🚀 go-pugleaf

This is a bit long, but I'd rather fill in all of the details than let 
this keep going on any longer.I've resisted posting anything on this 
subject, but since nobody who was "there when it happened" has posted, and 
it seems so important to all of you, I guess I'll chip in with some facts.

First, for those not from the area, the Cupertino-Sunnyvale-Los 
Altos-Santa Clara-Mt View areas are small communities and all kinda sit 
near San Jose, about 20-30 miles north-east of Santa Cruz, about 50 miles 
south from SF. 

The news kept showing those areas which were hit hard, namely, SF, 
Oakland, Santa Cruz and Los Gatos.  However, what they didn't show was 
that most of the areas named above got minimal damage.  I count myself as 
very lucky, not one thing broke in my apartment, and I had power restored 
later that first night.  There just wasn't any of the mass destruction you 
see on TV going on down here.   I don't know why, but I'm sure it has to 
do with the ground in these areas and where they were in relationship to 
the motion of the quake.  "There but for the grace of God go I..."

In article <18836@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> c8s-an@franny.Berkeley.EDU (Alex 
Lau) writes:
> >[ someone says that DA3 is sound ]
> This is what bothers me... if it's structurally sound, why such a hurry
> to renovate? Just a thought...

Because a building can be structurally sound without being "workable."  
While people are repairing stairwells, drying floors, putting back in 
glass, etc, it can be pretty impossible to work.  The most important thing 
was to get people out and into a situation where they can get their work 
done.  And once you have all of the people out and working, why not take 
the chance to upgrade the building, rather than moving them back in and 
disturbing them again later?

DA3 wasn't going to fall down, but with wet floors, stairwells that needed 
work and glass that popped out, it was going to be more than a week before 
us folks in system software could work well.  In addition, they have said 
that the renovation of the building can now take place in about 1/3 of the 
time that it would have with people hanging around in the building.

> The reason I (and many others) are so interested in DeAnza 3 is its
> importance in research & development, especially in the development of
> new System software.

People seem to be hinting that the problems in DA3 are somehow effecting 
system software.  Okay, let's clear that up once and for all.  I'm in 
system software.  I was on the 4th floor of DA3 when the quake hit.  

Facilities:
By *Sunday* I was out and in my new cube across the street, along with 
every single other person in system software.  The move was going to take 
place in the November-December time frame anyway, but got moved up a bit.  
It would have taken longer to clean up the 4th floor of DeAnza than it did 
to move us across the street.  And this way, we wouldn't have to clean up, 
and then lose more time moving when November-December rolled around.  So 
after the move, it doesn't matter *what* happens to DA3, we are all out of 
it and working.

Software:
The file servers were all intact and all of the source code is just fine.  
It was all backed up off-site on tapes anyway, but none of the servers 
were lost, so backups didn't need to be brought in.  And since everyone 
backs up on a daily basis to the file servers, anyone who lost a hard disk 
couldn't have lost more than a day.  In addition, since projector is used 
to keep track of the projects, you basically have n+1 backups of the 
software, where n is the number of people working on that project and 1 is 
the file server copy.

Lost engineering days:
Many (myself included) worked at home during the forced days off.  I can 
only watch MTV and play my Sega for so long without going nuts.  :-)  I 
took the chance to catch up on design work and some investigation that I'd 
been putting off.  Since I have a machine at home, I even took the chance 
to write some new code.

If this still makes you think that Apple is somehow "covering up" 
something about the quake, then I think you're making much more of this 
than it is.  And if you really think that we would have done something so 
silly as not having archival backups of all of the ROM and system software 
sources off-site,  then you are just plain wrong.  Apple is a California 
based company, and as such, part of the cost of living in this area is 
being prepared for such events.

Those at Apple who needed to be prepared were.  As mentioned before, 
Facilties, Telecom, and the hardware support groups did a wonderful job 
and worked some killer hours to make this move happen *faster than a 
normal move does* in a situation that wasn't really the best.  Huzza!

 Tom Dowdy                 Internet:  dowdy@apple.COM
 Apple Computer MS:81EQ    UUCP:      {sun,voder,amdahl,decwrl}!apple!dowdy
 20525 Mariani Ave         AppleLink: DOWDY1
 Cupertino, CA 95014       
 "The 'Ooh-Ah' Bird is so called because it lays square eggs."