Bob’s old off-white Camry wheezed its way down the empty Avenue, turning left on 8th past the shuttered shops and empty sidewalks. Spilling over the back seat were a few groceries, a squashed loaf of bread and roll of toilet paper that he fought a tough guy for at the store.
Rearranging his bent glasses, Bob strained to find the turn off for his street. Suddenly red and blue lights filled his rear view mirror as the patrol car signalled him to a stop. “What now”, he grumbled. It’s bad enough I can’t get to the office to process my tech pubs, now I’m being hassled by the police!
“License and registration please driver”. Bob slowly wound down the window, which made a dreadful grinding sound as glass and steel traded blows. “Any reason you are out of your home today sir?” Asked Officer Jackson.
“I am out to get some groceries if you don’t mind”, Bob snapped back.
“Will you be working from home this week sir?” The officer ask calmly.
“Yes”, hissed Bob.
“Well that’s a good thing, we don’t want people out and about with the virus as it is. Have a nice day”, said the officer, handing Bob a ticket for a broken tail light.
For Bob, this was the last straw. It’s bad enough that he was kicked out of his office and told to work from home. Work from home, really?! His crappy S1000D system is painful to use when you’re sitting next to it, let alone from afar! Cramming the ticket into the glove box, he cranked the tired Camry into life and headed home in a cloud of engine smoke.
Pushing the heavy front door open, Bob was assaulted by the din of his kids fighting, the dogs barking and his wife yelling. Walking past a child with gum in her hair, that was choking out her younger brother, he quickly entered his home office and slammed the door.
Slumped in his chair, Bob knew what was ahead of him. With trepidation, he clicked on the VPN icon and waited.
And waited…
And waited…
DING! “VPN Connected” stated his PC. “Finally”, Bob grumbled.
Bob started his S1000D management tool over the VPN. “JAVA Timeout Error 24” flashed back.
He started the S1000D PDF Engine. “Unable to connect a database, instance unavailable”
Sweat trickled from his brow. “This cannot be happening!” He yelled at the dogs. Jobs were piling up, managers were emailing.
OK, so if I grab a stylesheet from the network drive… “Windows cannot access N: Check the spelling of file name”.
We spent a stack of cash on an S1000D tech pubs system that doesn’t operate at work and is even worse from home!
Frustrated, Bob grabbed his keys and ran for the Camry. Sprinting like John Wick on a hit, he side stepped his exasperated wife and caught his daughter mid-flight, preventing a WWF body slam on her four year brother.
Slam, click. Bob made it into the Camry. If I can get to the office I might be able to generate some content, any content he thought out loud. Maybe even an IETP. Sure it will take days but something is better than nothing…
Bob could see the company gates and scrambled for his swipe card.
Red and blue lights flashed in Bob’s rear mirror.
“License and registration please driver”, asked Officer Jackson.
Don’t be like Bob… Click here to take your S1000D capability to the cloud with R4i AIR!
Michael Halter
VP Product Development
OneStrand Inc.
