Pandemic planning (day two)

The editorial office is remarkably peaceful compared to normal this morning. That’s partly down to the fact that so few of us are in today. But the most significant contributor to peace here is probably that all the cursing is happening at home!

A particular problem has been our page design program QuarkXPress, which needs networking to work properly.

“Does anyone else have a dongle? I’ve discovered that mine gets alarmingly hot, so, what with stuff I’ve been reading about exploding iPods, I am going to log off and only check my e-mails every couple of hours.

“Also, there is only one corner of my flat where I can get good enough reception and its getting a but tiring working while sitting on the arm of my sofa!

“Other learning points so far:

1. When you check out your Quark licence (which I definitely did yesterday), disconnect from the server to make sure it has all worked. Otherwise, you may find that you’ll only be able to use your emergency key, which lasts for 72 hours.
2. Use of Medicines Complete over the internet is successful.
3. Re-routing of telephone numbers is also successful, although callers report a short delay before a ring tone, so that they’re not sure if they should put the phone down and try again.”

“New problem. I can’t access my Quark pages because I didn’t export the licence! And I can’t use the emergency licence because it says it’s broken.

“I’ve spent about 15 minutes on the ’phone to our IT guy trying to solve the problem and after trying lots of different things we still have no solution. Luckily, this week is for learning and hopefully we can get this problem ironed out for if we are really are hit by the pandemic in the office. Alternatively, I could just remember to click the button I should have before leaving the office!

“My internet connection has worked fine today, so that must have been a glitch to do with my provider yesterday. Today, what I have found difficult is communicating with my colleagues. In the office, it is easy to walk up to someone and ask them a question, but when you’re at home this involves sending an e-mail or making a ’phone call. If it’s an e-mail, you then have to wait for a reply and you have no idea whether the person is in a meeting or how long it will take them to reply.

“Having no access to the file-server means I have no access to all the work we do as a team and save on there. Today my colleagues have had to send me a lot of things by e-mail, which worked fine, but obviously takes time for them to send, and for me to download.”

“I encountered my first problem today. My house ’phone cut out mid-call last night, which is normal for it to do once in a while . . . but after more testing this morning, it was obvious that all four handsets had made a pact to die together. Not great timing when you have a telephone interview to conduct at 10.30am. But as ever, technology to the rescue —at a price of course — speaking on my mobile on an 0845 number for 45 minutes will not make finance very happy. On the plus side, my shoulder and neck thanked me for being able to put the hands free on and talk as loudly as I like without fear of disturbing anyone else around me.

“Other than that, everything has been fine, and I am glad that my hour commute was transformed into gym time this morning. Very productive.”