You may have already read the open letter that I wrote on CentralGadget.com. You might be asking what broke today?
Well, for starters, our server went down at 5 AM. Just for point of reference, I finally got settled into my room and went to bed at 3 AM. Two hours sleep… so you might say I was broken from the get go.
Then, the WWAN connection broke. Went to the AT&T backup, and the drivers refused to install (multiple restarts, chkdsks, etc have failed to fix it) So, we ponied up for in-room Wi-Fi. Wonder what happened next? You guessed it, the in-room Wi-Fi started to timeout like crazy… likely due to the activity from everyone using it at CES.
What next? Well, I toggled over to our Verizon WWAN line, powered by an HTC Titan. Unfortunately, power drains out of that faster than you can charge it (seriously), so it became a jumping around game with the batteries. This was about when Palm was getting on the stage…
After I got the press badge sorted away (another 30 minutes there), I finally got to the show. Photos, details, got it. Went to upload it all online… and the memory card reader broke. 90 minutes later, I finally was able to buy another one… and that takes me to where I began penning this post.
It has been a brutal day. But, going sleepless for another night should bring things back up to speed. Did I mention I’m taking the week after next off? This is no vacation for us in the media… while this is an extreme case, it is a draining, loss-leading venture.
Forgot to mention, I’ve also had two Motorola P790s fail, and another staff member’s hard drive just got the knock of death.