I came into work, sat down, booted my computer and started my day to find that I had no network access at work. I asked around to see if anyone else was affected, tried to another work station to no success, and finally called technical support. They said they’d be a while so I had to bide time until a technician came around. I informed my coworkers of my plight and each offered to give me work to do.

The first had nothing because I couldn’t get on the web.
The second had nothing because I couldn’t access the network drives.
The third had nothing because she needed to email me something.
The fourth had nothing in general. I mentioned that no one else had been successful and he took this as a personal challenge. 10 minutes later he came back, he was frazzled, his shirt was untucked a little, and he seemed spent.

“Ok, Terry, please update these HTML files with a new batch of images you can make from screen caps of the Excel file on this this thumb drive.”

The drive was 512mb. It was old. I plugged it in and it failed to open. Later I got internet access back, googled the drive and found out the software the thumb drive used worked with nothing beyond Windows 2000. Next time there’s a network outage I think I’ll just take the extra paper kicking around and make a paper mache seat cover.