The Moth

OT post, no technical content on this one...

[sigh] I woke up this morning to the sound of my phone’s alarm. Unlike other times though, there is no notification. Without a notification, I cannot dismiss the alarm! None of the hardware buttons has any effect. I ended up muting the volume. Soft resets, playing with settings etc but still no joy. I am supposed to know this stuff and I can’t get this annoying alarm to stop sounding... Given that I had a conference meeting in 5’ I just left it muted and turned my attention to dialling the conference centre number. However, the person in charge of the call hadn’t activated it. So while waiting I thought I’d boot the laptop up and check email. Can’t connect to server; it could however download the 3 security updates fine and browse other internet sites. Checked another separate web email service and it was down as well! While trying VPNing in and finding that it is a no starter too, there is a loud bang on the door. I opened the door to find the postman informing me that the door bell seems to have broken. He handed me a letter I had to sign for.

As I was opening the letter (still waiting on the phone for the conf-call to be activated while observing that I still can’t connect to any email account and dreading to put the volume up on my phone in case the alarm started sounding again), I couldn’t help but think: “Will there be a message in the letter informing me that the ‘the world is broken today’...”. I was getting scared, in fact, I checked out of the window to see if there was anything unusual!

For the record: I eventually got into email via Redmond (rather than Reading), found a cancellation for the conf call, the other web email sprung to life, the letter wasn’t pleasant but not the end of the world. Door bell still broken, phone still on mute :-/