Another grid power failure today at 10:08. And of course lagune failed, despite being behind a UPS.
Why does this always stress me so much? I can't do much about it except turn off heavy
power consumers like the air conditioner. Powercor doesn't help by giving
contradictory claims about power restoration:
Finally the power came back at 14:17:15, after 4 hours and 9 minutes, just as they had
changed their minds and set the restoration time to 16:00, and I had started to wonder what
to do if it weren't restored by sunset:
Fortunately the sun came out enough to charge the batteries, so we managed to hit 100%
before the power came back, helped by the excessive duration. A good thing that it came
back then: the sun went in, and the battery charge diminished quickly:
As if the power failure wasn't bad enough, my Internet link died at 12:56:27. Clearly
something external: the ODU LED on the NTD showed orange.
But what could it be? Power to the ODU? I think that goes via the network cable. ODU
failure? Who can tell? It seemed to be worth raising a fault with Aussie Broadband, not helped by the fact that it
had temporarily forgotten my secret thumbprint and then claimed that my link was up. But in
less than 10 minutes, during which I had been required to run the connectivity test three
times, it finally accepted it. Fault 38813366. Will be “looked at” within 5 working hours,
which could mean tomorrow morning.
But what if it's a consequence of the power failure? Power had been out at the radiation
tower too, for 2 hours, 48 minutes. Maybe the National Broadband Network didn't envisage any longer power outage, and the batteries
in the tower had run out.
That guess seems to have been correct. Power was restored at 14:17:15, the network at
14:29:45. So it seems that the radiation tower needed 12½ minutes to boot.
In the middle of the outage pain, Paul Donaghy showed up to complete the bird netting in the
dog run. As if to prove the necessity, found a small bird in there when we went out. In 3
hours Paul was done. There are still a couple of places where birds can get through, and
Yvonne tells me that she has seen both a Crimson rosella and a red-browed finch in there. The
rosella was perplexed that it couldn't easily get out again. Maybe they'll stop coming;
otherwise there's patching to be done.
I've heard from Lokman Merican, who wanted to know about a song entitled “Pantai Chinta
Berahi by Dodo Millinger. The name proved to be Mailinger, a Hungarian musician who
arrived in Singapore in the
1930s:
Brought from Surabaya to Singapore in the 1930s by bandleader Joe Speelman to play piano
at the Raffles Hotel. He was widely celebrated as one of the finest pianists in the Far
East.
And once again I lost the URL. But though I had never heard of Dodo Mailinger, the name Joe
Speelman is immediately apparent: he arranged my very first public performance, in the
Selangor Club (not
“Royal” at the time) in December 1960. That brings back
memories. It's surprising that there's also a connection to Pantai Chinta Berahi; in those
days I didn't know of any such connection.
What, again? I went through a lot of correspondence with AAMI over two years ago, culminating in my
assessment that the people there would not pass the Turing test, and their giving up and
handing it over to a debt collection agency (ARMA debt resolution), who seems to be
staffed by similar people. After something like 8 repeats showing that they did not read my
replies, they seem to have given up. Is this going to happen again? There should be
something that can be done against this kind of frivolous action.
But what if these horrible debt collectors have entered something negative in my credit
profile? Off to take a look and discovered that there are two credit ratings listing
companies in Australia. Chose one at random, Equifax, who are prepared to give me a free
credit report. Sign up with their password restrictions, and then enter driver license
number and Medicare number.
Alarm. Those are exactly the data that were used to steal money from my Centrelink account five years ago. Yes, it's clear that I have to identify myself to Equifax if I want
a report. But is the report worth the risk? As long as Australia has these stupidly
inadequate identification rules, I think no. Sorry, Equifax.
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