The Day The Network Died

Published on 24 November 2003 in , , ,

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.