I’m betting there are at least a few readers who can relate to this story: You run a growing web site with just a couple other people and the holiday season (whether right before Christmas, such as if you’re an ecommerce site, or right after Christmas, if you’re more like us) is probably going to be your highest traffic time of the year. Still, you’d like to travel and spend some time with friends and family instead of cozied up next to your computer. This may even mean some long-ish car rides away from the Internets. The risk is that while your site has very little issues during normal usage and you expect it to be fine during the increased load, you’d much rather be around an internet connection just in case something happens.
So, what to do? Well, here’s what I did today:
I ran down to the local Verizon store and dealt with the usual I’m-sorry-I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing salesperson (really, she actually said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m doing with this”). I walked out frustrated — but successful nonetheless — with a new $129 Verizon Wireless Prepaid Mobile Broadband USB stick.
I consider this a $129 insurance policy. It costs $15 for every day I want to use it (or you can pay per week or per month), so I certainly don’t plan on using it often, but if our monitoring text messages me that there’s a problem this holiday season and I’m on the road without network access, I can easily get on and work.
