2024, Business, Family, Fantasy, Technology

Cyber Highway

33 Comments

Yesterday YA had to leave her car at the dealership for a recall of some sort so I picked her up there and delivered her to the office.  When we pulled up, the front parking area was blocked off on both sides.  This, in and of itself, isn’t too extraordinary.  The building in which the travel division resides is also the “client building” and occasionally the front will be blocked off for a client arrival (which is usually accompanied by the cheering throngs).  But it soon became clear that something else was up as there were just a few parked cars on the side of the building and a couple of people were lounging about their parked vehicles. 

Turns out the company internet was down.  There were a handful of times that the internet was done in the past twenty years, the most notorious being when a squirrel committed suicide on a power line on top to Building 3.   A few times the power went with the internet which always led to flocks of folks at Caribou down the street, colloquially known as Building 7.  Most of the time though we just muddled on, working on documents, jumping into quick meetings or making phone calls until cyberspace was clear.

But these days it’s a different story.  EVERYTHING is tied to “the cloud”.  The phone is through the internet, document storage is on the cloud, the meeting platforms are online.  If the internet is down, there is no point in even going into the building.  So YA and I headed back home, with a quick stop at the Dunkin drive-through, and she quickly got her laptop fired up on the dining room table.  Luckily her using our home wifi for work doesn’t increase the cost.  And it was a shorter drive to take her to the dealership later in the day than to pick her up at the office.  Win-win!

If the internet were a real person, would they be a friend of yours?

33 thoughts on “Cyber Highway”

  3. I am speaking with all of you, streaming Radio Heartland, checking an excellent weather forecast, and will soon start my work day eight feet from the couch I’m presently sitting on. Does that answer your question?

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  4. I don’t think so, although I use it daily. Bill’s description of “dependent” and “wary” are so right on. When you are dependent on someone in whom you don’t feel a high degree of trust, it’s not a really good relationship, is it?

    Do I need the internet? At this point I guess I do. Whether I like it or not depends on the platform. This Trail feels good to me and I like it, but lately I wonder about all the other thousands of people who read our conversations every day.

    Then again, without the internet I wouldn’t have met any of you.

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    1. Actually there aren’t thousands who read us every day – the stats show many fewer on a daily basis although over the long number of years that we’ve been up and running, thousands of folks have, at one point or another, hit the “Follow” button. And if I had to bet any of my own money…. I guess most of our readers don’t read the comments!

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  5. I both love and fear the internet. My whole day is built around emails, and I sometimes remember what it was like to attempt all these connections – now instant – by phone. I have yet to embrace a smart phone, but I imagine that is coming.

    The fear is about what happened at YA’s workplace. How long did it take to get it back up and running, VS?

    I should start using the mantra “The Internet is my friend.”

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I do not think of the internet/wifi/connectivity as a friend. It is a utility. If I thought of the web as a person it would be too much like #45: hogging the attention, omnipresent, moody, inclined to disrupt daily activities, and operating without consideration of other beings. That is no friend.

    I appreciate it, though.

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      1. I’m with Jacque & K-Two. Utility, but also a necessary evil today. Nearly impossible to navigate life without being connected for at least a short time. Only option might be to become a self-sufficient hermit.

        Chris in Owatonna

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  8. More and more I am being forced to do business with companies online that are openly dishonest or steal my options. Sandy’s pharmacy. How I am now to pay my rent and report repair issues. I am not allowed to tell the maintenance man who walks by my door several times a day. Fighting off my drug insurance company trying to force me to use an online pharmacy. Others
    Clyde

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  10. Every now and then we lose the internet at the college, and yep, we may as well go home then. I mean I can still work in the shop, but for students using it, teachers accessing lesson plans, all the office staff emails, nothing is done then.

    At one place about a year ago, they got hacked and the entire network was shut down for security reasons. copiers wouldn’t work. Even one theater: everything is networked to iPads, so if there’s no network, I can’t even turn on the lights.

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  12. I view the internet as an extremely useful and valuable tool, one it would be difficult to live without. It’s neither friend nor foe, and I don’t ascribe malicious or benevolent intent to it. I’m the one who is in charge of how much or how little I let it be a determining factor in my life. The occasional disruption of internet service is a stark reminder of how much I’ve come to depend on it for information, news, and contact with friends. I’m glad to have that choice.

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    2. Yes. I have a similar attitude toward credit cards. I know people who take the attitude, I shouldn’t use credit cards, because they will make me overspend. But I put almost everything on a credit card that pays 3% cash back on everything, or possibly 5% on some things, and I pay my balance off every month. I’m the one who is in charge of making decisions on what I should spend my money on – the credit card doesn’t make spending decisions for me.

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    3. As I said above, I am having that choice taken from me because I rent because I have a wife I care because I have insurance because I seek medical treatment. Etc etc etc

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  14. For the uninitiated to being a renter, my apartment owners like so many are trying to force me to pay my rent through RentCafe and Yardi. Look up some reviews. They are being sued in many states. You pay them as an ACH and if they do not tell your rental company you paid, you have very little proof. We are supposed to report repair issues to Rentcafe not to the man who walks by my door I presume because as is happening in many places because renters are being billed for repairs whether it is their fault or not. Yardi provides information to rental companies they use to raise rents. By law they cannot require us to do this but they can charge us for paying them directly. I suspect in the thousands and thousands of transactions they handle each month, almost all go fine, but a small number do not. They make sure not to mess with the owners, only the renters. The woman who set this up; for the owners openly admits she knows they are crooks and sometimes steal owners payments, but it is she says the best of the bad.
    My wife’s drug company, which I do not get to choose, is late delivering drugs, decides it will not get her the brand name drug she has to have, insists they can overule the doctor’s orders, and charges me for the brand name even when they do not provide it or provide any version of the drug at all. I have no phone number to call, no address to visit. I have no higher authority to go to.
    My drug insurer was threatening to charge me higher premium now because I use a local pharmacist and not their recommended online company. I asked what their stake in the drug company was and they backed off.
    One of my clinics just started using an outside ACH for paying bills.
    But if you pay bills be check or bank card and look at your bank statements, you will see many of your payments are going to an ACH without an issue. I believe Xcel uses an ACH to process your payments.

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