BOFHJournal - April 2009

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30/04/2009 [16:30] I was out rowing last night with the beginners (they needed a sub) and out again at the crack of dawn (actually before, being rudely awakened by the alarm and down at the boat house before 06:00) this morning. Once in an VIII, once in a 4+. Neither outing was brilliant but they were interesting for how each crew reacted (or didn't) to boat balance and calls from the cox. Surprise of surprises I've actually got a seat in the Vets boat on Sunday and Tuesday with a potential option for Saturday morning too. Although I think I want at least one morning over the weekend for lazing around so I'll pass on that. I cycled two bikes home last night too, which was interesting. A quick minute with my replacement allan key multi tool once I got home and the levers were in the right place for me to feel comfortable about using them... Now all I need to do is use them. I'm not quite sure where/when at the moment. I should look for some AR or MTB competitions and get myself along to them. The problems are mainly transport to and from and whether or not I need body armour (AR mountain biking usually doesn't which is good as I don't have any). Everyone acknowledges that work is currently pretty dull. Even my boss only really has meetings to go to at the moment. Still, we know work is coming as the calendar/scheduler is loaded up like a machine gun about to fire work just as soon as the days count down. We're just preparing, getting scripts in place and generally making sure when the need arises we're ready to go. Speaking of ready to go, I think I'll head off early and go for a quick jog with Kris before people come over for the evening's food and filmage.

29/04/2009 [16:55] It's happening. The machine I set up for two people to do some sandbox stuff on is now getting used by more and more people. I'm fairly certain that someone is going to put something important on it shortly and suddenly it'll become and essential part of the server infrastructure despite my best efforts and it being a desktop computer on top of a set of shelves in someone's office. I've had to write basically a Terms & Conditions email and send it to all the users (that I know about) saying, basically, that I might turn off the machine at any time and jump up and down on the hard drive in spiky boots. Even so I still don't think they got the message. I cycled both bikes into town this morning. I'd only hoped to go down the road to the closest bike workshop but they were booked up until 8 May for repairs and such like. As a result I had to pedal right into the centre of town before I could find a place that'd fit my new M530 STi brake/shifter levers. I didn't need them per se but my previous bike (which got stripped at the train station a few years ago) had them and I'd really liked them. Plus they were kind of a present for surviving the downhill and 4 hour enduro mountain bike races a few weekends ago. It was good I got them so cheap as the labour for fitting them wasn't that much less than their cost. I know I could have fitted them myself but having someone else deal with the cables, getting the grips off and on again and basically getting everything working right saved me a lot of time that I don't have spare at the moment. Now I just have to get out and use them. I'm off rowing this evening with the development squad. I'm taking any offer of a seat going at the moment as my squad really don't seem to be able to pull anything together right now and I really want more water time. I jogged into town at lunch time today to pick up my bike and was pleasantly pleased to find that while there was a noticable ache to my left knee it didn't seem to be that bad. I'll give it a bit more time and see how more rest works before subjecting it to road pounding again. Work is basically nothing for the moment with a flurry of activity coming next Wednesday (five machines to reinstall). Between now and then I guess I'll be doing some server patching, writing more documentation and keeping an eye on what the web team are doing.

28/04/2009 [16:55] The day started pleasantly, if with a little bit of confusion on my part, swiftly dealt with by Kris. There was also some morning exercises and the minor joy of not needing to make a packed lunch because it was burrito day. It really is the small things sometimes... Anyway, today has been another one of those vaguely lacklustre days work-wise. I don't have a lot on at the moment so I find myself doing small tidy-up jobs, installing bits of software for people and running up a quick install of RHEL5 for two of the web team who need a bleeding edge Ruby/Rails installation to break things on. Lunch with Kris and Cormac and Abi and Shaun was fun as we got to stare at small birds (goslings, ducklings, etc.) for an hour or so in the sun. That's about it, I guess. I'm off the the gym with Kris this evening to do a pure cardio workout to compliment the 40 minute uncoached coached erg last night which was depressingly hard.

27/04/2009 [16:40] Today was another day when we got up in time to go to the gym before work. My right shoulder/lat has been aching on and off all weeekend (but oddly not when cycling or carrying something in my left hand). I didn't push it in the gym and now it seems to be on the mend somewhat, finally. This is good as I've got a coached erg session this evening and I actually want to be able to finish it. I had rowing on Saturday which was OK, I suppose. Nothing special or out of the ordinary. I'm still not sure whether I'm getting enough water time to make the standing order I have set up with the club value for money but, well, we'll see what the summer brings. Sunday was Kris and I getting out on bikes and cycling to a National Trust property about ten miles away for walking and picnic fun. We even came a different way back. She took photos, I didn't and I still need to put up the Cotswold photos up (sorry). I'll try and do that tomorrow. I'm sure more stuff happened over the weekend but... no, hang on... Kris and I went out for a meal in town on Saturday night. A lovely Thai restaurant I haven't been to in ages. The food was lovely and I didn't over eat either, which is something I'm trying to do a little more (not over eating, not actually over eating) at the moment due to somehow gaining weight in the last few weeks and even over the IROC weekend. Anyway, getting to the gym again, coached ergs tonight and hopefully trying to run again without a painful left knee on Wednesday could see me getting back into proper shape again. I wonder if I'll get to do the Keswick Open5+ thing in a couple of weeks... consider

24/04/2009 [27/04/2009 10:10] Sorry, I meant to write this on Friday afternoon but I was handed an interesting task to get up and running before I left for the day. Given I needed to get out of the office by 16:30 and I was handed it at 16:00 it was a bit of a rush job. Basically it was setting up a Logitech Quickcam Pro 5000 to record images once a second between two times during the day under linux. I ended up with a script, a cron job or two and the linux-UVC v4l2 compatible device driver. The day started with me in town reinstalling two machines which the project developers decided actually needed to be RHEL5 rather than RHEL4. These are the sixth and seventh machines to 'need' reinstalling with another OS than the one which was originally slated, but it doesn't matter as my kickstart routine is now a slick and well-oiled machine.

23/04/2009 [16:35] I tried running with the AR group last night. After fifteen minutes of running my left knee began to make mention of the fact that it wasn't keen on the activity it was being asked to undertake and I had to stop. While this meant I didn't get a run in, it did mean I could cycle home slowly in lovely weather and get dinner ready for Kris when she got back from her running club. That was nice as she's been doing most of the cooking recently and it's always a good idea to try and even things up a little where possible. As an experiment we got up at 06:00 this morning and headed to the gym before work. Aside from feeling a little dozy to begin with (as well as feeling quite out of shape and a little heavier than normal) it seemed to go quite well so we're probably going to try it again, maybe on Saturday morning. Although I will have to be down at the boat house for before 09:00 to get in a boat and row, too. Otherwise, today I've been helping clear up the mess created by programmers and developers who somehow misconfigured mail server settings after they'd initially seemed to get them right. Over 1000 emails went out which shouldn't have. I've also been doing configurations for the machines I have to reinstall tomorrow morning, having lunch with Kris in the sun (I think I need to start carrying my sunglasses for the glare we're getting as sunlight at the moment) and trying to find out why Red hat haven't activated my new RHN subscriptions. My right latissimus dorsi is still playing up at the moment. It's beginning to to be quite annoying now. I don't recall how I managed to make it happen and I hope it goes away soon. Tonight it's Tesco, Thursday and crispy, battered/fried squid and other take away Chinese food.

22/04/2009 [16:00] Back in work today. Not a lot happening at the moment so I'm catching up on updating our Nessus installation with new versions, etc. I'm still waiting to see if we're going to re-purchase a ProfessionalFeed thingy (which I think we have to if we want to keep up to date). Other than that there was another wonderful opportunity for lunch with Kris on the grass and an afternoon to contemplate missing cables and AR training tonight in light of an unhappy left achillies tendon which seems to have occured in the last 24 hours or so. We'll see how it goes.

21/04/2009 [22/04/2009 - 15:45] I was ill today so I spent the day at home. Aside from recouperating I actually managed to tidy the house and garden a bit. By the evening I was capable of leaving the house without worry, so Kris and I went for a light picnic on one of the greens. That was nice. I had an early bed though.

20/04/2009 [17:10] I got back from IROC on Sunday and boy am I tired. It started off on Friday with a long drive to the Durham Dales. Unfortunately, owing to the time we set off we didn't get to put the tent up until gone midnight. This didn't matter as we all dropped off to sleep fairly quickly. In the morning, after a bit of food we set off on the first race of the day, a 15km fell run over some very tough ground. That did some serious damage to my knees within about seven kilometers and I was feeling pretty damaged by the end of it. This meant that the next two events (orienteering) had to be conducted at a little less than maximum speed so that I didn't do anything permanently debilitating. As such I came somewhere towards the bottom of the field after my mid-table effort in the fell race. Having recovered a little I felt I was able to take part in the night time mountain biking time trial... which went quite well considering I'm not the world's best downhiller. After that though I just couldn't face the prospect of another knee-pounding fell run, this time in the dark so I sat that out and got some rest instead (although I didn't get to sleep until everyone else got back and the 'live band' had fallen silent). It was surprising just how much I needed to eat after each of the events. After the second orienteering session someone else in the team actually sat me down and made me some couscous before I collapsed. Sunday morning was the 4 hour enduro mountain bike. It was a seriously tough big lap/small lap/big lap/small lap/lather, rinse, repeat course. There were some really impressive downhill sections through the forest and some long and painful uphill sections. There were a number of times when I got full-leg cramps (couldn't bend my knees, couldn't come off my tip-toes). I think that might have been down to not enough salts during the course of the day. Anyway, to cut a long and badly narrated story short (sorry, I'm still a little spaced) I ended up doing five of the six events I'd entered for, finished just above mid-table and still have the use of my knees. Oh yes, and I lost everything out of my saddlebag when, in an exhaustion-induced haze I forgot to zip it up again after taking a cereal bar out. I am therefore now missing one bike tool and one brand new inner tube. Luckily I didn't need either of them during the course of the race. On the journey home I convinced everyone to stop for a Burger King at a service station where for the first time in living memory I actually asked for and spread salt all over my fries before scoffing them down with an XL Bacon Double Cheeseburger. It tasted even more wonderful than usual for only having eaten sugars and sugar-based things for the previous 48 or so hours. Not that I disliked the excellent home-made cereal bars and trail mix that Kris made, but sometimes a little bit of protien and carbohydrate really are necessary. I know this was a poor writeup, and there are no photos either, but you can probably get a bit more information from SleepMonsters if you really want. I'm off into town to meet Kris and then laze around in Borders until it's time to go and have Kerala food at a lovely restaurant.

17/04/2009 [14:50] I pretty much finished packing last night after Kris and I had been to Tesco to get an imperial buttload of nuts, seeds and fruits for my trail mix. It heaved it down with rain on the way home but we dried off fairly quickly. Kris became a whirlwind in the kitchen and with very little help from me whipped up two batches of home-made cereal bars and a crustless quiche which we dined on both last night and for lunch again today. She really is super-smashing when it comes to cooking and stuff. Other areas too. I'm very lucky. Work has been quiet recently, so I've been catching up on a few things to fill in the time. One of those things was vacuuming the server room to make it look all shiny for management to poke around it on Monday. Between now and then there's a cycle across town with a big rucksack, a drive to Durham, two days of extremely strenuous activity at the IROC and a drive home. At some point I may even get to wash. See you next week.

16/04/2009 [16:30] It's a good job I'm not exercising today or tomorrow because I think yesterday's 6km lunchtime run, 1.5 hours gym and an hour of night time mountain biking seems to have made me feel quite tired today. Happily, I think with tonight's early sleep and a relaxing half a day tomorrow (the early evening and night being a bit more stressful with a drive up to Durham and pitching a tent in the dark) I should be as fit as I can be at the moment for the weekend's activities. We'll see on Monday when I report back (hopefully in on piece). Last night's mountain biking was pretty fun. Turns out the lights I've been loaned are really astonishingly excellent. And things will be even better when I couple them with the head torch I've also been given for the duration of the weekend. I have to say, once the most urgent house repairs cost is out of the way I may have to embark on a short period of intense research and purchasing of outdoors/mountain biking related items. Ones that'll last me for a good few years, if not longer. I really should make a food shopping list for this evening and then get out of here, home and to Tesco. I need to do pretty much all my packing this evening as I'm off out of here around about 15:30 tomorrow afternoon. Batteries look charged and hopefully all of my clothes have been washed (thanks to the wonderful Kris). See you tomorrow for a short day.

15/04/2009 [16:55] There was supposed to be a run/cycle last night with the AR crowd but we ended up just doing a cycle instead. It was pretty good actually, although I wish I hadn't had my locks with me. A positive outcome of the evening was also that I got to borrow a Blackburn X8 light system for the weekend as well as a far better head torch than I current have. It's just a shame I have to give them back next week. Still, with my run at lunch time today and a late night cycle tonight to check that everyone's getting decent coverage with their lights it should all be good. Not much has happened today otherwise. We leaned over the new rack here so we could fit proper legs this morning. That required a pallet lift truck and a few strong guys while someone screwed in the feet. It all seemed to go off without a hitch, which was nice. Other than that I think you're all up to date except that I haven't put up the photos from the weekend yet, there's a ton of washing up (and washing) to do this evening and my new saddle bag arrived just in time to fill it with a spare inner tube, a cereal bar and some tire irons this evening. Hurrah! I should go and meet Kris and try some more cycling on slick tyres in the wet.

14/04/2009 [16:40] What a brilliant Easter weekend and birthday! Friday - of course - started brilliantly with a lovely amount of presents from Kris and my family. After that we finished packing, went to Tesco and then cycled out to collect the car and on returning to the house threw the rest of the stuff in and got the hell out of town. The drive across the country was almost completely incident free, even using Google directions. We eventually got to Shipton-under-Wychwood and our accommodation for the weekend and settled in. It was a fabulous place; kind of like a large studio apartment with a nice big bathroom and a brilliantly equiped kitchen area. The next few days were spent relaxing, running up and down actual hills, cycling everywhere (the car was only used to get us there and back, and yes we had looked into trains and it just wasn't going to be economical, especially not with the amount of food we brought (self-catering)) and enjoying only one meal out (even if it was damned fine). We both had an absolutely fabulous time even if our sleep wasn't of the finest quality due to the pillows and the sun didn't ever really shine per se. What we did do is come back with a bucketload or two of wonderful memories and a greater appreciation for the lower gears on our bikes! Having come back fairly early on Monday we were able to get some housework (mostly washing) done and I was able to convert my old mountain bike to a much more road-orientated setup. As I'd finally spent some money on some slimmer inner tubes I was able to fit the completely slick tyres I'd been given free a few years ago, get rid of the shifter for my completely siezed front derailleur, take the back brakes off my old 'new' mountain bike (the one I cycled across the country on which got stripped at the train station a year or so ago) and replace the old and prone-to-jamming set on the old old bike. It's quite a bit lighter now, makes almost no sound on the road and handles very much more differently! Other than the fact that the rear cassette needs replacing it's almost like having a new bike! I'm looking forward to riding it a lot more in the near future (although tonight I think I'm going to need the off road bike again, as well as my new purpose-bought (a present from Kris) off-road running shoes as it's AR training again for this coming weekend in Durham). I'm just not quite sure what kind of grip the super-slick tyres are going to have in the wet! There'll be a few photos from the weekend coming soon. [16:45] Oh, I nearly forgot, someone posted two science fiction books through my letterbox while I was away this weekend. Completely unwrapped (although one was bubblewrapped). I have absolutely zero idea who they're from (although they are/were on my Amazon wishlist). If someone can let me know please I'll be sure and give them the thanks they deserve.

09/04/2009 [15:35] Easter (and my birthday) start tomorrow. As a result I won't be here. Instead I'll be in the Cotswolds hopefully enjoying some good weather (forecasts don't look good) cycling, running, walking and enjoying a wonderful time with Kris. I'll post some photos and stuff when I come back, some time after Monday. Today I have reprepped another two machines (one requiring a cycle into town and back due to an inability to PXE boot from the comfort of my chair here in the office. Still, it got me out of the building for a while. I also did a really lovely and relaxed 6km run and tried to make sure that I stretched my hamstrings and knees properly afterwards. This is due to the fact that the Monday run left me in a bit of a worrisome state and I didn't want a repeat of that. I think the rowing last night was actually good for me, even if two of the other people in the 4+ I was in weren't really switched on last night and caused us to nearly tip over a few times. Not that I was hugely better but I wasn't quite that bad. I put in a decent effort and learned a lot about setting smaller boats. I'm off for a haircut right now and then that's it until Monday. No more email, computers of anything like that. Brilliant!

08/04/2009 [16:15] Something of a good day today. Firstly I had an optician's appointment which meant I didn't need to be anywhere particularly quickly first thing. That's always good. Then I toddled into work to have a bit of a play with my new workstation. As I said yesterday it's basically the same setup as the old one with perhaps a little more zip here and there. Lunch was going to be a run until the fragrant Kris came up with the idea of sitting outside together to eat. So I did that instead. No contest really. When I got back from lunch there was an email from one of the developers saying that the last two Xen DomUs under one particular project were now free and I could tear down the Dom0 and rebuild it as a plain old RHEL5 server. In a way it was kind of sad to see the last of my hard-earned knowledge be flushed away... but in another it meant I got to reprep and update a server in less than thirty-five minutes from shutdown to ready to hand over. That was nice. Other than that I think I'm done for the day. I'll be heading off in just under an hour and going for a nice row in a 4+ with some people this evening. It'll make a change from last night when myself and six people took some cars out to a heath a few miles out of town and while four of them went for a nice long run among the rolling landscape I and another guy called Russ did some speed orienteering over an old course to help get my skills sharper for the IROC the weekend after next. He was fairly impressed with my abilities and seems to think I won't have (too m)any problems, which is nice. I think I should look at bike lights before this thing as the night time mountain bike race is the only thing which is really bothering me now.

07/04/2009 [15:25] I am speaking to you now from my new computer. Hurrah. a new computer for the first time since I started at this here workplace. Because of my hard work in copying over everything to do with my desktop configuration as well as my actual data it actually looks and behaves in exactly the same way as the old machine, just perhaps a little faster. Also I now have a DVD-RW instead of just a CD-RW. Other than that I'm all spanning-desktopped and thus far it seems like everything Just Works. What didn't just work last night was my left knee. After a perfectly normal (albeit hot) run at lunch yesterday I must have not stretched or flexed enough afterwards and as a result my knee was really achesome and stiff for the latter part of the afternoon and evening. This continued even after I went home and the to hash for the evening. As a result about a kilometer into the hash I turned off the trail and found Kris who was finishing her free yoga session. We made it home and spent some time making a rather lovely pair of steak sandwiches before retiring for the night. I don't know where it came from but also occuring after my lunchtime run was an absolutely dire runny nose. I don't think it was hayfever but I guess it could have been a really pollen-laden day yesterday. Happily it seemed to have vanished come the morning. I've spent the day doing small bits of systems administration, copying over files and so forth from my old machine to my new one and eating lunch at my desk so I can leave early and head to my doctor appointment for a checkup before I go running out in the countryside for some orienteering practice. Surprisingly we're having roast duck this evening. Kris is in London today seeing some collections and exhibitions and then will be coming home this evening. Hopefully I'll make it home in time to help cook rather than just reaping the benefits of her stunning cooking skills.

06/04/2009 [16:55] Success! Success that is on the dual-headed desktop setup. Not that I've achieved it with the Intel chipset in the Dell 760 desktop (Series 4), no a very helpful colleague happened to find an ATI X300SE card complete with its dual-DVI breakout cable and just handed it to me this morning. After a brief bit of fiddling to try and put a full-height bracket on it I settled for just bending the half-height bracket's securing top section straight with the rest of the card and slotting it in. A few minutes later I had a machine-generated xorg.conf which happily displayed two 1600x1200 desktops in Xinerama spanning mode. This is brilliant and only requires a plastic-wrapped cable tie or two to make the whole deal fool-proof. Hurrah! Other than that I've done my first 6km of the year in hot weather and discovered just how much harder that can be (even if I got a pretty respectable time), done something to my knee so it aches a little (which could be annoying for the hash this evening) and been trying to make my now-useful new desktop as similar to the current one upon which I'm typing this journal entry as possible. This could take a few hours. Once that's done I'll copy over all my files and move to the new, faster machine. It was Kris' birthday on Saturday. We woke semi-early and did the whole presents thing which went down very well as far as I can tell. For a twenty-*mumble* year old she got a pretty good haul, even if I say so myself. Once all of that was done and dusted I headed out for a row and left her to a run and gym session before we met up again back at the house afterwards. The rest of the day was pretty much fun, napping and enjoying ourselves before we headed out into town to wander, buy things, have a nice drink in Borders and then head to a local Kerala restaurant to meet friends and enjoy good company. A very good day, I reckon. Sunday was just as nice, as was the weather. I didn't managed to mow the lawn as I'd hoped but Kris and I did host Kate and her boyfriend for a genuine American-style brunch with pancakes, maple syrup and bacon (also orange juice). After that we just had some chill out time and then headed over to Cormac and Steph's house for an impromptu barbeque as the sun went down and the temperature dropped. By the time we got home it was all we could do to watch a smidgen of television and head to bed. If my knee calms down I'll be hashing this evening while Kris is going to yoga and then we'll come home and have smashing steak ciabatta sandwiches before some well-deserved chilloutedness.

03/04/2009 [15:15] Rowing last night was a mixture of being pleased to be back in a boat and mild frustration at only having seven people in the boat (not including the cox) such that the boat was unbalanced a lot of the time and rather difficult to get a feel for. Still, being out in a boat again after so long was pretty good. I went to bed fairly soon after I got home, although Kris and I watched some television over dinner just to wind down from the day a little. The reason for the early night was that I needed to be at work before 07:00 this morning for the major server moves we had planned. I arrived just as the removals guys turned up. We got the kit out to their truck (with tail lift) with only one mishap; they managed to snap one of the wheels off the rack we were relocating by pushing it too hard into the slightly-angled lip of the external door's frame. Luckily we pull in power and connectivity to racks at the server room it was going to via the ceiling, so there was no problem with taking all four wheels off and sitting the rack directly on the floor. Once all the kit was in we headed down to the other server room and moved everything into the room and then with my Ops Manager in attendance (he used to be a field engineer for Digital) powered down the OpenVMS cluster, partially dismantled it and had it moved back to our main server room (along with a Sun E450). I stayed behind and racked up seven servers and a disk array, sorted the power, service processor and network connections and got them all up and running. Rather than get a taxi back to work I wandered around town for a few minutes to get some dried fruit for muffins this weekend and then headed back via Kris' workplace to give her the fruits (ho ho ho) of my labours. Since being back I've brought my blood sugar back into the normal variance with lunch, sorted a few broken bits and pieces here and generally looked forward to the end of the week and the beginning of birthday week (Kris tomorrow, me next Friday). I think it's going to be brilliant. Weekend plans: Rowing, a present or two, fun, dinner with friends, brunch with other friends, cycling if the weather's nice and perhaps some really good fun here and there as well.

02/04/2009 [17:00] Mostly today I have been assembling everything I need to take a rack and a pile of machines down to the other server room at a horrible hour of the morning tomorrow. Seven machines, one array, two switches, four fibre runs and a fair amount of cabling, power cabling and switch configuration need to be done. I also need to coordinate with the Operations Manager who will be waiting for me and the computer removals company so he can down the VMS cluster (for the first time in years) and help transport it back to the machine room here. That's going to to be deeply 'interesting'. The weather has been lovely today but after yesterday's 45 minute, 12 mile cross-country mountain bike dash yesterday evening and tonight's rowing I figured I should rest for at least some of the day. Kris is yogaising this evening so we're both doing lots of good, fun exercisey things. In light of a lot of people not being able to come to the birthday brunch thing we'd organised we've postponed it until more people can make it and are hiring a car and will be driving across the country to a rather lovely place north of Burford instead. This is for my birthday weekend which happens to coincide with Good Friday and Easter Monday this year, which is nice. Anyway, I should head off now and make sure I get to the boathouse in time. Not that anyone else will, but I like to show willing. That and it's going to be a long day tomorrow and could be extremely tiring.

01/04/2009 [15:00] Right, so I was going to tell you about the weekend wasn't I? Well to tell you the truth I'm not sure I can remember what we did on Saturday any more. I think I went to the boat house and did my job on the cleaning rota while Kris went for a run in the rain. After that we went to Tesco and got an imperial buttload of shopping seeing as we'd been pretty low on quite a number of things. While I mention it I should tell you about the excellent evening we had last Wednesday (seeing as it was a week ago) which was a trip to the cinema with home made buttered pop corn and then a fabulous meal at Pizza Express. A cheap but uber-tasty evening in every respect. As for Saturday I honestly can't remember what else happened that day. Maybe I'll remember (or be told) for tomorrow's entry. Sunday on the other hand was memorable. Kris and I toddled into London having remembered to change the clocks at around 03:00. Well, I woke up and remembered for no readily-apparent reason. Anyway, we got in in plenty of time to wander around Covent Garden for a bit before the shops opened and we spent some time drooling over and considering shells and other bits of very useful outdoor clothing. Taking a break we met one of Kris' academic acquaintances, wandered around a book shop and then took him for lunch at Tokyo Diner before heading back to Covent Garden to bid him farewell and spend more time pondering expensive bits of material. In the end we both spent a fair bit of money (my birthday present to myself was a lightweight Gore-Tex shell), checked out the ice-climbing installation at Ellis Brigham that we'll hopefully go to try in a few weeks and then made our way home. After all that it just seemed like the right idea to relax for the rest of the day... although again I'm sure we did something else, I just can't remember what. Maybe I'll add more tomorrow on that. Today started off busy. First off Kris and I were a little later leaving the house than we'd planned on account of discussing something really important, then I had my contact lens checkup (must remember to book a sight test) and came into work. Immediately I got to work putting that hungry CD drive back in the server and kickstarting it and the other one into their new incarnations. Since then I've had lunch out in the glorious sunshine with Kris, sent a few important emails, confirmed my entry into the IROC and tried to think some more about which building quote to go with. The last one is extremely confusing and I wish someone else would made the decision for me.