Just out of curiosity, does anyone have any personal experience with losing utility-provided power more than, say, three times in a day?
Plenty. When power goes out around here, its going to go up and down several more times. DRA is located between several organizations concerned with real money, Bridge Information handles real-time trading feeds, MasterCard International does credit cards and Western Union/AT&T does money orders. The standard operating procedure around here is three backup generators. Nothing can ruin your trading day faster than a power failure just at the moment you have your backup generator torn apart for maintenance. With 24 hour trading becoming the norm, all day is trading day. Two generators usually start immediately, with the third one held as a spare. DRA won't make the news. But if you hear MasterCard International is down, DRA will likely have suffered the same fate. P.S. a generator hint, don't forget to keep your fuel tanks warm. As several sites in the northeast found out a couple of winters ago, diesel fuel gels at very cold tempatures. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation