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Nat!

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The idiocy of technology and me

I managed to run out of my office leaving the keys behind. That was pretty stupid. But I did have my mobile phone with me, which was good, except that it has no power left which is bad. But I did bring my USB charger cable from home in my jacket pocket, which is good. Alas I have nothing to charge it with, which is bad.

By officemate has another set of keys, which is good, but he isn't in the office that is bad. I have his number in the phone, which is also good, but its not helping me any further, as its out of power.

I go to an internet cafe, where they have a computer with USB and internet, which is good. I can download putty (SSH), though forbidden by the cafe rules, from there and run it, which is good. From there I could access the server and get the phone number. But now comes the technology idiocy. Can I use it ?

A machine in an internet cafe is certainly compromised with a key logger, so whatever account I access, is gonna get cracked. A solution would be to change the password later from a safe terminal, but that leaves a window of compromisabilty.

I figure out, that using hushmail is probably the best bet to send out an email for help. (I used to use googlemail for that, before they became all nosey and evil). So I create a new email account, but email isn't quite as often checked by my office-mate. SMS would be better.

I could use a free SMS service, but that probably puts him on a SPAM list and I don't have the number (yet) anyway. Seems the best option is to wait it out, while my mobile phone is SLOWLY charging. The problem is, that while its in its low power status, it won't turn on at all.

Two hours later of idle documentation reading, my office mate and dog appear in the internet cafe with my keys from the office. I pay 2 € for internet access fees, for two hours. Which kind of makes me wonder how a business like that survives. It's even cheaper than in 3rd world countries.

Later: another solution could have been to buy/rent/lend another phone and switch SIM cards. But I figured the internet cafe thing would be easier and quicker.