My note to FastMail...

FastMail sent out an apologetic note and tacked on a whole month of free service to us poor slobs who pay for it. Here's my reply:

Dear FastMail,

Your words hit most of the right notes, but frankly, I'm still trying to figure out whether to renew my subscription with you guys or let it lapse to its default level. After all, as a "top-tier" customer, I've had to endure two extended outages of a fairly essential service within the past ten months (at the same time, my wife, who signed up for a free account, has had no interruptions that she can tell). And this most recent interruption was most acutely felt.

The first time this happened, back last November, it was bad enough, but it happened on Friday and there really wasn't much I could do to mitigate the situation. This time, I lost valuable moments in the morning staring at an obviously INCORRECT message above my login asking me to wait 5 minutes while some routine maintenance was being done on my machine. Worse, by the time I began to suspect that something was really wrong, I had lost work from a client.

I realize that, in a legal sense, you aren't liable for the fact that I lost an assignment from a client. But you do carry the moral blame, in my opinion. And to top it all off, I feel as if a large part of my trouble is due to the fact that I elected to buy into your most expensive service level. Moreover, tacking on an extra month - which is like reimbursing me about $3.25 for my trouble - is exactly as you describe it: a token; if you really meant to say you're sorry - especially to a top-tier customer who's had to endure two of these events - you'd tack on a whole year.

But that doesn't really address the issue at the back of my mind: Of what use is even a lifetime of free "enhanced" service if you've got to live with such outages? What can be done? What other dragons lurk in your server rooms?

(I mean, understand my position: Here I am, at the "enhanced" level, wondering how silly I'll look developing a script that will execute from a hosting account of mine out there to send an email to all my clients, to the effect that "Oops! My FastMail account is down again, please send all messages to my backup email at..., until further notice!" to be sent to all my clients at the first whiff of trouble at FastMail, such as you guys claiming to do routine maintenance.)

So tell me, please, why should I even care to renew my account with you guys?

Cheers...

Connectivity...

I think I actually lost sleep last night because it occurred to me that once I get to Webster, I'll have no connectivity.Technically, I could trek over - afoot or abike - to a Starbucks about a mile away and connect through their T-Mobile provider, but I get entirely too many calls that require me to connect to my email now to pick up some file, so that's not really feasible (not to mention expensive).

AT&T doesn't serve the house; though Verizon does, but no DSL is available.

That'll leave either:

Getting some hardware for my cell phone that will allow me to connect to the Web for a monthly service charge plus minutes on my phone (which doubtless means increasing the minutes in my plan). I suspect, however, that much the same draconian conditions as I highlighted in a post yesterday will apply.

Seeing about getting broadband service via the local cable provider, or some variation thereof.

But now, with all translations finished - well, almost all, as I have a few revisions to take care of to an item I did the other day, which I can probably fit in sometime this afternoon, but I digress... - I can concentrate on the task of getting the car loaded. Hopefully, the fairly continuous rain that's been falling yesterday and so far today won't be a problem.

Cheers...

To sleep, if I can...

When I told Galina I couldn't think of much to take with me, I didn't realize she'd take me at her word. The car is full, and I barely was able to shoehorn in three boxes of stuff I decided I couldn't live without. She's in bed right now, but not sleeping, and I'm about to hit the rack, myself.

I got all the translations off and even managed to do an extra couple of small jobs while helping Galina load the heavy stuff. I really hope the assignment gods smile on me starting Tuesday.

Cheers...