The Day The Network Died
Published on 24 November 2003 in Computers, Work, computers, work
I hate feeling unproductive at work, and yet for seemingly the third working day running, that’s exactly how I feel.
On Thursday the afternoon was a right-off thanks to the large anti-Bush protest march that went very nosily past the office –
especially noticeable when they ‘spontaneously’ stopped outside
St. Catherine’s House (home of Esso) with a loud sound system and drums. Given the window near my desk was very close to this, it’s not surprising that it was just ever so slightly, a distraction.
On Friday it was Children In Need day, which saw several chunks of the day taken up with space hoppers and other charitable deeds – thus reducing the amount of work I could do.
And then there was today. Having slept badly last night, it took me a while to warm up on the old work front, and lo, what should happen around 10:30 as I got into my stride?
The network died.
When I wrote the first draft of this (offline) it was 3pm and there was still nothing. And of course you realise how little you can do without a computer network – especially if all your emails and files are kept on servers.
So today has been a write-off as well.
None of it is particularly my fault. It is very hard to work when
someone is having a party in the street, or when you can’t get to
anything you need, but it is all rather frustrating – nay annoying,
especially as it all came in three work days in a row.
Still I’ll have a nice backlog of stuff to keep me busy tomorrow.
Incidentally I did do one useful thing. I went to a meeting at 4pm. Ho hum.