I have been without Internet access since very early Tuesday morning. Turns out that they need to visit my premises and the earliest they can arrive is Thursday afternoon. At this rate, I have no idea when I’ll be back up and running in my home office, so if you need me, you’ll have to call or just wait until I can respond to your email.
The company that provides my Internet access is not important as I’ve been a happy customer of theirs since 1999. I’ve had problems with them only twice. Once about 5-years ago when the Internet went down for days (culprit – outdated modem) and now.
I didn’t realize how dependent I am on the Internet. Everything I do is online. My contact lists are online. My calendar is online. My friends are online. My community is online. I get my news online. I do my banking online. In fact, my entire life is online.
I had to drive downtown Toronto to the club I belong to in order to catch up on a day’s worth of email. And now, my corporate website is down which means I can’t access my main email account. When will this nightmare end?
In any case, here are some things I’m doing right now to make sure I’m not this lost if I ever lose my Internet connection again.
- Have a hard copy of my contact list in a binder. I don’t like business cards, so when I get them, I input the details into my contact list online then chuck the card away. Now, I’m going to ensure that I print off my list or just file the business cards away just in case.
- Use the phone alot more. But that means I’ve got to know people’s phone numbers. So, I’ll be updating my Palm with every phone number that I know.
- Stop being annoyed when people actually want to call instead. This doesn’t apply to the odd calls I get from colleagues who I communicate with online. We trade so many emails from week to week that hearing their voices at least once a quarter over the phone is just a nice treat. Yet, if I meet someone and they choose to make first contact by phone, I’d get so annoyed. I’d be like, “My goodness, use email to schedule our meeting, geez.” But after this experience, I don’t care how people want to make first contact with me. Whatever makes the person feel comfortable is alright with me.
- Use my Palm Pilot for my calendar. I’m no longer scheduling appointments using an online calendar. I’m going back to my trusty Palm.
- Resume my subscription to my favourite newspaper, Globe & Mail. I miss it so much and not having the Internet is all the more reason to re-start daily delivery again. Going 2 mornings without being able to read articles at globeandmail.com has practically thrown my daily routine off.
Any other tips?
And here’s something that gets my goat. You call your ISP because your Internet service is down and in the recorded message they say, “For faster service, visit our website at yourisp.com.” So silly.
Hi Lisa, You may remember me: I saw you last fall at the Professional Organizers in Canada conference, and was inspired to start my first blog after hearing you talk about conversational media.
I’ve been through what you’re experiencing; my modem stopped working a few months ago, and like you, they had to send a tech to my apartment to deal with the problem. Due to a mix-up in sending out the tech, I was without my internet access for over a week!
My business card solution is to staple the card (and or/any other paper material that you’ve received from the company or individual) to a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11″ paper. I then file these sheets in binders.
I like this approach better than the clear plastic sheets you can get that hold a lot of business cards on one page. Sometimes people have non-standard sized cards. When the card is staple to a sheet of paper, I can make notes about when and where I met them, and antyhing else that might trigger my memory later when I want to contact them again. You can even keep a contact log on the page.
All the best – and good luck with your book!
Michelle
michellelynnegoodfellow.blogspot.com
tellitwell.blogspot.com
I have to say I totally agree you have not decided to just rely on the internet, but cover yourself with having hard copies of your work, in case of some great disaster happens with the internet.
I use the internet myslf to do my work with clients and last month thing started to go wrong clients could not get their emails to me, either its was spam or internet server problem for two weeks..Was I annoyed? ( You BET I was !)
Now I keep hard copies of all my work. Sometime its best to go back to practical work and not to become to dependent on the internet. Also I have notice that people are having problems with their emails and internet, either you use it for personal or buisness.
I think it would be useful to remind people about this.Can you imagine years or months of your hard work online then low and behold the internet server crashes, or you cannot get back on until 2 month time you have lost all your work..yuk ! that not nice at all