Still having a few problems over here. Big problem is the damage to the power network and its effect on the phone network.
TheBackShed lives on a server at a local ISP, Orion Online. Orion is about 10km out of town, and is connected to a small unmaned telephone exchange.
These small exchanges have a 50v battery bank, usually made of individual 2v lead acid cells. The cells are well made, and have a life of 20 years, but are replaced after 10 as a rule. The most interesting things you notice about these cells is the clear case, so you can see the condition of the plates, and the 2inch space between the bottom of the plates and the case floor. This space slowly fills up with lead flakes as they fall off the cells, the space means a much longer life before the flakes start to short out the plates, or so I was told as an apprentice. One of my jobs was to wipe the batteries clean and check the specific gravity every few weeks.
Anyway, the battery bank is there to keep the exchange running for a few hours in the event of a power failure, enough time to send out a portable generator to keep the exchange alive. The problem is, after a cyclone, there may be 50 or more of these exchanges without power, and not enough generators to go around. So after a few hours, the phone exchanges start shutting down. The bigger exchanges have a build in diesel generator that starts automatically and has enough fuel to run for many days.
So the exhange that feeds TheBackShed has been down for a couple of days. Early today the power company managed to get power back on to the exchange, but Orion Online is still without power. Orion has been running a portable generator to get the servers up and running. Tonight its offline again, the generator has been running all day and they decided to shut it down for the evening and fire it back up in the morning for the business web sites and mail.
Long few days, but what can you do. Time for a beer.
Glenn
