Well, the hype doesn’t mention that you need power and an internet connection to get to all your stuff, and when you have neither, all your devices aren’t even good paperweights anymore. But most people know that’s a given or do they?
We recently experienced one of those memorable summer thunderstorms that you only see in horror movies…you know, rain falling sideways defying the laws of physics, downed trees, wind damage and no power, no Internet.
Fortunately, there were no zombies or vampires lurking around. At least I didn’t see any.
We had to suffer through a few days with no Internet. OK, not the end of the world, but close enough. I would open a browser window and then sigh and oh yeah, it doesn’t work. Ok, I’ll figure out something else to do, like clearing out all those unused files on my computer or typing all my passwords in an Excel sheet…boring.
As the internet-less days progressed other thorns stuck me in the side and some right in my eye.
| Our dog trying to hide from the thunder |
- Getting online email – nope
- Viewing photos from Google+, Pinterest or Instagram – I might as well be blindfolded.
- Music from Pandora or Spotify – I’m going tone deaf now.
- Dropbox, ShareFile and all those nifty apps where I squirreled away my life’s work – a thief might as well break into my house and steal all my stuff.
- Seeing what my friends were doing on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn – they probably think I fell off the earth or became a snob.
- The weather report – I’ll probably get struck by lightning when I leave the office or soaked in a downpour.
- Webinars – I’ll forever be ignorant of the knowledge in the world.
Lucky for me, everything I have on the Cloud is backed up on my computer, flash drives and my iPhone.
I have books and magazines in print form to read.
The telephone still works so I can call any of my friends.
I did buy a TV, so I can get the news and weather and whatever else I don’t want to hear about.
So the Cloud is useful to an extent, but don’t totally rely on the Internet. Make sure all your stuff is backed up somewhere so you can get to it without the Internet. Otherwise, you’ll wish you had.