BOFHJournal - June 2009

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30/06/2009 [14:50] I hear nothing for over a week (even though I had access to email while while on holiday) about rowing outings and things like that. I come back on Saturday and hear nothing between then and lunch time today either. I send out two emails to everyone in the crew asking if anything is happening and only after the second email do I coincidently get an email from my boat's organiser asking for a sub for this evening. Apparently (contrary to rules laid out by the men's captain about publishing schedules to the mailing list) all outings are on unless we hear otherwise. I've now had to cancel a rather lovely date I was going to have with Kris this evening which was going to involve mojitos and lovely restaurant food and go row in what will be admittedly lovely evening weather. Not best pleased is pretty much how I'd describe Kris and me at the moment. In other news the builders came around again this morning on account of the sealing stuff around the picture rail that was put up in the room I had the lintel done outside cracking and shrinking, and the curtain rail falling down and tearing a smallish hole in the ceiling. The latter was due to the lintel blocking half of the depth of the hole the middle fixing screw for the curtain rail went in to (but oddly not the left or right hand ones). Anyway, I called them yesterday and they came out this morning and seem to have done a much better job (probably by drilling a hole right through the cast iron (or steel) lintel and ramming a dirty great screw right through it while casting it in something akin to quick-set concrete. I think it'll stay up this time around. Work consists of holding the fort at the moment. Although I did patch and reboot a machine from home this morning while the building work was going on. That went well up until the point I tried to shut down all the Oracle gubbins on it and it turned out all the scripts were crap. After bringing everything down manually and rebooting the box had some major fsck issues which took me about 20 minutes to work through before the machine would come up cleanly. Still, this is what they pay me the big bucks for. No, wait. Kris and I had a lovely meal out on the lawn (or the yard as Kris would say) on picnic blankets and beanbags yesterday. Definitely a lovely way to spend the evening. It's a shame that the house gets in the way of the sun at that time of day but the air was still more than warm enough. Other than that, it turns out that mornings are better than evenings.

29/06/2009 [15:25] Hello there! I'm back and feeling good! Kris and I (and fifteen other people) are back from Salcombe in Devon where we had an absolutely great time. The train down to London and back out again went according to plan with all the people we were due to meet up with being where they were supposed to. The drive to the house from Totnes station was short and uneventful and the house pretty much perfect for what we wanted (even if the hot tub was broken). Days consisted of getting up nice and early and going for wonderful long runs up and down actual hills into, around and back out of Salcombe and then breakfast. The rest of the time was spent walking around in the brilliant sunshine, kayaking in the estuary, going to Overbeck's (a National Trust property) and sometimes just hanging around reading and playing (get this) Croquet. A real shame about the hot tub but there was a whole barn (seriously) filled with air hockey, pool and table tennis tables as well as a sauna. Not that I got around to using the sauna when I was getting hot enough out on the roads. Food was great although I might have eaten a little too much rich/good food than was good for my waistline (but what're holidays for?) and obviously a lot of people drank a lot of alcohol. The fact that pretty much everyone took a turn in the kitchen making a meal for the rest of the house (Kris and I did fajitas and salsa and other accompaniments which went down really well) meant that food costs stayed pretty low for the most part. Kris and I did go out for a meal one night to a lovely restaurant to celebrate well, us being so happy. Lots done, some photos taken (they'll be pretty Kris-heavy I'm afraid, but she is very pretty so you probably won't mind too much) and a return journey which wasn't too bad considering the lack of booked seats and a very hot Underground. The photos should be up soonish, as well as some older ones of a weekend Kris and I had with her parents visiting Blenheim Palace a while back. This weekend just gone (well, the Saturday night and Sunday) were spent firstly in a curry house (no-one wanted to cook once we'd arrived home again), rowing with the Dev squad in an 8+ on Sunday morning and finding that the curtain rail below the work I'd had done in Kris' room had come down due to the middle screw just not being bedded in enough and the filler around the edges of the room shrinking and cracking. I've called the builder, again, to see if he can do anything about it all. Today, just like the weather on almost every day of the previous week's holiday (although one day we had a temperature inversion and a very cool (and cold) bank of fog rolled in for a few hours), has been very hot. Probably not the best day to run 8km at lunch time, even though I did it in a fairly good time of 37:45. I've decided I won't be exercising this evening (unless I decide to go Hashing) and may just work on the photos I have outstanding instead. Kris and I have a Top Gear to watch as well as some other stuff and some more lovely mozzarella and tomato salad to eat for dinner. Not that I'm actually fat, but I could really do with losing a little bit from around my middle at the moment in preparation for some rather energetic activities coming up soon. Perhaps even tonight! On a final note, Kris and I have been discussing certain issues relating to the fact that she's a US citizen and this is the UK. You know, visas and all that. It's not a simple thing to decide about but I have some thoughtful and permanent ideas on the subject I'd like to mull over for a while. Nothing's certain at the moment and there'll definitely have to be a period of time when she's back in the States and I'm here. On the order of a few months, at least. As and when I know more that's worth telling I'll let you know. Put it this way though - there's a wonderful chance things could all work out in a very lovely way. Maybe.

19/06/2009 [15:35] Hello hello! The day's barely more than half over and has been a brilliant one already. Starting off the day in the smashingest way Kris and I got to work in time to be able to leave early this evening. Its also been a really busy day at work, which is good. It's just a shame the preceeding four days were so empty. Somehow, I don't know what I did, but I got to patch three of the machines which've been needing doing for the past month. And another one was released to me as a rebuild, which was even better. I'm now only six away from having a fully up to date set of machines. This is rare. Capitalising on this productive and enjoyable morning I went for a rather fine run at lunch time and reckon I got a pretty damned great time... I just wish I'd taken my watch with me so I could be sure. It was horribly humid outside but that's the kind of weather I need if I'm going to be competing where I hope I might be in a few months. We'll see on that score... This evening Kris and I'll be going to the gym, coming home and packing for the next week away. Seeing as it looks like we won't be doing more than some bouldering because of the need to bring a complete rack of climbing stuff (which weighs a lot) I'll be hoping to remember to pack a power kite and plenty of spare clothes for running and stuff. It's going to be odd in places, this holiday. Not only are there going to be two of my exes there (one married, with a child) but with a recent death in one of the people who we're celebrating a birthday for's (by doing this thing) family there's a good chance that at some point in the next seven days someone is going to get stressed. I for one don't intend it to be me, or Kris. Part of the way I'm going to help with that is making sure I'm always doing something either engrossing or exercisey. That or being totally relaxed somewhere quiet with Kris. Given I have a few rowing regattas coming up and the possibility of some big AR events in the next few months it won't pay to get out of the groove, as it were, when it comes to cardio/muscular fitness. Also we have a hot tub and sauna. So if nothing else I can totally kick back and chill out. Anyway, everyone have a great week and I'll see you soon.

18/06/2009 [16:55] Frustraingly, after getting up at 06:00 and even suffering the wonderful indignity of being last to the boat house at 06:15 we still didn't get to go out in the beautiful morning weather because we'd failed to secure the possession of a cox cupboard key. This meant that we stood around for about half an hour until the coach arrived and apologised. We ended up doing 1min, 2min, 3min, 2min, 1min piece work on the ergs instead which was at least some form of exercise as a reward for dragging ourselves out of bed. Work has been rewarding too in its own turn as I've been setting up secure socket layer stuff for the new online course bookign and payment system we're buying in from elsewhere but still using our own URLs for. That, updating some machines, trying to work out why our firewall management station went nuts and planning when I'm going to be doing some other work took up the morning. Lunch was with Kris in the glaresome but cloudy, warm and windy midday outdoors. This afternoon has been pretty empty to tell you the truth so I'm looking forward to going home, putting a wash on and maybe, just maybe having a very wonderful and pleasant evening.

17/06/2009 [13:05] A short entry today as I'm in a meeting all of this afternoon. Rowing last night was 'interesting' in that in my new role at 7 seat (great shoes) I have even more effect over the six people behind me that I thought (and I imagined it was quite a lot). High point of the outing was me actually doing some decent rockovers which really seemed to translate down the boat. I think being at bow has really soften my technique. It's going to be good for me to be shaping how the crew moves. I slept like the dead last night but still woke tired this morning. Stress about this and that has dropped somewhat but I'm still... I don't know... very slightly frustrated/peeved at myself and some of the small but important logistics of life. I know they're going to sort themselves out, but until then I just have a tiny niggly feeling that... I'm just not doing things exactly right. Then again, what is "exactly right" and who gets to say what is and isn't anyway? I should finish patching this machine and write up my notes from my appraisal this morning. Nothing amazing or surprising to report. I let my line manager know what I've been doing, what I want to do and what I think he could do better. There wasn't anything unexpected and he's promised to punt more things my way. You know, as and when something actually appears. One of those things is some proper commercial financial stuff tied in with sales, our load balancers, some SSL certificates and people who really don't know what they're talking about. It's going to be up to me to get them to understand. This could be fun. More rowing tonight. I think it's going to rain, lots. I'm off now to go to a meeting and listen to what others of my ilk have been or will be up to.

16/06/2009 [16:55] I didn't go to the gym in the end. Nor did I cycle around the place with Cormac. Instead I went down to the boathouse to fit some decent shoes in the 7 seat that I'll be occupying for the forseeable future and then bank partied the Dev crew (which Keith is in) for a Head race on the river. It was an OK row but a lot of the crew really needs to work on their flexibility and timing (not that my crew doesn't). The logistics and other things associated with Kris' continued presence in the UK has been on my mind these last few days since her return and run-in with the Border and Immigration people. I really don't know what we're going to do to solve that particular issue except that we have to if we're going to stay together. At least in England, where I'd like us to be. As we discover more information we can make more informed choices and I guess we'll take it from there. Suffice it to say that when those kinds of things are on your mind your mojo can take a bit of a hit right at the moment when you were hoping to use it. Work is quite dull at the moment. I'm playing around with Fedora 11 on the assumption that it's going to form the basis for RHEL6 when it comes out some time next year (with the beta some time towards the end of this year). Other than that I've got rowing this evening (so leaving soon) and my appraisal tomorrow morning. Neither I nor my appraiser know exactly what we're going to talk about considering how quiet it is at the moment but I'm sure I'll think of some things to bring up with regarg to expanding my role and getting some more out of this post. For now though, I think it's time I left, met Kris, gave her a bit kiss and then cycled home in what's turned out to be a rather lovely spate of weather. Considering I actually left work early to avoid a torrential downpour and thunderstorm which never materialised I'm kind of assuming it's hiding and will dump on me and my crew this evening.

15/06/2009 [15:40] After a gym session on Friday Kris and I were all set to relax for the evening. This we did. Saturday morning I was out in the 8+ with the rest of my crew while Kris was getting her hair cut. The outing was pretty good all things considered, even if our coach wasn't hugely impressed. With two new crew members in the boat (one of whom hadn't been in a boat since before Christmas). We finished in good time so that meant that after I was done I was able to meet Kris in town for a lunch time date. We ended up going to a GBK and sitting at the back of the restaurant by the open doors/windows. After that things are a bit hazy but I think we ended up wandering around town and poking through the market before heading home. Kris had a girly evening with friends around 18:00 so I was left to my own devices with TV and books and the internet. Fairly pleasant, really. Sunday morning we were seized by the urge to tidy the garden and house in preparation for people coming over to help organise the week we're spending in the south soon. I mowed the lawn and trimmed a hedge, etc. Kris took a good section of the lavender bush back as well as trimming a chunk for her own uses. A few hours later Cat, Keith, Cormac and Steph arrived, all with netbooks or iPhones or similar and with Kris on her iBook I felt a little silly with my 2001-era Dell Inspiron 8100. Still we achieved a fair bit of organisation (something we hadn't managed to do until now due to people being away or family emergencies) as well as Kris (and to a lesser extent I) doing some baking and cooking. I mean, she did pretty much all of it, I just did some mixing and washing up and other ancilliary tasks. Oddly, after about two hours or so I felt the need to lie down for a bit of a relax and before I knew it I'd slept all the way through to about 17:30. Some combination of the previous day's rowing, the heat of both days and probably a sugar crash left me basically comatose. I was fine by the evening so we settled down to have a nice dinner of leftovers and watch some television together. Going to bed early meant an earlyish morning this morning even though we decided not to go to the gym in lieu of having a good talk about a few things on our minds. Kris had had a bad night so went back to sleep while I went to work. We'd have been going to the gym together this evening but Kris has yoga and so I've decided to go for a (hopefully) forced-pace road cycle with Cormac (if he manages to get his ass in gear). As it is I've been for a good run this lunch time in what was truly hot and humid weather. I detoured at the end to Cormac's work place to collect some bike bits (cycle computer mounting kit, brake blocks) before getting back to the office. I'm going to spend a few more hours doing this that and the other today before I head off for an evening of either cycling or gym. Hopefully the weather will stay as good as it is at the moment. Work is quiet right now.

12/06/2009 [16:20] Today has luckily been really quiet. So quiet the hopefully newly regular lunchtime 6km run has been the highlight of the day. I really don't know what else to be doing considering it's a Friday afternoon. It looks like some of my crew (the 8+ I'm in) have started to get their act together when it comes to outings and regattas. As a result we're going to be training regularly a few times a week. It's going to get in the way of a few things (like AR training and the continued climbing hiatus) for a while but we'll see what happens after a few regattas and other events in town. This weekend I've got one bit of rowing on Saturday and a whole lot of individual errands to run in town including - potentially - getting new glasses (finally) and... something else I don't recall right now. Kris'll remind me, she's good at things like that.

11/06/2009 [12/06/2009 - 16:00] Ooops, I forgot to do this before I left yesterday. Probably something to do with Kris turning up at 12:10 and me needing to be home before she was. Her 20 hour journey from North Carolina seemed to go perfectly, which was great. Once she was home, cleaned up and luncheoned she went to sleep for a good few hours while I worked from home. We had a usual Thursday where we arranged some of the stuff we'll be doing in Devon in a week or so. The morning's work consisted of dealing with some strange SSL certificate weirdness which I have no idea about. That and installing about seven new and replacement ones.

10/06/2009 [17:00] Torrential rain has a way of making you not want to go erg training after work and instead go home and get warm and dry. I'm really feeling like if no-one else from my crew is doing any exercise this week I shouldn't have to. Not that I didn't go the gym last night and I won't try and do something tomorrow too. Today has been one of those days when you do all kinds of tiny things which should add up to a fairly satisfactory day's worth of achievements. Only somehow it just doesn't feel like it. Still, talking to Kris and realising that she is, as you read this (if you're reading it today) in transit home again is a Very Good Thing. She won't get back until gone midday tomorrow because of timezone stuff, two flights and a coach ride so I've got the morning to work and then the afternoon to work from home while making sure she can relax and recover from the journey. I need to go to Tesco this evening to get flowers and food and a few other things before I get home for good tonight.

09/06/2009 [16:30] A brief bit of excitement this afternoon when it turned out one of our cgi scripts used for sending out "email a friend" links was hijacked and used to send quite a bit of spam out. We quickly shut down everything involved while keeping everything else running, purged mail queues and asked for forgiveness from our upstream mail people. Given it wasn't my group's fault and not 100% the web team's fault that seems to have been pretty easy to get. Suffice it to say we won't be allowing other scripts of that nature in the future without someone taking a look at it to check for those kinds of holes. I went to see Terminator: Salvation last night on the spur of the moment (and also because I know Kris wouldn't have wanted to see it). It was... entertaining. Not really that impressive story-wise but certainly a fun way to spend the evening. As we saw it so early (pretty much straight from work) I was able to go home and do an initial clean up of the house and Kris' room for plaster dust and general muck. Next up is vacuuming before I put things like curtains back up and reassemble her room again. Even though today was burrito day I'd intended to run at lunch time as I'd forgotten that. Still, as I'd also forgotten my trainers I wasn't able to actually run anyway. I'm going to go to the gym after work instead before doing some more housework. There's supposed to be something happening in town this evening with friends but I really don't have the energy to do two things and I really do feel like a gym session today. Finally today I've been setting up a dual-homed machine to act as a Wake On LAN server for the Windows team. Of course it's a linux box but at least I get to control it and keep it up to date. Having a machine which bridges two VLANs is never great, but at least it's not Windows.

08/06/2009 [11:45] I just got back from Peterborough and boy my arms are tired. OK, that joke doesn't work too well as I neither flew (as the pun requires) nor am I particularly tired. We drove up on the Friday evening (late, as usual for our driver) and then proceeded to do things like put up the tents and go for a pint (I don't really drink) rather than light the barbeque. As a result we didn't actually start putting meat onto it until gone 22:30. Silly. I don't think I suffered from eating underdone venison burgers but only because they were good quality. Happily no-one really drank much that night so we were all pretty OK for the 1000m races on the Saturday. It rained a little here and there but our heat (which we won convincingly) was rowed in the dry. Later in the day we took part in the final but only came last (although only five or six seconds separated 1st and 4th (us). No pot won there many of my crew decided to get completely rat-arsed Saturday night and stayed awake until gone 02:00. In fact, our Stroke was so ill the next morning he not only went back to bed between 09:00 and 13:00 (our heat being at 13:48) we also moved him out of his seat to one where he only had to follow. As a result we showed a decent turn of pace in our 500m heat by coming second and qualifying for the final. Unfortunately our chance to win a pot and break our Novice status was stymied by the crew we'd come second to in our heat. What was doubly galling was that the same club's previous Novice crew last year had done exactly the same thing to my boat (I hadn't been available to row as I was in New York seeing Kris) and gone up to the status above (currently known as IM3) then too. Still, this probably means we're in good shape for the Bedford Regatta next month where we should have a Novice race against much slower crews. The drive to Peterborough and back were pretty damned fast on account of the driver being a lead-foot. It did mean that I got to have a fair proportion of the Sunday evening to myself at home after a hot shower. I decided to make the executive decision of getting delivery food (and even stumped up the extra pound delivery charge for the order value being so low) and didn't regret it one bit. Happily I'm suffering no ill-effects this morning although I don't think I'll do any exercise this evening. Work is quiet, especially since the RAID failure which occured seconds after I posted Friday's entry has turned out to be one of those Dell PowerEdge reseat-the-drive-in-its-bay-and-the-error-stops things. I'm running some diagnostics now but all seems well. Monday, another week, but one in which Kris comes back to me, even if it is towards the tail end of it.

05/06/2009 [16:35] Obviously now that the weekend is nearly upon us the weather has taken a turn for the worse. Yes, it has been raining on and off since lunch time. This means that it's more than likely that I'll be putting a tent up in the rain this evening. I hate that. Still, it hopefully won't take too long and at the end of it at least I'll have plenty of space, probably to myself unless I'm actually making room for one or two other people. No-one's actually said as yet. Still, I'm getting picked up at 19:00 this evening and then being driven so it's not like it's much effort on my part before then. We figured out why the machine I tried to build yesterday wouldn't get its Kickstart information from the network. Turns out the network guy had put its port on the wrong VLAN. All solved the machine installed as usual. I'll pass it on to the people who know what strange and weird perl modules and other things need to go on to it on Monday. Between now and then I've got washing up to do, packing to finish and then a drive to Peterborough. Two sprint races (1000m tomorrow, 500m on Sunday) and then a drive back and boat trailer unloading. Hopefully there'll be barbeques and potentially even some winning to look forward to... but you'll find out next week whether that's the case.

04/06/2009 [15:50] Just after I got in this morning I got a mail (and a text) telling me that this evening's rowing outing had been cancelled. Frustrating, as I'd already cancelled this evening's Thursday session because of it. What I'm going to do now is run alongside the 4+ containing two of the people from my 8+ who couldn't make their own morning outing and have instead decided to use the evening slot for themselves. As I said, a bit frustrating, but it means we definitely go to Peterborough off the back of a good outing. I'm getting my hair cut today. It's just too damned hot (and would get too waterlogged if it rains over the weekend) at the moment for the amount of thatch I've got going on right now. Work continues to be quiet this week. I've got two machines to build (one server, one workstation). I should go and get one done before I leave.

03/06/2009 [17:05] Didn't get into work until gone 10:10 this morning on account of the builder(s) not arriving until close to 08:00 this morning and over running. I guess I shouldn't complain as the more time they took filling holes, sanding rough plaster down and doing mortar pointing the better job they hopefully should have done. Still, apparently they're all done now. I'm going to head home in a few minutes and take another look with fresh eyes before I go to the gym or something for today's exercise. Last night's exercise was another rowing outing. Our next to last before the Peterborough Regatta this weekend. I don't know if it was me haranguing every person in the boat beforehand, the cox getting a bit more of a grip or our coach for the evening but now and again, for significant periods of time we really seemed to be switched on. As a result, for the most part the outing went quite well. We'll see how tomorrow evening's outing goes before I express any kind of hope for the weekend's 1000m and 500m sprints. Nothing much happening at work today. I attempted to upgrade ViewVC but the new version seems like a step backwards so I've left it alone for a bit to have a think about what I want to do.

02/06/2009 [16:50] Pleasingly I've been in contact with Kris and now know that she arrived safely in North Carolina. After having dinner with Kate last night (mmmm, spicy squid) I stayed up late on my own for the first time in months because I didn't really want to lie awake for too long. Anyway, I got up this morning and went about my morning things at a leisurely pace as I was expecting the lead builder over to collect his final acro support and other bits and bobs, only to remember that he's actually due this evening at 17:15. Happily as today was burrito day I left for work as soon as I realised. Work's been pretty boring today. A couple of machine restarts and some clean up of the ZXTM load balancer configuration. I'm actually hoping that this evening's rowing session is good otherwise I'm going to be a bit peeved. It also looks like it's going to rain over the course of the Peterborough Regatta this weekend, which is really annoying as I'll be camping. Only one night, it's true, but still annoying. Rowing in the wet is also bothersome as it makes the blade handle slippery. I guess that's it for today. The Polish builder is coming over again (hopefully for the last time) tomorrow morning at 07:30 (yeah right) and then that should be it. Well, apart from the large amount of sanding and painting Kris and I are going to have ahead of us. Still, as she's decided that I'm apparently not the worst guy in the world she could spend a bit of time with she's chosen to make here here mission control for a while longer, which is nice. All I have to do now is help her get her Ph.D (not that she needs any), a job (somewhere good in every way), let her paint her room whatever colours she wants and decide when we're going to do the bathroom. That and have lots of adventures and fun and things like that.

01/06/2009 [16:00] And now we're half way through the year. No, I don't know how it happened either. Still, not to worry, everything seems to be turning out OK thus far. A case in point (I hope, after this morning) is my building work. By the end of Friday (which I had to take off as vacation on account of there not being enough work for me at the moment such that I could work from home) there were significant doubts in my head as to whether or not the new wooden planking to replace the coving had been installed with any great care or attention to things like measurements. Kris was even more perturbed by the job at that point so I texted the builder in charge in the evening and hoped for a reply before Monday morning when his Polish builder was due back to carry on with the work. Saturday morning I was rowing but that didn't go well on account of the number 2 seat's rigged coming to pieces a few minutes into the outing. That left him and me at bow setting the boat for the rest of the time on the water. Really very frustrating. After that coming home to dust and clean and tidy the whole house wasn't really something I wanted to do. Still, as Kris had done an amazing job with her part I buckled down and not only did my bit but also did a first pass on cleaning out/up my computer room resulting in two bags of stuff I never use or actually had no use for ending up in the bin. I'm sure I'll do another pass soon. Anyway, after a while of doing that I just had to get out and do something more active in the sun so I dragged out my good bike and went for a forced pace cycle for about 18 or 19km. I've done the route before so I was quite pleased to see I'd knocked about five minutes off the time compared with about a year ago. Or is it two, I don't actually know. Anyway, after that there was just enough time to have a nice shower and get ready for curry with Keith and Cat. Only Keith decided to get drunk with his rowing crew instead, which was annoying. As a result Kris and I decided to take Cat out for the meal instead. Which was lovely. Sunday morning's outing was a little better what with me having spent a good few minutes making sure the boat was ready to go at the end of the last outing. Getting back from that there was time to sa hi to Kris and have some very early lunch before she went out to have her last cream tea in a little while with Cat. I decided another cycle was what was necessary given the weather was just so truly fabulous but this time it was on my road-configured cycle so I wasn't going to push hard cycling on gravel with narrow road tyres. Soon after I'd come back and washed up I met Kris and Cat in town and once Cat had wandered off Kris and I looked around town, bought a book, drink and stuff and then headed home. The evening was chilled, especially with home made Thai food and television. It was even better once I'd called the builder, had to leave a message but had him call me back to say that he'd be coming in the morning to see what was what. This morning nobody actually turned up until about 07:45 (rather than the 07:30 we'd asked for but he swore up and down that once everything was done it would all look fine. I left Kris to mind the fort for the hour or two before she had to leave for her plane back to the US (a week and a bit, back a week on Thursday) and she reckoned things were going a little better. I've been discovering that the replacement machine which arrived on Friday for that one that wouldn't even POST desn't have the right amount of RAM, and also that the SAN has a failing battery or two. Both of these are now under control. Also, I've been for a run on basically the hottest day of the year thus far, which was lovely. I'm off out for dinner this evening and then I've got a good few days of batchelorhood to experience again. Also washing up, doing the washing, Tesco shopping and generally keeping the house all neat and tidy. No real change at all. I just hope Kris gets back to North Carolina safely.