Grandpa Ham – Grandpa Can do IT!

The domain host for my alert blogger sites apparently stopped responding to posts on 8 September 2018. I am trying to resolve issues with the hosting provider. Sorry that the alerts are not being posted during this time of increased weather activity.

The alerting blogs fed from IPAWS are now back in operation. They went down at 0952 EST today. Power has been restored and they are fully back on line as of 1700.

My apologies to anyone looking to one of the alertblogger.com site for alerts. A power outage caused by Winter Storm Riley is preventing alerts from being posted. Hopefully we will be back to normal soon.

Resiliency supports reliability, but sometimes, and in IT especially, all the extra services like backups, alternate sites, automatic failover, automated retry, etc. add so many parts that things seem like they are always breaking somewhere.  With the right design, the system itself does not fail. But damn, there is a lot to monitor and fix all the time to make that larger failure not happen.  Yep, that is #IPAWS; highly reliable, very resilient, and aways with some issue somewhere causing a problem.  But saving lives every day.

An NPR report on Wireless Emergency Alerts saving lives in Illinois:

http://www.npr.org/2013/11/20/246274989/early-warnings-saved-lives-in-weekend-storms

NWS via IPAWS  for Cellular Carrier Broadcast.  YES!!!!!

I am temporarily off IPAWS support until a continuing resolution is passed.  Hope to be back soon.

I want to be sure that no one confuses my blogs and Twitter accounts that access the FEMA IPAWS Production Public Alert Feed as official FEMA outlets.  They are not.  I am not paid by FEMA to run them.   I do have an MOA with FEMA to access the production Public Alert Feed.  The blogs are my own separate work.   The posts are run from my non-government, personally owned, computer to a blog host that is also not run by, or contracted to, the U.S. Government.

One other note:   The example blogs are actually subject to downtime due to local power failure ( my UPS lasts about 2 hours).  I have a backup on a thumb drive, so I can restart it from any machine that I can get to with access to the internet. I have a laptop ready.  Not your classic active-active redundant operational capability, but the best I can do as a one man band.   If I were to set one of these blogs up for a customer, it would be up to that customer to determine both retrieval customization and  what level of resiliency they wish to have (and pay for).  All levels are possible.

Example Blogs:
1. All recent Tornado Warnings and Flash Flood Warnings in the U.S can be found at http://weatheralerts.alertblogger.com and/or follow @ipawsweather on Twitter.

2. All recent IPAWS Public Alerts affecting Virginia’s First Congressional District can be found at http://va1stipaws.alertblogger.com and/or follow @VA_1st_IPAWS.

3. All production non-weather IPAWS Public Alerts can be found at http://ipawsnonweather.alertblogger.com and/or follow @ipawsalerts.

I have a new offering for all who do alerting using the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). I can create a combined blog, tweet and RSS functionality for your alerts as an IPAWS COG, or for any set of IPAWS Public Alerts. The capability works independently and also as an add-on to any IPAWS capable alert origination software. If you have an IPAWS COG, I can make it work without any special integration effort. If you have software that creates CAP alerts, I can build a connection to that software, depending on the interfaces it provides. If you have your own Facebook Page or Twitter Account, I can connect to that. If you have your own WordPress blog, I can use it for the connection. Or I can provide you with whatever you need. I can do it for messages you originate or, if you are an information consumer only, I can support that for any IPAWS Public alert. I can host the connection for you, or you can host and I will help you set up.

Examples:
1. All recent Tornado Warnings and Flash Flood Warnings in the U.S can be found at http://weatheralerts.alertblogger.com and/or follow @ipawsweather on Twitter.

2. All recent IPAWS Public Alerts affecting Virginia’s First Congressional District can be found at http://va1stipaws.alertblogger.com and/or follow @VA_1st_IPAWS.

3. All production non-weather IPAWS Alerts can be found at http://ipawsnonweather.alertblogger.com and/or follow @ipawsalerts.

Please note: This is a grandpaham.com offering and is separate from my support to IPAWS origination vendors. The IPAWS connection tech support is free (as I am paid for it by FEMA) to such vendors. This new capability will be priced according to the complexity of the solution to be provided. It can be inexpensive. Any time spent on customization will necessarily raise the price.

Finally received my first real live Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) on my AT&T iPhone. It was a FlashFlood Warning. I live on very high ground, but do often travel a flood prone route close by. So, the alert is appreciated.

Actual Tornado video with #WEA alert sounding in the background! washfm.com/player/?mid=23…