Here We Go

Here we go....The adventure begins.

I am off on my first training trip. I left home early this morning; jumped on a 757 and off I went into the wild blue yonder (as they say).

I was not anxious at all prior to the trip, but sitting here in the hotel room, after traveling all the way across the country, I couldn't get my laptop to connect to the Internet. Panic was beginning to set in.

I spent a couple of hours trying to get my laptop to connect. Anxiety was building up quickly. Sweat was streaming down my brow. So much of what I do depends on being able to get email and to connect to databases back at the office. I just couldn't imagine what I was doing wrong. This hasn't happened before!

All through dinner those laptop settings ran through my head. I barely heard any of the conversation of the four others at the table. All I could see was the laptop, on my hotel room desk, with the Internet Explorer window staring blankly back at me.

When I returned to the room, I tried the wireless settings, I tried my LAN cable settings, I tried to reboot, I tried to restore an earlier backup...NOTHING. AHHHHHHH.

Maybe, I thought, a trip to the front desk for Diet Coke machine change might bring some kind of miraculous vision as to what was wrong. As I stepped out of the elevator it came to me: the LAN cable HAS to be BAD. I'll just see if the front desk clerk has a spare cable hanging around.

So I rushed up to my room, shiny blue cable in hand, ripped the old cable out of the laptop and the wall connection, then plugged in the new.... CONNECTION!

Whew. First crisis solved. Let's see what opportunities the next three and a half weeks bring.