Back to Basics

By Larry Eiss

The weather this summer has been the best I can remember. There have been many days I would classify as perfect. I can’t count the number of times my wife and I have commented on how nice the weather was. Blue skies, fluffy cumulus clouds, and low humidity levels make for idyllic conditions.

There have been a couple of periods of oppressive heat and humidity, however. In typical summer fashion, these have precipitated loud and flashy storms. Interestingly, this year the storms have been unusually intense, though thankfully brief.

We experienced such a storm two weeks ago. At about 5 p.m. in the afternoon the skies darkened with low-hanging blue-black clouds obscuring the sun. The wind began to howl and twist, stripping leaves from the trees and breaking small branches. With the first thunder, the rains came -- torrential in their intensity. The thirsty earth absorbed most of the water and the temperature dropped 15 degrees in a few minutes.

Then the electric power in our house flicked off and on. I took that as a good sign that we would weather the storm with electric service intact; but I was wrong. The storm was over in less than half an hour, but a moment later the electricity went off to stay.

When my wife returned home from work, we decided to kill some time by going out for dinner and then to do a bit of needed grocery shopping. (We find we save money when we shop on full stomachs. Of course the downside is that we don't have goodies when we want them.) Power outages usually last only a short time so, expecting that we would find power restored on our return, we shopped for perishable food. We soon learned that expectations do not always match reality. Undaunted, we put the food into the refrigerator and lit some candles."

When our children were young, we used such opportunities to have “old times days.” Old times days were times when we got to experience life as it was before electricity. We did not allow ourselves the use of flashlights, but relied instead on kerosene lamps and candles. Since we had a well and the pump didn’t work without power, we used other sources of water. We didn’t have an outhouse, so we flushed toilets using buckets of water obtained from a pond or a neighbor’s pool. We’d play games and talk and read aloud. The kids learned a lot and these were enjoyable family times.

We enjoyed our recent session “off the grid” as well. Still I blissfully assumed power would be restored by the time I had to start work the next morning. I was mistaken. I had elected not to rise at my usual 3:45 a.m. for the trek to New York City, but instead planned to work from home. I reasoned that on the off chance that power was still out, this would offer some benefits. This plan would ensure that I wouldn't be stumbling around in the dark without the requisite caffeine, which is important since at 3:45 in the morning this invariably leads to showing up in public wearing a plaid shirt and striped pants accented by shoes of different colors.

 

Sometimes I can be pretty stupid. When I rose in the morning the power was still out and prospects to be restored were slim until at least late afternoon. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ll use the laptop on batteries!” Of course I was completely forgetting that my cable modem and wireless network were totally useless without electricity—see, I told you I can be pretty stupid at times. But wait! I could use my Blackberry as a tethered modem, and since it’s also a cellular telephone, I could make and receive calls. This is what I set out to do.  

By about 9:30 in the morning, after about an hour of work, I realized the flaws in this approach. Talking on the phone while using the Internet meant that all the available bandwidth went to the telephone. Consequently, the e-mail I was sending to my boss as part of the discussion we were having, was not going to get to him until I got off the telephone. Even more disastrous, the battery in the Blackberry is charging whenever it is connected to the laptop. Therefore, battery life in the laptop was significantly reduced. All that was left was to call the office and take a personal day. Power was restored after 21 hours. We lost no food from the refrigerator, but I learned some important lessons. Chief among them: you just never know when the things you take most for granted will fail and put you back in the technological Stone Age.

Unbelievably, the power went out again this week. It was out for some 27 hours this time, but I was better prepared. I used my Blackberry as an alarm clock, a use that consumed none of my precious laptop battery life. I endured cold water and dressed by flashlight. (My “black” socks turned out to be navy blue, but I can hardly tell the difference in the daylight anyway.) I got on the train and went to the office in the city, where I had a great cup of coffee and the luxury of electric service. I worked with the lights off.

From where I sit there are lessons here for business intelligence (BI) applications. Since BI has become such a central part of the way we work these days, lesson one is, it’s important to treat BI as seriously as “core” systems in IT. Disaster preparedness and recovery are crucial. Lesson two is just as important. With a little forethought and planning, it is possible to work in less than optimal circumstances. Plan ahead so you don’t have to learn the hard way, as I did. WebFOCUS Active Reports and our industry leading integration with Microsoft Excel, provide possible alternatives for off line analysis and reporting. Maybe that’s a place to start.