BOFHJournal - February 2016

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29/02/2016 [17:15] For much of the weekend I managed to put this week out of my mind considering how busy and problematic I was sure it was going to be. Having Rachel arrive on Friday, and stay until Saturday lunch time to help me go shopping for new trainers (with gait analysis, naturally) was a big plus. Then she went home to play a game of hockey and I went to Tesco to get stuff for us (her) to cook for Sunday dinner. She came back (having scored in her game) in the evening and we had pizza and watch stuff on the television. Sunday morning was the half marathon. We both went into it thinking we'd do fairly well, and had decided to race it properly rather than treating it like a training run. The weather was pretty much perfect (cold, but not freezing, barely any wind, dry), and other than a bit of congestion for the first mile or so due to there being a lot of people in the first pen we both came away having done pretty great runs and achieving new PBs. Not only that but neither of us felt particularly destroyed afterwards and in fact were quite perky. Especially after a cheese-heavy lunch. The rest of Sunday was relax and recovery time. This morning neither of us were all that stiff as we went in our own directions either. At work I started the copy off of a huge amount of data from a server I had to get stuff done to before tomorrow morning when I reboot its partner, then dove into the mass of other stuff I needed to get ready for tomorrow's very early morning mammoth patch and reboot session. I think I'm ready to go there. Over lunch, while waiting for the last little bit of data to finish copying safely away I went for my usual Monday lunch time 11.4km run and came away with a reasonable time considering I ran a half marathon race yesterday. Plus I still don't feel too bad. I'll head off to do some weights in a few moments, then see about getting an early night. After showering post-run I headed over to the server room with new disks to do server things, spending about an hour and a half there before coming back. Right now there's still about three hours to go on the copy, so I'm going to have to log in from home tonight and do the necessary things to have stuff ready to fail over tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning is going to be extremely interesting, to say the least. If I don't make at least one or two mistakes I'm going to be very surprised. We'll see.

26/02/2016 [16:40] Today has been A Day. As well as realising I had to prepare 72 servers for patching and rebooting on Tuesday morning next week, there was a disk failure in a RAID5 set. On its own this wasn't anything to be too concerned about and we would get a new disk on Monday. However, when we sent the controller log to Dell they said there was another disk on the way out, and two other disks had bad blocks and were the cause of a punctured stripe in the RAID set. This is obviously non-optimal. As a result we're getting two new disks on Monday, I have to copy the live KVM guest server off to somewhere else with lots of room as it's huge, blow away the RAID volume, replace the disks and recreate it, before copying the guest back again. What was going to compound the issue was that the other half of the failover for this service was in a server room with power issues (see: last weekend). Luckily those problems have apparently been temporarily fixed, so we're not quite so doubly vulnerable, but still are a bit as that server room's power is proving to be extremely badly provisioned. Along with all of that was the usual day's worth of work, emails, stand up meetings, and staring morosely at the YaST XML files I need to talk to someone about translating into something I can write in Kickstart. As it is though that's all next week. Before then I have the very lovely Rachel coming to see me this evening (a little later than planned due to over-work, I imagine), then she's heading back to play hockey tomorrow afternoon before returning tomorrow evening in time for Sunday's half marathon. I really don't know how my race is going to go, but I think I might try to see how well I can do without totally destroying myself for the following week's training. This isn't my target race, so I need to make sure I'm still in one piece for what's to come. Anyway, more on everything on Monday.

25/02/2016 [17:00] Oddly, I had a really good run this morning. I wasn't expecting much, and didn't think I pushed all that hard, yet it's entirely possible I broke 20km for 1 hour and 30 minutes. That's what my GPS watch and Endomondo says anyway. Strava, being Strava, says otherwise. In any event it was a remarkably good run for how I was feeling. I still don't know what I'm going to do in terms of the race on Sunday. Will I go out and race it full on, or just treat it like a fast training run for the marathon? Honestly, I don't know, but it's entirely likely it'll be the former, and I'll go off too fast and come apart somewhere around 15km or so into the 21.1km distance, and then Rachel will overtake me. With that foreknowledge you'd have to hope I therefore wouldn't do that, but you never know with me. So little happened at work today I've been able to spend some time replying to a few very pending emails, and even stir myself up a bit about the impending (and likely stupid) office moves we're all going to be going through here. We'll have to see if anything happens on that score. I think it's unlikely. Also on the not happening front is Rachel not coming this evening (according to plan). This leaves me at something of a loose end, but does mean I can have steak for dinner and continue my recovery by not doing any exercise. I actually won't be exerting myself again properly before Sunday morning... At least in terms of running. Rachel will instead be coming tomorrow evening, going home to play hockey on Saturday, then coming back again on Saturday evening for the race on Sunday (and then staying until Monday morning). While she's here we'll probably go and get me some new trainers (to switch to after the half marathon this weekend), and then I'll go to Tesco whilest she's doing her thing on the hockey pitch.

24/02/2016 [17:10] Positive news on the running front this morning. I managed a season's best for 1.5 hours of 19.93km. And I wasn't completely dead by the end of it. If tomorrow morning's run is vaguely similar (but by no means faster), I think I should be in reasonable shape to at least get under 1:30 on Sunday. That, or possibly under 1:27, is all I really care about. Well, and not picking up any injuries. Workwise there was some server rebooting at lunch time to get partition tables re-read so that I could add some extra disk space to a logical volume, a whole lot of administrative stuff, helping my new team leader move to his new desk (outgoing Network guy's old desk), and generally responding to lots of emails and sorting out lots of things. Right now though all I want to do is go home and eat some more. I think I drank a little too much squash today. Either that or I'm really hungry. Whatever it is, I have a bit of a stomach ache and I think it's probably solvable by eating more. I can't see how that could possibly be a bad idea whatever the issue.

23/02/2016 [16:45] A slightly early morning of patching and rebooting. Unfortunately one server hadn't had its firmware updated, so that'll have to be reschduled for another time and another reboot. Disappointing, but them's the breaks. Other than a shortish weights session last night I haven't done any exercise since Sunday. Oddly I don't feel all that rested, more just a little drained-feeling. Maybe my body already feels like it can go into proper recovery mode. I hope not, because I've got two runs to do this week before the race on Sunday, as well as an AT erg to do this evening. Maybe the latter will wake me up again. It certainly needs it as right now I can't even muster up the energy to work out what to have for dinner this evening. Otherwise, everything's pretty normal here at the moment. Well, it was the Network guy's last day, which meant I got to reallocate a few things from his desk, but I missed his leaving presentation as I was at a psychology experiment thingy. What else to tell you...? Other than getting up early tomorrow for a run, that's about all I have that might interest you. Or anyone else.

22/02/2016 [16:45] Another extremely full weekend. Saturday started pretty well with a rather good 39km run. Nearly a marathon, not quite. It would have been a fairly good time too, I think. Not as fast as Manchester, slower than Paris. Anyway, best not to destroy myself before the actual race, and before this next weekend's half marathon. Sadly, although I was pretty tired I couldn't stay home and rest and recuperate until the meet up with Max and Stacey as there was a power cut at one of our server rooms which required me to choke down my lunch at high speed and then cycle over there on tired legs. A significant amount of time was spent fighting with electrical things before I got out of there and cycled in to town to meet everyone (including Rachel). In the end everything worked out fairly well and Rachel and I made it home intact. Sunday was more of a recovery run for me, so I only did 15km whilest Rachel strode out 23 miles or so. We did the first 10km or so together before she split off for points unknown and I headed back to wash up, go to Tesco and generally clean the house up a bit. Then we were in for the day, which was great. Lots of food, drink, foot massages, and things like that. Dinner and Rachel choosing to watch The Great Escape followed. This morning was pretty difficult in terms of getting out of bed, but success was had and since then I've pretty much got everything ready for tomorrow morning's patch and reboot session. I'm feeling fairly good, energy-wise. This is the first week in over a month when I haven't run three days in a row (Sat-Mon), so I'm actually champing at the bit, slightly. I'll be doing weights this evening, then an erg tomorrow, running Wednesday and possibly Thursday morning, then resting as per on Friday before taking Saturday off as well. Unheard of lack of running on Saturday. Then again, I will be racing a half marathon on the Sunday, so that probably counts for something. It's definitely not going to be a 100km week though. Hmmm, must remember to keep asking about getting TOIL and an emergency callout payment from work (fat chance).

19/02/2016 [17:10] As days go, this one was fairly productive. Of course there are a few things I haven't gotten done that I'm sure at least on developer is annoyed about, but frankly I've had one of the most productive weeks I can remember in a good few months, so sod them. Today has mainly been about patching servers for the glibc thing, installing GSM modems, installing new hard drives, replacing hard drives, configuring new RAID configurations, writing very long, complicated emails, and generally getting lots of things done efficiently. As a result I'm mentally quite tired, which is OK considering today is my rest day so I'm physically not too bad at all. All that changes over the weekend with my two long runs. I'm not sure how long they'll both be, but probably on the order of 22 miles and 13 miles respectively. We'll see. Rachel arrives on Saturday afternoon, fresh from her hockey game. We'll be meeting Max and Stacey in town for tea, and discussing marathons and ultras we're interested in in the lead up to the ultra we're all doing in the latter half of this year. Other than that there'll be all the usual stuff that I/we do over the course of the weekend, then I'll be back at the coal face on Monday. That'll be the Networks person's last day, or second last day. We don't seem to have arranged a card or a collection for him, which is a bit poor. Hopefully something will happen before he goes.

18/02/2016 [16:30] Another hectic day. This one started, like yesterday, with an early morning rise and run. Thankfully the weather wasn't terrible, as forecast. No wind, no rain, no snow. It was wet underfoot after last night, so there were a lot of puddles, but nothing problematic to speak of, really. I didn't feel like I pushed all that hard, but came away with my second best distance for the time, I think. Useful, I hope. Once at work, having eaten some second breakfast, things started to go down hill a bit. Lots of walking the whole building trying to find people so I could negotiate when to do this glibc patching thing. Explaining why I'm not available on Thursday mornings at the moment, explaining why the patch really requires a reboot, dealing with the fact that my management chain is in transition at the moment. All a bit annoying. Then I was told how many machines I'm patching next Tuesday morning. I think it's about thirty two all told. And many of them are having firmware updates applied as well. It's going to be an interesting morning. I've also got three machines to patch and reboot tomorrow morning. They should go OK. I think. Then the icing on the cake is that a disk has failed in a server, I've got two other servers to fill with disks, a GSM modem needs attaching to a server, and there's a tape changing run that needs doing. With luck the replacement disk will arrive tomorrow and, given all of the above is at the same server room, a colleague and I can do everything in one visit. If all that comes off I'll be very very pleased. For now though I'm going to leave early and go to the cinema.

17/02/2016 [17:30] A good solid run was had this morning. So I'm pleased with that. Then I got into work to find that the six KVM guests I attempted to fix yesterday had remained fixed, so that was good too. The day degraded slightly as more and more technical admin has been piled on top of me with regard to this recent glibc vulnerability. Suffice it to say I'm not impressed with the hoops I'm going to have to jump through. Especially as the minor (and not so minor) mistakes I've made with patching servers recently, as well as the general difficulty with getting patching done/downtime all adds up to making my life hell with regard to when I get to do stuff. Still, almost all of it can't be helped. I just have to work through it a day/task at a time. Now though I'm off for a physio session where I get to say that I'm actually feeling quite good. Then it's another early night for tomorrow morning's run. Although the weather forecast is for snow, which could be interesting.

16/02/2016 [17:00] Today has been something of an arse. The patching this morning went well, but a major application stack didn't start up again for over 35 minutes until my old team leader pointed out a configuration change I should have been aware of as it'd come up previously. This means I'm probably going to get reamed about it on Thursday at a meeting. However, I won't be at that meeting so I don't think it'll be too bad. Another application that I upgraded began spewing errors at around 14:00 today, but a conversation with the developer and a configuration change seems to have made that shut up, too. Then there's the KVM guests I've been moving from one server to another. I was in serious trouble of getting told off about the repeated segfaults we've been getting on all six currently-moved instances. It's entirely possible I've found the solution to their issues too (moving from an Oracle UEK kernel to the "RHEL-compatible" kernel for the hypervisor), but we need at least 24 hours to prove that's the case. Then on top of all of that there's the work I have to start doing with one of the services I've inherited as part of the coming together of our division and the other one. I haven't even had time to think about that except to curse it and wish it would all go away. It's going to require sitting down with people and learning a lot of new stuff I don't really have the head space for at the moment. Sadly though, it's something I have to make room for. I'll see if I have some time on Thursday. For now I'm off to the boat house to do my 20 min erg for the week, then head home and do the washing up from last week (I was away all weekend, don't judge me too harshly), and then get an early night for tomorrow's first morning run of this week. I hope it's not too cold, or at least not windy or wet. I'd pick one of three.

15/02/2016 [17:00] Nothing says Valentine's Day weekend like running 35km one day, and then thrashing out an incredibly fast 18km the next, over the slightly contoured area of South London (Croydon). I headed to Rachel's on Friday straight from work. Having found somewhere to lock my bike where it wouldn't be too disturbed over the weekend the journey was then fairly uneventful, even given the time of day. However, after poor end to the working day, and then traveling, I needed a good hour or more before I was able to settle down properly at Rachel's. Saturday morning we were up early and running in moderatley grim weather. 2h48m later we were done, numb of face and hands, and very glad to be getting in doors. Rachel had to leave fairly quickly for a massage appointment she hadn't been able to shift, but I spent some time doing computery things, and then a fair amount of time dozing in bed. Once she was back that's definitely what I did, anyway. The remainder of Saturday wasn't so much a write-off as just legitimate 100% recovery. Dinner was home-made pie (Rachel's home, she made it) which was incredibly good. We slept fairly well, and were able to sleep in (or at least doze in) until quite late. Then, in an attempt to stop me from feeling like the runs I do with Rachel are more tiring than the ones I do on my own, Rachel let me lead on a shorter two lap run. I pushed us both very hard and wer were rewarded with a rather stonking time for a training run. Elated, and weirdly not as tired as the day before (given that day's run and the effects of the previous day's run) we retired to the sofa to eat lots, drink lots, and watch stuff on her laptop until bed time. I had to get up early to get to work on time this morning, and traveled during rush hour of course, but it wasn't too bad with a book and a seat. At work today I've deracked old servers (rescuing now-spare hard drives and FC cards), run a very fast Monday lunchtime 11.4km, and prepared a whole host of servers for tomorrow's patching schedule. Hopefully everything will go according to plan and I can get on with the rest of my day as soon as it's all complete. For now though it's a short gym session, home, Tesco, home, collapse.

12/02/2016 [16:20] The server I built for one of my new developers (that I've inherited as part of the divisional joining that's slowly going on (like two continents grinding together)) is going to have to be totally torn down and rebuilt in a stupid an annoying way. It's also going to be handed over to the developer to do horrible things to with regard to unmaintainable software. I've pushed back one last time to ask if a VM can be spun up to do what the developer wants, and keep the server for the brave new world, but we'll have to see how that goes. In any event next week is going to be unpleasant from a work point of view. I actually got up at a half way sensible time this morning, showered, shaved, and cycled to work on a bike I won't mind leaving at the train station for the weekend. However, that does mean a slightly less than comfortable cycle to work on Monday morning. I'm honestly not looking forward to next week much at all. Still, before then I have three nights with Rachel, a long run, a slightly less long run, and hopefully some time to relax and not think about work. We'll see how that goes. Have a good weekend.

11/02/2016 [17:15] Some hopeful thoughts on getting the KVM guests I've been moving from hypervisor to hypervisor working a bit more cleanly. I've asked for one of the guests to play with tomorrow and we'll see if the virsh editing I want to do will have any effect. I moved another two guests this morning and for a time it looked like they'd moved happily... only for them to start throwing segfaults and errors later on in the day. Initially though, having done another run this morning (which was much better than yesterday's in terms of feeling, but not anywhere near as fast as I'd done last week's) I was feeling pretty good about the things I'd achieved by 10:00. Also I got a lift to the boat house and back to collect a running glove I managed to leave behind, so that saved my legs the effort, and it only cost me the price of a sandwich that I owed the person who drove me anyway. So, win/win there. This afternoon I had a meeting with the other two people in my erstwhile new team. Nothing much was progressed, but we got to talk about what was bothering us (lots of things) and our worries and fears about what we were being given (aka: saddled with) in terms of servers and services and things we'd have to support in the new world order. I don't think the meeting achieved much, other than establishing that the three of us are on the same page with regard to the mountain we're going to have to start climbing at some point in the indefinitely near future. I'm going to go home and start eating until it's bed time, and mix in some television watching and packing for this weekend. I'm going to be going to see Rachel tomorrow and won't be back in town until Monday morning when I'll do the usual cycle from the station straight to work. There's work going on at the station this weekend so I'm going to have to park my bike somewhere safe for the duration. I'm not sure which bike to take, or where to park it, so that's something else I'll have to think about, too. In any event, it's definitely home time, and food time.

10/02/2016 [17:20] I had pancakes last night. After doing a new PB for a 20 minute erg, and without having a reasonable dinner. As a result, and probably in combination with being quite tired from all the running I've been doing recently, this morning's run was pretty unpleasant. I was only about 600m off my PB for 1.5 hours of running, but not only did I feel probably more tired than usual (although my splits were pretty good, and I still had enough energy to speed up in the last three K or so), I also had some gastrointestinal issues which made me glad I packed preparedly for the run. Anyway, suffice it to say the run was hard, but I did it. I'll evaluate how I feel about running again tomorrow morning when I go to bed, and when I wake up in the morning. For the time being though I'm just going to go home and have a quiet evening of television watching and washing up (which hasn't been done since the weekend). Today at work I did some emailing, got some logistical stuff done, helped the Networks guy do some some networking stuff in town all afternoon, and earned a free second lunch, which I really needed. I also ate a huge amount after my run, which I hope will make Rachel a little more pleased with me (because I don't eat enough after my runs, she says (and could be right)).

09/02/2016 [17:15] Large amounts of patching done this morning. Everything pretty much went according to plan, thankfully. I did actually forget to patch one box before rebooting it, but I still managed to get it done and rebooted again before the downtime period was over. Since then I've had a bit of a time dealing with one new server that's falling under my remit in the brave new world. The developer wants to do horrible things to it because that's the way things were always done, and I really really want to push back. Hopefully I'll be able to, with support from his line manager and my new line mananger. It got my blood pressure up though, when I got the email. Last night after weights I went out for Chinese New Year with a few friends, and tonight, after doing my cardio erg I'll be seeing pretty much the same friends again for Shrove Tuesday pancakes. I just have to get the erg done first. Tomorrow morning is my first early morning run of the week for which I hope the weather is clement.

08/02/2016 [16:45] Last week I ran 104.0km. Not all in one go, obviously. I put the fact that I'm not laid up with shin splints, achilles tendenitis, or other joint/soft tissue injuries down to almost religiously doing my physio-mandated exercises every single morning and evening and before and after every run without fail. While I continue to run at this intensity I am determined not to miss even one set. They take time, but the advantages I gain from taking that time out of my day are huge. By doing them I was able to run 32.8km on Saturday, 21.5km on Sunday, and 11.4km (in high winds) today. That's pretty awesome, if I say so myself. The weekend as a whole went pretty swimmingly, if I do say so myself. After a nice quiet Friday evening I did my 20+ mile run on Saturday morning, getting back in pretty reasonable weather, and at the same overall pace as I ran the Saturday before's one. Then there was some lunch, and Tesco. Rachel arrived quite late into the evening after her Saturday of doing things and we had a rather nice dinner together. Sunday was her long run day, so I cycled the first few miles with her, then ran a half marathon distance with her, and then jumped back on the bike to stay with her back to the house again. She was incredible, and, I'm pretty sure, had a better finishing few km than I am capable of at the moment. After getting cleaned up we drifted into town for a smashing lunch, and then a smidgen of shopping. At home we caught up on stuff (but not all of the things we should have done), did some online shopping, and Rachel made us a rather delicious curry. As a blast from the past I downloaded two old Top Gear episodes, which amused us until the end of the day. Owing to there being upheaval at the train station with regard to cycle racking in the next few weeks Rachel got up early and walked to the station to head to work. Not a great way to start the week, but probably good for her after yesterday's run. I headed into work this morning and spent the day preparing servers for tomorrow's earlyish morning patching. Only 16 servers of various physical and virtual types, plus about a dozen more that just need a reboot. Given the amount of firmware patching that's gone on too, there's a small chance something will go wrong tomorrow, but I'm hopeful it won't. Other than that the lunchtime run was interesting, given how strongly the wind was gusting. Definitely not a PB for the route. but some solid miles nonetheless. Now I'm off to do a quick weights session before celebrating the Chinese New Year with Cormac and co.

05/02/2016 [16:40] Rest day! Thank goodness. I definitely needed it. I've no real aches or pains, but I do have some chafing, and frankly I think I needed to get some energy back into my cells. Especially considering the next three days of running. Rachel came over last night, but she was as tired as I was, so it was quite a quiet and subdued evening together. I think we both need to find some way to get respective monkeys off our backs a little, as well as making sure our marathon training doesn't overcome us (me much more than her). It's obvious that in the next few weeks, as her job situation sorts itself out and my training settles down into something sensible, things will bounce back and all will be wellerer. We just have to drum our fingers until then. I've had a thankfully drama-free day today swapping disks, configuring servers to be KVM hosts, and deracking various bits of equipment. That's certainly helped on my end. Rachel had a very good presentation yesterday, which made her (and therefore me) very happy, so we're definitely on the right track. We just need a bit more time together. Happily, Rachel's due back on Saturday evening, and will be with me through Sunday (when we'll run together!) and into Monday morning. That'll be lovely. In and around that I'll be fitting in a 32.5km run, a Tesco trip, potentially a lunch at Patisserie Valerie, and at least one fantastic shared evening meal. I'm really looking forward to it all, actually. All we need now is for the weather not to be vile. It all starts with me leaving work as soon as I've posted this and going home to relax as much as humanly possible, potentially with a pizza.

04/02/2016 [18:05] There wasn't much chance of me beating yesterday's PB for a 1.5 hour run (or at least a PB for these 1.5 hour runs, this year... although, checking my training log the only time I've run faster/further for 1.5 hours has been actual half marathons, so actually an actual PB for a training run, yay!) given how tired I was after it, and how I felt getting up this morning. However, in the end I was just shy of 500m off what I did, so that was quite pleasing. What was also pleasing was getting back to the boat house in time to have a pint of home-made smoothie and a crossant with blueberry jam for a reasonable price from the bar there. Then a nice long, hot shower. The cycle to work was a little more doable therefore than yesterday's given the energy infusion. Today's work was a bit patchy. Disks failed, VMs were spun up, attempts were made to solve the issues affecting KVM guests which were moved from one server to another (without success), and other servers' external disk arrays were set to shred their contents in preparation for the servers being retasked and the arrays being junked. The shredding is actually still ongoing, but I can leave that for as long as it takes and then do the necessary cleaning up (software-wise as well as deracking the hardware) whenever it's done. Rachel's coming to town this evening (yay!), so I need to go home via Tesco and get some potatoes, unless she's convinced me that the mashable spuds will do instead. We'll give them a shot and see, I think. Tomorrow is my total rest day, and I have to say that I'm really starting to look forward to Fridays. No need to get up early (now regular for Tuesday-Thursday (patching, runnning, running)), nothing physical at lunch time, and I can even go home early due to it being Friday. Speaking of which, it's gone 18:00 so I should get out of here and try to put the house in some sort of order before Rachel arrives.

03/02/2016 [17:35] Earlyish bed time last night so I could get up to do my run this morning. After a pretty hard 20min erg I wasn't looking forward to the run. Especially if there was going to be a strong wind against me on the way back. In the end though, despite not feeling all that awake when I got out of bed, I managed a new longest distance for a 1.5 hour run, and with only a slight increase in shin tenderness (still doesn't feel like proper shin splints by any means). I didn't even feel all that tired until I came to get on my bike to cycle to work, at which point I felt very very tired. I'm hoping some snacking and a big dinner this evening will see me right for tomorrow morning's more of the same. I probably won't push as hard as I did this morning. At work I solved a few problems, did a few useful things, and went into town with the Networks guy to clear a few switches and other things from buildings which have been abandoned for newer offices. Came back with almost everything we were hoping for, and some stuff we weren't expecting. Since then I've been trying to find time to wash the dust off my hands from handling all the kit we reclaimed and not managing to. So I'm just going to go home now instead. Steak, I think, tonight. And something nice to drink. And some good downloaded television.

02/02/2016 [16:35] Rachel had a bit of a stomach ache for most of yesterday, which wasn't all that nice for her, sadly. It appears to have lasted into today as well. So much so that we thought it made sense for her to take the morning off (or at least not travel in to work, she still worked from home). Hopefully she'll feel better soon. I'm a little worried, to be honest, as it has lasted a few days now. I had to leave earlyish this morning to get in and do patching. This went well, thank goodness. Since then I've done a psychology experiment, replaced a hard drive, and communicated with a few developers about the servers I'm going to be or am already maintaining for them. Now I'm about to leave a little earlier than usual (because I was in earlier) to go and do my Tuesday evening erg before the rest of the men's squad turns up to do their 5K test. Tomorrow morning I'll be doing a 1.5 hour run before work, then coming in to get on with my day.

01/02/2016 [17:05] Quite an impressive weekend for me, if I say so myself. A 32.5km run on Saturday, followed by a 20km run on Sunday, all without any serious injuries or niggles (other than the usual low-grade ones). The weather wasn't spectacular, but it was tolerable (especially when I visualised the hot shower and comfy clothes I'd be looking forward to after each run). Other than the runs there was Tesco shopping, and looking after Rachel, who arrived on Sunday afternoon quite under the weather. She's working from (my) home today, so I should get off and do my hour's weight training at the boat house and be home as soon as I can (although she has a Skype call at 19:00, so I've no need to rush too much). Today I've been ordering replacement hard drives, installing firmwares, pre-patching (downloading) servers for tomorrow morning, and running a reasonably quick 11.4km at lunch time. That's probably about it, if I'm honest.