One fakakta Week!

Well, this has been an interesting work week....

Due to the mortgage credit crunch our business has nosedived and as a result we've laid off several people, including many in information technology, including my staff who maintain phones and the servers that the phone equipment uses, as well as those who were our vendor links including phone service.

Late last week we lost connectivity to one of our remote sites, as a result of AT&T having terminated the wrong network line. As a result we lost phone service with them, building security, and data. It took nearly all of one day to get the line reconnected and then AT&T wanted to bill me back for getting it running. I calmly explained that it was not our fault for the wrong line being cut and they seemed to understand that they shouldn't charge us then.

Thursday of this week one of our guys goes into the server room and it's nearly 90 degrees! Turns out one of our 2 A/C units is blowing ambient air. The technician from the maintenance company comes out and diagnoses a bad compressor. That will be installed Monday but in the mean time we're on one A/C unit and have a series of fans through the room exhausting the hot air.

About noon today we get a call that voice mail isn't working. After trying to diagnose it ourselves and seeing nothing but cryptic errors on the server we break down and call the vendor. Since we've been trying to save money we didn't renew the $87k annual maintenance agreement and we're low on their list of priorities (that company is ExtraTeam). We paid a deposit by credit card and are waiting for them to step up still as I type.

So, the lesson in all this? People in pivotal roles are pivotal. The positive side is that my remaining staff and I are all getting a crash course in much of the infrastructure and how to resolve issues. Good times ;-).