Print Contact Lists

[Rickliftig]

We had the bad fortune (along with the majority of our metro area to lose power for seven + days. I realized that it would be good practice to have printed copies of several of our records (we lost phone (cable and POTS) and internet too -everywhere in the Central CT area).

In particular, I'd like top be able to print out the Contact list (CTRL-SHIFT-C) to have this on hand.

And I hate to mention - we had to rely on a "paper" phone book.

Eventually I'll get to posting some of the other lessons on Dental town.

Here are a a few:

-You should have a manual telephone available - old school - not plugged into AC
-You need paper copies of your important numbers
-I will setup a laptop to run OD, but keep the database off it. I'll use my flash drive backup if that ever becomes necessary. A laptop can be charged off an inverter or anywhere with AC power-
-Keep a paper phone book around
-Of course, make sure you are backed up in multiple locations - the cloud won't help you when you have no internet or flaky internet.
-Consider a UPS for your answering machine. Again - online service was practically non-existent and programming in a forwarding number next to impossible. Battery Backup would have taken care of the answering machine for a long time

[jordansparks]

I'm so sorry to hear that. We lose power fairly frequently here. I have 6 UPSs and a small generator at my house so that I don't lose telephone or computer when power goes down. But if your POTS was down, even that wouldn't help. If you can't call anyone, and nobody can call you, no need to worry about an answering machine or phone book. Were you able to stay warm?

[Rickliftig]

It was a real wake up call for all of us. Fortunately, even with temps in the 20's, the house stayed about 50. But the town shelter was filled through the day and night.

The cell phone service was flaky and overloaded. Cable services were offline because branches had fallen on the lines. I placed a sign with my cell phone # on the office in case anyone needed to contact me. The only place I could find cell phone service near my house was 100 feet in front and even that was spotty. I would pick up any calls by walking in front several times during the day.

We were fortunate for several reasons: it wasn't the dead of winter; several commercial areas had power, so you could get gasoline, food or charge your phone; areas fifty miles away were intact. If the destruction had been more widespread or the power outage more complete, it could have been a real hardship.

The outage highlighted our dependency on the internet and on wireless and the need to prepare in some very basic ways - especially communication and basic levels of power generation.