DEC 27, 2010 - Skype Goes Out was quite a headline in the tech world this past week, when the Internet communication service of the same name went out of service. During the outage, which went on for several hours on Wednesday, DEC 22, millions of users were unable to make calls. With something on the order of 125 million active users per month, Skype is far from a trivial communication service. That it should go down last week took a lot of people by surprise. Not you, if you read my 2010 World Forecast Highlights (published last year); specifically the section dealing with the Mercury Max phenomenon. As detailed in that section, the current Mercury Max cycle began "with the maximum eastern elongation on December 1, includes the December 10-30 retrograde and the December 20 inferior conjunction, and wraps up with the western elongation extreme on January 9, 2011." And of course, the forecast specified exactly what would happen during this period: "disruptions affecting transportation and communication (e.g. postal, phone, mass transit, trucking, airline, shipping, dock and warehouse workers, teachers and all manner of media". You saw it coming last year, you knew it would happen this month, and there's no reason you had to be buffaloed by the snafu. (We had iPhone issues here, connected with our upgrade to iPhone 4. But we knew to expect them and sailed through with no loss of service. It can be done, if you know in advance and keep your eye on the ball. Otherwise, the ball too often hits you in the eye.) Speaking of keeping your eye on the ball, remember: this isn't over yet.
