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Learn From My Mistakes
Some of you probably noted that I have been absent from this blog for the last 5 days or so. The reason being that I was away on a short city trip and despite thinking that I can run my business as usual, I had to learn otherwise.
I had it all planned, diary packed and booked as much as you can while away, laptop in the bag and Internet setup in my hotel.
Upon arrival I had the first shock, learning that Internet was in fact not part of my hotel package and that it would cost an additional $27.50/day. This is daylight robbery, considering that the room wasn’t cheap and cost over $240/day. Ok, I admit it was five star hotel, but a girl has got to travel in style occasionally.
Lesson number 1:
Always double check your destinations Internet options. Can your normal provider give you some “away” packages? Or is there an option to buy from another provider for less money?
Some hotels offer free Internet as part of the deal and I strongly advise you to try to get your hands on one of them and actually double check this too before you leave home. Otherwise you will have an expensive and rough surprise when you get there.
It got better
So here I was, fuming, but ready to check my mail when all of a sudden my local mail wouldn’t download at all. Due to having changed servers from home to the hotel, my local email program didn’t want to play the game and simply refused to inform me of any incoming mail.
Being a freelancer this is what freaked me out the most, since I am relying on communication with potential and existing clients. But no matter what I tried, it simply wouldn’t work.
Lesson number 2:
Since I’m no tech geek I still don’t know what went wrong. The only thing I can guess is that it was due to the servers settings, firewall or anti virus settings. Even trying to log into web mail didn’t help, since I don’t leave a copy on my server (lesson) and because the messages were stuck in cyber space, they weren’t there anymore.
Therefore it is essential that you either log into web mail every time you are away from home and just disregard your local mail program, or find some ways to circumnavigate this issue.
Blog posts
The last issue I had was with WordPress. I couldn’t publish any posts, nor could I upload any images into any of the blogs I wrote or edit. Once again, I was at a loss. I was able to post into draft but without images and sitting there defeats the purpose of getting a new post online.
Once again this puzzled me, since at home I never have any problems.
To be honest, I still have no idea on what could have caused these problems. If any of you could enlighten me, that would be highly appreciated.
All I know is that it put me behind in my work by about 3 days and coming home to some 130 emails wasn’t fun either.
Lesson number 3:
This wasn’t the first time I’ve had trouble trying to run my business from the confines of a hotel room and it just shows that we can never be careful enough to double check whether we have thought about everything necessary in detail before we leave home.
I hope that my mistakes will be a lesson for you when you plan your next trip.
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Well, you’re back in one piece. That’s important..:)
Useful tips there. This will be in my check list in future.
@ Kai: thanks, I’m glad you got some value out of this post. In moments like these I wish their was a collective data base we can tap into with our brains and just take the info we need to fix the problem.
I found the same to be true. Last year when I was in California for 2 weeks, I expected to have 24 hour Internet access, but in most cases it was either too expensive, or simply not available.
I think we can never expect the same level of comfort and convenience as in our home / office when traveling. Nowadays when I travel it’s 100% holidays and I forget all about work.
If I bring work along with me, it will be less of a holiday, and not much work done either.
As far as the email issue goes, you should look into switching to either an IMAP or a Microsoft Exchange email server.
Both of them store your complete mailbox on the server and your local email software retrieves it from there and then synchronizes all changes you make locally back to the server.
If you login through a webmail interface, all your mailboxes and messages will be accessible and any changes you make there will sync up to your local machine the next time you use your email software.
I have an Exchange Server account and I can check email from any computer via webmail, on my Mac, on my Windows box and on my Blackberry. If I make a change on any one of them, all the others will be kept up to date.
Plus, if I ever have a crash of some sort, everything is still in place on the server, ready to get synced up once I get my computer up and running again.
@ John: thank you for this tip. I will definitely look into it and hopefully it will be possible for me to change over.
This is soooo painful Monika. Checking into a hotel and with such a surprise!
I did not have such shock but I was pissed off when my hotel did not have the Wi-fi working for 4-5 days of thanksgiving out of my 1.5 months of stay in that hotel in FL. I could not do much to get the Wi-fi working as everyone was on vacation but I could get some other internet working meanwhile.
Thanks for sharing this. I guess if we really want to get some work done while away, the best is to locate free Wi-Fi close to the hotel where you are going to stay. At least there is backup available.
Then get a Wi-Fi booster to get any signal you can. But I agree with Monika. Better just tell people you are away for a few days. Otherwise your body’s at the holiday destination & the mind is at work.
my 2 cents
@LiC: that would suck alright. Surprisingly I found the U.S to be very good with Internet connections. Practically everywhere we stayed in 3 or 4 star hotels we had access to free Wi-Fi. That was kinda cool.
@ James: Forgive my ignorance, what is a Wi-Fi booster? Is this some kind of thing you plug into your computer? I’m a bit behind with gadgets and could use a lesson. LOL I admit it I’m so not a geek, even though I’d love to be at times.
I suppose that another myth perpetrated by the gurus is now exposed, which is that a internet marketer can have a thriving business while working all over the world