Friday, October 2, 2009

tsunami clean up

Cleaning up is no fun.  When your office looks like mine does, it's even less fun.

To borrow Jer's turn of phrase, my office is fucking fucked. There really aren't words to describe it.  One of my four windows is broken with my chair halfway out of it. There is a layer of glass, mud, and books covering the entire floor.  My desk is at an angle on top of my printer and telephone.  Bookshelves, office supplies, filing cabinets, and files are everywhere.   Words like disaster, chaos, and destruction start sounding like understatements in the middle of all this.

I've spent the last two days cleaning up all the salvagable, or remotely salvagable, documents from my office.  Most files were backed up on the server, but the server was also taken out by the wave.  So the water-logged hard copies are all we have left, some of which I found wrapped around brush outside as if my office documents were used to toilet paper the ASPA grounds.

I have photos to upload, but the upload keeps failing.  Hopefully I'll be able to post some of the 300+ pictures I've taken soon.

3 comments:

Rachel said...

"fucking fucked."

i laughed. out loud.

so glad it was your office and not your house!

Julia said...

oh, me too! I can't imagine if everything in my life were in such a state.

Steven said...

I would suspect that the hard drive platters themselves are intact, especially if the computer was turned off. You might be able to remove the salt with distilled water or similar and then let it dry (I know, it is easier in the desert). If the circuit board on the hard drive is irreparably damaged, a replacement circuit board can be taken off of a hard drive (of the same model) that is working. I don't think that much water would have found its way into the drive compartment.