verbosity

I lost my bird!

Why you couldn't get me to come out for beers early last week:

The bird in the sky that we used for terminal communications, Intelsat satellite IA-7, disappeared (communication-wise). It was only 5 years old. Satellite failures of this magnitude are basically unheard of. Playboy was even knocked off the air :)

If you want more details, news.google.com has plenty of hits when you throw keywords at it: IA-7, intelsat, lottery, playboy, and so forth. Just be careful when tossing "playboy" into search engines if you're at work...

And our last press-release describing the results of our digit-freezing icy-roof escapades:

NETWORK RESTORATION NEARLY COMPLETED

The Nebraska Lottery was just one of dozens of business and media customers worldwide affected by the Sunday morning failure of a major communications satellite.

While by Thursday afternoon, at least 97 percent of the Nebraska Lottery Lotto retailer network was back on-line, other interests affected by the failure faced long delays. One of those other customers, Edward Jones financial services, apparently has several more days to wait before communications are restored with its thousands of agent offices.

WIDE RESTORATION EFFORT
In order to restore retailer communications, the technical service staff of Intralot, the Nebraska Lottery's Lotto vendor, has worked around the clock for the past four days. Supplemented by contract technicians from around the nation, crews have worked more than 2,000 man-hours since Monday night. The effort has required crews to visit every one of more than 950 Nebraska Lottery Lotto retailers, facing winter conditions including icy roofs, as they redirect satellite dishes and reroute equipment.

Resulting from a rare satellite failure, the communication outage disrupted sales of Nebraska Lottery Lotto games, Powerball, Nebraska Pick 5 and 2by2.

The outage was made all the more dramatic by the Powerball jackpot of $127 million for the Wednesday drawing, and a jackpot Doubler promotion in effect for Nebraska Pick 5.

JACKPOT GROWING, PROMOTION EXTENDED
Players seeking Powerball tickets for the Wednesday drawing had access at about 800 retailers statewide by Wednesday evening. The full network is expected to be operational for Saturday's Powerball drawing, with an estimated jackpot of $145 million.

Originally scheduled to end on November 30, the Nebraska Pick 5 Doubler promotion has been extended to December 4. The promotion gives players who win the Nebraska Pick 5 jackpot twice the advertised amount of the jackpot for the drawing in which they won. During November, the jackpot was won twice: November 11, $158,000 doubled to $316,000; and November 20, $78,000 doubled to $156,000.

SALES REMAINED STRONG
Sales of Powerball, Nebraska Pick 5 and 2by2 tickets that were disrupted early in the week had rebounded significantly by Wednesday night. Total Lotto sales for Wednesday exceeded $389,000, which was about 70 percent higher than average Wednesday sales for the previous two months. Preliminary analysis indicates that a combination of the fast recovery effort mounted by technicians, and players deferring rather than canceling their Lotto purchases, helped to minimize potential losses. Although complete figures won't be available until after the Lottery's business week ends after the Saturday night drawing, lost sales appear to be limited to around $150,000.

SATELLITE SPECIFICS
The failed satellite, IA-7, formerly known as Telstar 7, was launched in September of 1999. It hosted more than 50 transponders, one of which was leased by ViaSat the technology provider for Intralot the Nebraska Lottery’s Lotto equipment vendor.

The new satellite, Horizons 1, is owned by PanAmSat. It was launched in September of 2003, and has a life expectancy of 15 years. ViaSat will lease space for the Nebraska Lottery on two of the new satellite's 24 transponders.

If you're really bored, buy me a beer some night and I'll relate to you in great detail how perilous some of our upper-story adventures were.