Some days I’m clearly not meant to write

On Wednesday night, I was wrapping up the development of my second course web site [1]. I was planning to take a break by writing my essay of the day. Suddenly, I was disconnected from the campus network [2]. I tried to reconnect, and I tried connecting to other places on the Internet. No luck. I followed my normal process, and went to reset our devices and, while I was doing so, Michelle shouted No! Eldest son just started a 9 gigabyte [5] download.

But it was too late. I’d turned it off. And, unfortunately, after thirty minutes of futzing around, it still didn’t work. As far as I can tell, our ADSL just isn’t connecting. Given that we have some ice [6] falling from the sky, there’s a chance that Windstream is having trouble. Michelle even noted that they were in our alley earlier today, which isn’t a good sign.

With no Internet connection and no access to my list of essay topics, it seems like I’m not meant to write anything significant tonight. Plus, I need to get another class prepped, and that’s going to be much harder to do without an Internet connection. But it’s clearly too late to go to my office, particularly since I have to get up early to transport youngest to swim practice [7]. I guess I’ll just plan to do class prep and the other important work in the morning. Clearly, if I’m getting up that early in the morning, I probably shouldn’t spend much time on an essay.

So this is all you get. I hope my schedule permits a longer essay tomorrow [8].

As of midday on Thursday, our home network was still not up. I’m crossing my fingers it will be later.

[1] As you may recall from a recent essay, I switched my suite of tools for building course sites right before classes started. I’m a bit behind on getting any/all of my courses up and running.

[2] I do most of my work on the campus Linux workstations [3], and usually log in from home.

[3] Particularly church.cs.grinnell.edu [4], the one that sits on my desk.

[4] It is named Church after Alonzo Church, developer of the lambda calculus, and my great great grand advisor.

[5] Or maybe a 9 gibibyte download.

[6] Some combination of snow, freezing rain, and ice.

[7] There is a slight chance that swim practice will be delayed because of the weather, but it’s pretty slight.

[8] Since I’m not able to post this essay the night I wrote it, today may be more appropriate.

Version 1.0 of 2017-01-25.