Author Archives: Nik Bronder

Hanging on by a thread.

Map of the Undersea Communications of the Middle East/Asia.

Large area’s of the Middle East and Asia are without the Internet today due to what some believe is a severed cable in the Mediterranean Sea between Alexandria, Egypt and Palermo, Italy.

One major telecommunications provider blamed the outage, which started Wednesday, on a major undersea cable failure in the Mediterranean.

India’s Internet bandwidth has been sliced in half, The Associated Press reported, leaving its lucrative outsourcing industry trying to reroute traffic to satellites and other cables through Asia.

Reports say that Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain are also experiencing severe problems.

An official at Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was believed that a boat’s anchor may have caused the problems, although this was unconfirmed, AP reported. He added that it might take up to a week to repair the fault.

This is pretty amazing if you think about it: Nearly the entire Middle East and India rely on 1 underwater cable for over 50% of their Internet access (IE connection to the outside world). We’re really not that far from the days of a single Transatlantic Cable that was prone to snapping. Of course there are backup systems in place for critical communications where Satallite’s will do but for the average business and consumer this cable is thier sole source of information. Good to know a small boat with an anchor can still reek havoc on the modern world.

In the mean time good luck calling any kind of technical support that resides in India.

Series of tubes my ass.

Clown Invasion.

Clown Crawl.

After seeing Rambo yesterday afternoon Nick and I decided to catch the NHL All-Star game at Finley Dunnes with the idea being low key. All was going well until about 40 minutes into the game when 4 masked, menacing looking guys walked into the bar, made a B-line for the back and one guy walk straight up to me. I assumed that it was a robbery for a split second, especially since Josh (see photo below) came right up to me and attempted to ‘take me down’. After breaking is chain necklace I figured out who he was and all was good.

Clown Down.Bar Clowns.img_0145.jpgJosh being as menacing as possible.Clown cinematographer.More clowns.

Over the next 10 minutes, about 50 clowns piled into the bar and things got interesting as you can imagine. One clown passed out in the middle of the bar and the rest just started yelling ‘Clown Down’ and throwing confetti on him. Before the clowns showed up there was probably 4 other people in the bar. As you can see in the pictures the vibe changed dramatically. The clowns traveled via school bus to top it all off.

Man 1, Crocodile 1: Lessons Learned.

After hearing of about how a man was rescued from the clutches of a Crocodile’s jaw this past week in Australia I was relieved. Now that time has passed and I’ve had time to reflect I think there are lessons to be learned from this near disaster:

  1. Never except employment from a ‘Crocodile Farm‘.
  2. If you do find yourself employed by a Crocodile Farm make sure not to be responsible for collecting Crocodile eggs.
  3. Create a good working relationship with your coworkers (they’re the only who can help you if and when the giant reptile you decided to work with on a daily basis decides to eat you).
  4. Verify that your coworker has at least average marksmanship skills.