Of couse I was nervous as hell for the kick off of PodCamp Second Life last night. I was sure to be prepared, and stress-free for this, so I got online early to get set up. I actually said out loud that this night was going to go great or be the worst day ever. Guess which one it was.

While checking my gMail, my connection burped, no service. Hit refresh, nothing. Tried a third time, it was back. Looked outside, and there was the cable tech, at 6:00pm, in 25 degree weather, in the cherry picker. My stomach turned. Damn residential cable internet.

Grabbed my coat, and my car keys, and drove over to ask him how things were going. Offered coffee, whatever it took for him to get out of that truck and leave my connection alone. Apparently the folks across the street were having some problems and the tech just needed to shut off the service between the points to troubleshoot. He had found the issue, and had the part in his hand. I asked, as sweetly as I could (inside I wanted to tie him up and throw him in the back of his truck for the night) if he thought my connection would be fine for 9pm, as I had an incredibly huge thing going online tonight, and would have to drive to someone’s house with a connection if he was going to knock out my connection for the night. No problem ma’am, it will take me 5 minutes to switch out the part.
Happy that I had spoken to him, I headed home and finished preparations for PodCamp. Sucker.

Six minutes to kickoff, my connection DIES. Everything, not just a burp. Screaming does not describe what I did when I looked out my back window and saw four cable tech trucks, all with their cherry picker baskets up.

Everything I do – online. Skype and Second Life, gMail and Google, Technorati … it’s how I live. GONE. I have very few phone numbers from friends online, it’s all Skype. Isolated, with no way to contact anyone, thank goodness I told the other organizer that I was having connection problems. Any other night to lose my connection would have been fine (but we never really lose our connection) – I would have just worked offline or -gasp- cleaned or something. Amazing how productive you can be when you aren’t jacked into the matrix.

But this was different. I NEEDED to get in. And the stupid cable tech with a snip of his wirecutters I’m sure, ended all that for me. I was dumb for actually telling him what time my function was.

I have backup plans tonight, two other places I can go to with connections, unrelated connections to me. Cleaned my desk, organized. I keep looking out my window. I will bribe him if needed tonight.

The only reason I’m alive to tell this tale is because Jay from Uncle Seth (other PodCamp SL coordinator) and Corey from Bucket Podcast saved my ass bigtime. Stepped in to DJ for me, on a moment’s notice, and with no preparation. I love them both.