"N" is for no network

Since I am not teaching this semester, I have been working at home most days. Today, I decided to work in the office, since I hadn't even been in there since before the conference and Mexico trip. I stopped at Starbucks on the way in and happily arrived at my office with my decaf grande soy latte (my favorite!). I logged into Novell (if your company/university doesn't use this- just ask me later) and it took a long time to respond- this usually means that it isn't finding the network or it's having trouble connecting to some network drives. It finally gave me the "tree could not be found- would you like to log in to windows anyway" error, so I did the "workstation only" option and logged into Windows. I opened Firefox to discover that I was also unable to access the internet. After a few minutes on the phone with IT and reconnecting cables and hubs, disabling and enabling my LAN, they concluded that I needed some hardware assistance- "there must be a problem with the network jack in your office". Apparently there was a power outage last week, which may or may not have affected the network. Now, the work I needed to do today does not require the network (just my external hard drive, excel, stats package, word, & powerpoint). I stayed to work without network access and just went down the hall to the public lab occasionally to check mail. It was a short day, since I told my husband I would pick up the little pumpkin at school today- and it was early dismissal, but I managed to organize my correlation results into a summary table to go into my poster. I also went back to the poster I used the last time presented work related to this and modified it to use for this conference. After lunch, the network people came and saved me from my cyberspace banishment- unfortunately, not in time for me to listen to Al Franken while I ate my lunch. So, the network problem was hardware related- they said it's an 'age' issue- not even related to the power outage. I'm hoping that I won't go in next time and find the same problem! Bottom line: I got some things done today, despite the technical glitch. I hope I can print the poster on Friday and then it will be DONE for the trip! Have a good evening everyone.