Cyber-gau!

Under other circumstances my lamentations would concern the weather, after over a week of sub-zero days and nights, and now snow enough to disrupt the suburban train services and oblige a gloomy Sandlander to wait on an open platform for over a quarter of an hour...

But far more dramatic is the cyber-gau which has befallen my Munich client. Since last Thursday morning we have no internet access whatsoever, all three of our domains and the associated email services were at a stroke disconnected.

The story, as far as I can make out, goes roughly as follows. The previous management of the firm opted to entrust all things internet to an IT support provider and entered into a long-term contractual relationship. The new management which took over in July took a look at the contract and decided that in future IT could be more economically handled in-house. There is also a hint that the long-term deal was not quite above the board and that wasta was suspected.

Thus the firm gave notice and the IT support providing company was given the chop.

What perhaps nobody noticed was the fact that all three of our domains were registered by said support provider, who felt fully justified in terminating connectivity at one fell swoop.

Ouch!

Bad for business, of course, and one expects no haste from the lawyers now involved in the affair. And it’s a painful reminder of how dependent we are on the web, above all when it comes to the painstaking research which underlies the creation of broadcast content.

I am left with no choice but to make my blog posts... and in the foreseeable future they will be rare... from the laptop in my flat which had a sluggish and expensive pay-as-you-go internet access dongle which normally I hardly ever use.

However, all is not gloom. Today is the Winter Solstice... for the next six months each day will be longer and lighter than the one before.

So... Sol Invictus, Happy Holidays and all that.