DF Blog

Just when we thought we had things under control...

June 14, 2011 By Julie and Craig

Bam! Another couple of decent shakes and I think it’s fair to say our confidence has taken a bit of a knock. This time however, our servers and workstations weren’t in the red zone and most importantly no-one was seriously hurt. We learnt a thing or two from the events on Feb 22nd, and for the most part we're back to business as usual.

Th fit-out of our new offices in Ferrymead was completed last Friday and we were just waiting for the internet to get hooked up before we moved in this week.... ha!

A few of the team were onsite: Greg was working on the network setup, and James and Phil were hosting the first meeting in our new swanky boardroom with new client, Rachel and Debbie from the Foundation for Arable Research, when the big one (6.3) shook the living daylights out them.

While the building is fine and no real damage apparent, the newly sealed car park is another matter - within minutes, as our people gathered their wits, the car park began to erupt into silt and water as the liquefaction kicked in - it was everyman for their cars and outta there as quick as they could before they were stuck forever.

By the next day the liquefaction had created us our very own spa pool...

Power is on to most of the city now, including our interim home offices and that plus internet is all we need. We still hope to be in the offices as soon and we can - it all just needs a bit of a clean up.

Matthew and his girlfriend have been camping out at his parents place since their apartment was red stickered in February. But Ma and Pa Rhodes got their turn this time and have been inundated with liquefaction. Catherine and Daniel got out their gummys and shovels this morning and are round there lending a hand today (we better watch it in case they get signed up by the student army!).

Our servers didn't miss a beat - they're housed in at a very nice data centre which has huge amounts of backup power and net connectivity. It's a testament to the robustness with which modern infrastructure can be built internet connections from ADSL to fibre haven't failed at all in the earthquakes... it's just the buildings and the power supplies that are the weak points.

Thanks for all the thoughts and best wishes, stay in contact... we're still here, still doing great stuff.