WOW! Yesterday was really an eye-opener! Upon arriving to the office (my short commute down the hall) there was no dial tone on the regular land line, no dialtone for the fax line, no DSL connection (no internet or email) and my 2 ISDN lines were inactive.
We called AT&T on from the cell phone to report the problem and were given case number with assurance that the problem should be corrected by noon. Pete (my husband) & I asked around. The neighbors were all without service, too.
I had jobs and auditions to be delivered, and email to be downloaded, so I went with laptop in hand to a coffeehouse with wi-fi. I travelled home, recorded jobs and auditions, and went back to the coffee shop to upload the files. BIG problem. I couldn’t get the files to load…..too big. This was about 2PM.
I went back home and called AT&T to get a status. I was told it was a major outage and worst case repair scenario would be Friday. I exclaimed, “You’re kidding, right?”.
I was on my way back to the coffee shop to grab more email, and I saw the AT&T repair trucks up the street. I stopped and found out what the problem was. Cable theft. A huge, 900 pair cable (1800 lines) was cut from the utility pole and absconded with, probably by tweekers. A cable’s basic component is valuable copper, ranging from $3-15.00 a pound.
This is a big problem, the repair folks told me. Yes, it was a big problem for me. Most troubling is the potential life threatening problem for aged or shut-ins who needed lifeline service.
Thankfully, service was restored about 3:00AM. I got up, recorded and sent out time-critical files and went back to bed at 4:30.
I hope they’re caught one day. Gotta believe in Karma!
Man, I am tired this morning!!!!!
Bobbin:
You need to look into an FTP. Depending on your provider, it may be something you already have access to and don’t know it. There are also some free FTP services.
That would have allowed you record the files in the studio, zip over to the coffee shop and wolf down a danish while you uploaded to the files to an FTP server that your client could then easily down load to. Once finished successfully, you could then reward yourself with a fresh oatmeal raisin cookie.
Remember, in voice over, its all about the food.
Best always,
– Peter
Hi Bobbin,
Crazy stuff!
David and I read that recently there was a power outage in San Francisco that affected people in a major way as well. Apparently it knocked out some server centers leaving several Internet businesses offline for hours…
Glad to hear that everything is now business as usual for you.
Best,
Stephanie
Hi Peter,
Thanks for writing in. I have FTP, but if you cannot connect anyway, which was the real problem from home, well, I was dead in the water, so to speak.
I also tried to use FTP at the wi-fi cafe, but the service kept kicking me off.
The great news is, we’re up and running again.
We may look into a wireless internet in the future.
Best,
Bobbin