Gremlins Attack!

It has not been a good few days for technology in my life.

My car is in the shop and won't be done until later today or Tuesday.

My newest laptop died this weekend, although my old spare that I am using now is limping along.

Sometime between 12:46 p.m. and 3:20 p.m. on Sunday, my office suite's phones, local area network, file server, and Internet connection died.  I think that our e-mail server also works through this network.  Also, since it was the weekend, the HVAC systems in our office were shut down and the lights went out every hour until I went into the hall to restart them.  Two and half hours later, I left the office too frustrated to try to make everything work.

While my car has been in the shop, I have been using the car2go smart car share system.  But,  on Sunday afternoon, the same time that the office systems died, I reserved a car that was supposedly at 1221 East Alameda Avenue, but after walking several blocks to get there, there was no car even though the system showed that it was still there.

Also, this weekend, my phone died for almost a day, although I hadn't realized that fact, because the batteries were dead.

Also, this morning, the copying machine had a paper jam even though it hadn't had one when I left on Friday afternoon.

I also learned that our managing partner and office manager were both on vacation (and our law clerk finished his summer on Friday), so the usual suspect to fix the tech problems were away.  One lawyer colleague, a former lawyer at the firm in doing some contact work, my assistant and I were it. 

We may not be back to the Stone Age, but we are definitely back to the Bronze Age of paper and pen, and maybe even to the Middle Ages when the printing press was invented, because we do have law books that we can refer to in the meantime.

I am currently encamped in Subway having a coffee and roll, and waiting for the cavalry to arrive, and trying to function with my spare computer and poached Internet service.

I'm totally blaming Gremlins for all of this mess.