Blizzard NYC

   Due to blizzard conditions in NYC and vehicles ordered off the roads, shipping will be suspended today but should resume tomorrow.  

Snow Day NYC

   Mother Nature dropped about 26" of snow on New York City and surrounding areas over the weekend. It's generally a good idea for office building management to start clearing out the snow shortly after it has stopped falling. That happened to be Sunday morning. No such luck in our case since the garage ramp to second level parking still hasn't been cleared as of Monday 11:09AM EDT. Behold. 

Snow in NYC

   Due to heavy snow yesterday evening and this morning, our building is operating on a limited schedule and the ramps aren't all cleared yet. Due to this issue, we're not certain that package pickups will occur this afternoon. The local post offices are also closed today because of the snow but they should re-open by tomorrow. If package pickups aren't done today, they will be performed tomorrow after the roads and ramps are expected to be completely cleared.

NEWS Office Construction Work

NCS Product Synopsis 
   There's a jackhammer destroying concrete in the office above ours so we'll be in and out of the office today in an effort to escape the bone-rattling tremors reverberating throughout the building. How is this allowed during a business day? No one knows but according to the grunt jackhammer operator, "They told me to do this today. The building inspector is coming next week. Gotta do it today." Calls to the building management weren't returned.

   In other news, the crack maintenance staff in the building didn't shovel the ramp to the second floor garage properly and two vans were stuck for over an hour as snow was cleared. Comedy.

Snowbound

Update: February 13, 2014
   Due to a nor'easter that's currently in progress in New York City, please note that USPS and UPS shipments may not be shipped today in the event that trucks aren't able to navigate through the snow-laden roads this afternoon. If there are shipment issues this afternoon, please note that normal shipping should resume by tomorrow.

Datacenter fuel contamination update

The latest update from our datacenter:

For customers at our New York hosting center at 33 Whitehall: We have partially restored power to some of the areas at the hosting center. Some customers still remaint down as of 11:30PM. A possible fuel contamination is suspected as the cause of the failure to both our primary and secondary generators. Final load tests are currently being conducted before bringing the remaining customers back online. We continue to work with the generator contractor to restore service. Due to the nature of the problem there is no estimated time to repair. There is no access to 33 Whitehall at this time. Once power is restored, if you need to have your server rebooted, please send a request to support@cogentco.com with a subject of "33 Whitehall Reboot Request".

Fuel contamination issue at datacenter

Our site at ncsx.com is down again due to an morning 'fuel contamination' issue affecting the two generators which are providing power to the building.

 For customers at our New York hosting center at 33 Whitehall: At this time both our generators are down due to possible fuel contamination issues. We are investigating at this time and have no ETR. If you are an Off Net customer of Cogent in the lower Manhattan area, Verizon has reported wide spread outages due to flooding of their central offices that are impacting many services.

We're assuming the generators will be back online today and service will be restored to the servers running in the datacenter. 

Bye, Sandy

NCS Update
 «©NCSX» The datacenter where our ncsx.com server is colocated was knocked out by Hurricane Sandy last Monday night and it took about a week to get generator power restored to the building. The backup generator for the building is located on the roof but the fuel was stored in the basement which got flooded out by torrential rivers of water that sped through lower Manhattan at the height of the storm last week.

   The server's been up since yesterday so we're going to assume that things will be okay from here on out and service will continue uninterrupted. The site is being updated to a new format in December 2012 but the old archives will be kept online for revisiting so when we're in wheelchairs rolling around the office, we can still stare at pages like this one.

Generator power running in datacenter

The building that our datacenter is located in is currently running on generator power so our site at www.ncsx.com should be back up later today or Tuesday if there are any exigent issues. The lobby of the building doesn't look too bad considering that there was about 8 feet of water coursing through it last Monday night. A site redesign will be implemented in December 2012 for quicker updates that will be posted throughout the day.

Datacenter back up by 7PM today?

Con Edison won't be restoring power to the colocation center in lower Manhattan today but a diesel-powered generator will be functional and online later tonight. This means all of the servers should get power and we should be back online at www.ncsx.com tonight. This is the latest update that we have and in the meantime, we've been working on changing the format of the site for daily updates but we'll keep the old archives from 1995 and thereabouts online for perusal.

Datacenter should be back up tomorrow

Based on information from the colocation center, power should be restored by tomorrow and the servers in their building should be back up on Friday. This week's import shipments containing PS3 Tales of Xillia 2 and PS3 Okami HD are scheduled to arrive tomorrow and preorders will ship on Friday afternoon.

Datacenter still down, UPS working

The datacenter that colocates our ncsx.com server in Battery Park is still flooded but things appear to slowly be getting back to normal. We anticipate they'll be back online tomorrow. Our shop at www.shopncsx.com is hosted elsewhere so it wasn't affected by the outage. JFK airport has re-opened although Laguardia is still closed because of extensive flooding and damage. This week's import shipments should arrive on time (Thursday/Friday) since the flights are routed through JFK. Photo credit: kaitstalyn

Datacenter down, UPS down

The data center in downtown Manhattan's Battery Park where our server is located was affected by the Con Edison power shutdown last night so www.ncsx.com is down. There's no timetable as to when power will be restored but we're guessing Thursday.

Please note that UPS is not operating in our area today and the Postal Service is also shut down so packages will probably go out on Wednesday. Photo credit: jesseanggreg

NEWS Hurricane Sandy

NCS Product Synopsis
 «©NCSX» We're in the offices today but depending on how the day goes, we'll probably have to shut down early if the lights go out. Mass transit in New York City has been shut down and schools are closed. UPS and the USPS might also shut down early in the afternoon so all of their people are off the roads as the hurricane nears NYC. Due to the expected shut downs, NCS expects shipments for orders placed over the weekend to go out on Tuesday.

Aerialist Seanna Sharpe 285 Feet Over The Williamsburg Bridge

Aerialist Seanna Sharpe 285 Feet Over The Williamsburg Bridge
This summer, 24-year old Seanna Sharpe did an illegal acrobatics show 285 feet up the Williamsburg bridge (11 stories over rush hour train traffic) hanging from the double-silk cloud swing she invented.

NEWS General Updates

Snowstorm NYC    The weather isn't monstrous but it's sort of bad out there. We don't expect any package pickup delays but we'll post another update later today if UPS decides to call in their drivers early due to inclement weather.

X360 DoDonPachi Daifukkatsu Black Label - Shipping Today    An early shipment of DDPDBL arrived today and we're processing an shipping roughly 70% of our preorders this afternoon. The remainder will ship tomorrow when the rest of our shipments arrive.

General Updates

Blackout Blues in New York City The oppressive heat in NYC caused rolling power outages yesterday afternoon as millions of air conditioners competed against each other for electricity. Our office lights never went out but we did encounter some internet connectivity issues when a local Verizon facility ran into problems. Today's another really warm day and we expect some more outages when the mercury reaches its apex in the afternoon.

Nostalgia NCS We found an old folder of invoices from 1996-1997 while moving some old records yesterday. There was an invoice for the Diehard Gamefan store that used to be in Manhasset, Long Island which was run by John Park and Todd Goldstein. Another invoice was for Knight's Video Games which was in California and a bunch of others. If we have the time and permission, we'll scan the invoices and post them up for curiosity's sake. They're fairly interesting... especially the prices for the Japanese Nintendo 64 console when it was first released in the summer of 1996.