VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[bobbinbeamo]

I just had to share the last day or so with you.
WOW! Yesterday was really an eye-opener! Upon arriving to the office (my short commute down the hall) there was no dial tone on the regular land line, no dialtone for the fax line, no DSL connection (no internet or email) and my 2 ISDN lines were inactive.

We called AT&T on from the cell phone to report the problem and were given case number with assurance that the problem should be corrected by noon. Pete (my husband) & I asked around. The neighbors were all without service, too.

I had jobs and auditions to be delivered, and email to be downloaded, so I went with laptop in hand to a coffeehouse with wi-fi. I travelled home, recorded jobs and auditions, and went back to the coffee shop to upload the files. BIG problem. I couldn't get the files to load.....too big. This was about 2PM.

I went back home and called AT&T to get a status. I was told it was a major outage and worst case repair scenario would be Friday. I exclaimed, "You're kidding, right?".

I was on my way back to the coffee shop to grab more email, and I saw the AT&T repair trucks up the street. I stopped and found out what the problem was. Cable theft. A huge, 900 pair cable (1800 lines) was cut from the utility pole and absconded with, probably by tweekers. A cable's basic component is valuable copper, ranging from $3-15.00 a pound.

This is a big problem, the repair folks told me. Yes, it was a big problem for me. Most troubling is the potential life threatening problem for aged or shut-ins who needed lifeline service.

Thankfully, service was restored about 3:00AM. I got up, recorded and sent out time-critical files and went back to bed at 4:30. I had ameeting at 8:30.
Then I returned home and recorded and sent out a large narration job, and about 5 auditions.

I hope they're caught one day. Gotta believe in Karma!

I am going to bed early tonight.
_________________
Bobbin Beam
www.bobbinbeam.com
blog.bobbinbeam.com

[Brett Mason]

Wow, that is one scary story. I've wondered about this issue, i.e., when a storm hits, or other catastrophe. I recall reading another incident on this board, I think it was Bob Souer's episode in Vegas, that got me thinking about disaster plans. What do some of you do when faced with your home studio suddenly being out of commission?

I mean, I just had a UPS battery go dead and had to order a replacement...which pales, big time, in comparison to Bobbin's situation...
_________________
Brett

"Dare to be Yourself" - André Gide
Merry Merchants of Voice Over!
Mendicant

[KaraEdwards]

Wow Bobbin! I've never heard of that- how crazy!

I had a computer shut down on me about 9 months ago (and I'm talking a major random shut down, they ended up replacing the whole computer for free) only a few hours prior to a big session.

In a panic, I called every production studio in Charlotte. That's when I discovered one of our studios actually caters to talent they use in-house. You can book an open studio at reduced rates. Sure, I lost a few bucks in the whole deal...but it was better than loosing a regular client!

I now use this studio for ISDN sessions...much cheaper than re-wiring my house and having monthly fees.
_________________
Threadjackers local 420

Kara Edwards
http://www.karaedwards.com
kara@karaedwards.com

[Chrissy]

Bobbin so glad the lines were fixed in time for you to do you work.

Kara's finding a studio to rent sounds like a good preventative measure. Rather than wait for a crisis it would be good to find a studio to use beforehand. I asked a friend if I could use his studio in an emergency, and being a great guy he said of course.

Chrissy

[Frank F]

My emergency plans is three fold. First I have the laptop - which means the coffee shop run if needed. Then there is my "real" studio, which offers more toys than I would ever need for VO. Then there is a friends studio in town, and last - but not least, I drive into the city and use another friends computer an studio. Isn't life fun?

F2
_________________
Be thankful for the bad things in life. They opened your eyes to the good things you weren't paying attention to before. email: thevoice@usa.com

[tackerman]

That certainly stinks, glad to hear you're back online. Copper theft is a huge problem here. The meth/crack/whatever-heads like to strip the copper piping from air conditioning units. Usually at churches, businesses, etc. The sad thing is they get so little metal that it's hardly worth it but ends up costing thousands of dollars to repair. People are now building cages around their units to try to prevent the theft.
I've seen at least a few reports in the last couple of years of thieves going after power lines and substations and in the process getting electrocuted.

[davidmonteath]

[billelder]

Wow. What a frightening story. It's the same here with copper theft.
I have to give props to (the new) AT&T. I was 'down for the count' a month ago. Both phone and DSL went out in the late afternoon and was back by 8:30 the next morning. Solid as a rock now. Like the rest of you, I'm mindful of all internet "hotspots" in my area. And who would have thought? My city's entire downtown is a hotspot now just activated a couple of months ago. I haven't tried it yet, but hear it actually works! Of course, we sometimes get weather that knocks everyone out completely. I hear that sometimes when your phone is out, your DSL will actually work.

Glad you got up and running.

[CWToo]

During a huge tropical storm here in Norfolk the power went out. Nothing new there as the power goes out if there is a heavy dew. I was just starting an ISDN session with an important client when it went dark at Studio Center. We ran around the place borrowing UPS units from everybody's computer and hooked the control room up with a bunch of them, hooked one to a floodlight so I could see and away we went. The session ended a couple minutes before the UPS units started to run out of juice.

All's well that ends well.

[todd ellis]

OT on the outage, but in line with tweakers:

i have a friend who is on the state police drug task force. last fall he told me he and his partner rolled up on a field and watched a guy laying under an anhydrous ammonia (a main ingredient in meth) tank with a cordless drill - drilling up into the tank ... the highly pressurized tank ... filled with an explosive substance. i guess he thought he'd just drain a few gallons out. the cops debated about letting him continue and just blow himself up, but relented and arrested him instead.

kids ... that's why they call it dope!
_________________
"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[bobbinbeamo]

I called my agent here in SD to tell her not to email me, but call (there's a session schedule pending) As we chatted, she said how silly it is how connect-dependent we've become with our computers. She went on to say, "We all were able to communicate just fine 20 years ago."

Yup. A dose of perspective.
_________________
Bobbin Beam
www.bobbinbeam.com
blog.bobbinbeam.com

[CarynClark]

Wow, I had no idea this could happen.

I have to admit, I don't really have a contingency plan. There are studios in town, but I don't know how much extra time/space they would have in their day. I don't have a laptop... though I guess I could go to my hubby's office.

Good topic... thanks for making me think about this.

And Todd, that's quite a story. Talk about out of his mind!
_________________
Caryn Clark... The Hip Chick Voice!

"A positive mental attitude and having faith in your ability is quite different from being irresponsible and downright stupid." - Dave

[jrodriguez315]

I don't yet have a lot of clients that I service from home but I am looking forward to having a long enough client list that emergency planning will actually be necessary. I do have an outage story though.

We signed local cable company just last month that offered a 3-in-1 plan that provides High-speed Internet, Telephone and Cable services at a significant savings over using separate providers. Great deal, or so I thought. Monday night, I was in the middle of sending an email when the my internet service went out. This was at about 8:00 pm or so.

Well, I figured it'd be back soon. By 9:00 pm my daughters come over and complain taht we have no Cable TV service and my family starts getting antsy, Heaven forbid we miss Big Brother!

OK, I figure I gave it long enough so I tried to call. Oops! No phone service either. Since it's a 3-in-1 plan, I had no Cable, no Phone and no Internet!

Luckily, we all have cell-phones so I was able to contact them that way. Turns out were in an outage area and there was a crew working on it. They said it would be up shortly. When we went to be around 1:00 am or so, we still had no service but according to my TiVO recording, it came back on about 2:00 since we did get the last hour of Big Brother Overnight on ShowTOO.

Thank god for TiVO. If we didn't have many of our favorite programs recorded and waiting for viewing, we might have actually had to resort to reading BOOKS or dare I say it BOARD GAMES! Whew!
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Joe Rodriguez, Bilingual Voice Actor | The Voiceover Thespian Blog

[todd ellis]

heavens, joe! you nearly had to have a conversation!!!

shot at and missed.
_________________
"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

[jrodriguez315]