BOFHJournal - November 2012

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30/11/2012 [16:20] My back still aches somewhat. Rather than do anything with it this weekend I've cancelled any outings I might have had over the weekend and will be taking it easy for once. Well, apart from this evening, and last night when I substituted into a boat that's racing tomorrow, and sat on stroke side (cue new blisters, yay). I'll take a few Ibuprofen when I get home, which should see me through the evening. Not that it hurts at all. It's just aching a little and I'd like to be capable of movement before bed. Over the weekend I'll see if I feel like doing parkrun tomorrow morning (depends on how I feel after tonight), cycle alongside my friends as they race on the river, go to Tesco, probably go to Homebase and get things for the boat house, do maintenance things at the boat house, attend a Christmas celebration at the boat house, attend a Learn 2 Row barbeque, yes, at the boat house, and eat a large amount of the meat which got delivered by courier in a cool box this morning while I was in town a) buying things and, b) repairing a wireless bridge that someone had pulled off a shelf and torn the cables out of (completely *cough* by accident). I just wish they'd owned up to it rather than leaving me to have to trek into town to discover it. Right, time to go home. See you Monday.

29/11/2012 [17:30] Slept in even later this morning. Probably not the best idea, but as I was heading into town at lunch time and didn't need to make lunch I was able to still get everything done in time to get out of the house around the same time as I normally would. Last night's weight's session was pretty good and I seem to have got my back into some kind of shape again, which is good considering I'm substituting into a boat this evening on stroke side (something I haven't done in a good year or so). Work today has mainly centred around getting NTP monitoring working for the new servers I built yesterday, firewall changes, and generally cleaning up all of the things which are flashing red or yellow on our monitoring system. I think I've done a reasonable job, all things considered. As it is I'll have to make a trip into town tomorrow morning to bring a wireless bridge back up, and at the same time I can do a little essential shopping while the place isn't rammed with Friday lunchtime shoppers. For now though, it's rowing time (again). And then another big meal. I'm not sure what of this evening. It may have to be pizza with a mass of extra vegetables on the side. Tomorrow I should hopefully be getting a huge delivery of meat in a cool box. We'll wait to see how that goes, and how easy it is to get it home at the end of the day. The end of the day could be very interesting too, depending on schedules, tiredness and general availability.

28/11/2012 [17:35] Plenty of success today! Success the first was managing to stay in bed until 07:15! That's practically unheard of for the past month or so. I still managed to get out, do my morning exercises and be on the way to work to be in time before anyone else. But it still felt like a real lie-in. Success the second was getting the second KVM host server built without having to mess around quite so much with SCSI disk identifiers. The third was going for a run when it didn't rain and doing another 6km intervals session in which I managed to hit dead on 25 minutes. Which is right where I want to be at the moment. Lastly, or second to lastly if we count the emails I sent today which seem to have been received fairly well, is getting all four KVM guests built and 95% configured before the deadline of the end of the week/month. Now, I know there's going to be some more work to do on them, but they're basically done and are off my list of things to do. Which is pretty much a win for me. I've got plenty more to be getting on with this week (some of it actual work), so getting this task ticked (for the most part) off is a big win. Right, that there is one longish run-on paragraph, so I'm going to leave it there and head to the boat house to see if my back is feeling in the mood for some heavier-than-last time weights. It also looks like it's not raining for once, which is also a win. On the advice of various people I've started having larger meals of protein and carbohydrates in an effort to give my muscles something to work with. Here's hoping I keep the levels of exercise (of the right kind) up enough to stop me getting tubby.

27/11/2012 [18:30] It got late quickly here. And that's with me getting in early to do a firmware update and discover that on this particular marque of server that means you need to go and get console access so you can flip the remote management hardware back to using its own NIC, rather than a 'shared' one. Very annoying. Anyway, yes, I've been here all day (try the veal). Mostly today I've been discovering that someone somewhere (or multiple someones) ordered the wrong subscriptions from Red Hat, so we're going to have to go through the loop again on that one. Also, that older Dells with extra SCSI hardware in them are a real pain to kickstart when it comes to deciding which bit of hardware is what SCSI designation. It's cold, wet and windy here. So obviously I went for a run at lunch time. Only 6K, but after last night's weights session, and with the fact that my lower back is still aching slightly from that and the weekend, I think it was enough. As it is I'm not going to go to the erg tonight, and may not do the weights tomorrow night either as I'm subbing into a boat on Thursday evening and I don't want to do myself any damage. Is that it? I think so. Other than the fact that I bought something else from Sport Pursuit and booked something for the end of January which should be a lot of fun. Other than that, time to go home, I think!

26/11/2012 [17:25] I ache in all kinds of interesting ways. Probably due to Sunday. But let's have a quick rundown of the days previous first. Friday night I gave in and ordered a pizza for the first time in I don't know how long. The accounts page said some time in June, but I'm not sure I believe that. Anyway, it was damned tasty. Saturday morning I was down at the boat house in the freezing cold (but thankfully no rain) to jump in a single scull for only the second time ever. Being a wouss and all around inexperienced sculler (especially in a single) I put on one of the Wraptor things we have and felt a whole lot better about things. I know that one day I'll have to scull without (not that I'm that interested in sculling), but on a day like that, with the stream as fast as it was I think it was for the best. Otherwise I'd have been in the water repeatedly. After rowing I went for a quick 10K run to the lock and back before managing to drag myself to Tesco for the usual stuff before going home for a while to try to relax. Dinner was at Shaun and Fran's where I had a wonderful time chatting, catching up and watching their daughter tear around the place non-stop. I don't know if it was a combination of the long day, the terrible weather or the anticipation of what Sunday was but I was feeling very tired and in need of an early bed before too long. I would have loved to have stayed longer, but given the length of the cycle home in the cold, wet darkness and the fact that I passed out within about two minutes of getting into bed I think it made sense. Sunday morning I didn't have anything to do at all, so I arranged to meet Kate for some interval training on a green area in the middle of town. That went pretty well; I think her fitness is slowly improving. I got to do a lap or two at my own pace which tired me out nicely as well. After lunch I was at the boat house teaching the second last session of this occurence of the Learn2Row course. No rowing this week on account of the weather, so I took about two hours of erg training, core strength exercises, and stretching. I know I did that, because I'm aching today. In the evening I wandered over to Kate's place for a lovely dinner and met her housemate, who may become an occasional cox for the boat club, which is good. By the time I got home after dinner it was time for bed, which was exactly the right thing to have happen. Sunday would have been my second wedding anniversary. Obviously it wasn't. I had the chance for a brief Skype (text) conversation with Kris on the Saturday (we just happened to be on at the same time). It was nice to at least see how she was doing and to wish her a slightly belated happy Thanksgiving. I think she's doing OK, for the most part. Not that I could tell, or that it's my business, but it would be good to know she's safe, well, and happy. But, that's it over for the year. I guess it won't even be worth mentioning this time next year. Monday has mostly been about the final bit of firmware patching of IBM boxen, getting kickstarts ready for old Dell boxen to be reprepped, setting up firmware patching for a Dell box tomorrow morning and looking at hotels for something some time early next year. More on that another time, perhaps. Oh, and I did 6km of intervals at lunch time which was pretty intense. I seem to have forgotten how hard they can be. Still, I'm off to the boat house for a weights session nowish, which will either solve this aching back or snap me in two. Obviously I'm hoping for the former. Back tomorrow for another early one!

23/11/2012 [16:45] Pretty tired today for various good reasons. One of them being the rather hard 6K run I put myself through today. Other ones involve the three KVM guests I cloned this morning which took a bit of brain power to get going for various local configuration reasons. Not much else going on here at work though. The weekend is going to be me in a single scull for the first time in a long time (so probably falling in, it's going to be cold) and then me teaching the Learn2Row people on Sunday afternoon (it pays the bills, sort of). Other than that I think I may try to have a quiet one for once. Right now though I should go and see if the sorting office is still open in case they have at least one of my pairs of running socks from Wiggle.

22/11/2012 [12:10] A half day consisting of a meeting where I've been given an imperial buttload of work to do before the end of next week and some firmware updating (in reverse order). Luckily I barely have anything planned work-wise for next week, so I might even be able to get a chunk of the masses of work I've been handed done tomorrow. Even so next week could be interesting. For the moment though I'm going to do some email and then get the hell out of here for today. This morning's work went perfectly, and even fixed the memory error that was the main reason I was doing the work. So hurrah for that. Last night's weights session was good, although I think I need to start increasing the weights I'm working with somewhat. I also don't appear to have put on any actual body weight since my return from Bhutan as I'm at 70.5kg at the moment. Time to eat and exercise more! Oh, and I saw Skyfall last night. Definitely a different kind of Bond film, of which I think I approve. Even if Daniel Craig looked extremely old and haggard in some scenes.

21/11/2012 [15:15] Another day, another early start. This time I began the patching process from home at 06:00 and still only got things done by 08:57:30. The very definition of "in under the wire". The firmware update I did went perfectly, which has made me a lot calmer about doing it on the server which needs it and another one of its compatriots tomorrow morning (my last early morning of the week!). Otherwise today I've moved half of the new backup system over to the other server room, brought back a server from there to the server room in the building here, written a few important emails, downloaded the most recent television stuff and not managed to get a run in, which is disappointing. I will try and get one in on Friday. I'm heading off nowish to an IT exhibition (freebies, maybe), then it's weights at the boat house and then hopefully down to the cinema in time to see Skyfall with friends.

20/11/2012 [17:30] It has been a hell of a day today. Aside from getting in at 07:00 and probably not leaving before 17:50 today I've been on the go almost constantly. It started with patching two servers, which should have gone smoothly. Only one decided that it didn't like two of its DIMMs afterwards and has now generated over 711,600 memory errors. Luckily none of them are the kind that can take the machine down. Plus it has 192GB of RAM, so it's not likely to be an issue. I opened a case with IBM and I've got some firmware updates to do to it and all its friends (to keep them all the same) over the next few mornings in additon to the other patching and rebooting I have to do before the end of the week. So yes, another early day tomorrow. In fact I don't think any day isn't early except Friday. Which is good as I'd really like to sleep in, or at least be in bed for longer, on Friday. Just before lunch I had some time to catch up on emails, finally. I've still got one pending which I'll get to this evening once I'm back from being a bank party for a women's crew. After emails I squeezed in a quick (very quick, actually) 6K run, showered, inhaled lunch and then headed over to the other server room to reinstall an X4600M2 with RHEL6. Annoying this took longer than expected due to the fact that the USB key I use for kickstarts now is detected as a hard drive rather than a "removeable media", so booting from it was a bit of an issue to get working. Then the serial console didn't seem to be accepting input (had to use a USB keyboard), then there were typos in the syslinux.cfg and then, finally everything installed and I was able to get back to my desk and do the rest of the stuff from there, which is a much nicer place to be. I should head off shortly, perhaps even get a bite to eat before I do my cycling on the towpath thing. Back tomorrow, early, again. This time to not only patch live machines (joy), but install firmware updates on another box as well. What could go wrong!?

19/11/2012 [15:50] Another good weekend. Brilliant, pretty much. When I said I was off for the week, I meant that I was done for last week, not that I'd be off this week. Just so we're clear. Anyway, Friday was great. Better than I'd hoped and exactly the kind of way I wanted to end the week. Saturday was great as I didn't have rowing so got to go and do a nice relaxed parkrun for the first time in ages. I didn't push too hard as I had to keep my powder dry for Sunday (more on that below). As soon as I'd done the parkrun I dashed home, showered and was then bank party for a women's crew competing on the river. I was able to peel off as they were heading back to the boat house and have a birthday (not mine) lunch of Thai food at a pub and then head home for a bit of relaxing before the evening's meal at a rather nice restaurant. I was down at the other end of the table from the loud and boisterous people, but that paid dividends in all kinds of ways. I left when we moved upstairs to a private bar as I needed an early night. The early night was a good idea given the half marathon on Sunday morning. I had planned to cycle to and from the event but was offered a lift at the last moment, so went with that. The race was pretty damned good, even if it's the first time in a while I've had to run hills at race pace. In the end I shaved almost three minutes off my last half marathon time, which was good. Didn't quite make 1:25:00, but maybe third time'll be the charm. I'm not sure when that'll be, but I'd like it to be soonish. As it was I was in the top 10% of those who finished. So I'm quite pleased. Sunday afternoon was spent relaxing and discovering that I wasn't really stiffening up legs-wise. Which was nice. On a whim I went for a curry with Kate for dinner rather than cook and had probably the nicest lamb korma ever. I may have to go back there. That was a bit of a run-on paragraph so here's a new one. This morning I was up at the sparrow's fart to be in work for 07:00 so I could both patch machines and reverse load balancer rules such that the rest of the world could get access to our finance system which underwent a hardware refresh over the weekend (I'm very glad I wasn't involved in that). Although the patching overran slightly, everything went according to plan and I'm now 'looking forward' to tomorrow's patching, which should be a whole lot faster and easier. I'm also rebuilding a server tomorrow in preparation for it being another KVM host. I think I'll give tonight's weights session a miss as I seem to have slept extremely oddly on my right side and made the right hand side of my neck and that shoulder extremely stiff and sore. Turning my head isn't fun. I think that's everything for now. You're all caught up except to say that the BOFHcam was offline overnight (UK time) due to a server move and lack of autostarting and that I'm also in early on Wednesday when I'll be doing other server patching. Thursday afternoon I have off and Friday currently looks like it should at least start well. I was in early this morning, so I'm going home now. Have a good evening.

16/11/2012 [12:00] Circuits last night was great! I actually felt better and less achey and stuff this morning than I have all week. Also, it was fun too. Definitely a good way to get in a bit of cross-training. Anyway, that was that. All I have actually done this morning is write three emails and start off a PCI/DSS scan (now completed). Now I'm off for the week! Busy, busy few days coming up, but it should all be brilliant.

15/11/2012 [17:20] Fairly pooped after weights Tuesday and running and erging last night. I'm not entirely sure I should go to circuits tonight, but I did promise myself I would, even if I'll be getting plenty of exercise in the next few days in the run-up to the half on Sunday. I started work at about 06:30 this morning from home (thank goodness for VPNs) and then finished it off once I got in. Unfortunately, I forgot to stop a large volume of storage on relatively slow disk from doing an fsck (file system check), so that added another hour and a half to proceedings, which held up two servers from being available again. The third server being patched and the VM being migrated seemed to go perfectly, so that was good at least. For a variety of reasons most of the morning was taken up replying to three emails. But that was OK as they needed doing. I've got a PCI/DSS scan to schedule tomorrow, some bits and bobs to do and then I'm off for the weekend at lunch time. I'll be having fun doing stuff and things, I hope you do too. I'll be back on Monday to tell you how the weekend went. Hopefully, the answer will be some variation on "well". Hmmm, what is it with my appetite at the moment? I'm ravenous again.

14/11/2012 [17:30] Last night's weights session was hard! We're talking big weights and lots of learning to keep the correct posture while lifting them. I've got a good bit to take on board before I'm doing as well as I'd like. As it is I got up this morning and was pleased to find no injuries or strains, but a large amounts of aches in muscles that haven't seen that kind of action in a while. Morning exercises and a 10K tempo run with Hazel dealt with pretty much everything, although I know when I stand up to head out for this evening's UT2 erg I'm going to have stiffened up somewhat. I'm actually looking forward to Friday afternoon when I'll get to unstiffen a bit with some directed exercise, before the weekend's parkrun and the half marathon on the Sunday. Between now and then is the erg tonight and tomorrow evening's circuits session. I haven't done circuits in a long time so I'm both looking forward to and am slightly trepidacious of how it's going to go. Work today has been fairly standard. After last night's failure to move a VM I've been told it might just be binned instead. Which is good as it gives us back another RHEL subscription thingy. I've prepared everything I can for tomorrow morning's early start of three machines being patched and another VM being moved. Here's hoping it all goes according to plan.

13/11/2012 [17:45] A bitty day today. I did lots of small things to do with SANs, NFS, patching, firmware, networks, firewalls and virtual guests and hosts. Nothing that really added up to much on their own, but together pretty much filled the day. Other than that I did an 85% effort 8K run at lunch, morning exercises as per and will be going to the boat house for the last of the Tuesday weights sessions (all change next week training-wise). Finally got the email I was waiting for, and am having mild buyer's remorse about things, including socks from Wiggle for which the replacement have also weirdly gone missing, or at least are very late in arriving. The other stuff I'm sure will work out. Tomorrow is mostly going to be about how to fit a quart (100G of Xen guest disk image) into a pint pot (a server with only 67G of disk space free). The idea of shrinking the thing fills me with deep dread right now. I guess that's it. I've two emails to deal with at present when I get home this evening. A third didn't go so well as I think I've annoyed someone somewhat. Not so much of a problem really, but annoying that I misread the situation enough to have done so.

12/11/2012 [16:35] Mostly today I have been giving the BOFHcam server some actual swap so that it might not start OOM-killing my screen sessions any more (had to sacrifice 500MB to the cause, but that's OK), getting Oracle Connection Manager-related things working again, saying goodbye to my parents who were here all weekend (more on that below) and writing lots of long emails very quickly to bat balls back into other people's courts before the end of the working day. I've rowing tonight, and a lot of washing up to do, so having to deal with emails too would pretty much fill up my entire evening. Especially as I'm still weeks behind and getting further so on all my downloaded television. Life is really a little too busy at the moment. I guess this is how other people's lives are most of the time. Mine rarely is. So my parents arrived on Friday, and it was wonderful to see them. I attempted to show them my photos from the trip but we all sort of drifted off. I needed an early night anyway as Saturday was spent sitting on Tideway (the Thames) for two hours before rowing a really rather good time in the Fours Head of the River race. I won't tell you where exactly we came for obvious reasons, but we were in the top third for our category and also for all boats racing. So that was rather pleasing. It also didn't rain all that much, there was no wind and in the grand scheme of things everything went quite well considering I went down with the trailer at 07:00 in the morning and didn't get home until gone 18:30. My parents spent the day exploring the city and then had dinner waiting when I got home, which was marvellous. Sunday morning I went for a 13K run before they got up and then took them out for a 4K walk/jog which is pretty extraordinary for them considering how unfit they used to be. My brother and I are very proud of what they're achieving. I got to show them my pictures, we went to Tesco and ate a roast dinner together over the course of the rest of the day and then this morning they left when I went to work. Tonight training restarts for our next races, I've got an imperial buttload of washing up from yesterday to do and I need to eat the leftover home-made curry in the fridge, so luckily it's just that to reheat and some rice to do... Damn, just spotted another email I haven't replied to yet. I'll have to see if I can get it done before 17:00.

09/11/2012 [17:10] Friday, and nothing much to do for the day except catch up on emails. Which was good, apart from one where I had to walk back someone's analysis of what I'd said, somewhat. But I think I've managed to do that successfully, so good save (I hope). Also, I had a delivery which is pretty much exactly what I wanted, so that's good too. Now I just have to wait until as late as January before I can see it in action. Last night we derigged the boat for Tideway. I could have then gone to circuits but having run at lunchtime I chose not to and went home to tidy the house a bit for my parents arriving in, well, probably about the time I'm writing this, so I should go as soon as I have. I'm off to London tomorrow, early, and back late in the afternoon. Sunday'll be just with my parents doing something I know not what and then they'll go on Monday when I head to work. I guess that's it for the moment. I'll talk about how the race and Sunday went on Monday.

08/11/2012 [17:25] We changed back to our old boat for the outing last night. I don't know if it was that, or us relaxing, or better coxing or a combination of all three or more but the outing was so much better than Tuesday's. I came off the water on a real high, and that carried over into dinner with Kate which is always nice anyway. Got to bed fairly late for a variety of reasons, so getting up in the dark this morning wasn't favourite. Morning exercises always continue to help with that kind of thing, so I continue to do them. I actually started this morning's patching off from home, and came in to find it pretty much done, which was great considering how long that machine's sister had taken to do a few days ago. The rest of the morning was spent dealing with a rather recalcitrant QNAP box which we eventually had to go in to via the non-standard VGA/USB keyboard interface and give it back its IP that way before getting to it from a web browser on the same subnet and bringing it back to the world. Lunchtime was a gentle 8K run (my last proper cardio workout before the race on Saturday) and then this afternoon I've mainly been catching up on email and doing some Subversion maintenance and troubleshooting. I'm off in a moment to go and derig the boat for trailering tomorrow, collect sponges, binbags, spare nuts, bolts, washers, spacers and all those kinds of things and then go home, put a wash on and catch up on some television for the first time this week. Tomorrow should hopefully be a quiet day, with my parents arriving in the late afternoon for the weekend. Which reminds me, I should change the bedding and get the sofa bed set up.

07/11/2012 [17:15] A day when I didn't have to get in early was pretty great considering that I stayed up a large chunk of the night watching the US Presidential Elections online. America decided... wisely. I had no idea a year ago that I would be watching them from this side of the Atlantic, rather than from in the midst of it all. No idea at all. It's astonishing how life can utterly change beneath your feet in such a short space of time. So here I am now. And indeed here I am, at work, preparing for another early morning of patching tomorrow preceeded by another night outing tonight as we do our last preparations for the Fours Head of the River this weekend. Last night's outing didn't go particularly well. There were frustrations in the boat. It's my opinion that it comes down to rowing in the dark rather than anything else particularly significant. We'll have to see what Saturday brings. For tonight though I just hope we can relax a bit more and see what comes of it. The weather currently seems mostly okay, even if it is cold and pitch black outside already. I've sent a lot of emails today. All of them were pretty much upbeat and fun to some degree. Aside from the work ones, which obviously weren't. As I look at my inbox I see I have one to reply to at the moment. I may do that this evening after I get back. I probably need to put a wash on if my rowing kit isn't going to get up and row in the boat without me on Saturday. Time to head off now though, there's things to be doing.

06/11/2012 [16:05] The fireworks last night were rather good. It's like they were handed 4 tons of explosives and told to justgonuts. They did. It was loud, and very pretty. I didn't actually get to the boat house until just before 19:00 on account of the patching of the servers I started at 15:00 not finishing until gone 18:00, at which point I had to then go over to the remote server room, replace a RAID battery and get the box and its dog slow Xen guests back up and running again. Only then could I cycle over to the boat house and help check the rigging on the boat for tonight's outing, tomorrow's and the weekend's race. The evening went on a while, and by the end I was sitting talking to one of the new beginners about neural networks and things. Putting the training room back in place didn't take long with everyone helping, but I still didn't get home and to bed much before midnight. I was up early again this morning and in work well before 07:00. Still managed my morning exercises despite the terrible sleeping position I had the night before last which has meant my right shoulder/neck has been stiff and aching since Monday morning. The exercises help. They center me and mean I start the day feeling calm and relaxed. They're a kind of meditation in a way. Much like my running. It's the same thing every morning (kind of like an astanga routine) that I know and can simply enter into and let carry me along. Anyway, got to work, patched some machines, got them back up and running 30 seconds before my self-imposed cutoff time. Nice. 10K run at lunch time with my running partner in the cold and wet. Felt good. I should really go home and do some house work before I head out to rowing. The washing up has been piling up for a few days now and there's a bit of tidying to do (I know, shocking, right?).

05/11/2012 [16:50] Whee! What a great couple of days. Thursday afternoon and Friday were awesome. Saturday and Sunday were actually really wet and cold, but I did a lot of good rowing, a lot of good teaching of rowing, got to see Kate for a drink or two and even managed to sneak in some Tesco shopping and a tiny tiny bit of relaxation. Not much though, so I'm quite tired. It hammered down with rain and was cold, wet and windy throughout all of Saturday and Sunday, so sitting in a boat with numb hands preparing for next weekend's 4's Head of the River race on Tideway (the Thames, in London) was pretty tough going. As was coaching completely raw novice rowers who, bless their hearts, wanted to try so hard, but weren't any good at all. That's what they're there for though, I guess; to learn. What's made me even more tired was getting up early this morning to come in and do patching. I've been patching all day actually, and will be doing more tomorrow and Thursday mornings as well. Everything seems to be going really slowly at the moment and, of course, I've raised the ire of my team leader by missing things here and there which I should have dealt with. Nothing huge or important (as yet), just stuff which causes him to get peeved (at me), which is frustrating. Guy Fawkes night tonight. I'll be down at the boat house (if I get finished with this patching in time). Firstly to do some rigger jiggering, and then to watch the fireworks. Probably not too late a night as I need to be in work early again tomorrow. It should be nice to meet some of the new Learn2Row people in a social, rather than coaching context, too.

01/11/2012 [11:40] I promise that as soon as I get a free few hours I'll get October's journal page updated with Wot I Did On My Holidaze. Maybe on the train this afternoon when I'm heading down to London. Or, given I've got tomorrow off, then. Who knows? What I do know was that I was in work for 07:30 this morning and by 08:00 the outside contractor I had on the phone had managed to drop the entire firewall cluster into such a funk that the failing machine wouldn't allow the OK one to take over. Not my fault in any way, thank goodness, but other people were Very Angry about it all. I got it fixed in the end by remembering that we had remote access to the DRAC on the Dell box which was the firewall machine that was misbehaving. Still, damned annoying. The rest of this morning I've mainly just been dealing with the fallout from that, generic sysadmin tasks and scheduling a hair cut. I'll be getting out of here in about thirty minutes and won't be back again until Monday. By then I should have done a whole lot of rowing, a whole lot of other forms of exercise, seen a friend or two, eaten Turkish food (maybe), swum in a pool (probably), and typed up some portion of the above handwritten journal (some of which was written while either a) very tired, b) at high altitude, or c) in the back of a minibus going over a road barely worthy of the name/description) for public consumption. See you Monday.