I had it brought home to me this week how totally we now rely on technology.
My website went down. Yes this one, which I assume is back up or no one is reading this. With it went my main e-mail.
It was down for more than two days. Actually – worse – it was up and down for two days so I have no idea what mails went out and what didn’t or what mail I received or what was lost.
As some of you know, I work in technology, and I understand that technical failures happen.
But what I totally didn’t understand were conversations that went like this….
JustHostSupport: The system status is showing OK
Me: But the site won’t load. You try it.
JustHostSupport: Correct. The system status is showing OK
Me: This is some meaning of OK with which I have been previously unfamiliar?
Then there was this….
JustHostSupport: The duration of assessing this is approximately 15 to 45 minutes.
That little gem was up for about 30 hours.
And of course, lets not forget the ever popular:
JustHostSupport: Your patience is greatly appreciated.
What patience – I tried. H0nestly I did. I took deep breaths and chanted Om. I drank many cups of tea. But by mid afternoon on day one, my patience was running thin. By the end of day two, it was pretty much gone.
And the only time I finally got any response was when I started posting to Facebook and Tweeting about how bad JustHost was. At that point I got…
JustHostSupport: We apologize.
I also suddenly found myself being followed by a number of web hosting services.
I think you get that I was pretty miffed. There were times the site came back – and it loaded at the speed of an ancient and arthritic tortoise. So – I applied tea and a chocolate éclair (to me, not the tortoise) and went hunting for a new website and mail host.
My point is this – not all that long ago, the Internet didn’t exist. We wrote real mail to each other and waited days for it to be delivered. We telephoned but only when we were at home or in an office because we didn’t have mobile phones.
I confess I was appalled at how much I was stressed by the failure of my e-mail and website. And I have vowed three things.
- Get a more reliable host. I’m working on that now then I will ask JustHost for my money back (Note to self – don’t hold my breath waiting for it)
- Stop stressing so much when something like that happens. The world did not end. No one died. I may have missed some emails. (If you were trying to get me and I didn’t answer back – please try again. I wasn’t being rude – honestly I wasn’t).
- Never ever work on a telephone or live chat support desk – because you have to put up with people like me.
Deep Breath – and now time to get on with real life. But first – am I allowed to have another chocolate éclair?