This was a tough week to work from home. As a heat wave crept across the states this week, many took shelter inside and cranked up the AC. The resulting strain and overheat on area power grids left entire regions without electricity. While my region was spared being without power, we were not spared the network outage that left me without internet connectivity for over 2 days. This was an unforeseen circumstance that hindered not only completing my classwork but also keeping up with my team and working on the current sprint's task. It was difficult conducting research for my task, and I was unable to attend several daily standups and planning poker meetings for the upcoming PI 5.

It definitely felt awkward bringing up to the team that I couldn't complete my task, especially when our scrum master mentioned that this could be the highest performing sprint if everyone finished. Alas, I felt like I broke his heart admitting I wasn't prepared.

It felt kind of silly taking the blame for a network outage/something beyond my control, but I think I was more worried about my image as a "sitting duck" to the rest of the team. It feels like I've experienced much of what can go wrong in all different kinds of places, from getting sick to discovering more overhead than expected regarding a task, and now I can add a colossal heatwave to the list of things that could go wrong working from home.

Of course, my fear was much bigger in my head than in reality. We celebrated the end of our PI 4 and discussed our plans for our upcoming meetings in preparation for PI 5.