Away from the Storm

A September night under the strong winds of Hurricane Maria, in Carolina, Puerto Rico.

I have seen hurricanes, storms and lots of rain, but nothing like 155 mile winds. If you have seen the movie Twister, that's what I saw thru a crystal door. It was one of the most scariest and longest days of my life.

They say; "After the storm comes the calm", yes, with no electricity, no communication, no Internet, no water, no contact to the outside world. Long nights, very long days, with the hope of, "Maybe tomorrow the electricity will come back". There was only on radio station available, and no hope for a " Maybe tomorrow will be better".

That's when having family at the other side, was the biggest blessing. How are your doing? Are you guys ok? I have been so worry. That was the feeling of our family who called us from the states. We didn't know what was happening in our own country, without news, without Internet, without communication. Only a few people could communicate with there family in the states and they will inform us of how things were doing in Puerto Rico.

Actually, it was more stressfull for our family in the states, which could see everything, we didn't know what was happening. Luckily we had the opportunity to get a plane to the states and visit our family in Florida. There were waiting for us with open arms.

I will tell you, there is God and then there is family. My oldest son, moved every rock he could move to make sure we could get on a plane, until we did. We will be eternally grateful for his efforts.

After our plane departed at 2:00 am in the morning we finally arrived at Miami, Florida. We rented a car and drove over 4 hours to get to Tampa, Florida. There was our sister in law, waiting for us with open arms, a warm meal and a smile that we will never forget.

As a software developer, having the opportunity to access the Internet, to make phone calls, a warm meal, a nice shower, be able to watch TV, was a dream come true. A began to call my customers to find out, that some of them actually closed their business. But thanks to God, some of them told me, if you can connect and provide us support, we are here for you.

One of my customers did not have access to the FileMaker databases, which need it to manage patient and doctors visits. I was able to connect and transfer the data to a remote location. We decided the FileMaker Cloud was a good option for them to have access without difficulty. So we adventured to migrate all the databases to a AWS FileMaker Cloud. This was an excellent choice which provide us the flexibility to support our customers while being remote from the office database.

Now, while "Away from the Storm", we have been providing our customers in Puerto Rico, the best support from a remote location. I am very happy that we are blessed with an excellent family and an flexible platform such as FileMaker.

At the moment, we our changing our support to one that does not require a customer visit. We can visit and actually do more while being connected remote using FileMaker.

My feeling for those who suffered the hurricane Harvey in Texas, the hurricane Irma in Florida, the earthquake in Mexico, the wild fires in California and of course, the hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

Now we have the advantage to work away from the storm. Thanks God.

We know there will be a better tomorrow.

Nelson Santos

PalmPC Solutions