Living offline - and living to tell about it!

The last two days, our office has been Internet-less.

Yes, you've heard it right.

No e-mail.

No Google.

No intranet.

No servers.

Nada.

I can almost see you twitching. We've gotten so accustomed to being online that it almost hurts to having life without it.

Now throw in that we're a communications department, and you almost can feel the tension rise.

Life without a PC is actually kind of freeing - for the first hour or so. You at first think you can take care of a few random items that have been rotting on your to-do list because of more pressing items. Then you get an itchy trigger finger and click on the IE icon a few more times, because maybe this once it will pop up.

By the end of the first day, you're telling your sob story to others in your company, who respond with wide eyes by compassionately offering you a computer terminal. Company-wide e-mails are being distributed saying you can't get online, too bad.

You think of all the little things you could take care of, like finally call the pharmacy. Except there are no phone books around - everything is online.

You decide to actually phone others in other departments who are working on projects with you. Except there's no paper phone directory anymore, and it's all on the intranet.

By the second day, your coworkers are getting edgy - those who bothered to come into the office versus camping out elsewhere.

So we'll see whether the third day is a charm.

But this whole experience, other than making me want to twitch, makes me realize just how dependent we are on technology. Whether we're trying for cost savings or a little less paper generated, our work lives and home lives are at the mercy of whether a cable is working.

Kind of sad, isn't it?