BOFHJournal - March 2013

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28/03/2013 [15:45] Yesterday I was at a funeral for a good friend's father. I'd met him maybe a dozen times over the years, helped paint his house, eaten his food and shared a Christmas meal with him. It was good to go, support my friend and get to remember his dad. If nothing else, one of the stories my friend told at the service involved me, which was a real honour. After the service we all went to a pub close by and shared tall tales about him for a few hours before friends and family went their separate ways again. Once I'd been dropped back at home again, in a fit of need for life-affirmation I pulled on a few layers of compression kit, a hat and gloves and did a light, fast 13.5K run along the river and back. There was no-one else around so I was alone with my thoughts, until even my thoughts left me alone and I found myself in my favourite state of unthinkingness. A state I haven't been able to find for a few weeks now for various and sundry reasons. Of course, by the time I'd finished my run (in the wrong shoes) I'd given myself two blisters (one on each foot). But you know what? I couldn't have cared less. Today I've been boggling gently at what Oracle are asking me to do to my Oracle VM Manager installation to fix an issue with it. It's not critical (what's wrong), but it is something which should be fixed eventually. I don't have the mental capacity to face the rather dangerous and involved process today, so I'm leaving it until Monday (Easter weekend, innt?). In a few minutes I'll be heading off to do another paid psychology study, and then I won't be around again until Tuesday morning. The weekend will hopefully consist of all kinds of exercise (probably cycling rather than running to let my feet recover, as well as some erging or rowing), and some other fun stuff, although probably not until Monday. I may also be moving the BOFHcam site itself to a new home, if I can get the current VM up and running again and copy everything off. Stay tuned.

26/03/2013 [17:55] A possible light at the end of the tunnel for BOFHcam. We'll have to see if I get a contact address and something works out. Otherwise, on with today's entry! I decided to take the evening off after all last night. As a result I made myself get up this morning and do a good solid 30 minute erg at the boat house instead. Amusingly, as I was arriving at 07:00 someone was leaving having just completed one. That made me feel a little better. Belgian buns and a morning of preparing for the network wide Nessus scans followed. After that it was simply a case of updating all of the machine lists (Windows, Solaris, linuxes), having some lunch and then running them one after another. Had I run them all at the same time I would have probably destroyed every service we have running. As it is I only blew away access to one tier one application, which was good. And we managed to get it up and running again with a simple web front end restart. I'm heading off now for an erg with others at the boat house, then there's a Men's Squad meeting. After that... sausages!

25/03/2013 [18:15] The BOFHcam is still down. Sorry about that. It may be time for me to look into actually paying to host it somewhere, rather than getting a VM for free. I assume you're still reading this on LiveJournal, rather than once I get the site back up again however many days/weeks from now I'm writing this entry. So the weekend. No HoRR race due to it being cancelled, so we had a race with a few crews on our local river instead. It was even international owing to our cox having convinced a crew she coxed in Switzerland (which was over for the HoRR) to come and race against us. So, in the end there were about 10 crews and we went out in the cold and the wind and the snow and had a damned good time. Then there was some food, and some drinking. As I had nothing to do on Sunday I obviously got up at 07:30 and went for a run in the same cold, wet, snowy weather. I actually ended up coaching a novice 4+ for a while, before realising I hadn't brought thick enough gloves and going home again. Tesco, then lunch, then plenty of television watching. Annoyingly, for the rest of the day I ended up hoping that I'd get a text from someone to say they fancied coming over for some company. Even though there wasn't any chance that was going to happen. I think I should have gone out and been sociable rather than hoping someone would come to me. I put it down to... actually, I don't know what to put it down to. The most obvious reason is me being silly. Anyway, that was Sunday. Today actually seems to have gone quite well despite me still being at work at this time of the evening. The morning's work wasn't too heavy, I went for a goo 6K run at lunch time, I installed a wireless access point in town without any major issues. I'm about to go home (or possibly the boat house, I can't quite decide yet). There will be sausages this evening. I think that qualifies as an OK day in most people's books.

22/03/2013 [17:55] The HoRR has been cancelled. This is annoying. Luckily, it looks like there'll be a race of sorts on our home river tomorrow morning. Not as long, and the chances are the weather will be terrible, but it'll be a chance to put all this excess energy we've been storing up this week to good use. Speaking of which, I used some of it last night in the short outing and derigging. Then I went home and expended a bit more. I even got some exercise in this morning. First time in a while for some of it, not so much for others. Mostly today I've been putting replacement RAM in servers and talking with Oracle about things. Oh, and I had lunch with Anna and complained about the race being cancelled. Other than that I'd have to say that since I left for work nothing much has really happened today. More has happened outside of it. This weekend is obviously not going to include a race on Tideway, but it may still involve rowing, getting cold and wet, and racing. However there will also be burgers, some alcohol and whatever other fun I can come up with at short notice. Then it'll be Monday again, and the beginning of two short (four day) weeks.

21/03/2013 [17:00] Last night's outing couldn't have been as good as the previous night's one without some serious work. As it was it turned out to simply be pretty good instead of excellent. However the meal after the outing with Kate really was excellent (best bit of lamb I've had in ages). So, what with one thing and another the day ended really quite well. Not that it wasn't without a few, small, surprise disappointments as well as some total awesomenesses. I'd be faking it if I smiled and said I was happy about everything that went on yesterday, but in the grand scheme of things (confirmation of some of my skills being a good thing) I'm going to consider yesterday a tick in the 'win' column rather than anything else. Whether there's a chance of a win of that nature again in the future, well, who can say? I'll tell you what though, I had a rotten night's sleep. Definitely a deep disappointment, especially considering the time I went to bed. It's more through luck than anything else that I feel even halfway functional today. I had really hoped for a better night and morning, but it wasn't to be. Maybe it's actually a sign. I don't know. All I know is that after rowing and derigging this evening I'm going to head on home and try to make up for last night as much as I can. How that, and future nights work out is down to me. Especially as I think I've identified the stress in my life which is causing me the sleepus (sic) interruptus. Most of today has been spent being the equivalent of remote hands for an Oracle engineer. And finding out which pair of DIMMs are causing memory errors in a server to such a degree that it eventually crashed. Ah, sod it. It's time to go. The boat house calls, then home.

20/03/2013 [17:00] Today has been a better day. Not 100% awesome, but much much better. It started last night, actually. The outing was really good. One of our better rows, to be honest. The rowing enabled me to completely put out of my mind the emotional and mental turmoil I've embroiled myself in in the last few weeks. I'd have to say that it's all pretty much my own fault. There's a good chance that in the next 24 to 36 hours I may be able to get a better idea of what I'm doing... mostly because during that time I'll be doing a lot of thinking and possibly acting which should let me figure out Where I Go From Here. I wish I already knew, but there's a lot going on in my head and I hope that the course of action that I'm sort of hoping/planning on taking is the right one. We'll see. It should be interesting, and potentially fun, if nothing else. Anyway, as I was saying before I veered off on a huge tangent... After the row I went straight home and had a huge meal, watched a bit of television and went to bed. Unfortunately I still didn't manage to sleep all the way through (it's definitely a stress thing, which means once I resolve the stress the sleeping through will happen again), but did get enough sleep such that I was happy to get up around about 06:00 and get to the other server room, shut down the databases, shut down the server, replace the hardware (fan module pair), reboot the server, start the databases and restart all the applications which depend on them before the time the services were due to go down. Excellent! The rest of the morning was spent being driven to, and then walking back from, a remote site in town where I retrieved a network switch (and popped to the station to get a train ticket for Saturday). The walk back wasn't too bad, even if I had to carry a switch under my arm the whole way. Since then I've been adding a plethora of rules to my Outlook client so that my inbox doesn't get covered in crap throughout the day (and night). I may make an attempt at adding a switch to a stack in the next two days, but I'm worried I could really cause some damage to a live switch, so I may just leave it until my Networks team leader comes back and takes me through it step by step. And now: I'm off for an outing, then dinner and fun with Kate.

19/03/2013 [17:25] A totally unbrilliant day, sadly. Let's start off last night when I got home and went for a walk to try and clear my head of a few worries, and probably ended up stressing myself out even more. I really do need to make sure I don't cause myself any more issues right now. Only there's every chance that I might, because that's the kind of person I am, sometimes (or at least at the moment). It's like I can see what I'm doing, know it's not the right thing to be involved in, and yet I'm doing it anyway. Anyway, after that, at 03:00 this morning I woke up and discovered that not only was I overheating, but I wasn't happy with the state of my bed. Follow that with a day of small mistakes, and being called into my line manager's office to discuss some minor comments people have been (validly) making about me which I should do something about and, well, it hasn't been the most awesome day, y'know? Positives though. Positives including feeling pretty fit and healthy, having a bit of drive physically. A good erg this morning and an outing coming up this evening in an hour and a half or so. Selling my spare pogies (bought in error when I couldn't find my original pair) for only a few pounds of loss. Having a chat which might have staved off some emotional issues for a little while (here's hoping). And there being steak tonight. And chips, and beans. The kind of meal I really think might be a good idea for me today. But first, an outing. Hopefully not one in which I get soaked too heavily by the people in front of me. Back tomorrow, for what I would like to be a much better day. Oh, and my server is down. So you're only reading this on Live Journal until I can get that back up again, too. Joy.

18/03/2013 [17:00] I am so tired. It has been a very, very long weekend. Pretty awesome for the most part, but still extremely draining. After Friday night's boat loading I went home and tried to relax a bit. I haven't slept terribly well for the last two nights or so (it happens every so often, but never for too long), so getting up at 06:00 to get to the boat house for 07:00 wasn't a great start to the Saturday. Add to that the really terrible weather we had on Saturday morning, and getting down to Kingston, putting the boat together and rowing in the rain, wind, and cold wasn't awesome. We still put in a fairly good time all things considered and hope we've put down a reasonable marker for the same time next weekend when we'll be doing the HoRR on Tideway. After the race we derigged and racked the boat and then headed home again. I got back in time to go home and have a bit of the afternoon/evening to relax and unwind before coming back to the boat house to rerig the boat. I had been expecting someone over in the evening, but they were tired too and it didn't happen. All things considered I think it was for the best as I got to just go to bed early and try not to fall asleep before I turned off the light. Sunday morning was a fairly gentle outing to work out the kinks left over from the race. We also have a new sub in who'll be with us for the next three outings (and an erg) leading up to the HoRR. After that we have no idea who will get to be in what boats as it'll be all change, potentially. There's a good chance I may end up in another boat, perhaps the second boat. We'll have to see. Anyway, after the outing I came home and had a really, great afternoon, which started off with a bit of bed (I really was tired), and then an afternoon of rewatching old Top Gear special episodes. I still ended up nearly dozing off once or twice. Luckily I got the Tesco shop done before I completely ran out of energy, but I have to say that by the end of Sunday I was pretty much drained, chafed, heated and cooled as much as it is possible to be. Getting out of bed this morning was, again, pretty darned hard. In fact I was nearly late for work such was the attraction of it. The working day has been fairly quiet. I've been able to do some network stuff, some sysadmin stuff, send some emails, puzzle over DHCP things, and generally achieve almost everything I had to do. I'm pretty sure something's fallen through the cracks... but I'm damned if I can work out what it might be. I've got an erg tomorrow morning at 07:00, then I need to be in town to oversee some network cabling work at 08:30. After that it's pretty much a normal day, followed by a row in the evening. Given we're now tapering for HoRR I'd like to hope it won't be too hard.

15/03/2013 [16:10] One of those bitty days today when nothing significant really happened. Last night's outing was pretty ragged. I think everyone was a bit spaced out, to be honest. Plus it was as dark as the inside of a cat, so the timing was a touch off, too. And we have a new rower as our previous bow man has a back injury. Anyway, that plus the morning erg we did took it out of us all, I think. Even if it didn't show on the surface. I've spent a lot of the day trying to get Skype to accept that it wants to have a tabbed interface. I have thus far been unsuccessful. I may take another stab at it on Monday. The reason being that as far as I can recall, MSN is getting shut down in a little while. I'm derigging the boat this evening, then having dinner with the crew and going through the race plan before getting an early night tonight. Tomorrow we'll be racing 5.2K at Kingston-upon-Thames and then hopefully getting home fairly early in the afternoon, thus giving me at least some of Saturday to get the house in order, get some food in and generally recover from the week. Sunday I will be reluctantly leaving my bed to train again (only one week to go before HoRR) and very much looking forward to getting home again after training is done. Sunday (and hopefully Saturday evening) should be a chance for me to really unwind for the first time in two weeks. I have tried to do so in the last week or so, but nothing came of my attempts. Anyway, that seems to be it for the moment. I need to pop to the post office to return something for a bigger size, and maybe buy an apron for the kitchen, but otherwise I think it's about time to get out of here for the week. There will be lots happening next week, but I can fill you in on all of that as the days go by. Have a great weekend. I certainly hope to.

14/03/2013 [17:40] Well, last night wasn't everything I wanted it to be, but I think that's OK. In fact it might have been a great evening after all because of that. Either way I was able to make the erg this morning, which was pretty hard. What amounted to five 1K pieces at rates from 30 to 34 strokes per minute. I chose to work on technique over raw power, which I think helped me a lot. As soon as I got into work I had to choke down my belgian buns and get straight on my bike again (legs aching) to get into town to talk fibres, cat5 cables and the removal of asbestos for an hour and a half (plus attendant walking around rooms and peering inside trunking). By the time I got back it was practically lunch time. So I had lunch. This afternoon I've mainly been working on finding a replacement for Google Reader now that Google have decided that they don't like it any more. I'm a little peeved at them for doing it when so many people seem to be using it (like me). Hopefully I'll find a replacement and after a few weeks I won't even remember that Google Reader existed. That would be nice. In other news there's an outing tonight and I'm desperately hoping that the weird and 'wonderful' weather we've had this week won't mean get doubly soaked by both it and the two rowers in front of me. A plain old steady paddle would go down very nicely, please. Had contact from Africa this afternoon just as I've been packing up to leave. I will take the time to reply to those emails when I get home this evening. Although it could be quite late as there's a standing pub invitation all evening that I could probably join in on. Although I will be very, very hungry. We'll see how it goes. Speaking of going...

13/03/2013 [17:00] Thus far today has been pretty successful. This morning I did my first erg in just over a week (two 6km UT2 lumps), and did them both in times faster than I've done in recent times while still maintaining good technique (or as good as I could tell whilest being on my own in the boat house). Then I got a switch installed and connected up and talking without any issues other than having a few panics over connector types. Since then I've been making some progress with my current Oracle VM Manager issue, catching up on emails, and fielding most of the things which've come my way in both the Networks and systems administration arenas. Oh, and after some overly-enthusiastic patch pushing last night I was fairly quickly able to downgrade some libxml2 packages which turned out to break a web application which was going to be demonstrated to the higher-ups this morning. Other than RHN being on a go-slow along with the overworked servers I was having to downgrade on, it all seemed to happen pretty cleanly. Which was nice. The weather has been nuts today. All over the place. I'm pretty glad I'm not going to be out on the river tonight. I just hope tomorrow night and Saturday aren't anything like today has been or I'm going to be pretty miserable. Relaxing (somewhat, maybe) with film this evening. Haven't done that in a while.

12/03/2013 [17:00] I actually, honestly wanted to go and do morning ergs today. But instead I had servers to patch. And not only that, the patching didn't go entirely according to plan. Not only did I suddenly remember on the cycle in that I had two other servers to patch, they turned out to be the easy ones, while the other three took over forty minutes to not do anything at all, thus completely pushing things out of the maintenance window. And then one of the servers barfed on reboot and caused a conniption fit amongst us here while we hunted around for passwords and things. Bottom line, after forty-five minutes past maintenance window deadline everything seemed to be OK. That meant I could instantly leap out of my chair and cycle over to my appointment at the surgery to be told that really, no-one really knows whether I have a hernia or not. But I can keep doing what I'm doing. Just a bit more gently. So that's not too bad. Still waiting on my ultrasound scan appointment date, though. I got in a real mood last night when I was packing for today. I appear to have misplaced my pogies. These are sort of vital at this time of year with the cold/wet weather and the terrible circulation I have in my hands. It's entirely possible I left them at the boat house and someone has appropriated them, believing that they were, in fact, abandoned. This is annoying. I've ordered another set because I definitely think I'm going to need them again before summer comes around, and also for winters to come. Hopefully (as they come in a set of three) I can sell the one I still have left to someone else and recoup a few pounds. In other news, I opened a new SR with Oracle about the physical disks I can't seem to delete from Oracle VM Manager. They told me to try some things. They didn't work. And now it appears to all have gone very quiet. Which is par for the course, of course. Oh, and there's video of me and my running partner doing the half marathon on Sunday. Well, just under three seconds of us, anyway. So that's cool. Right, I think that's it. Time to head off.

11/03/2013 [18:45] I should have gone home over an hour and a half ago, but I've been catching up on all kinds of things. And now there's this before I can leave. So the weather's been really odd today. Bright sunshine and blizzards. Cool, but a bit weird. Over the weekend I rowed a reasonable outing, went to London and met a friend, went to the British Museum, and ate pulled pork and burnt ends, and still got home in time to get a good night's sleep. Then on Sunday I ran a half marathon as a pacer for a friend and got them home two minutes faster than their previous PB. I think that's kinda cool. Oh, and then I had a pub lunch with Kate, and a rather super (and super-relaxing) afternoon listening to jazz music. Not everything I wanted from the day, but darned near close to it. Had I had everything, maybe I'd be feeling a little guilty about just how awesome it would have been. I really wasn't looking forward to work today, and the mass of things I thought I'd have to do... but luckily pretty much everything I did today came off without a hitch. All of the issues I was presented with I found solutions for and all of the people I emailed or otherwise contacted got back in touch with me in positive ways! Even the Oracle VM Manager upgrade went flawlessly, even if it didn't fix the bug I've been seeing. Couple that with rebuilding a RAID5 set as a six disk/three stripe RAID10 set and, well, I should have just gone home then rather than tempt fate. Which is what I'm going to do now, actually. No weights session at the boat house tonight. I'm giving myself a day off even though I didn't really have any issues with the half marathon. Although the weather was absolutely shocking, with sleet, snow, cold winds and the mild-and-easily-managed frustration of not running the thing at race pace. I think pacing for my friend really was the best thing to do given the amount of training I hadn't done. Next year I'm hoping to break 1h20m. Anyway, enough about that, it's rowing all the way now. Although not starting tomorrow as I will be here early tomorrow, patching machines.

08/03/2013 [17:30] I am now officially the busiest person ever in the history of work and stuff. My (Networks) team leader went on paternity leave in the middle of the day yesterday and since then my workload has increased by what feels like two orders of magnitude. I've been in and out of the office all day doing survey stuff, talking to contractors, looking at cable runs and negotiating with all manner of people... all at the same time as fighting with buggy-as-hell Oracle VM Manager (really dreading the update I'm going to try next week) and another change to the disk layout the developers want for the database servers the Oracle VM Servers will be hosting. Really, from zero to a billion miles an hour makes for some serious whiplash. At the same time I'm not sure what to make of my potential hernia and the half marathon I'm running on the weekend. Sometimes everything feels fine and I do wonder if I should run the thing at full pace. Other times I jog down a corridor and wonder if something isn't rather wrong with my body. I guess I will have to see how I feel on the day. That's Sunday (morning) anyway, I still have tonight's and tomorrow morning's outings, a trip to London on Saturday afternoon and a meal with Kate tonight to experience, first. Have a good weekend. I imagine I'll have plenty to tell you on Monday, if I get the time to write anything.

07/03/2013 [16:05] It turns out getting your ultrasound scan done privately is quite expensive. I'm debating doing it, though. I just wish I knew how long it would be before the NHS scan date will come through so I know what kind of time frame I'm looking at with regard to making it worth my while to wait or pay. In the meantime I'm getting what I'm 66% sure is psychosomatic discomfort in that area and possibly even referred psychosomatic feelings close by. This is, as you can imagine, annoying. What am I supposed to do? What exercises can and can't, should and shouldn't I do? It's so frustrating. I'm glad I have another appontment Tuesday next as that should give me a bit more information to go on. That time I'll have my wits about me a little more I hope. I did some very gentle core work this morning (ludicrously gentle) as a first step to increasing muscle tone, control, etc. in that area. Maybe that's what has caused the sensations I'm feeling now. Who knows. I've got an outing tonight, which will be the first test of whatever's wrong and me being aware of what to look for. Last night's bank partying for another crew was a chance to stay warm while still getting out for a bit of light exercise. Tonight I expect to get quite wet (it's spitting outside at the moment), and probably cold too. I still slept pretty well all things considered, and was up in time to do the above exercises and still get to the other server room in time to see the builders in and get the RAM added to the last server in the set I had to add RAM to. The Networks team leader is likely off until the beginning of April on paternity leave, so he's handed all of his calls over to me. This could be the beginning of a very busy time for me. For now though, haircut!

06/03/2013 [17:55] It's not that I'm not thinking about it a lot but I still seemed to sleep fairly well last night despite being told it's fairly likely I have some kind of hernia and my running and rowing for this year could basically be on hold/cancelled. I did some core exercises this morning (and have printed out some from the web to do every morning) which didn't feel too bad. However, I'm now in total hypochondria/overly-sensitive mode about anything I feel in that area. I'm constantly poking and proding it to make sure everything's OK. If I was actually pushing any harder I'd probably be doing myself actual damage. However, I think I've managed to save the half marathon for myself. Rather than not do it at all, which would really upset me, and not run it at race pace, which could break me, I'm going to run it as a pacer for my running partner from work. She's not as fast as me, but it'll still be proof to myself that I can run a half marathon in a reasonable time (1h45m-ish Vs 1h25m or so). Also, I'll be able to concentrate more on how my body is feeling, keep my running technique stable, solid, and correct, and not be totally wiped out by the end. The latter being much appreciated by my coach, cox, and captain from the rowing club. I'm worried about my body. But the doctor didn't seem that bothered and at no point said anything about not running or rowing. Just not to lift heavy weights. Maybe she doesn't know that the rowing stroke is pretty much like doing almost all of a power clean, or a dead lift. I'll be careful, anyway. Another machine's RAM upgraded this morning. All seemed to go perfectly. I have one more to do tomorrow morning. This one'll be a bit earlier as I need to be there to let some builders into the remote site I'll be at. Then I have to hang around for a few hours until someone can come and replace me. Anyway, time to head off and bank party a crew on the river, in the dark. Then have pizza.

05/03/2013 [06/03/2013 11:10] Sorry I forgot to do this on the day. I don't know why I didn't. Maybe I was distracted, and just wanted to go home. The reason for the distraction was that I went to the doctor in the morning and they said that there was definitely some kind of "cough response" or at least definitely something that looked like it might be a hernia, or at least a weakness in that area. She told me not to lift weights. Unfortunately that's a big part of my rowing training. Not to mention the fact that the action of taking a rowing stroke is very similar to lifting weights. And then there's the two rowing races this month, and the half marathon this weekend. I really don't know what to do about it all. I did the race on Sunday and don't seem to have made anything worse (I think). So maybe I'll just take things a day/session at a time and see how things go. For now she's going to schedule an ultrasound scan which could take 4-6 weeks, plus another 1-2 weeks before I get to discuss the results. In effect, this could basically blow away my whole rowing season. Not to mention running, or any other training other than perhaps road cycling. I'm really not happy. And I don't really know what I can and can't, should or shouldn't be doing. I should find a physio, I think. Maybe even go private for the scan.

04/03/2013 [16:55] It was a good weekend! Saturday we had some reasonable outings in the 8+, then a rather fun meal with everyone in the evening at a Zizzi in town. Sunday was the race. Which we won by a good ten seconds, meaning we came joint second overall over the three legs (January, February (which I didn't do due to injury), and this one in March). My only worry, which seems to be increasing ever so slightly by the hour, is that the aches in my lower abdominal muscles that followed on from the pull in my right adductor (groin straing) could be a hernia. I really have no idea. I've never really investigated what things feel like there in any in-depth manner, so I'm going to go to the doctor tomorrow (if I can get an appointment, don't get me started on that) and see what they say. If the news is simply "you've pulled something, let it recover" then we're golden. If it's anything worse then it means that Kingston Head, the HORR, and the rest of this season could be pretty much up the spout as I'd lose my seat in the M1 boat and basically not be able to do anything for a good long while. That would be deeply annoying. Still, it could mean that with running and rowing out of the picture it might be the time to concentrate on my cycling a bit more. Let's try to find the silver lining, eh? Anyway, it could all be nothing and just me being a hypochondriac about a bulging muscle rather than a hernia. Trained minds will investigate. I'll let you know. I did some work today. Mainly stuff with Oracle VM which Oracle have seen fit to update again without any real notification. A little annoying, but the two things I've updated so far don't seem to be throwing any fits. I've been bitten by this once now though. So I'm hugely wary this time around. I hope there's a way to mitigate the risks this time.

01/03/2013 [17:35] And now we're into March. Again, these months seem to pass more and more quickly. And with the start of the month I have the beginnings of a cold. Just days before the hardest week of training and racing yet. Utterly perfect. No, really. It's going to be horrible trying to race (rowing) on Sunday and then doing a half marathon a week on Sunday feeling like poo. I may have to miss out on a lot of training just to keep from getting run down (no pun intended) for the half marathon. Obviously I'll go all out on Sunday, but after that it's resting and trying to get over this thing as quickly as I can. In other news it looks like my old bike really has bitten the dust. No-one's been able to get the bottom bracket out. So I'm going to strip the frame for parts and consign it to the skip. Only lasted me 12 years, but they were very important and life-changing years. Three major relationships, one of them a marriage, a house, two jobs, and almost a completely life direction change. I guess it's time to move on. Or roll on. Workwise I spent the first part of this morning putting RAM in various different slots in a server and discovering that either something is very weird, or very broken, with the server. Either way, it's working, so I'm leaving it alone now. Three more servers to do next week. Not particularly early mornings, but still requiring of a bit of early morning effort. This morning was rather lovely, it has to be said. Although there's a part of me which is wondering if everything is as it should be. Anyway, this weekend is mainly about rowing, picking up my new bike (again), potentially collecting my old one and stripping it, Tesco shopping, racing, hoping my cold is a quickly suffered and dealt with one, and having a club meal. Not necessarily in that order. Whatever you're doing this weekend, I hope it is fun, and the weather is nice.