ianwoodmore
Active member
My internet and phone have just been restored following a massive storm 6 days ago. The polar blast hit NZ with unprecedented fury. All of NZ was affected with snow, rain, high winds, and freezing cold.
I live in Wellington, NZ and we're pretty blase about wind gusts of 100kph. We jokingly call then zephyrs (light breezes). This storm was very different. First we had rain bucketing down softening the ground and causing flooding. Then the wind. Hours of 160kph gusting to 200kph on the hilltops. Huge macaracarpa and pine trees were being knocked over like skittles in a bowling alley, blocking roads all over the region. A red gum started leaning and rubbing against my guttering making weird groaning noises. Power went out twice for me but fortunately only for a short period. Others were not so fortunate and are still without power. Satellite TV was jumping in and out as the wind buffeted the antenna, or rain squalls masked the satellite signal. And then I lost my phone and internet connection. First time since TRS2006 introduced Content Manager seven years ago that the message on the redbar was appropriate. "Please check your connection." When dawn broke gloomily next day I ventured out to see what local damage had occurred. Wind was still at severe gale intensity. Amazingly I had rhododendrons, azaleas and roses still with flowers on them. Wellington plants are pretty resilient. My leadin from the streetpole to the house was severed. To make matters worse the overhead cable to our street was down. A huge tree limb had snapped like a twig and smashed down on the cable. The anchor pole, a fairly hefty telephone pole, was snapped in half and now was blocking the main service road between two suburbs. So now the road was closed as well. What with all the other higher priority damage linesmen were going to have to repair, it could be sometime before my comms would be restored and I could communicate with the Trainz Community again. The real railway was in trouble with seven breaches of the sea wall from 15m waves smashing into the shore. Wellington rail links are but a few metres from the harbour. Huge hunks of concrete were hurled onto the rail line along with every type of flotsam and jetsam imaginable. Track ballast was washed out and track gangs were working in atrocious conditions to seal the breaches in the sea wall, and then make the track safe again. Heavy equipment and materials could only be brought in from the ends along the tracks, and not from the sides due to the terrain.
I had plenty of supplies for such an emergency. While I waited for comms to be restored I decided to do some more work on TARDIS 3.7, my Trainz Asset Repair programme. And that is where I stayed for the next six days. No TS12 SP1 beta testing. No moderating the forums. When I finally was able to re-connect with the world and the Trainz forum, not much had changed. Another bot spamming the blogs. A couple of complaints of inappropriate language and behaviour on the forum, and other reminiscing about the good old days with the first computers.
Ah well, back into repair work. As a final note TARDIS 3.7 took care of 66,441 missing thumbnails in those six days. Up to 8,000 at a time. Beats doing manually. Outcome - no missing thumbnails on all downloadable DLS assets and builtins, other than those locked payware.
I've already eliminated the uniform colour issue. Lost count how many, but probably in excess of 60,000.
And so on to the next problem; how to automate providing mesh-tables for ~10,000 aliased assets.
I live in Wellington, NZ and we're pretty blase about wind gusts of 100kph. We jokingly call then zephyrs (light breezes). This storm was very different. First we had rain bucketing down softening the ground and causing flooding. Then the wind. Hours of 160kph gusting to 200kph on the hilltops. Huge macaracarpa and pine trees were being knocked over like skittles in a bowling alley, blocking roads all over the region. A red gum started leaning and rubbing against my guttering making weird groaning noises. Power went out twice for me but fortunately only for a short period. Others were not so fortunate and are still without power. Satellite TV was jumping in and out as the wind buffeted the antenna, or rain squalls masked the satellite signal. And then I lost my phone and internet connection. First time since TRS2006 introduced Content Manager seven years ago that the message on the redbar was appropriate. "Please check your connection." When dawn broke gloomily next day I ventured out to see what local damage had occurred. Wind was still at severe gale intensity. Amazingly I had rhododendrons, azaleas and roses still with flowers on them. Wellington plants are pretty resilient. My leadin from the streetpole to the house was severed. To make matters worse the overhead cable to our street was down. A huge tree limb had snapped like a twig and smashed down on the cable. The anchor pole, a fairly hefty telephone pole, was snapped in half and now was blocking the main service road between two suburbs. So now the road was closed as well. What with all the other higher priority damage linesmen were going to have to repair, it could be sometime before my comms would be restored and I could communicate with the Trainz Community again. The real railway was in trouble with seven breaches of the sea wall from 15m waves smashing into the shore. Wellington rail links are but a few metres from the harbour. Huge hunks of concrete were hurled onto the rail line along with every type of flotsam and jetsam imaginable. Track ballast was washed out and track gangs were working in atrocious conditions to seal the breaches in the sea wall, and then make the track safe again. Heavy equipment and materials could only be brought in from the ends along the tracks, and not from the sides due to the terrain.
I had plenty of supplies for such an emergency. While I waited for comms to be restored I decided to do some more work on TARDIS 3.7, my Trainz Asset Repair programme. And that is where I stayed for the next six days. No TS12 SP1 beta testing. No moderating the forums. When I finally was able to re-connect with the world and the Trainz forum, not much had changed. Another bot spamming the blogs. A couple of complaints of inappropriate language and behaviour on the forum, and other reminiscing about the good old days with the first computers.
Ah well, back into repair work. As a final note TARDIS 3.7 took care of 66,441 missing thumbnails in those six days. Up to 8,000 at a time. Beats doing manually. Outcome - no missing thumbnails on all downloadable DLS assets and builtins, other than those locked payware.
I've already eliminated the uniform colour issue. Lost count how many, but probably in excess of 60,000.
And so on to the next problem; how to automate providing mesh-tables for ~10,000 aliased assets.
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