Author | Lightnews

Andrew Joll

Andrew Joll

@andrew.joll.nz

74 followers 39 following 1.1K posts

Chartered Accountant, IT Consultant, radio and electronics enthusiast, vintage computers.... general all round geek. He/him.

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Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 23h

"Our protection mechanisms, to validate and block any erroneous deployments, failed due to a software defect which allowed the deployment to bypass safety validations."

Someone messed up....

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 23h

Just read the BBC article - not sure what outage it is describing but it doesn't match with this morning's. Microsoft 365 and Outlook were fine.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 23h

azure.status.microsoft/en-gb/status...

Azure status history | Microsoft Azure

Check the status history of Microsoft Azure services here.

azure.status.microsoft

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 23h

Azure's status page said it was a bad code update deployed to Azure Front Door which propagated across all the nodes, and that's pretty much what I saw with a client who's store and app went down. Could fix by bypassing AFD but TLS certs etc broke.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 23h

This one wasn't. When a good load balancer/proxy goes bad....

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 2d

Almost nine months since Katie succombed to heart disease, it looks like Slinky has decided to become my new gaming buddy.

The most gorgeous calico cat Katie, sitting on my lap with a controller while I play As Dusk Falls on Xbox One a couple of years ago. We lost her to heart failure at 14 years, 16 February 2025.

Slinky the wee black void rescue cat, sleeping on my legs while I play The Alters on an Xbox Series X.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 3d

It looks like slightly out of date info. They're quoting outage numbers from "Monday afternoon" but Powenet's 7:30pm update was about a thousand lower.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 3d

Update from Powernet tonight, those numbers are coming down.

Screenshot of a Powernet Facebook post saying 5450 homes in Southland and 2400 in Otago are still without power.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 3d

And I know I'm lucky I live near Invercargill and only had power down for 14 hours, but still have the buckets of water I siphoned from the tank to flush the toilets just in case. And wifi calling so having no bars of 3G from Bluff isn't a problem.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 3d

Most towns are now up (my client in Otautau got power back on Saturday /after/ I'd made trips to grab their server to pop in my rack). Rural is problematic. Practice manager has power but their neighbour doesn't. At least roads are mostly clear.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 3d

I'm not surprised. It'd start next weekend and there's still a heck of a lot of more important stuff to do.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 3d

Yeah I spent years meaning to finish building timers based on 555s and counters to divide up and things then laat year realised - I have spare old Pis, I can whip up some Python, so why not?

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 3d

I don't think we'll be getting any tomatoes this season. A pity, as the irrigation system is all there ready to go....

Some very sorry looking tomato plants that took the brunt of the strong winds that completely blew out our glasshouse.

An irrigation system, comprised of a Raspberry Pi 2 board, WiPi wireless adapter, DC-DC converter and relay board, controlling a cheap 12V water pump and an old V bottle deployed as a pressure vessel.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 4d

Just FYI, our boys send purrs to anyone having a bad day/week/month/year.

Slinky the black rescue cat and Arlo the silver tabby Maine Coon snuggling on the cat tower.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 4d

After a couple of days running around helping get stuff back online I'm finally getting stuck into the storm cleanup seeing it's reasonably calm today. I am positive some magic is at work here though - there's no way that much smashed glass could come out of a single small glasshouse!

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 4d

I've got a client with branches in Gore, Balclutha and Mosgiel and they're always looking for sparkies, plumbers etc. Industrial projects. Balclutha seems to have the largest growth.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 4d

The coal mine closed years ago. Trades are big in Balclutha, and it's not far.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 4d

So a little longer to Dunedin, but Balclutha is closer. I haven't looked, but based on what I've seen with clients in the area there'll be jobs there for tradies.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 4d

What's a normal commute time in Auckland?

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 5d

They also can't say solder. Its all "let's just sodder this joint."

And of course cooking with "erbs."

Ugh.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 5d

I offered hyper-V replication back to one of my servers but they decided against that. When the dust settles will have another chat about that. Oh and yes of course they have backups, but will take longer to restore onto my server than just grabbing theirs!

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 5d

Talked about a generator but not sure if the Chorus OLT will be working seeing I suspect telcos will prioritise mobile. They decided against hosting because they were concerned about internet (it's fibre but they remember how unreliable copper was).

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 5d

Started on the glasshouse cleanup, but need to go out to a vet clinic this afternoon. No power since Thursday, no ETA on restoration, and they don't know what appointments they have.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 6d

A lot of Nazis ended up in the US space programme too.

Andrew Joll @andrew.joll.nz · 7d

Well Argentina is part of America, right? He never said the "United States of" bit, right?