“Fall back!” – What to do when your fallback plan fails – Tuesday Tech Tip

Wow. The universe does like to have its little jokes, doesn’t it? Just a couple weeks ago, I wrote about things going wrong and before the next seven days were up… I was putting the “Fallback Broadcast Studio” plan into action.

Let me back up a couple of steps. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, which for the last couple of years has been “The Land That Rain Forgot.” Early this month (October, 2021), we started hearing news that “October might bring some rain…” which made everyone around here pretty happy. Last week, that changed into “Atmospheric River Headed Our Way,” which is an exponentially different set of circumstances.

I spent some time clearing gutters, cutting down suspect tree limbs and checking pumps. Topped off rechargeables and turned off computers I wasn’t actively using. Things seemed pretty battened down.

And it rained. Not much to start, but our local power winked out almost immediately. Drat. Then it really rained. Seriously. The local mountain received more than 16” of rain over 24 hours. Most of the cities reported 5” or more, which is a lot when it falls in a short period of time. That pretty much overwhelmed everything. Trees down. Widespread power outages. Puddles turning into ponds in new and interesting locations.

As the worst of it passed, we hooked up our generator and ran power to the pumps, to see if we could reclaim our land from the sea. Helped a neighbor out with similar issues and then figured we’d be seeing electricity before we had to worry about our refrigerator. Wrong. Things stayed dark through the night.

On Monday morning, our area was still a power-free zone, so I started trying to wrangle my Monday evening class.

The Plan:

• Generator powers computers (Yes, I am nerdy enough to have bought a generator)
• Generator powers network and internet gateway (I’d already measured and purchased the extension cords and power strips)
• Class ends at 9:30 PM, so I’m not running generator too terribly late

All-righty then…

Ran cords, swapped plugs. Gateway/modem comes to life and…. continues to frustratingly blink a flashing yellow light. For a long time. Which means it’s not connecting. Three restarts makes no difference. I text to the “status” number of my ISP and the benevolent AI response lets me know “there is a power-related outage in my area…” By this point, I’ve also been on the phone with our power company a few times, trying to let them know that their website was wrong, and we did not have power in my neighborhood.

Just to recap. Internet blames power company. Power company says “you’ve got power!” Yet, wall switches still do nothing. Many other areas now have power, but we do not. It would seem that the lines which bring the internet have been compromised along with the voltage. If I don’t have solid internet, teaching an online class gets tricky.

Fallback Plan:

• Generator powers computer
• Phone hotspot connects to internet

This actually works, so I am able to review audio files the students sent in while refining the evening’s lesson plan. Files download fairly quickly. However, the upload speed is finicky. That upload speed will sit at around 2.5Mbps for a while, but then drop down below 1Mbps without any clear pattern. And the response ping delay is fairly lengthy. It’s too erratic to rely upon to lead a class.

Fallback Fallback Plan:

• Cash in favor: “hey.. hi… do you have power and internet at your house? You do! Remember when I said that there may be a time when I need to ask a favor…? Yeah….”
• Turn off computers
• Grab “remote broadcast gear” list
• Stuff computers, cables, lighting, interface, power supplies and various bits into backpack
• Hightail it to an undisclosed location, which through the grace of the grid actually has internet and electricity

And it actually works. Class starts on time. All good. Whew. Long couple o’ days.

While we can’t prepare for all emergencies, situations like this do occur. Losing power seems to be happening more frequently, so taking time beforehand to work through how that might impact things is a key step to keeping your VO business running.

Plus, an “iterative fix” for next time:

While I had tested powering the modem/gateway from the generator, I did not account for the power taking down the cable internet. Which means that I need to address that. Looks like I’ll be (a) asking the cable company why we lost internet and (b) researching whether I can get better hot spot hardware, and likely researching hot spots a bit more to learn where they might fail.

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