Posts by Andre Alessi
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Megan Wegan,
I asked her if she needed details of where to get water, and she replied “pumping station…is pissing out potable water”.
Well, Bear Grylls was in the South Island, so...
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to George Darroch,
But this is an emergency on a huge scale.
And it has national implications, hence a "national emergency". Any even that affects voice and SMS services across the country is already major stuff, and plenty of organisations outside Christchurch are heavily impacted by the damage done for a variety of reasons.
Much better to declare an emergency now and then not have to use the powers implied than to have the rescue efforts hampered by being unable to move resources around the country because all available transport is tied up by non-essential requests, for example.
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I didn't (and haven't since) watched any broadcast television related to this disaster. All my information has been via Twitter and new websites. In part that's a self-defence mechanism (I get too emotional watching video of anything-hell, soppy insurance commercials reduce me to tears) but it's also proven to be a very practical way to learn about what's going on quickly, as it happens.
When the quake hit I was outside a cafe near work having lunch. Within 5 minutes of the first tweets coming through, I'd given my boss a heads up (our company and other companies we work with have staff in Christchurch) and was heading back to the office with a bunch of practical information (reports of major building damage, evacuations, etc) so that when we got the official heads up ten minutes later, we were already in the process of switching to our predetermined contingency plans.
What has struck me, though, and this will I think be an issue that will be discussed in more detail in he coming weeks, is that companies like ours and others who had been affected by the last quake hadn't really put effective contingency planning in place for whole rafts of business-critical processes. A lot of the issues we came up against in September are rearing their heads again, even though we'd all previously acknowledged that these issues needed to be something we were prepared for "next time". I think that there were a lot of people that were assuming (perhaps for their own sanity) that there wouldn't be a next time.
All this pales into insignificance next to the loss of life and massive infrastructure damage we're seeing at the moment, but I hope once we've dealt with what we need to deal with that New Zealand business as a whole sits down and tries to find solutions for these problems, so that when "next time" happens again, we aren't caught off guard quite so badly.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Whoops,
Unconfirmed commentary on HuffPo that tourist were up in the Cathedral Tower.
Stuff had a quote from the Dean of the Cathedral earlier:
4.01 pm: The Dean of the Cathedral, Peter Beck, says he had no idea how many people were inside the church.
He says they tried to get out as many people as they could but it was now in the hands of emergency services. "It doesn't look good".
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Telecom has decreased data capacity and increased voice capacity over the XT network, and "SMS quick retry" has been disabled for 027-if a SMS has not been received the first time a retry will not occur.
They're also considering locking down the XT network for 111 calls only, but only if the situation absolutely requires it, which it doesn't at the moment. 111 calling is now stable.
(This is all directly from Telecom Wholesale's Service Delivery team.)
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Jackie Clark,
There are alot of call centres based in Chch too.
Yeah, both Telecom and TelstraClear have evacuated their buildings, but there is routing in place to take calls to other centres. Reports are that the TelstraClear building in Hereford St (the one that survived the last quake) is pretty much wrecked.
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Hard News: Again: Is everyone okay?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
There are two major exchanges for Telecom’s voice network in New Zealand, in Glenfield and Papatoetoe. A lot of calling gets routed through these, particularly if other parts of the network fall over, and right now they’re regularly reaching capacity due to spiking national calling. Vodafone’s own network infrastructure is also Auckland-heavy, IIRC.
Internet in New Zealand tends to be more decentralised and isn’t routed in the same way if there’s a problem with the network (though there’s always the possibility that bits and pieces will stop responding for a while.)
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Muse: Shelf Life: The Dying Elephant in…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I thought The Sparrow and Children of God are both excellent books
I liked The Sparrow, although I think the way the author brushes off the (at times quite startling) similarities between her book and James Blish's A Case of Conscience are unconvincing. I found Children of God to be a bit too dull for my tastes, and I found the way the plot was resolved to be too trite for my tastes. It was too much of a stretch for me to accept as a genuine resolution to the tensions the author had so carefully crafted.
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I spent over a hundred bucks between Whitcoulls and Borders just last week-for newly released and less popular fantasy books, independent stores just don't cut it unless I already know what I'm after and put an order in six weeks in advance (which is unworkable given how fast I read and how often I like to try out new authors.) I buy 1-3 books per week, split evenly between Whitcoulls/Borders and my local second hand bookstore. I have yet to buy an e-reader, although I've certainly looked into it.
So yeah, I'm a wee bit upset about this.
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Muse: TV Review: Good Gods Almighty!, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
Uh-huh. Remind me to tell you my Kevin Sorbo story, Jackie.
I have a Bruce Campbell story from my time working in a bottle store around the corner from where the cast of Xena would have wrap parties. I only tell it when I’m feeling in particular need of self-flagellation though.