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August's Journal
October's Journal
23/09/2016
[18:20] And that's it, a short week done and now my last week of vacation
before, well, probably Christmas. I've done a lot today, including go to
another meeting about something which broke things here. As I was about to get
out of my chair to go home last night we suffered the culmination of a DOS
attack which had been building all day... or a thorough vulnerablity probe
attack which resulted in a DOS on some of our web sites. I, along with others,
fixed it within about an hour, but it was annoying for a while. Anyway, the
meeting about it was today and I think it went quite well. Other than that I've
just been doing the usual 1001 things which crop up to deal with when I'm the
only person in the building who is responsible for the things I'm responsible
for. I haven't really had time to work on anything else that I should have been
progressing. Hopefully once I'm back a week on Monday and everyone else is too
we'll all be able to do the jobs we're supposed to be doing, rather than
covering for everyone else. Anyway, that's it from me now. A weekend of
relaxation, and maybe a little bit of running shorter distances faster here and
there (and some cycling too, I think). Rachel arriving on Sunday and then...
well, I have no idea what I'll be doing next week, but it should involve being
outdoors, reading, exercise, and sleeping.
22/09/2016
[16:50] Not quite such a busy day today, thankfully. After yesterday's
activities all I had to do was get up this morning, do morning exercises for the
first time in many many months, recover from that and then get to work for about
07:40 or so. Then it was patching and rebooting four physical and three virtual
servers (including numerous firmware updates, which still make me nervous), and
then it was getting on with the day. I've made some real progress on a good few
things and even managed to send out some emails asking other people to do things
so they can give me more work. Crazy, I know.
Over lunch I risked going for a very short run (~6km) and found that I was
actually less sore and more loose afterwards than before, which was nice. Of
course, I clocked the slowest I've ever done that particular route since I
started recording doing it some time in 2014, but that's beside the point.
I'm going to head home now, via Cormac's office to pick up a bit of kit to do
hard drive duplication, and then await Rachel's arrival, which will herald an
evening of awesomeness and relaxation before Friday morning's bah-inducing
bah-ness. Still, I have all of next week off as the last of the vacation days
I'm not allowed to carry over, so there is that.
21/09/2016
[17:50] Sorry for the extremely sporadic journal entries at the moment. They'll
settle down in a little while, once I've run out of vacation days to use up. As
it is I'm in for the remainder of the week and then off all of next week. After
that I'm afraid you get to see my mug every working day until some time in
December when I go on a course again (the last one in quite some time I'd
imagine).
Anyway, the reason I was away this time was to go and run my very first
ultramarathon in the Peak District, with Rachel. We headed up there on Friday
after getting sports massages locally. I don't know quite how much good mine
did me, but some definite tight knots were identified and pummeled a lot. After
that we went home and waited to be collected by Max and Stacey. The drive to
the Peaks went perfectly fine, and we found the place easily given it was right
next door to where Rachel and I had stayed three weekends before. The AirBnB
apartment itself was fantastic. I can't commend it highly enough. It
was everything we needed, exactly where we needed it. We'd arrived via Tesco,
so we had everything we needed for the weekend for the most part, so we settled
in and went to bed. On the Saturday morning Max and Stacey tried to change
registration to enter the 20 mile race rather than the 50 mile one on account of
them both being injured in the run up (no pun intended) to the day. They
weren't allowed to, but decided to just run that distance anyway. They went for
a hike for much of the day. Rachel and I walked over to the start of the course
and hired mountain bikes to ride one big loop of the course in the opposite
direction to all the loops we'd done in the race's direction, before coming home
again before we got too tired. We had a nice meal and an early night. Neither
of us slept particularly well though. In the morning we all drove to the
start/race control, unpacked our transition bags and went to the toilet a few
times. Then it was the countdown to the start and we were off. Having done
enough long runs, the first small lap of just under 10km seemed to take no time
at all, Rachel and I were running well together, although it seemed like we were
losing ground on everyone ahead of us. By the time we were half way through the
first big lap we'd decided not to care about placing. After finishing the first
big lap, my changing of kit, and starting the second lap we'd also decided not
to care too much about our stretch target goal of a finishing time of 8h30m. We
just wanted to cover the distance. The second lap was hard, and made harder by
the constant thought that this wasn't the last time we'd be treading the same
ground. The end of the second lap was both a joy and a dread that the same
again was still to come. I changed kit again (did I mention I sweat a lot
running in the heat?) and off we went. A good bit more walking in this final
lap, but we knew we were on the home straight, as it were. Not that there was
much straight, or that it was even downhill for the most part. In any event, we
managed significant chunks of running and only really walked on the harder
climbs. With only 5km to go we started running for the last time after an
uphill and... just kept running. In fact we managed to speed up somewhat too,
which is what got us past a few people, and eventually managed to get us in
under 9 hours (8h53m00s) for the course. Half way between our goal and our
stretch goal, which was pleasing. I then proceeded to be a complete wimp and
require a long massage (whilest shivering and generally being all pathetic),
before we limped to the car and were driven back to the apartment by Max and
Stacey who'd both completed the 20 mile version of the course in good times. We
had a go at a cold bath followed by a hot shower, which seemed to help, and then
went looking for food. Stacey'd made us some peanut butter curry which I
practically inhaled (despite hating peanut butter) and then after a while we
all went to bed. Neither Rachel or I slept particularly well because of aching
limbs, but also because we woke in the night completely famished. Breakfast
the following morning was had at the Outside cafe in Hathersage with two of
Max's friends from Project Trail, which he was a part of previously. Some
shopping followed, after which we headed back to the apartment and relaxed a
bit more. After lunch Max and Stacey went out for a hike and Rachel and I went
for what we'd planned to be a gentle walk, but ended up as a bit of a mission
to climb Win Hill. Once we got to the top we then had to walk down, our legs
protesting with every big step we had to take. We did make it home and ran a
hot bath to sit in for a while. I think that evening we headed out to the pub
opposite and had a nice meal together before coming home, attempting to watch a
bit of a film and then all just kind of flaking out. In the morning we drove
Rachel to the local train station so she could get a train down to London for a
meeting in the afternoon, and we all drove back at a more relaxed pace, stopping
off at a cafe just off the A1 for lunch and cake.
And that's about it, really. Our first ultra completed without too many issues,
me home and unpacked and back to work today, and both of us thinking about when
we might start running again.
Today's been pretty hectic work-wise. We had a bit of an issue this morning
with a server which my team should be covering now, but none of us who're in
knew how to diagnose or deal with it. There was a no-blame meeting after lunch
to try and ascertain how to Do Things Better in this regard. I think it was
useful. On top of that was all the work that'd been pending whilest I'd been
away (most of which I think I've managed to get done, or get a handle on), the
servers to prepare for tomorrow morning's patching (which I've also done, and I
think will go OK, so long as nothing untoward happens), and... just the usual
general stuff that fills my day.
I'm heading home now, and thence to Tesco to get food for the remainder of the
week. Rachel will be with me tomorrow evening, thank goodness. I've missed
her quite a lot since Tuesday morning, and it'll be really wonderful to see her
again. We both woke separately, repeatedly, last night expecting the other to
be there, and for the room to be the room in the apartment, so we were doubly
disappointed. Especially as the landscape is a lot more beautiful than where
we're currently living.
13/09/2016
[17:15] And just like that I'm off again. Two days of solid, wall-to-wall work,
and then I'm off on hollibobs until next Wednesday. Not that you might call
running an ultra on Sunday to be holidaying or relaxing, but I'm not in work, so
it counts.
Before I got to go home today though I was in early to do patching and rebooting
on a live tier one service. That went without a hitch, which was fantastic.
Then I had a whole day of dealing with all kinds of issues, including heading
stupidity off at the pass, creating and configuring two VMs (one on very very
short notice) and handling a server with ECC errors so severe that every time I
tried to diagnose them the thing rebooted. There's new RAM coming out for it
tomorrow, but obviously I won't be here, so I've given my new team leader very
very precise instructions on how he's supposed to get access to and then fix
said server. Sending back the old DIMMs has sort of been left as "an exercise
for the reader". We'll see how that goes when I get back on Wednesday next
week. Here's hoping the whole place doesn't fall down around everyone's ears
whilest I'm away. It just might.
12/09/2016
[17:20] Hello again. Sorry, its been a little while since I last wrote
something. This was due to a combination of needing to use-or-lose some
vacation time (still a bit more to go, too) and another training course. It may
seem like I'm going on a lot of training courses recently. This is because I
have been. This time is was the second in a series of three Windows 2012 R2
ones. It wasn't terribly useful, but is is rounding out my knowledge of Windows
and filling in some gaps which had widened since I stopped being a Windows
administrator back in 2002 or so. Before that I'd had a week off, ending with a
rather lovely time in Bath with Rachel for the weekend. We did some running,
and walking, and getting drenched in the rain, and generally had a fantastic
time. Frankly we've been having a lot of fantastic times recently, which is
pretty wonderful. Then again, she is all kinds of awesome.
This week I'm only in today (catching up on email, conference calls, updating
linux VM images, generally making sure everything hasn't fallen apart in my
absence) and tomorrow (early morning patching of a live tier one service, more
of the same, building a bespoke VM for someone, handing over a few things).
Then between Wednesday and next Tuesday I'll be getting ready for and then
heading off to do my very first official ultra running race. This'll be 51 or
so miles in the Peak District. Hopefully I'll come back with a tale of having
done it, and bemoaning my increased aches and pains, rather than being upset
about anything other than finishing the whole thing. Rachel and I will be
driving up with Max and Stacey who are now not doing the whole thing (there's a
20 mile option) or not doing it at all (in the case of Max who's got even worse
achilles tendons issues than I have). Hopefully they'll both be able to run,
and do the full fat version, but I'm not holding out much hope at this point,
which is extremely disappointing for all of us. Still, the AirBnB place we're
staying looks fantastic, and it's literally across the road from the pub/inn
Rachel and I stayed in a few weekends ago, so that's going to be lovely
regardless.
Anyway, other than that today I've been on a moderately useful conference call
which might result in some movement on some servers I can patch, got a whole
load of servers ready for patching early tomorrow morning, send a lot of emails,
read and filed/deleted a lot of emails, and generally got back up to speed in
most places. So now I'm going to go home and eat, because for some reason I'm
absolutely famished. Maybe my body's preparing itself for Sunday's ultra.