Just call me MacGyver

I had another post that I planned on. Even wrote about half of it. But then something more interesting came along. My office was without power for 48 hours. Most would think, great, two days off. Not really. In fact, the power went out Wednesday night and payroll is done on Thursday by yours truly. Sure I can hand write a check, but for 50 employees, who wants to do that? Plus you have to make sure that you have all the correct withholding info and guess where all of that is stored? On my server. Yes, I have a battery back up surge protector, but it doesn't last two days.

So I had to take an old back-up copy of my accounting program, reinstall it on my laptop. Wait the two hours while it updated the tax info on the internet before I could even do payroll. Do you know how that wears down a battery? Lucky for me, I have an inverter. Out of over 40 men working with me in this semi construction business, I'm the only one that has an inverter. (BTW, an inverter is an outlet that plugs into your cigarette lighter. I had to explain that to some of said guys.) Maybe I was a boy scout in a past life? Or maybe I've experienced so many things going wrong that I try to always be prepared. (My sister voted on the later. She doesn't think I was ever able to play nice enough to be a boy scout. She's probably right.)

Once I had everything updated on the laptop I had to install the printer driver on my computer. By this time my laptop started losing power. I had it unplugged for awhile so I could get some other work done in my flashlight lit office. So then it was a matter of plugging in my computer and then switching the power to my printer in time to print checks and back and forth for the other batch of checks (there are three different groups that get paid separately). All in the back seat of my truck in the 100 degree weather. Fun huh? But everyone got paid and was happy. Then they gave me the nickname MacGyver. I kind of like it.