Note: This blog post was written yesterday, while we were still captive to the evil e-mail worm. Praise be to God, we're back online today!!

Past calamities in the American worker’s life included crop failure and losing a finger in the weaving loom. Today, the Presbyterian Center is facing the modern American working disaster—a devastating e-mail virus. Yes, we here in PresbyLand have been held captive to the forces of computer-hacking darkness for almost 24 hours now.

While some of us in Women’s Ministries were over at Presbyterian Women yesterday, stealing their coffeecake, our computers completely shut down and refused to restart properly. Soon the brave souls in the Office of Information Services (OIS—the computer people) were seen infiltrating the building, spreading the bad news—a virus had hit the PC(USA) servers, and we had to literally unplug our cables from the network. Eventually we were able to turn our computers back on, but a day later, many of us are still without all network files or Internet/e-mail access.

Ten years ago, I had a dinky little dinosaur computer. I taught myself to use the MS DOS 6.0 operating system on it before my parents finally bought a computer that I could use to type homework assignments. We didn’t even get the Internet at my house until 1998.

Looking back on that, it seems almost unbelievable how much I need the computer, particularly the network, to get anything done now. When I want to send paperwork for Brianne to type up, I can’t do it without e-mail. I can’t even print her a hard copy, since we do all the printing here through the network. Since 80% of my communication with you all is through e-mail, the effect of losing e-mail is akin to becoming deaf and dumb. I can’t hear you all, and I can’t talk to you. Even this blog post will go up only when OIS finally plugs me back in, after a thorough 30-minute virus scan on this computer. Amazing how relatively simple it is to bring the entire work of the church to a grinding halt.

Maybe what God is trying to teach us through this, though, is to get up off our duffs and go talk to people. When I finish this blog post, the next order of business is to actually call CoCo members about our conference call this afternoon. Then I will walk over to my co-worker’s cube to ask her about an article I’m supposed to write for Horizons, the magazine for Presbyterian Women. I’ve heard so many more voices, so much more laughter, reverberating through the corridors of PresbyLand since the virus hit. It is because people are out of their little bubbles and actually communicating with one another.

But I’ll still be glad when the system is back up!

“I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” --Psalm 121:1-2

Kelsey

Very Important Note: If you sent me a message at karice@ctr.pcusa.org in the last 24 hours, I probably did not receive it! If your business is urgent, you probably need to call me. Otherwise, please resend your message tomorrow.