Forced Offline Have USB

There have been a number of data storage and upgrade initiatives at work over the past 12 months which have led to a number of outage-related lulls at work. Either the system, Internet access, or access to our directories and files have been restricted or removed entirely during these outages. Many outages are planned, while many others are just the unhappy result of a hard drive dying a miserable, flamey death after a long life of service. So how can someone counteract these horrible, horrible outage lulls while there's so much to get done?

If you throw an outage my way, my first instinct is to lean back in my chair, run my hands through my hair, and go AARGHHH Then get the urge to just go have a walk, talk to a buddy, or go eat something in the deli. I've been quite disciplined. What I actually end up doing is going to refill my hot water for tea and then pull out my saved files from my trusty USB stick.

this turtle is my favorite USB

I typically save items to a USB memory stick that I keep on my keychain. When I know an outage is coming, I save quickly a bunch of files I'm working on and then have those available during the outage.

By storing needed projects on my USB I can access them pretty much at any computer location (Work or home) and begin working just where I left off, as if nothing had interrupted me. Now how about *that* convenience?

This is incredibly useful for mind-flow type projects where I need to format documents, edit intense logistics/transportation/supply chain books and publications, am writing out a guide/walkthrough for a particular process or application, or when I need to complete tabulations of review results for committees.

These are typically flow kind of projects because once I get started, the hours just tick by as if seconds. Very engrossing work.

All around, I appreciate our company's efforts to keep our meager technology assets up and functioning, and especially, when there's upgrades being performed to assure compatibility. There are just so many that it's intensely irritating. But our IT folks are good people and I don't want to make their life impossible, so I thank them for letting me know of planned outages and plan accordingly.

We can all squint and drum our fists on the table, but in the face of technical outages and hang ups, little tricks like my USB stick can do wonders for our peace of mind and productivity.