Well I have been without power for at least 2 days now. The outer bands from Hurricane Ike ran through Pittsburgh a few days ago bringing with them some very heavy wind storms. These wind storms knocked out the power of course but also downed many trees, which was evident the next morning when I was driving through the city. The night of the storm I invited my friend over to watch the Steeler game, but of course the power went out, so we decided to go to his place since the power was still on there. I ended up staying the night since I was already out there. The next morning I drive back to my place to find out that I still don’t have power and I might not get it back on till Thursday! So I’m staying at my friend’s house so I can get work done.

Not having power makes your realize a lot, especially regarding work. Here are some tips that will keep you working if you end up losing power for a few days and have to stay at a friend’s house.

Laptop
If you don’t have a laptop it would be a pain to drag your desktop computer all the way out to your friend’s house. My desktop sits in a Thermaltake SwordM case, which is HUGE so taking it somewhere is definitely out of the question. A laptop gives you the freedom to work from anywhere. Right now I’m using a Dell XPS M1210, which is small and easy to carry.

Portable Storage
About a year ago I started storing all of my work materials on a portable drive so if I needed to work from the road I could easily just unplug the drive and take it with me. I recently reviewed the Seagate FreeAgent Go, which not only is a portable drive it allows you to actually install programs right on the drive so not only do you have your data but all the necessary programs you need for getting your work done. If you still want to rely on internal storage you could invest in a hard drive dock like the Thermaltake BlacX that allows you to take any internal drive and dock it so you can use it with any computer with a USB connection.

Online Apps
So many apps are moving online. One of the most popular is e-mail. Why have all of your e-mail stored on 1 computer. If the power goes out you cannot access your e-mail. That’s why services like Gmail are great for online e-mail. You can even use your own e-mail addresses, not just the gmail ones. Google docs is also a great online app. It is just like Microsoft Office, but online. So you can be writing a paper save it and access it from any computer that has internet access.