A day off (Death and Webhosting inside)

This Blog Post was originally published on adagia.org.

Yesterday I took the day off because of my grandfather's funereal (). Since it is the end of the week I thought to myself, not knowing how I would feel after the funeral I would take off Friday too. Luckily I have 11 days of vacation from last year (well and already 25 added this year) so it wasn't complicated to use them.

Also, "lucky" me, the deathof a grandparent (and sibling) grants me a day off extra (by the collective contract of the IT Sector in Austria). For partners (married or not) and parents' death, I would get three days off. There is also a clause for moving (two days every two years if I remember correctly).

I'm thankful that such agreements exist as the "death" ones must be granted by the employer. I remember when my cousin died a few years back, my aunt was already in retirement so she didn't have the stress to fit all things that need to be done in three days. Although morticians can help with the handling of the dead body and the funeral (including the church stuff), but who helps you cancel all subscriptions of the deceased? Nobody.

Sure, my grandfather doesn't have Netflixor something similar, so this part isn't necessary after his death. But I remember my aunt having a few hard months on killing off every service my cousin was subscribed to. Months later there were still overdue notices where coming in. And every time you receive one of those notices you're reminded of the death again.

Maybe it is time to set up some kind of "when I'm dead" list which includes access to a password manager or something similar. Who knows what I'm subscribed to besides me?

About two or three years back I had a new customer approach me whose Webhosting provider died. The client didn't have access to anything and I had a hard time moving the domains and emails over to my hosting provider. Sure nobody expects the worst, but as we all know, it could be over tomorrow.