To Tim and his faithful crew, I wish you all the best with the impending storm heading your way.
I hope that you and all your families remain safe.
burris
Printable View
To Tim and his faithful crew, I wish you all the best with the impending storm heading your way.
I hope that you and all your families remain safe.
burris
I second that wish.Quote:
Originally Posted by burris
Thanks for the well-wishes. This one looks really bad.
I've posted an update here: http://forums.voipo.com/showthread.php?t=720
Anyone who works in our office has been given time off to be with family at this time. Anyone who normally works remotely outside of Houston will be working normally to address critical issues that come up. I am currently in the Northeast monitoring the situation and making plans to address it.
Well as a few of us said in the other thread - hopefully everyone will be safe and it won't be as bad as they say.Quote:
Originally Posted by VOIPoTim
You have to have hope.
Where in the Northeast? In Norm's basement? :)
I was originally at the W in Dallas, but there is good potential for Dallas to get some tornados and have power outages, so I went to visit family in WV. Haven't done so in a year or so so they seem happy about that. Since it's essentially a waiting game to see how extensive the damage is, there's not a lot that can be done.Quote:
Originally Posted by NY Tel Guy
I'm go back to Dallas Mon or Tues depending on how things look there and we'll go from there at this point.
We don't expect a lot of physical damage in the part of Houston with the exception that the office is a glass building. So depending on the outcome, we may or may not need to move to contingency space.
HostGator has also closed and is offering emergency-only support with their remote employees as well.
We're mostly concerned about the interruption of support operations and keeping everyone safe at this point until it passes.
Funny that you refer to West Virginia as the Northeast.....
We from the Northeast consider that "Mid-Atlantic"
But then again we are splitting hairs.
You made a smart decision to "hot-foot" it out of there.
While you were moving millions....I was sorting my sock drawer. :)
Best of of luck and stay safe.
We will keep you on our prayers in Indiana.
Yes, by all means our prayers are with you Tim and your employees and all your families. Been through a few of these storms when living in Biloxi Mississippi. They can be scary.
While on the east coast; if you get bored and feel like writing something; I'd be curious to know how the voipo network is set up to withstand such a disaster. I know your offices are in Houston. Are ALL the servers there also? Do ALL VoipO customer's calls go through Houston to the servers? I know level 3 is a major backbone provider, but how are the voip calls router. Just curious. If you have time and want to write. Thanks. And again, our prayers are with you all and your families. Later.... Mike.....
Equipment is mostly in Dallas with backups in Houston. Everything primarily goes through Dallas. There it's spread out among The Planet's datacenters. I have full confidence in TP keeping things online. Their Houston DCs I've never been 100% sold on but the Dallas ones I don't worry about at all. Their planning is very solid there.Quote:
Originally Posted by christcorp
No power for nearly 3M in Houston area
05:22 AM CDT on Saturday, September 13, 2008
Associated Press HOUSTON -- Nearly 3 million people are without power in the Houston area as Hurricane Ike slams the Texas coast.
It will likely be a while before electricity returns. CenterPoint Energy says it could take weeks before all the power in the nation’s fourth-largest city was restored.
Utility spokesman Floyd LeBlanc said 1.3 million customers—or about 2.9 million people—had lost power by the time the storm made landfall at Galveston early Saturday. Work crews were coming in Monday to restore power, and priority will be given to hospitals, fire and police departments and water and sewage treatment plants.
The city’s last direct hit from a hurricane came from Alicia in 1983, when 750,000 CenterPoint customers lost power. It took 16 days to restore all service.
Stay safe!
. . . and you were so close to a full launch I would bet!
If there are any ramifications as a result of the storm, it's better that this happened before the full launch.Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
Maybe Tim's company is in a hospital or other public service grid and power will get priority restoration.
We've been lucky in South Florida, as we are in a hospital grid and haven't had too long a wait after each storm.
Same here - I am on the local hospital's grid so we always get power back first. Best way to buy a house.Quote:
Originally Posted by burris
Fortunately, we had very minimal damage at the office. Just a few windows blown out and that's about it.
Basically the key now will be power restoration and getting all the public services back on like water, etc. They said it could take up to a month for all power to be restored because of the extend of damage.
Watching the feeds here and I feel for those on the coast...
Been looking for your building on the news and have been re leaved to have not seen it...
The Balinese Room is gone... :eek: Yikes...
http://forums.voipo.com/attachment.p...1&d=1221348226
Yeah for those watching we're in the NW part of town off Highway 290.Quote:
Originally Posted by chpalmer
In the map of Houston Freeways, we're basically just NW of the biggest "loop" going around Houston.
The bulk of the hurricane stayed in the Eastern part.
For anyone wondering, all pending orders were shipped out Saturday.
How did your restaurant fair? Or is it elsewhere?
I'm flying back to Texas today (Dallas though) and wanted to post an update.
Current Situation
Like the majority of Houston, our office still has no power and no water. It's not looking good for quick restoration. Current ETA is a few weeks. That is the biggest problem by far.
Gas, ice, etc are also incredibly hard to come by in Houston based on what people I've talked to have said. The vast majority of our employees for both companies have no power or water at home and life is pretty miserable now for many of them.
For these things, there is nothing we can do but wait.
In terms of actual physical damage, it's still minimal and shouldn't take much time to fix once the power is back. We had broken windows during the hurricane and minimal other wind damage, but the day after the hurricane, there was some major flooding and rain going on in Harris county and by the time everything was said and done, we did have some minor water damage. Beyond that, our signs are gone, etc.
We had things assessed quickly without power so it could change, but right now the first estimate was around $100K in damage. Keep in mind that we actually own the office building which encompasses HostGator (floors 3 & 4), VOIPo (2nd floor), and a credit union and other tenants. So this is not $100K in damage to VOIPo...just in general.
Ironically, we have been waiting for weeks for permits to install a new $200K generator which is sitting outside of the office, just not connected.
Overall, we were pretty lucky and fared substantially better than many people. There is major damage all over Houston though.
My neighborhood actually has all utilities and is in good shape now. That whole area is only 2-3 years old so everything was underground, etc. It was also on the west side which wasn't as bad. The big issue is that since we're the side of town with gas, restaurants and stores open everyone is pouring in and I'm told it's a big big big mess with waiting hours for gas, etc.
Our Plan
Right now, it's a waiting game until the public infrastructure is back and everyone has water and power. Many roads are not passable and there are curfews in place. We can't return to normal operations until this is cleared up.
For HostGator, we have 15 people around the clock handling critical issues from a temporary contingency space in the Time Warner NOC in Houston. For VOIPo, we have 2 people working remotely not including me and all monitoring is in place as usual.
I'm flying back in today, but staying in Dallas for at least the next couple days to give things in Houston a little more time to recover.
Our plan is to asses the progress by weekend to see where we stand. Hopefully there will be major progress made this week in the restoration efforts.
I don't forsee any issues for VOIPo at all. Orders are still being processed and shipped. Tickets are being responded too, but slower than usual.
If you have a question or run into a problem, feel free to open a ticket. Just keep in mind the response will be slower than normal if not a critical issue given the current situation.
Thanks for asking. I've actually trimmed back commitments some and am not really involved with that project anymore, so I'm really not sure how it turned out. Ironically, Brendan at VT sold his Quiznos about 2 months ago too.Quote:
Originally Posted by usa2k
I had so many things going on and while income from so many sources was good, it was getting to a point where it just kind of became more of a hassle than anything. I got out of the real estate investing, dropped most investment projects, cut day-to-day involvement with HostGator down to almost nothing, and I'm just focusing on VOIPo and internet marketing now. I was making so much money with internet marketing and VOIPo has so much long-term potential, the other investment income was kind of irrelevant.
I'm much happier now that life isn't a big ball of chaos :)
After living through Fran here in the Triangle area in 1996, I really feel for you guys. The situation sounds similar, except it sounds like you got it worse than we did. It sounds like the recovery efforts are well underway, albeit definitely to take a while, given the extent of the damage.
I wish all SE Texans the best in getting back to 'normal' following this disaster...
And....my service hasn't faltered for one minute...can't get better than that..
Yeah I think part of the issue is that we hadn't had a big hit like this in a very long time. Haven't looked it up, but assuming NC doesn't get hit as often as some others either.Quote:
Originally Posted by fisamo
I think that under the emergency conditions, I'd hit the transfer switch and bring that generator on line now so that you can secure and protect your property, properly [if you can get the fuel]. I don't think anyone could object, given the conditions, as long as it's properly wired in. 'Permanent' installation can proceed at the bureaucratic snail's pace, whenever the 'crats get back to work. You might have to provide a chemical toilet for any guards. ;-) I doubt that you could re-occupy the facility at this time though.Quote:
Originally Posted by VOIPoTim
Good News. We kept calling various contacts Centerpoint and various contacts and now our office should have power by 5PM today. Once this happens, the cleanup can begin. We already have a restoration company scheduled to come in tomorrow and they should the cleanup should take 6 days. Then the contractor will come in and make it look nice once again.
For those wondering, things are getting pretty much back to normal. Still about 600K people in Houston without power though and a lot of traffic lights are either out or just flashing red. I'm not sure why, but they said it could be the end of the year before all the lights are fixed.
When compared to the 4 million or so that lost power, I guess 600K remaining is progress.
We opened HostGator phone support back up yesterday and both offices are pretty much normal now. Some minor cleanup still being done, but nothing major.