Walking On Sunshine

Inasmuch as I am happy, my life is good and I enjoy waking up every day, I wish I could say that this morning's mood finds me in that happy-go-lucky state.

It's about 10:30AM on a Monday; normally I am knee-deep in work-related stuff, digging out the clients who called over the weekend, reviewing their files, contacting City agencies (who are rarely thrilled to be back in a city agency office after two days of freedom to begin with) and basically catching up on any- and everything not handled over the prior 36 business hours.

This day, however, is a bit different; our office ISP basically went belly up -- and not because of technical reasons, apparently, but political ones. So Friday we were essentially out of the office because our office server, which houses our entire database -- including client lists, city property information, everything -- was inaccessible and locked down. Funny how technology manages to have its way with anything and anyone in its path. Our server is ten steps from my office but it might as well be in Pakistan among Osama bin-Laden's personal effects.

Meanwhile, when the ISP's feed into our office originally died, we presumed it was a temporary outage; between the heat and the rain, things like copper broadband wiring goes bad, especially that located below huge office corpo-structures. And considering even Con Ed's service is dying by degrees (no pun intended) we figured a day or two of non-Internet service was somewhat feasible.

Except that our server is tied into our Internet service; without getting into too much detail, the Internet runs on certain protocols, and one of which is resolving locations of computers, whether it's the main server at ESPN.com or our little data server. And without our ISP's ability to help our computers navigate one another in the little pond we call our office, it might as well be trying to log onto the CRAY supercomputer behind a mountain at Norad. The same result applies: it ain't happening.

So pressure-packed weekend sessions on the phone with our (old) ISP finally resulted this morning in one of their tech guys -- a guy with whom I've been dealing for the past eight or so years -- quietly advising me to find new service. He revealed that this isn't so much a technical issue but more one involving lawyers, disconnections through Verizon, verbal wars and multiple organizations and buildings. Great, it's a multi-corporation game of "Whose dick is bigger" and I basically can't even unzip.

That brings us to this morning; I've been dealing with almost two-thirds of my clients via cellphone so the server's temporary absence isn't life-threatening. However, at the same time, other components of our office are barely on life support because of this situation, so even if I could go about my business without any significant problems, this is taking up most of my attention because the business as a whole needs to get the problem back on track. On top of that, once the immediate problem -- ie getting our server back online -- is solved, we need to find us a new ISP. And considering the number of issues we've had with our current ISP, we're not just getting into bed with the next one that comes along. Problem is, any worthwhile ISP company isn't going to just snap their fingers and appear at our door; it's going to be at least a few days until they're able to show up onsite and get us back up and running.

And aside from it ruining a good majority of the weekend, with me running around mentally and physically trying to solve the problem, it's now, ironically enough, infringing on my ability to actually do the work that all this technology was designed to facilitate.

Some Mondays are just better spent in bed.

Speaking of which, Kaia arrives tomorrow. This past Saturday night, a bunch of friends of ours got together -- first for sushi, then thereafter for karaoke -- and we're doing Part II on Tuesday night since Kaia wasn't in town for when the Karaoke-fest was originally called. I posted some pictures here and I'm sure I'll post more of Tuesday night's festivities as well. Either way, I finally got to hang out with SuziQ in Florida and a bunch of other people I had been looking forward to seeing, and between my friend Mark hitting town later today from LA and Kaia's arrival tomorrow, things are looking up. Of course, all I really need is a week or two with Kaia; but with everyone looking to party it up before September arrives, I'm not unwilling to oblige. The problem is that with everything office-wise that's been happening, it's nearing fever pitch and I am just hopeful I'll have plenty of time to spend with Kaia.

It seems like every time she's in town, things are always floating up in the air and coming back at me at high speed; more importantly, it seems that, despite the manic craziness that seems to inhabit my world, I've noticed that when I walk through the door and she's there in my apartment, everything pretty much melts away and I find myself smiling.

If they find a way to bottle it, I'm sold.