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?

Look at Me!

Wow. I was awarded the VA Networking VAccolade Business Entrepreneurs Award.



I am rarely speechless, but today, I am.

BSP

Or, as we call it on my writing lists, Blatant Self Promotion.

I joined the staff of the IVAACast, the newsletter for the International Virtual Assistants Association, a couple of months ago. My first article is in the August 2007 issue, which came out today.

Guess who's on the cover? Yep. Me! Well, my article. But that's okay, I don't photograph well, I'd rather it be my words than me...lol.

If you want to check it out, you can see it online at the IVAA website:

http://www.ivaa.org/ivaacast/IVAACast_August_2007_Final.pdf

If you want to get the IVAACast in your inbox year-round, check out the subscription link on the IVAA home page.

Lovin' LibriVox

Did you read Jane Austen in school?

I didn't, not even once. Apparently this is a rare thing. It's made books like "The Jane Austen Book Club" really hard to enjoy because I had no idea what the heck the characters were referring to.

No more!

Thanks to LibriVox I can listen to Jane Austin in my car, for the cost of burning the CD.

LibriVox is a project to record all the public domain books of the world into audio files. The catalog of completed works is extensive and growing all the time. I'm even thinking of volunteering, if I can get a halfway decent mic for my computer.

Volunteering? eh? Yep. All the content at LibriVox is read into audio files by volunteers! I think it's pretty cool, but I'm a self-acknowledged book geek.

Check it out & download a classic today. I'm off to get "Moby Dick", another one that I seem to the be the only person on Earth who did not have to read it in high school.

Ah, Editors!

I have to admit, I live for stories like this one from the Entrepreneur.com blog.

Nothing says, "yes, editors really do have a purpose in life," like a little commercial embarrassment for the people who didn't use one. Localization is also a GOOD thing :-)

Just in case you want to cut to the good parts, here are the sites the Entrepreneur blog links to. Be warned, they are a bit irreverent and the ad content (not the articles, just the ads) may or may not get you in trouble at work.

The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs

Top 13 Worst Slogan Translations Ever