Yes, my move is still ongoing.

The good news is that I’m writing this in the new place, and am almost completely out of the old one.  The bad news is the almost.   As I write this I’m sitting at the kitchen table that is doing double duty as my work desk as my real desk is still at the other house.  I haven’t hooked up the fax machine, or either printer.  I don’t even have my speakers  hooked up.  Just keyboard, mouse and monitors.

The move has definitely got in the way of work.  I have DSL, so my ISP is the phone company.  No problem there except they’re a different department of the phone company and the two sides don’t like to talk to each other if they can avoid it.

They’re good at avoiding it.

Case in point, we were supposed to have the phone and internet moved on the 11th.  They were disconnected on schedule at the old place, and I went to the new (and very cold) place to wait for the installer.  He didn’t show, so I was in a place with no heat  for seven or eight hours.  This didn’t make me happy.  I got a call about 4PM explaining that for some reason the phone company had neglected to schedule having it set up at the new place that day.

So we give them a call, telling them we needed it set back up at the old place, because they weren’t going to be able to get back out to the new place until the 15th.  The phone was back up on the 12th.  We never did get DSL back at the old place.  As near as anyone can tell, our DSL connection was moved to the new place on the 11th, where it remained in limbo until the phone line was moved back over to that address.

Score one for the good guys.

Now the question you are all asking, how did that affect me as a freelancer?

Not well.

I ended up without net access for most of a week– and I had work due that Monday.  Not only did running around mean that I didn’t get it all done; it also meant I had to find internet access to send it off.  Luckily I even have wireless on my desktop, and had a sympathetic next door neighbor who let me connect to her access point to hand my work in.

I was late, and the client had no sympathy.  She was right too.  Any issues I might have as a result of the move are not the client’s fault.   They’re my issues and my responsibility.

That’s something that you have to remember as a freelancer.   You can’t pass the buck.  Everything comes back to you.

Remember that.

Everything comes back to you.

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