BOFHJournal - May 2009

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28/05/2009 [15:05] I was in for 07:30 this morning so I could do a ZXTM switch over of the OCM server. As it turned out I got in and did the changeover right on time but the DBA didn't arrive for another twenty minutes to check everything. It didn't really matter, to be honest, except if something had gone horribly wrong. Kris and I went to the cinema last night to see Angels and Demons. I won't spoil it for you because, well, even though you're probably too sensible to go and see it it's still an amusing distraction for an hour or so. I'd been forewarned that the builders had been cutting bricks in the garage all of yesterday so when I got home I was prepared for the generous coating of red dust over everything in sight (not to mention the floor and driveway). I believe Kris has had a word with the builder today to make sure it doesn't happen quite so much today. Just doing the cutting outside with the garage door closed might have helped. Anyway, I'm off home shortly to have a word with the builders about what's still left to do. I won't be in tomorrow, or at least for half of tomorrow. Then it's the weekend, which is good as there's a lot of cleaning and probably painting to do.

27/05/2009 [17:00] With Cormac and Steph being out of the country at the moment it fell to me to help roll out VoIP phones at the place Cormac works secondarily. As a result I spent the entire morning plugging in a half dozen or so Cisco phones along with the guy from my workplace who's already done more than twenty VoIP rollouts this year already and a BT iNet engineer. Aside from it taking a substantial period of time it all went off without a hitch. Since then I've been at work doing... well, stuff. Last night was kind of weird. After thinking about getting home in time to see the builders it turned out they knocked off at 16:30. When I did get home I was confronted with the 'strongboys' holding up the side of my house over the large window... and a garden covered in a light coating of cavity wall insulation which had escaped from the house. Kris and I settled down for the evening until I had a terrible urge to get up and do something. What that something turned out to be was a cycle to the river, a 5km run and a cycle home again. Total distance: 12.7km. Total number of mayflies accidently ingested: 50+. Ick. Oh, and the builders arrived again this morning and carried on where they left off. All seems well at the moment aside from a few issues with a slightly smaller 'L' shaped lintel being ordered by the people who supplied my builder. It's probably for the best considering where the thing will be fitted and what the left over bit from the other segment can be used for. Don't worry, it makes sense to me. What is causing me a smidgen of concern is that while one builder is the guy who own the company I hired, the other appears to be a jobbing Polish man. Obviously my prejudices are showing when I wonder if he has a proper work permit, etc. Either way the guy I'm paying sometimes has a spot of bother getting across English-spoken concepts to him. I'm sure it'll all be fine though. After Kris womanfully put up with watching Star Trek with me last week I've offered to take her to see Angels and Demons this evening... Yes, yes, I know. Still, home cooked kebabs afterwards! I'd have gone to the gym but sometimes these are the sacrifices you have to make. Like being in work for 07:30 tomorrow morning rather than going to the gym then too. Maybe I'll go at lunchtime, or for a run, or something like that.

26/05/2009 [16:50] A very full bank holiday weekend. Saturday became a free-form day rather quickly when a suggested forced pace cycle with Cormac turned into a very leisurely cycle with Kris and Steph too to a local farm shop for nothing in particular. Unfortunately, on the way back Kris came off her bike on a corner owing to a rather aggressive front brake which was probably my fault. I cycled her bike (with wobbly handlebars) back to Cormac and Steph's to get it fixed while she rode mine. Doubly unfortunately she came off that too while trying to avoid a grubby street urchin who was cycling off the pavement across a junction without stopping. Cue one pretty unhappy Kris and some bruising on her legs and hands. A little bump to the head too, but nothing serious. Sunday Kris and I did a 3.5 hour cycle in brilliant sunshine out to a town about 30-odd miles distant. We'd planned to have a picnic enroute but were so speedy and excellent that we got there in time to drop things off at the lovely B&B and cycle into the town itself to have our food in the gardens of some ruins. After plenty more time in the sun and shade, enjoying the day we headed home to get dressed up in something a little less sweaty and made our way to a hotel restaurant where we'd booked a table. There Kris taught a barman how to mix a Manhattan and I had the most expensive drink I've ever had. I won't tell you how much an 18 year old Glenmorangie was in a hotel bar, but I won't be doing it again in a hurry! While the meal and company were amazing I let myself down a little by not thinking quite as clearly as I could have done. Next time I won't make that mistake. Still, it was a fabulous evening and very much something we'll aim to do again. And better next time! Monday morning started badly unfortunately. We also got word that a good friend's father had died the day before and I was being asked to do a favour. That and other things put a bit of a pall on the morning but we still managed to brighten up (as we always do, team BK!), cycle out to a near by National Trust propety and abuse our year's membership. Marvellous. It's great when you don't feel the need to completely do everything at an NT property because it's 'not costing you anything'. After a while we realised we needed to get the train home rather than cycle so headed for the station, bought tickets, got a 6' sub from Subway and then caught the train home again. The remainder of the day was basically tidying the house for the builders. I also put up another sheet over the too-thin curtains in an attempt to stop Kris and I waking up too early in the mornings. It seemed to work too (although part of me thinks we were also tired from the weekend) as Kris didn't stir until just before 07:00. After some last-minute tidying Tim the builder arrived, then left (to get stuff), his eastern european builder colleague (instantly I thought "illegal", very mistrusting of me) arrived and smoked a rollup, Tim returned with acro props for inside of the garage and he and the other guy set them up. At that point I had to leave for work so for the rest of the day Kris has been feeding me updates and taking photos now and then for me to look at when I get home. I'd have left by now but apparently even though the rain has stopped for the day (it was raining when I left) they've knocked off for the day. Still, I'm told the house doesn't appear to have fallen down and the cavity wall insulation which escaped into the garden shouldn't be too bad... I hope. More tomorrow.

22/05/2009 [17:05] Today I have basically rebuilt a box in under an hour, printed out some things and had lunch with Kris. Not much more than that, really. Oh, I wrote a really long email and went to the gym this morning. Basically a quiet and pleasant day. Which is just what I needed after the beer festival trip last night. Kris and I are off to Tesco this evening. It'll be a quiet day tomorrow followed by a 30-40 mile cycle on Sunday, a stay in a B&B that night (with a lovely restaurant date) and then some wandering around a National Trust property before either a cycle or (more likely) train home again on the bank holiday Monday. Tuesday sees the start of the building work to repair the end of my house and install lintels above three windows. I really hope nothing goes wrong.

21/05/2009 [14:45] I was in work for 06:50 this morning. A regular patch and reboot on a RHEL5 database server with some core switch work on the side. It all went pretty much according to plans but there's some fallout from the switch work which means our cacti installation is erroring somewhat and some VoIP phones were screwed up for a while. Back at the office my Rising Star compendium arrived from Amazon. I've only been waiting nine years for it. Also I've been getting our Oracle Connection Manager set up rationalised somewhat in preparation for next Thursday. I'm going to go home in fifteen minutes or so because I was in so early this morning. It means I can get to the beer festival a little earlier, which is nice. A positive side issue is that there'll not be a whole stack of washing up to do after tonight as everyone's going there rather than coming over. Last night I came home from work, made bread, put some washing on, cleared the drying racks and did all the washing up before going out for a 19.5 mile mountain bike. Kris did a 5km run with her running club which also seemed to go well so I'm very pleased and proud of her too. We were both shattered this morning - physically - although mentally we were perfectly fine. That just made it all the more amusing/annoying to have to get up.

20/05/2009 [16:40] So, the server seems to be completely kaputski. Three motherboards, three CPUs and a lot of sticks of RAM and it still remains unable to do a BIOS POST or better. After having the engineer here between 09:00 and 15:00 we've resorted to trying to get the machine replaced completely under DOA rules. I think we may have a few problems seeing as we actually took delivery of it at the beginning of March but only powered it on this Monday. Kris and I met in town for lunch today. After getting a map in Waterstones for the overnight cycle trip we're doing Sunday to Monday (Borders didn't have the one we needed) we settled for lunch and chat before I headed back to work. Kris is in town for her running club with Sweaty Betty this evening and I've got a dozen or so miles of AR off-road mountain biking between 18:30 and 20:00 myself. Anyway, I've got to get home, put some bread on to bake, do some washing up, and then put some washing on. Ah, the perils of being domestificated.

19/05/2009 [16:50] I've spent most of the day fighting/working with an engineer to discover why the server I tried to build yesterday doesn't seem to want to output anything BIOS POST or better from any of the methods available to it (serial over SP, serial over SP via SSH, VGA via Java KVM over SP over HTTPS or even direct hardware VGA). Once we'd ascertained (I'd proven) that the machine was pretty much broken in that regard we swapped out the motherboard for a freshly delivered one and loaded it up with CPUs and DIMMs. Lo and behold a complete lack of difference between it and the once we'd just removed. Complete failure to BIOS POST in any human verifiable way. This was, as you can imagine, a tad annoying. I've let him go now with a promise to bring another mother board (known new) and at least one new CPU so that we can make a start on some more maintenance tomorrow morning at 09:00. Hopefully something'll come out of it by the time I'm set to go home. Last night, while Kris was at yoga I went for a three loop run taking in a green and a common in town. Mostly on grass my knee seemed fairly OK afterwards. I did make the 'mistake' of locking my bike up somewhere where a thief decided to make off with my pump. It was OK really as it was starting to lose its puff a little when the pressure got higher. Tonight I'm rowing in someone's 4+ as as sub and then attempting to get to the cinema to see Star Trek at a not-too-obscene time.

18/05/2009 [17:00] It's only the end of Monday and I'm already dizzy with what this week is probably going to contain. In fact, thinking about it it's likely that tonight is going to be my only really free evening if the coached ergs session doesn't materialise. Which I don't think it will. Workwise, I've had to diagnose a machine as DOA, even though the service processor on it works perfectly well. Sun have said they'll ship out another motherboard (and engineer) tomorrow, which is helpful but annoying as I wanted to build the machine today so we could shift Munin aggregation from one overworked server to that one. That's work anyway, nothing much happening there. Outside of work the weekend was pretty fun. Rowing on Saturday morning, then some time in town before heading back and totally neglecting to make dinner and instead going for the takeaway option. I feel a little better about eating out because I cycled really hard in both directions to burn off a few more calories. Sunday was more rowing, then a race in which we did... reasonably well, considering. Once home Kris and I headed out to Cormac and Steph's to help her stuff some envelopes and then watch a film with free pizza. Definitely a nice gentle way to finish the weekend. This morning Tim the builder came over (thus stopping us going to the gym) but he seems ready to start the work making the end of my house not keep falling off. That should be next Tuesday after the bank holiday Monday. Kris is going to stay home for the days required so I need to give her somewhere to work while her room is out of bounds. Otherwise as there's no erging this evening I'm going to meet Kris in a few minutes so we can go into town and discuss what's going to be happening this three-day weekend, tomorrow I'm subbing into someone else's boat and then either after that or on Wednesday there might be a cinema trip in the offing to see the new Star Trek. It all depends what Kris is doing and how tired we feel. Oh, and Kris has arranged to use the return portion of her flight to/from the US fairly shortly. It seemed best that I didn't go with her for a number of reasons we spent lunchtime working through (it's brilliant when you can do that) so I didn't run then. Probably means I go running this evening instead. I'm going to cycle down to a green not so far from me and run on grass the whole way. That way I'm doing my knee as little stress as possible. Kris, as I might have mentioned, will be yogaising. I should probably head off now so I'm at her work place in time to meet her.

15/05/2009 [16:40] Gym this morning. I didn't sleep particularly well owing to not having opened the window in the bedroom properly so I was feeling a little bedraggled when we got out of the door. Perhaps it was not being awake enough to hate the fact that I was up and about but by the time the session was over I was feeling pretty energised, even if I seem to be at my heaviest weight ever. I'm not going to lie and say it's all muscle growth so I've got to find some ways to cut back on food a bit. That or get into running regularly again. On that score it was with great relief and pleasure that I finished a 6km road run at lunch time in no pain or discomfort whatsoever. Well, aside from being a bit out of breath. Going on Kris' exhortation I still had an ibuprofen to combat any incipient inflammation in my left knee but... no, all seems well at the moment. If things stay good I'm going to get back into the old 6km three times a week thing for a few weeks and they try adding in my old 12.7km Sunday afternoon jaunt as well. I'm damned if I'm going to be so far down the results on the next AR race I do. So, yes, other than that I've done a whole round of updates on pretty much all the machines I'm responsible for here (although a few had to be manually frobbed to stick with the kernels with RDAC support attached). I'm just one machine away from having everything properly updated (even if many of them need to be rebooted into a more recent kernel), at least for now. This weekend I will be rowing three times (my boat's racing on Sunday), stuffing envelopes in exchange for food, spending plenty of time with Kris (I hope) and potentially going for a long, fast cycle ride. There might even be cinema, although I doubt it as we're probably going to go on a cheap day next week instead.

14/05/2009 [15:20] Unsurprisingly last night's AR training of 15km of run/cycle did for my knee a little. Staying up late on a school night because Kris was out of town, and then getting up at 0600 this morning probably wasn't a great idea either. Still, I got my machine patched and rebooted so all is well. The early morning meant that the rest of the time between then and lunch seemed (was, in fact) three hours longer than normal. I had my lunch at 1100 and then went out for something small to be sociable with everyone else at the pub. I discovered that three machines (our first x4240 servers) seemed to have died SP/IPMI-wise. I've managed to get time to reboot two of them but the third (live server) has to wait until next Thursday when I'm patching and rebooting another box and there's a core switch upgrade. It's not a major problem, more just a little worrying as even resetting/restarting the SP didn't seem to fix it. I'm putting it down to some kind of bad interaction between the version of the SP firmware, the version of the OpenIPMI suite and the kernel the boxes were/are on. I'm off shortly as I've already put in a full working day. Kris and Tesco are calling me. Oh, I made bread last night too while I was out having dinner with Kate. Given that there seemed to be a bit of an issue with the mix this time for some reason I was wary as to what I'd come back to. It all seemed to turn out rather well though, which was nice. [15:25] Oh, it turns out the webcam I set up has done what it was supposed to. So not my job, but there you go.

13/05/2009 [16:40] OK, so no gym this morning. It was kind of a joint decision between Kris and myself as we just weren't feeling it. I'm contemplating going for a run/cycle this evening (even if it is raining) before dinner out so that should be my exercise for the day. Instead of going to the gym we sat on the floor of Kris' room and talked about Stuff. That was probably a good thing as it opened up all kinds of new avenues of thought, discussion and possibility. Kris headed off to see her parents and I went to work. Nothing much happening here today as basically it's all about tomorrow and the very early morning patch and reboot of one of the database servers that's about 232 RPMs out of date. Of course, its sister server is in exactly the same state but that doesn't get patched until a week tomorrow. The fact that the former server crashed yesterday morning with a bug which I'm damned sure was fixed in one of the kernels which has been released since this box was last patched is, I guess, neither here nor there at this point. I guess that's it. AR training if I can be bothered, dinner out, an evening and night to myself and a very early morning (with no gym tomorrow).

12/05/2009 [16:40] The server that I was having trouble with yesterday seems to have decided to play ball now. After running SunVTS on it over night there have been no memory or Hyper Transport errors at all. This is good. As such I've commissioned it and handed it and the four other servers over to the development team to do whatever horrible things it is they do to my machines once I've set them up. We went to the gym again this morning. I have to say I'm getting into this early morning routine a bit more now. It's quite nice to know that every evening is free of gym stuff and is therefore completely ready to be already filled with other double bookings for rowing, cinema, AR training and dinner dates. As it is I've had to decide against going to see the new Star Trek this evening as I don't think I'm going to get back from rowing with the vets until too late. Still, rowing with the people I'll be out with is definitely worth waiting a week or so to see a film at cheaper-than-full-price. Plus Kris gets a bit of an evening to herself to relax and have some her-time. Especially useful as she's spending the following 24 hours or so in London with her parents doing tourist and theatre things. So, not much happening today other than Mexican lunch (they've raised their prices, annoyingly) and topping up the Hard Drive of Great Joy for Kris. We'll see about tomorrow, tomorrow.

11/05/2009 [17:00] I'm quite tired. On the plus side I think the parents-out-law like me, which is good. They arrived in town at the tail end of last week and took us out for evening meals. This weekend they took Kris and I to Woodstock (where Blenheim Palace is) via a National Trust property or two. In fact we've been to so many recently - Kris and I - that we decided to get a joint membership. Getting the parents not to pay for that was an effort in and of itself. The drive to Woodstock was fine. The hotel looked rather nice too. Out of the ordinary was seeing Billy Connelly sitting smoking a cigar on a table outside of the hotel reception. Turns out he and Jack Black (among others) were in town to film a reworking of Gulliver's Travels due to be released in 2010. Kris and I went for a run before dinner and I was pretty pleased to find that my left knee didn't seem to complain at all. I'll keep working at it very very gently in the hope that I can strengthen what needs to be made stronger and give some surcease to those bits that need that. The evening meal in the hotel was astonishingly good but unfortunately the windows in the bedroom couldn't be opened (apart from one, a tiny bit), so neither Kris or I slept very well. We both felt a little groggy come the morning. Even so, the walk around the Palace on Sunday was pretty cool. We saw an awful lot of the gardens (which are going to be used for a triathlon in a few weekends time), the butterfly house and much of the interior of the Palace itself as well as a pretty hokey multimedia tour which was nevertheless amusing. Various bits of Fox's lighting and sound equipment was dotted about the place which made for an intriquing mix of old and new. By the end of it all even Kris' mother (she of seemingly limitless energy) was feeling a little tired so the drive home was subsequently quieter than the journey there the previous day. We said our goodbyes until the evening meal and spent an hour or two relaxing and watching Scrubs before heading out again for a planned-on smaller meal than one in the hotel Kris' parents were staying in. We even managed to use two 2-for-1 vouchers which lowered the cost of the meal. Considering Kris' parents had paid for pretty much everything it was the very least we could do to help with the amount. Afterwards we said our goodbyes (Kris'll be seeing them again one more time in a day or two) and headed home to watch something brainless on the television before bed. We got up this morning feeling a little more beanful (probably due to a slightly smaller meal than expected) and went to the gym to begin the long process of working off all the extra weight we've put on since we started eating out every evening. Botheringly, because of various committments (and worries about my knee) I'm probably going to miss out on some rowing on Tuesday evening and an AR training session on Wednesday evening. That is, unless, I do some very rapid changes after each bit of exercise. I'm going to have to chat to Kris about one because we've kind of made plans which might be pushed back if I go rowing. Hmm, it's all suddenly got a little bit complicated and it's only Monday afternoon. Speaking of which, it's 17:00, time to scoot!

08/05/2009 [16:30] Another evening, another meal out with Kris' parents. While lovely and a chance to find out more about how Kris became Kris, it's a little embarrassing that I'm not even getting to offer to pay for the evening. I've asked Kris but she says I shouldn't even offer-for-show. Very strange. Then again the places we've eaten (and will eat tonight) have been pretty lovely and certainly not the cheapest to pay for. Even so I'm going to put my foot down and at least try to pay for this evening's meal. Considering we're all four off to the Cotswolds for a day or so (one night in Woodstock) and not paying for that either I think it's the bare minimum I can do. In other news we got to bed at a fairly sensible time last night but still woke up this morning feeling groggy. It might have been the glass and a half of red wine I had. Seriously, I have no problem being a lightweight when it comes to alcohol considering I don't really drink at all. Anyway, with a supreme effort of will I got us both to the gym for a weights session for 07:00 and myself to work before 09:00. I even went to the gym at lunch time (a little late as an update of Cacti on one of our management servers completly hosed the configurations and lost all of our custom plugins) and did a 30 minute erg session. I'll be off out of here at 17:00 today when Kris rings to tell me her seminar is over. We'll either go into town and chill out in Borders or head home and get me into some trousers (we're not sure exposing the parents to my knees is a 100% great idea at this juncture). Keralan food tonight, then home for some relaxation and maybe a film, depending on the time we get back. The weekend should be relaxed and interesting (we're going to see Blenheim Palace, which I don't think I've seen before) with the chance of a light run (I'm still trying not to stress my left knee out for at least another few days with road running) on Sunday morning. We're missing a whole load of nice people visiting town this weekend and a trip to see the new Star Trek film, but I'm sure there'll be a chance to see them again (and see the film on Cheap Tuesday or Orange Wednesday).

07/05/2009 [17:00] After work I headed out to meet Kris and her parents in town. It was the very first time of meeting them and I think it went quite well. They didn't seem to hate me, we had OK conversations and I was wearing trousers so they probably don't think I'm some scruffy guy who's managed to convince their daughter I'm worth hanging around. We went to a nice bar for a drink and then to a Loch Fyne restaurant for some really rather lovely food. I'd have offered to pay, or at least split the bill but it turns out I'm not allowed. Which is nice. Kris and I got home fairly early from dinner last night but were still utterly pooped. Probably something to do with the alcohol, her having to show her parents around all day and the general low-level stress you got when your routine is disrupted. Either way we went to bed early. Of course that meant that Kris was again up with the larks (05:30) so I let her get on with her morning stuff while I grabbed another hour or so of dozing. I seem to be sleeping a little better these months (I'm pretty sure my previous issues were down to stress and worry about a few things). Today's work was what yesterday's should have been. As soon as I got the go-ahead to reprep the five machines I'd been told about I started on the two at this location. Both installed cleanly but one of them appears to have developed some kind of Hyper-Transport problem which has taken out at least the DIMMs attached to processor 0 as well as causing the machine to recycle itself half way through the OS' boot. I've a call in with Sun (it's an X4200M2) so we'll see what happens there. As soon as I'd done what I could I headed into town to take part in a 1.5 hour psychology experiment and then ate lunch while doing the three other linux installations at the other server room. Those ones went off without a hitch apart from the fact that RHN released a new kernel for RHEL5 while I was installing them but not all of the dependencies it depended on, thus breaking my yum update until I excluded those packages. That's now fixed but it does mean I've a lot of fettling to do to the other servers when I have time. Dinner tonight was going to be at 19:45 (thus allowing me to go to a book shop for a few hours and have a nice read), but its been brought forward to 18:45 which means I have to be quick to get what I need to do done and into town. Actually, sod it, I'll just go into town now.

06/05/2009 [17:15] Last night's outing with the vets was something of a damp squib unfortunately. Although everyone turned up this time we not only had a rigger come to pieces half way through the outing but two other people injured themselves (one wrist, one back) thus necessitating a slow and gentle return to the boathouse long before most of us wanted to. Still, the dinner Kris made (with a smidgen of help from me) was astoundingly tasty and very filling, which was brilliant. We got up early again this morning to go to the gym again. This time we went with weights instead, which was nice. After being told yesterday offhandedly that I wasn't actually going to be reprepping machines today its actually been rather quiet instead of the packed and interesting day I thought I'd have. I was planning on it being today and as such had arranged something to do tomorrow lunchtime. I'm now going to have to wait for a meeting to finish tomorrow morning before I can start on the two machines here and the three in town that are on the list. I guess things might work out with my appointment if I get the ones done here before 11:50 or so and then go do my thing followed by the other machines in the afternoon. That might work. Kris' parents arrived this morning too. Flew into Gatwick and then got a hire car. I'm about to pop into town to meet them (for the first time). I think it's going to be fine but I've put on trousers (normally I wear shorts, it's not like I go uncovered) especially and even had a shave. I must really like this girl.

05/05/2009 [16:50] Whee. Short week! Hurrah for bank holiday weekends. Kris and I spent plenty of time exercising, cleaning the house, relaxing and generally eating perhaps a little too much takeaway/delivery food. Then again, it was a mini holiday so things like that are allowed. At least I think so. Saturday there was rowing in the morning. It should have been a veteran VIII but one of the people didn't turn up so we went out in a single, a pair and a 4+ instead. That was pretty cool considering pretty much everyone in the boat was experience and knew how to set a boat. Once I was back home and we'd had a spot of lunch we both headed into town to meet a group of friends for some fun on the river of a different sort. Suffice it to say that was pretty tiring especially with the sun being out as much as it was. Rather than the two of us do our own evening things we chose to go home and have a nice, quiet evening together. Sunday was much more relaxing, with no rowing and just a chance to head over to a friend's house and catch up with everyone, including Elaine, who I don't think I'd seen in over a year. The afternoon developed into a kind of mid-evening indoor barbeque, which was nice. By the time we left it was dark. Happily, there was no work on Monday because of the aforementioned bank holiday so we stayed home (rather than going on a long cycle with lots of other people) and did a lot of housework we'd been putting off which needed doing before Kris' parents arrive on Wednesday. I'm going to have to wear trousers and everything. I also went for a run. I was hopeful of doing my full 12.8km run but had to stop (or at least walk) after 6km because my left knee is still playing up rather worryingly. I've looking into a few physios in town and it looks like initial appointments are all on the order of £50 so I may have to suck it up and pay that some time soon. Today Kris and I started off the day well with some major exercise (40 min of cross training really does work up a sweat) before heading into work. I've been fixing missing codes from import routines for one of our applications and trying to work out whether I am in fact rebuilding five machines tomorrow or Thursday. Given the conflicting information I received between late last week and on the way down to my Mexican lunch (chicken quesadilla eaten with Kris) today I'm going to have to come into work tomorrow morning rather than go straight to the other machine room in town and do the installations. This is frustrating and will possibly lead to the day being longer than I was hoping it would be. I should head off now and get ready for another rowing with the vets. This time, hopefully, in an VIII.

01/05/2009 [16:55] Kris and I went for a jog last night. It wasn't far. Maybe only 4km or so. I'd say that within 2km or so my left knee was noticably aching, but I carried on and it seemed to calm down, or at least not get any worse for the remaining length of time/distance. I'll give it a few days and then try another light jog to see if I can very slowly convince it that it's both strong enough and happy enough to withstand some longer and faster routes. Cycling remains perfectly easy so it really is just an impact thing. I really do hate this feeling that my joints aren't quite as resilient as they used to be. I'm only just 33 for goodness sake. People came over for a nice Thursday last night. We watched a classic Disney (One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing) that Kris hadn't ever seen before (cue open-mouthed expression at depiction of the Chinese and the plot 'twist') and Mrs Henderson Presents which turned out to be a much better film that I'd been expecting. Given I was up at 05:30 in the morning I was pretty pooped by the time people left. Luckily today has been just as empty as yesterday, work-wise. Kris and I got in just before 09:00 and I for one have been doing very little since. I know Kris is working hard (as she always does) so that's one of us. Next week is going to be a lot busier for me so I'm counting my blessings at the moment. Lunch was exceedingly brilliant in all kinds of ways. The masses of ducklings and goslings crowding the grass where we met to have leftover pizza and chocolate mini-eggs for lunch were just the icing on the cake for some rather momentous decisions, discussions, hopes, plans and admissions. You all know that Kris is American, right? No? OK, well she is. Obviously that makes a few things a little less straightforward that might usually be the case. We met while she was in Boston (Harvard, doing a Ph.D actually) and now she's over here. Anyway, that's all I'm saying for now... although I'm feeling all happy and hopeful at the moment. As soon as I have more to say don't worry, I will. Time to head off for the extended weekend (another bank holiday Monday here in the UK). There's fun stuff planned for tonight. More tomorrow, rowing and this and that on Sunday and a long cycle ride (hopefully in great weather) on Monday. Tuesday I'll tell you all about it.