someone would schedule a person to come out and check the line?

I gave up hope and packed laptop and child off to the library after school. There I checked my email, did a little research, and, of course, borrowed some Dr Seuss & the animated version of "The Hobbit" that she and I were watching when dh got home from work.

I made him call tech support back.

The new tech people intimated it might be our modem and if we replaced we could be up and running tonight. Faster than you can say, "Raid Night in the World of Warcraft" he was off to the electronics store.

I'm posting this, so obviously it worked...

But still. If you work virtually, your Internet connection IS your business. What would you do if your ISP failed you? No matter how many managers you spoke to or people you were pleasantly firm with about your problem, if you faced being without connectivity for one or more days, what would you do?

I'm lucky. Austin is one of the most connected cities in the world and I pay my ISP a little extra (about $3) a month to be able to access wireless in ANY public location where they are the wi-fi provider, places like McDonald's, UPS stores. If I'm really desperate I can drive my car up to the park & ride up the street. It has wireless, too.

In fact, had dh not fixed us up I was going to do that later tonight. Put the small person to bed, reply to the emails I downloaded earlier, then pop down the road (literally about 2 miles) to send. Then I could swing by McDonald's for coffee in the morning to check for replies...

It's not a perfect plan, but it is a plan, and one that doesn't require any great outlay of cash while my ISP is down. So, for now, it works for me.

IF your ISP goes down for 2 or more days, what will you do?

I may never wash dishes again.

Why? Because I usually do kitchen chores in the early morning while waiting for the almighty bean to bestow its nectar upon me (aka waiting for the coffee to brew). If I don't do the dishes and laundry then, I usually catch them later in the day when I go downstairs for a refill.

Of course, the latter was affecting my productivity since if I was downstairs doing chores I was ~not~ upstairs writing and editing and networking and filing and doing all those other self-employed kind of things.

No More!
Like my motivational note from Jay? I thought I was supposed to be sending those to her, not the other way around--not that I'm complaining, mind you.

I may never wash a dish or fold another pile another laundry again. I'm debating the necessity of ever going downstairs, but am fairly sure the school will call and be ugly to me if I don't go pick up Jay in the afternoons.

In the meantime, Imma work on emptying that full pot you see in the picture :-)

Oh! And if anyone should decide that they think I am just the awesomest, I always need pods for the Senseo ;-)