rangerssuck wrote:

On Aug 29, 6:57 pm, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
rangerssuck wrote:

On Aug 28, 7:00 am, " ? wrote:
? On Aug 26, 12:17 am, rangerssuck ? wrote:
?
? ? I'm right in the line of fire (four mile drive from the George
? ? Washington Bridge), and I'm gonna hunker down and enjoy the show.
?
? ? Being this prepared, I fully expect the storm to be nothing more than
? ? a breeze a drizzle.
?
? It was pretty much a non event at our house. We did get a lot of
? rain, but not close to the prediction of 12 to 14 inches. The creek
? is up and out of its banks, but it has been higher as a result of
? thunderstorms. The power stayed on which is good as I can hear the
? sump pump running every once in a while. Still pretty breezy outside,
? but looking from the house I can not see any trees or limbs down.
?
? Dan

Our power was out 5am Sunday through 10pm Sunday. Cable ? internet
were out from about 11am to a few minutes after the power came back
(I'm thinking Time Warner doesn't have enough backup power).

All it takes is one failed UPS on a CATV system to take everything
down. BTDT, and repaired the pole mounted UPS in the shop.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense

The cable stayed up for about five hours after the power failed. I
don't think this was an equipment failure, I think it was undersized
batteries. Ever seen the batteries in a Verizon central office?
They're about as big as a small house. And next to them is the multi-
fueled generator.


Do you expect the cable company to have a generator every half mile?
Where would they put them so no one could steal them, yet be easy to
refuel and service?


What really burns me is that the Time Warner guy (in Buffalo, NY) who
ansered the phone last night, a full eight hours after the failure,
had absolutely zero information on the nature of the failure. Couldn't
tell me the size of the affected area, couldn't give me a clue about
who was working where to fix it, Nothing. This is the 21st century.
The Information Age. They advertise high-end, broadband, business-
class service (and yes, I am a business customer). They simply don't
know how to deal with this kind of event. And that's not acceptable.


Sigh. In a major outage it's difficult to determine the affected
area. The calls aren't taken by the people doing the work in the
field. I worked in CATV for four years, and despised the idiots who
interrupted my crews to demand that they stop what they are doing, to go
fix the outage at their house, when they are already working on the
outage.

What do you think they can do after major damage, and just how long
do you think the UPS batteries should last? They could make it
bulletproof, if everyone was willing to pay a couple thousand dollars a
month to pay for the equipment, and upkeep. Five hours is a lot longer
than the average power outage for a cable system, so you just have a
bunch of sour grapes.

If you don't like the way they do business, raise the capital and
build your own broadband backbone and TV headend. Figure a minimum of 20
million dollars to get started. Then there are the franchise fees, OSHA
to deal with, and all the utilities you'll have to share the right of
way with. You'll need some great corporate communications lawyers, as
well as ones who can work with the FAA and the EPA.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.