Amazon Outage Continues

Amazon.com was down again on Monday for a while, and is down as of this writing as well.

Estimates are Amazon.com is losing about $30,000 USD per minute with its site being unreachable by the millions who use the site each day to make purchases.

Also affected are Bloggers who rely on Amazon.com as a revenue stream. Ironically I myself used an Amazon link this past week which is currently not working. Though, this is not my main priority I am sure it is affecting other bloggers out there.

In addition it will most likely have a negative impact on Amazon's revenues for the quarter as well.

The Register has a story saying that bots are to blame for the outage which may well be possible, at this point it seems like a DDOS attack on them and some of their other sites in both the U.S. and UK. In any case Amazon so far seems fairly tight lipped about what the actual cause is.

The Register also had this to say "Whatever the cause, the outage comes as a pox on the house of Amazon. In addition to being the world's biggest online retailer, it's also trying to convince smaller companies to outsource their mission-critical storage, server and database operations to its Amazon Web Services."

In the world of business continuity, giving your small company critical systems to a large wouldbe target just does not make sense. There are much better solutions out there.

I'll keep you up to date on the issue as I am curious as how this will play out.

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Wisconsin Dams Fail, Drains Manmade Lake

Heavy storms in Wisconsin, have caused the failure of two dams and more are facing failure. The State has dam safety engineers, in planes assessing at least 22 other dams in danger of failing.

Lake Delton, a manmade 245 acre lake and popular tourist spot south of the Wisconsin Dells, overflowed and emptied out Monday when the earthen dams gave way and overflowed into he Wisconsin River. The overflow happened as authorities ordered evacuations and sandbagging in a number of towns across the southern portion of the state.

Gov. Jim Doyle vowed the state would work to replenish the lake and told reporters state workers hope to restore the water to the lake as soon as possible, describing the lake as crucial to the $1 billion annual tourism industry in Wisconsin Dells.

"It's horrible. There's no way we could stop it," said Thomas Diehl, a Lake Delton village trustee. "The breach is between 300 and 400 feet wide. The volume (of water) was just so great there wasn't anything anyone could do."

Bill Pettit, who has owned the Delton Oaks Resort on the lake for 12 years, said he watched the dam wash away and saw the flood water push a two-story lakefront house into the lake. It quickly disappeared under the rushing water.

Pettit looked a half mile down the lake to his resort, where the lake's water was only a trickle."We are out of busienss," he said of his 30-unit resort, which has been in operation since 1948. "We sell lakefront property but there is no more lake."He said he was calling summer vacationers to alert them that the lake is gone and that boating and fishing won't be possible.

Hopefully Bill Pettit and others in the area had a contingency plan, but like many other businesses they probably did not. We will try to find out more about him and his situation and provide an update when we can.

Video of the Homes Falling into the Lake from Fox News.

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Update: Amazon.com Site Back Up

As I was completing my last post about Amazon.com being down the site came back online. Still awaiting for an update from Amazon.com if there is any as to what caused the issue.

The site was down for about two hours by my estimates though I will post an update to this story with more facts as they become available at a later time.

Business As Usual After Fire At Universal Studios

After the large fire that swept through Universal Studios on Sunday, the President Ron Meyer, vowed that it would be "business as usual" come Monday.

Being true to his word they loaded visitors onto a tram to tour the studios back lot where the fire damage occurred. “We’re going to take you right up next to the devastated part of the lot, and give you a closeup look,” a smiling guide who identified himself as Owen told visitors. “Actually, Hollywood has a long history of back-lot fires,” said Owen. He told the visitors — who asked no questions, and seemed to take it all in stride.

The smell of smoke hung in the air Monday as tourists on the park's tram ride applauded firefighters as they drove past. At least a dozen fire trucks remained on the lot as smoke continued to rise from thick, twisted piles of girders.

The fire was started accidentally by company employees using a blowtorch to heat asphalt roofing shingles, authorities said. It was initially spotted by a security guard at approx 4:43 AM Sunday morning who reported the fire.

The blaze burned for more than 12 hours but was contained to the back lot. It gutted a building housing 40,000 to 50,000 videos, but Universal Studios President and Chief Operating Officer Ron Meyer said there were duplicates of everything.

It also destroyed a King Kong attraction, the courthouse square from Back to the Future, which my wife tells me is also the set of CBS' Ghost Whisperer, and a street scape featured in Spider-Man 2 and Transformers.

About 400 firefighters battled the blaze for nearly 18 hours and were severely hampered by low water pressure.

Damage cost estimates at this time are unknown but, another fire at Universal Studios in November 1990 caused $25 million in damage and was rebuilt in three months.

Video of the Universal Studios Fire

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Terrorist Bombing At Danish Embassy In Islamabad

At Least eight people have been killed as of this writting at the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan after a suicide car bombing.

The large blast was reportedly heard two miles away and occurred around midday local time.

“It was a suicide attack carried out in a vehicle, apparently targeting the Denmark embassy,” the senior security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

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