We were away overnight visiting Queen B. HA got a call that one of her hospice patients might be dying, so she took off around four in the morning on a three-hour round trip to be there. Queen B was asleep. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Luna the Big Dog™ and I were all alone.
I was watching my Home Assistant dashboard for the compound, as I often do when I’m away. It’s comforting to see everything ticking away on its own. Suddenly, though, I lost connectivity. I had a minor panic: had somebody broken in and disconnected the networking gear? Had there been a fire? Normally, I can look at a couple of surveillance cameras and see the status of various switches and sensors around the place. Everything was down. Even my mail server wasn’t responding.
My panic was short-lived. Three minutes later, everything came back and the logs showed it was just a transient failure of the internet connection. Of course it was. But I think catastrophizing is something that made me a good sysadmin.
I suppose I could just keep my satellite backup on hot standby, but it’s kind of an energy hog and it’s unsightly, so I’d rather just keep it in a box in the garage for those rare occasions when I need it. And learn not to freak out over a few minutes of disconnection.
—2p