Today is 4 years since a massive earthquake destroyed Christchurch.  I was going to post a suitably depressing post about the Avonhead Park Cemetery’s Earthquake Interment Site.  But I decided that can wait.  Instead, I’m going to give you a recap of my Facebook posts from 4 years ago.  Humour under the face of adversity… Why cry when you can laugh until you cry?

17 February 2011 – careful what you wish for

well hello earthquake, was thinking it had been a few weeks since we had a decent jolt but that one was pathetic … barely worth bothering with! 

21 February 2011 – a fated IT project migration go live – it took us 8 weeks to get back onsite to do the wrap up as disaster recovery had to take priority

is crossing my fingers that we have a super smooth “go live” today on my latest project (completely new server platform)… as studies show that crossing your fingers actually make computers work properly

And it gets to lunchtime and the quake hits at 12.51pm and I post a couple of minutes after the quake hits –

Fucking huge earthquake

My workmate Brett and I head home from the client site and I post at 1.35pm

Chch people take care on the roads – people are panicking

at around 7pm after listening to sirens, alarms and choppers going over…

 we have just got power restored so am about to check out the news… I’m too scared to look.

By the following morning I posted this along with a bunch of useful but not very interesting information.

61 earthquakes since lunchtime yesterday… and I’ve not even had breakfast yet

Shortly followed by

… Robert has hit the road (by bike) to go to his Mum’s – her neighbourhood (St Albans) has been hit fairly badly.   She has water coming up through the carpet so they are going to see if they can identity/fix it temporarily.   She has power but no water – except coming up through the floor – geez some people are so fussy! 🙂

11am

am urgently in need of Reeses Peanut Buttercups… essential for the earthquake survival kit… please send ASAP!

1pm

Australia has offered any thing that we need – how about they give us back the pavlova and all those celebrities that they stole?

23rd February – a day we spent helping friends and family leave their homes or clear up the mess

funniest quote in the last few days… “at least I was wearing my brown trousers” said Mum shortly after the earthquake hit

24th February – and back to work when we realised that as much as everyone needs power, water and sewer systems, they also need their IT system urgently

this is a hugely busy day – trying to get clients back up and running – especially those in the CBD – trying to source equipment, restore data onto other platforms and get mail flowing somehow…

25th February – slept deprivation and exhaustion is kicking in

… successfully got one client relocated and up and running in Rangiora with thanks to Jamie and David … but how many dozen to go? Starving hungry and tired. Each aftershock gives the adrenalin level a boost … I’m sure its good for the heart, right?

thinks Geonet is taking lessons from the Metservice on accuracy of reporting – Geonet say no quakes from 11.15am – 5.40pm – well I must be hallucinating earthquakes in that case then. (quake3.crowe.co.nz are reporting a bunch of them during that time!)

26th February – now finding it hard to even get the essentials done (as we’d lost our hot water cylinder at home)

11am … day off cancelled – it was fun while it lasted.

6.30pm  done for the day … but on the bright side, I did have a quick shower!

27th February – looking on the bright side

well, if nothing else my workmates and I are getting very proficient on how to do disaster recovery on client systems – bare metal restores, P2V, vanilla systems with data recovery only – you name it, we are doing it…

and trying to be punny

I can stand the mormons and the seventh day adventists coming to the door but I’ve had about as much as I can stand with the Quakers

28th February

has very sore teeth and jaw… sneaky suspicious I’m clenching my teeth with stress… so back to this server restore then… 

got naked at work today (to have a shower but that doesn’t sound half as interesting)

and as the client systems start to get up and running

grateful clients are now threatening to lock lips with my colleagues – I’m keeping a low profile as there are not many clients I want to get in a lip lock with … (though I might make the odd exception) 

1st March

has decided that my Mickey Mouse top probably isn’t very appropriate in this difficult times… so I decided this morning that it’d better be my Pluto t-shirt instead

this is the longest week ever! Day 16 without a day off… and counting (apparently)

Rocky was a boulder than came through my boss’s house and became something of social media celebrity, for a short while, I was his “manager” until my boss had time to pickup the task.

thinks its a strange job I do at times – on one screen I’m doing an Exchange database repair – on the other, I’m running a fan page on Facebook as a rock… I guess thats why I like the variety in my job 🙂

2nd March

… stuff the meeting room booking resources at work – we need one for the flippin’ shower … I was 4th in the queue this morning! (was tempted to say, “gettin’ naked with my workmates” but see how well behaved I am today?)

was looking forward to hitting the town tomorrow night… but its already been hit (in a super big way…)

home alone… the night is mine to do with as I wish… I choose sleep… which I will partake in diagonally across the bed!

4th March

felt it would be really bad karma this morning not to pickup our Buddha statue that got knocked over with one of the aftershocks … and I’m getting fed up with having to keep picking this stuff up … maybe I should sell everything that gets knocked over or falls on Trademe

has just purchased my “sad cow frozen dinner for one” and is contemplating a quiet night in front of the TV with back-to-back episodes of Next Top Model eating chocolate … what’dya’know its turning out to be the perfect day!

and a short while later

wow that was a long, hard one… aftershock I mean!

5th March

why did I have to buy a washing machine, which while unusually quiet, on its spin cycle sounds like an earthquake coming?

is not looking forward to work tomorrow when the stress level skyrockets again … I’d throw a sicky but my team leader, the GM and the MD are all on my friends list

7th March

… well despite what all the fashion mags say the “in colour” is for autumn, looking around town, it appears to be hi-vis yellow or orange – just everyone is wearing it!

8th March

so you get to that point when you get a 4+ magnitude quake and only thing you do is say “that was a good one”, turn over and go back to sleep…

Apparently Chch sex workers are being “run off their feet” following the quake – according to todays paper – irony!

9th March – still busy doing DR recovery

sitting on the couch watching Star Trek and do a DR recovery from tape to VM one server and a system repair on a second – I really am a geek!

10th March

“Anyone who slept through those was probably jolted awake by a 4.1 quake at 4am. It was within 5km of Lyttelton and at a depth of 11km.” – nope slept through that – was awake at 2.40am and checking the status of one of my client restores.

11th March