Dave, Good to hear from you and Happy Birthday(???). Stay safe. Regards, Bob S.
On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 3:44 AM, David Mann <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I have a few spare moments so I thought I might write an update on how things > are going here. I've been quiet lately but for good reasons, things have > been settling down and slowly returning towards normality. > > Last Monday we moved into a temporary office. The building that houses our > usual office sustained a lot of water damage after the earthquake activated > the sprinkler system. The boss has been trying to get out of the lease (for > this and other reasons) but it looks like they'll have it ready for use soon, > possibly this coming week. > > The temporary office space is working fairly well, except for the > distractions of having everyone together in the same room. The only major > annoyance is the IT situation; our main office server is still in its > temporary location and it's very slow to access files over the VPN connection. > > We are still getting aftershocks. The biggest ones are about magnitude 4.5 > and we'd be getting maybe one or two of those a day with a handful of smaller > ones, mostly around 3.5. The scientists say that the aftershocks are mostly > generated at each end of the main fault, and one end is uncomfortably close > to the city. I don't know how accurate the location data is, but when I put > the coordinates into Google Maps it sometimes shows the location directly > under people's houses in the outer suburbs! The shakes don't worry me so > much now but the noise that precedes them still gets the adrenalin running. > The sound is hard to describe, it's a bit like thunder. > > We haven't heard anything from the insurers yet. They have tens of thousands > of claims to process and a broken chimney isn't going to be high on the > priority list so we're expecting to have to wait a while. There is a silver > lining though, due to the cost of repairing or replacing chimneys we are > likely to qualify for an energy efficient heat pump as a replacement. > > You may find the insurance situation for natural disasters to be interesting. > The first $100,000 (+tax) of damage to houses is covered by the > government-run Earthquake Commission (EQC), plus another $20,000 for personal > effects. That wouldn't even cover half the value of most houses, so private > insurance will cover any shortfall if the damage is bad enough. I don't > remember the current estimate of total damage across the city, it's a few > billion dollars which really isn't too bad when you consider what it could > have been. > > I've taken tomorrow (Monday) off as it's my birthday. I also thought a four > day weekend would be nice :) We've had stunning weather over the past few > days, and I got to meet adventurer extraordinaire Steve Gurney at an outdoors > expo. I bought a copy of his autobiography because he said he'd sign it. > He's turned to coaching and motivational speaking now and the bastard has got > me thinking about goals again. I mean that in the nicest possible way, I > have tremendous respect for him and I do need a kick in the pants from time > to time. > > Cheers, > > Dave > > David Mann > [email protected] > http://www.multisport.net.nz/ > skype: multisport.net.nz > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
