Spring madness

Updated July 1, 2000

Back in December 1999, officials of the city of Daly City told residents of 18 homes on Westline Drive that they feared a landslide would destroy the homes. They produced a report from a geological engineer that said that in the event of even a "moderate" earthquake, the homes would collapse. Another year or two of heavy rains would cause the earth underneath the homes to slide.

The solution to this problem was a $25 million to $30 million retaining wall; the city officials pointed out they didn't have the money for such a project and neither did the state nor the feds. Even with hyper-inflated Northern California real estate values, 18 homes weren't even worth half of the money needed.

We lived in one of the 18 homes.

A raft of news stories then ensued -- I was on national TV and four of the five local news stations (I always knew I'd regret skipping those Spanish classes in junior high; the only station that missed talking to me was the Spanish-language station).

As renters, Shirleen and I had a number of options: In January, we decided that it would be a good idea to start looking for a new residence, which would continue to include an office for me. We elected to look for a home to purchase and decided on Pacifica, a town just south of Daly City on the Pacific Ocean side of the S.F. Peninsula hills.

As we were looking for a home, the landslide threat became more real. On Feb. 17, the local natural gas utility turned off the gas to 20 of the affected homes because its engineers believed that the shifting soil was causing too many gas leaks. In California, most homes use natural gas for heating, cooking and hot water. So, from Feb. 17 until we moved (almost 40 days) we took camping-type showers and shivered in front of electric heaters. At this point, city officials "yellow-tagged" the homes; this designation means that residents have been informed that they are living in unsafe lodgings.

Many of you know that I am an avid model railroader and my friends in the model railroad community came through for me -- we held a nice "destruction" party one afternoon and took down my entire layout and packed it for moving.

In the only stroke of good luck in this story, we found a suitable abode in our price range relatively quickly, in about four weeks. As the owner also wanted a quick close, we were able to set it up to take possession of the Pacifica home in mid-March.

Almost simultaneously with escrow closing on the new house, Daly City officials announced that they would "red tag" the now-21 homes, with an effective date of April 17. This designation meant that all the homes had to be completely vacated by that date. Since I had a business trip starting April 15, we had to be out of the old house even earlier than I had planned.

We went into high gear at the new house and spent two weeks replacing the galvanized plumbing, repainting the entire upstairs, remodeling a bathroom and laying new carpet. We moved into the new home on March 27.

I left my office in the Westline Drive house, intending to get settled in the Pacifica home and then move. I worked there March 27 through April 7.

The plan was that the movers would come at noon Friday, April 7 and I would keep the web and mail servers there over the weekend. At the same time, I would move a second set of machines over to my friend Chris Gulker's house, where he had generously offered to host my machines until DSL was installed in the Pacifica home.

I arrived at the office at 5:30 a.m. to finish packing and found that six of my seven computers had been stolen. Missing were the desktop machine, the laptop machine, the web server, the mail server and the two backup servers that were going to go to Gulker's.

Also stolen were a 20-inch color monitor, the DSL modem, a spare ISDN modem, a tape drive, a Jaz drive, an external 4-gigabyte disk drive, a 56k modem, my telephone headset, the fax machine, the credit card machine, the postage meter and a CD player. My wallet, my checks and my 35mm camera and spare lens also were taken.

Left were only one mail server, the laser printer, a spare monitor and a stereo receiver. Of course, they hadn't taken the furniture and there were dozens of packed boxes still around.

I immediately called the police and they spent about 30 minutes at the "crime scene" as I began to call people and do things like cancel credit cards and stop checks. I ordered a new tape drive by telephone -- I had backup tapes and they were safe in Illinois. I also postponed the move.

It appears that the burglars had been casing the joint and had noted that there was nobody living in the house (I had left lights and radios on in the living quarters, to no avail). With the help of Mike Middlesworth, I determined that the servers were still operational at 4:30 a.m.; when taken with the fact that some equipment wasn't stolen and that a Venetian blind over a window with a view of the driveway that had been closed the night before was open halfway, I have to assume that I startled the burglars and that they ran as I drove up. They apparently entered through the home's front door, as it was standing wide open when I got there.

I chatted with my ISP throughout the weekend and we finally determined that it would be best to not attempt to reinstall the DSL. Gulker said that I could move to his server farm at any time and if I needed equipment, he could lend me some.

Unfortunately, I did not have insurance.

Fortunately, I did have some good friends (as did Shirleen) and we begged and borrowed enough equipment to get back on the air (which we did on April 12). I won't name names, but a laptop, a potential desktop machine, a monitor and some server equipment came to me on semi-permanent loan. My thanks to those who helped.

I had thought it would be relatively simple to get the backup tapes that I faithfully made each week and restore them to the "new" equipment. Problem No. One was that because of the stress of the move, I had elected to skip the April 1-2 backups. Also, previously scheduled obligations (including cleaning out the residence and moving some last residential stuff) kept me from getting off the ground until Monday. My lack of familiarity with how the backup software kept me from beginning to restore tapes until Tuesday and I didn't really get everything operational until Wednesday.

There were other minor irritants. On the second night in the new house, one of the cats kept escaping and I stumbled, fell and skinned my knee retrieving it; my cell phone developed some type of problem and had to be replaced; the phone company didn't handle my order correctly; the cost of my plan for adding telephone and data cables coming into the house was off by a factor of almost 1000 percent; the old landlord wanted rent money for the time we lived in a cold, unstable house; for a variety of reasons, my office in the new house wasn't finished by the time the move had to happen, so I have had to put all my files and furniture into storage until the trade and craft people finished, and my diabetes has reacted to all this by keeping my blood sugar perilously low. In addition, it turned out that the telephone database regarding the length of "local loops" (the distance from a residence to the nearest central office) was incorrect and I could not get DSL, which a new ISP neglected to tell me until the day the line was due for installation -- six weeks after the order -- and I called up to ask where they were. Suffice it to say, I ceased doing business with that ISP and went back to my old one, who was willing to provide inexpensive co-location services and ISDN access; too bad the phone company wanted 15 working days to install ISDN at the house.

Then we had NEXPO and then I got in a two small wrecks and then Shirleen had elective surgery (she's doing great, thanks for asking).

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Surprisingly, when 28,000 telephones on the Peninsula went out in late June (which the phone company says may last for months), I wasn't effected.

I tell this story mostly so that I can post it and then don't have to tell it over and over again; but I also tell this story to thank the dozens of individuals -- ranging from close friends to relative strangers -- who have helped me and Shirleen through this arduous couple of months. I don't want to start listing people, because I'll undoubtedly leave someone out (not to mention one or two people may have exceeded their authority in getting me computers), but you all know who you are.

Even as late as July, I was still getting back on my feet. Thanks for your patience and remember this: a house, a computer, a postage machine, a camera -- these are all just things. The important part here is that we're OK and we have good people around us who are willing to help.

Thanks to one and all.

\dmc