Saturday, April 22, 2006

Working from home?

Having to support client testing for a couple of weeks (ending yesterday), I was to work in some weird timings – 4:30 PM to 12:30 AM. Truly speaking, this suits me quite well, for a host of reasons - I don’t have to kill myself by trying to get up at 7, I don’t have to try to go to work early, I don’t have to travel indefinitely to reach office… and so on. But never in my dreams did I think working from home would be so challenging.

The first challenge I had to face was, of course, the BSNL broadband connection I have at home. Awesome, to put it in one word. I only had to login. The logging out was automatically taken care of by BSNL, disconnecting at will every 10 mins. Struggling with the connection for several hours yesterday, my emotions ranging from pure fury to extreme despair, I experienced it all. Having been outsmarted by BSNL every time, I decided to prove I could do it, too, and I logged out myself! Ha!! <evil laughter>

Whenever BSNL was busy disconnecting someone else’s connection and let me be, for say 30 mins at a stretch, TNEB took over the responsibility. Every night, promptly, there is an electricity failure - usually lasting under 5 minutes and sometimes over 15 mins. Sweet.

And whenever, by a freak coincidence, BSNL and TNEB did let me work undisturbed, VPN entered the fray, apparently, trying to prove that it was equally adept at disconnecting. Once dc, even though the broadband connection was just fine (surprisingly!), VPN refused to let me log back on, saying that the ‘Remote peer is not responding’. Nice.

Ultimately, when fate managed to keep all the conspirators at bay and I had finally logged onto VPN and was actually working/talking to D on the official messenger Jabber, I suddenly realized that there was no response from D. Ah.. well, you guessed right - Jabber’s turn. *shrug* But Jabber was not as relentless as the others, it let me log right back in, though I missed several msgs in the process… *sigh*

Last night was particularly bad. I think I got disconnected at least 20 times…. Ummm, actually, you could actually make that 25, and I’ll give you the benefit of doubt. *sigh* D and I were discussing about assigning a piece of work to one of the team members… (or rather, we were trying to discuss it but fate willed otherwise). I got dc so many times and she kept trying to copy/paste her previous msgs every time, that she finally lost patience, and refused to copy/paste her previous msgs. Hmph!!

Well, the Airtel representative came over to my place a short while ago. I decided I have had enough and am switching connections... Please tell me Airtel isn’t half as bad.

Comments on "Working from home?"

 

Blogger Aravind said ... (6:54 am) : 

me using BSNL Broadband... ivlo mosamaa illaye :D hardly disconnects tice or thrice a day :D

Heard Airtel is pretty gud...

 

Blogger Subramanian Ramachandran said ... (3:12 pm) : 

aravind..athu etho oru story sense kaga konjam build up pannirukanga ninaikkaren..ithellam kandukave koodahtu

and me too a proud BSNL customer. i dont have as much problems as u have told too... only thing that leave me fuming is, sometimes it doesnt allow me to log in.. connection blink aayite irukum.... all those days i have missed precious time of well... chatting :D

yep me too heard airtel is very goood.. i tried to switch to airtel but connection thara maaten solitaanga.... :( coz, inga no more slots for connection ahm... yaaruna disconnect pannatum tharen nu sonnanga

 

Blogger Sheks said ... (4:50 pm) : 

if u r a BSNL b'band user frm chennai,then u'll have to bear the brunt of frequent disconnections.

and airtel rocks.go for it.

 

Blogger Madhu said ... (6:46 pm) : 

@Aravind
I've been using BSNL for the past several months.. it was pretty decent then.. but for it's been really pathetic over the past coupla weeks.. :(

@Rsubras
neenga thirundhave matteengala? 'story sense..'? and 'build up..'?? Ellarayum ungala madhriey nenachuteengale.. :)

Btw, 'ithellam kandukave koodadhu' nu sollitu, irukaradhulaye perrriya comment ungalodadhu dhan!!! :D

@Sheks
People tell me Airtel is good, am really hoping so too..

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (8:03 am) : 

Airtel is god chi good... Me on the 900 rupee unlimited plan, download 30 GB a month :D

No service disruptions whatsoever. Until now, the only time i got disconnected was when i didnt pay the bill :D

 

Blogger Badri said ... (11:56 am) : 

damn my neighbour's A/C, it sucks power and keeps disconnecting my modem...and i don't blame BSNL...its quite good.

 

Blogger Sathish said ... (11:35 pm) : 

Airtel, mobile phone connection?

 

Blogger Prabhu said ... (9:07 pm) : 

hi,
guess murphy's laws came to play perfectly. When everything goes right, the thing you least expect fails you. :)

First time here, will definitely come back. :)

 

Blogger expertdabbler said ... (6:40 am) : 

Airtel broadband rendu varushama use panren.. absolutely no probs...
Go for it!!

 

Blogger Prashanth said ... (4:43 pm) : 

Oh boy! Do i relate to your experience.

I still vividly remember my recent fumes over working from home, already exhausted from nervous workings over interpretive content drafts for a client's web property, which i had to deliver at 12 next day noon.

heh

 

Blogger Pappaya Pie said ... (10:09 pm) : 

Having been outsmarted by BSNL every time, I decided to prove I could do it, too, and I logged out myself! -- aww...i'm sure the monent you logged out BSNL must have decided to behave...bu we'll never know, for YOU decided to outsmart BSNL...(lol...well put!)

 

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