The other day I was telling you about what could happen when there's bad weather -- lost power, poor road conditions and the like. I neglected to specifically mention the loss of our Internet connection. So much of what we do these days is Internet-related, you don't fully appreciate it until it's not there. Like yesterday.

Our Internet service died mid-morning. It didn't come back up until 6 a.m. today. The problem was at our server in the corporate office in Pennsylvania. Actually, it wasn't the corporate office's fault, but a major glitch in its region.

Anyway, we didn't have Internet and that meant lots of what we call "work arounds." Ads were being emailed off site and downloaded onto CDs or floppy disks and brought into the office. Same thing with some of our news features, like the weather package and stock report. Conversely, stories for dailyfreeman.com were put on disks and uploaded to the Internet from the city editor's home.

In short, we didn't realize how much we'd miss the Internet until it was gone.