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31/07/2018
[17:15] After feeling like I failed on Sunday's long run I got up at 05:00 this morning and made myself do the full 21.1K of a half marathon before breakfast. While I managed it without feeling like I'd come close to death, and I made sure I wasn't running "too fast" it really didn't feel all that easy, despite relatively cool temperatures. It also rained for much of it, although nowhere near as heavily as just after I got home. I think I'll be OK for the half marathon distance on the Vanguard Way this weekend, but doing the full marathon distance in what might be quite high temperatures definitely isn't on the cards. Not considering some of the contours involved. Anyway, after having done the run I got myself sorted and headed into work, picking up a dropped wallet on the way. A quick post to the local Facebook group and I've got the owner coming by this evening to collect it from me. So that's nice. Over the course of the day I've done a fair bit of useful mini-tasks, driven over to one of the server rooms with Cormac to change a hard drive, move a server within a rack to make room for some networking equipment, and reclaimed some hardware which was heading to the great WEEE Disposal center in the sky. I'm now going to pootle home on the bike and spend some of the evening fitting the lock and mudguards for Rachel's bike which arrived today.

30/07/2018
[16:50] A lovely weekend, with a somewhat disappointing patch towards the end of it. Saturday was pretty excellent as we decided not to get up and do parkrun, opting instead for a leisurely breakfast of pancakes, blueberries and maple syrup and some gentle pottering around. After that I convinced Rachel to let me buy her a new bike (rather than a second hand one, or continuing to use one of my frankenbikes). We toured two bike shops and a second hand bike shop and eventually settled on a fairly cheap hybrid that I think will stand her in good stead for more than enough years. We cycled it home rather than going into town to do other things as we didn't have a lock that she was comfortable using with her new pride and joy. After going to Tesco and having a very late lunch we then took the new bike for a marathon (literally, 42.2K) spin and got utterly soaked by the weather breaking while we were miles from home. We powered through it and made it home safely to have our first hot showers in weeks (given the temperatures recently). Rachel then made an absolutely delicious dinner before we retired for the day. On Sunday we got up moderately sensibly and pottered around a bit waiting for the weather to clear up a bit before heading out for a run. We'd planned on 18-22km at a moderate pace, but I really wasn't up to it and we slowed down substantially after about 10K, with me dropping to a walk at 18K. We walked a few hundred meters or so and then Rachel headed off to run the rest of the way home (about three K). I couldn't stand not keeping up with her and managed to keep her in sight until we arrived back at the house. This feeling of an increasing lack of running fitness is starting to worry me somewhat. It can't just be a sudden feeling of my age, or me taking a bit of time off to row, or going to the gym... can it? In any event I'm going to try and run a gentle 21.1K or so early tomorrow morning before work in the hopes that that'll give me some confidence to enter the Vanguard Way Marathon on Sunday down in Croydon. Otherwise it'll be me doing a unofficial half marathon and then waiting a few hours for Rachel to finish the full. The weather looks like it may be heating up again, which doesn't bode well for me doing the full distance and/or enjoying it... It would be an understatement to say I'm deeply disappointed with how my running is going right now, and how much I'm lagging behind Rachel. I don't even want to be better than her, just able to comfortably keep up, and match her when it comes to parkruns and races, like the upcoming 10K we have at the end of September. After tomorrow's run I hope to actually start doing some sprint sessions again, although it looks like the heat will be returning again, which isn't going to help. Maybe I'll just do them anyway. I'll go to the track, start small, and bring a bottle of water. That might do it.

27/07/2018
[16:45] Happily, Rachel arrived in one piece (albeit a bit melty around the edges) last night, and we had a lovely quiet evening together. Then around 02:30 the heavens opened and there was thunder and lightning and all that stuff. I might have slept through it, only we had the window open in an effort to bring the temperature down a bit, so I was awake for about an hour until things subsided somewhat and the rain died down. As I was leaving for work I noticed that one of the gutters (which hasn't had to do anything for over six weeks) was leaking at a join. This is probably down to it being removed and replaced when the soffit ventilation holes were added by the EWI people. I've left a message about it, but might call again next week to ask whether the message was received. Over lunchtime I ran in about 30degC sun and heat without too much issue (a simple 6K) and then spent plenty of time in the shade and then in a cold shower. I have forgotten to drink anything more this afternoon, but I'll fix that before I cycle home, and then once I get home, where Rachel will spend a further hour working before we relax for the evening.

This is our first weekend in a while where we haven't had to do anything or be anywhere specific, so we're going to spend it hopefully getting Rachel a new bike for this end of her train rides, going to Tesco, probably running a bit (although not too much as it is far too hot for me), probably doing parkrun (at which Rachel will beat me by a significant margin, as per usual) and maybe just sitting around and relaxing in each other's company. Then it'll be Monday.

26/07/2018
[17:10] I paid off the final tranche of money for my EWI today, after having the foreman for the job around last night to make up a final snagging list. Hopefully all those bits and bobs will get done in the next week or so. None of them are show-stoppers, but it's nice that they should/will be done. It's still close on too hot here at the moment, but did rain for about ten minutes this afternoon. This just seems to have raised the humidity rather than doing any good otherwise. Still, we'll see what the first rain on my house post-EWI has done to it. I'm expecting a bit of white to have washed off, but we'll see.

Plenty of tiny bits of work today. Just enough to keep me busy, but slightly too uninteresting to tell you about. I did go to the gym at lunch time where the air-conditioning wasn't working, and the music continues to only be either the left or right channels of stereo, rather than both. It makes for some very slightly off-sounding music.

I'm heading home now to get the house and dinner ready for Rachel, who'll be with me until Monday morning (yay!). Of course, I'll be coming to work tomorrow, but she'll get to work from home somewhere a little cooler than her office in London. Hopefully it'll be a bit more pleasant for her.

25/07/2018
[17:15] The heat continues here. I managed a run at lunch time, but I'm not breaking any records at the moment, and certainly not getting any sprinting done. Inside of work I've done a few useful things, but not really anything of note. I've had two meetings about patching, and the Satellite server, and laid the groundwork for future changes to how we do things here. And finally I created a VM or two and passed on some runes as to how to get them patched and ready to do useful things.

Honestly, I think that's about it. I'm now going to cycle home gently so as not to be a sweaty mess when I get there. Then I will make a start on considering what changes to make to my diet to lower the amount of carbohydrate I'm consuming. I think it's time, considering how little exercise I'm doing compared to marathon training season. Or when I was rowing.

24/07/2018
[17:20] It's just stupidly hot now. Far too hot to do anything sensible. I went to the gym at lunch time rather than run in the heat again like yesterday. I will give it a go tomorrow, though. Probably nothing more than a steady session, though. I really would like to get some regular sprintervals in, but it just doesn't seem like a good idea.

With my colleagues back the firewall issues that plagued me yesterday have been handed off to someone else. They had some troubles initially, but things seem to have settled down for the most part, which is relieving. I've spent the day working on all the things I wanted to get done yesterday, but couldn't because I was fire(wall) fighting.

Last night I got a bit more fence painting done, and I might even do a bit tonight, too. Then I'll wait a few days and go back to the first colour and do the second coat where I think it might be required (in each of the colours).

I think that's everything, for today.

23/07/2018
[18:10] It has been something of A Day. I came in this morning after knowing there'd been some network issues over the weekend to find that one of the firewall pair was in a weird state and we were pretty much (more on that later) failed over to the other one. On the advice of a colleague (not at work, by phone) I opened a support call given that the normal firewall person also wasn't in today and had been uncontactable when the initial issue happened on Saturday (and apparently fixed itself after a few hours). The engineer I spoke to had me do a few things and, after I'd jumped through a few hoops to get him access via a desktop sharing application he diagnosed that there seemed to be some issue with one of the pair of interfaces used to create a bonded link over which the sync/HA/heartbeat traffic went. After going over to physically check the link (which turned out to be active, as far as I could see) I reseated the cable and was rewarded with what can only assume is the down previously-primary firewall trying to take back dominance and having a knock-down, drag-out fight with the secondary/failover firewall. This caused further network disruption until they settled down into how they'd been when I got in this morning. During the process I did manage to briefly log back into the firewalls and noticed that the CPUs were pegged at 100% usage, which wasn't good. During that time I couldn't get enough access/time to manually fix anything, so that was frustrating. Also all inter-VLAN traffic was down, so everything we had on the network stopped working, too. Eventually everything started working (at first thing this morning status, so still failed over and the bonded interface not working, but services on the network accessible) so we had another go and in the process downed an interface on a switch which both locked me out of bringing the interface back up again, but also cut off a whole load of servers again, which was both mortifying and deeply problematic. I had to run about half a mile with one of the network techs and a laptop to get the port back up again by connecting directly to the switch in the server room. Off the back of that experience I told the support technician we wouldn't be doing any more work today. Tomorrow my colleague who knows more about everything will be back and he can take over once I've briefed him on everything that's taken place, including all of my mistakes.

In the middle of all of that, when things seemed to be OK, I went for a run on what turns out to probably have been the hottest day of the year. I had planned to do some sprintervals, but that would have been stupid, so I just did a 6K run instead.

Over the weekend I did parkrun, and it was too hot again. Then rushed around to get to London in time to meet Rachel and her parents and go to the Olympic stadium to watch some athletics for the afternoon. That was lovely, if a little hot. We then took the train back to Croydon for the night and had a hot night's sleep (mostly). Neither of us wanted to run in the morning so we actually had a lie-in, for the first time in what felt like months. After we were up and about we relaxed for the morning and then got a train to London so she could head off to Ramsgate and my back home. I spent the afternoon doing the Tesco thing and then painting bits of fence (more to do this evening), and then Rachel arrived late into the evening after being driven back by a colleague. I arranged to get dinner takeaway just before she arrived and we were able to sit down together for an evening meal before a bit of television and bed.

Rachel ran to the station this morning (quite a way with a heavy bag) and I cycled in to discover... well, all of the above. I'm going home now to do a bit fence painting and then collapse in a heap. Tomorrow I expect to be subjected to sarcasm by my colleague, but at least there's a greater chance of things getting fixed, rather than messed up more by me.

20/07/2018
[16:30] Achieved a passable result last night in the rowing. Not what we were hoping for, but the crew we were chasing did better than us before we could do better than them. Them's the breaks. Still, it means tonight's row could be nice and short, which would be helpful as I'm gripping far too tightly with my left hand and after about 500m I'm having trouble feathering the blade well. Things weren't helped last night by us having to take a different boat owing to another one of our club's crews doing so well they got to race twice. That meant we were in an unfamiliar boat, and the person two ahead of me splashed a lot of water over my hands and the blade handle, which made it slippery too, meaning I gripped it even more tightly. Anyway, we're hoping to get the right boat back again this evening, but who knows.

When I got home last night it was to a pretty-much-completed house in terms of EWI and associated external modifications. The electrician seems to have wired up the new external switches backwards (so they're in the opposite orientation to the other switch next to them for their lights to be off), but otherwise everything looks done. I need to spend some time looking in the shed to see if the right colours of fence paint were left by the previous owner, otherwise I'm going to have a bit of an issue getting the large tubs those types of paint normally come in back from the DIY stores.

This weekend I'll be doing parkrun, then dashing home, getting cleaned up, and then cycling to the station to get to London in time to meet Rachel and her parents to go and watch some athletics at the Olympic stadium. After that we'll head back to Croydon for the night (just Rachel and I). On the Sunday morning we'll go for a run (hopefully it won't be too hot) and then Rachel goes to Ramsgate and I go home (depending on trains, as usual). If I have the paint in the shed I'll do some painting and then welcome Rachel to my freshly EWI'ed house late on Sunday evening after she gets a lift back from Ramsgate.

Surprisingly quiet at work today. My most major pieces of work were taking a snapshot of my Red Hat Satellite VM and then applying a puppet server update to it (with the usual morass of warnings and errors which seem to be non-fatal), and then working out some firewall and NAT rules to enable an external service to talk to one of our internal ones. Otherwise, pretty quiet in the office, and in work in general.

19/07/2018
[16:45] We just about managed to come out on top in the racing last night. It was hard work and I messed up my stroke again during the hardest part of the row. I really need to work on that so as not to cause the boat problems. I think it's down to lack of practice rowing, and therefore over-gripping the blade's handle and then getting cramp. That or just being too unfit. Either way, we managed to do what we needed to. At work this morning I got notification that my replacement outdoor light switch had arrived so contacted the foreman for my EWI work to find out if it could be fitted tomorrow. It turned out not, as the electrician would only be on site today. Cue me cycling home again to leave it and a snagging list (what small things that had been noted as still needing to be (re)done) for the foreman and the electrician respectively. As I was leaving, the people reinstating the fencing, gate, etc. arrived, so I had a good chat with them about the snagging, as well as getting them a coffee and tea before I left. It does wonders for the quality of your job's work if you treat the professionals with courtesy and whatever limited generosity you're able to give. Apparently, if all goes well they might even be finished with 'everything' by the time I get home this evening. I did mean to ask them to change the location of the retractable washing line, which they've mounted in a slightly odd location, but I might just leave it as is as I doubt I'll use it much. I haven't yet.

I'm off home now to have a snack before the penultimate night's racing, then off to the boat house, rowing, showering, coming home, having a late dinner while watching an episode of something on Netflix, and then bed. I might take my cheap GoPro knock-off with me tonight and mount it somewhere on the boat, but we'll see. There's not much else to tell you at the moment, other than it hasn't rained here in quite some time (which is sort of nice), and we're due some soon. Hopefully not before next week, though as I've rowing tonight and tomorrow, and then stuff on in London over the weekend.

18/07/2018
[17:00] Aside from a poor practice start from me last night (my first in this particular boat, and my first in an 8+ since this time last year) we had a pretty good (read: short) row last night, which was useful for me considering how out of practice I am. There's a hope that tonight's row will be similarly abrupt, but we'll have to see how things go. When I got home last night I found a few issues with the EWI finishing touches to the house which I've started writing down on a "snagging list" that I can reel off when I'm asked if there's anything that still needs doing. I was calling/emailing someone whenever I found them, but I think it'll be far less annoying for those people I contact if I wait until the end (when many of them may be resolved anyway). One thing I noticed was that the external lights had been wired back up to the switches incorrectly, and one of those switches was now broken. I've ordered a replacement switch, which should arrive tomorrow (so be ready to install on Friday), but I may be the one who has to install it. I'm not sure how the wiring should go, so I may have to ask.

Work-wise today has been another quiet day, thankfully. A few useful things done, again, a period of busy in the mid-afternoon, and then a server and its KVM guest decommissioned (firmware patched and prepared for a new life). I'm off home for my pre-rowing snack, and then after rowing dinner and bed. More on this evening's events tomorrow.

17/07/2018
[16:45] Nothing much going on today. Did the usual things to keep the place going. Hopefully when I get home this evening for a brief turn around and a snack pre-rowing I'll have found some more work done to my house, notably that all the electrics have been reinstated. We'll see. Otherwise I haven't really got much to tell you about today. I hope you had a good one.

16/07/2018
[17:30] It was an interesting weekend, to say the least. Saturday morning started with a hot parkrun which I aimed to do in a certain time, and came within about five seconds of my target, which was good. Then as I was doing some housework I was interrupted by a neighbour who pointed out that the EWI installation had in fact covered over all of the soffit ventilation to my roof, so I had to send a quick email asking for the installation company to come and make some new holes so things were OK. After that I got a train to London and met Rachel at the hotel we were staying at. After going for a nice but surprisingly small meal at Bodean's we tried to get an early night so as to be able to get up and run 20K at 05:05 the following morning. Owing to one thing and another we ended up doing different legs of the London Relay than expected, but still managed to get the running done. We weren't alone, and my achilles tendons (and then my right groin) gave me a lot of woe from about 3K in, but in the end I decided to tough it out and get the run done. The pace went down markedly in the second 10K owing to one of the people we were running with, but that was fine by me. After the run we headed back to the hotel, showered, and then had a large breakfast. Wandering out after that we ended up going to Stratford to explore how to get someone with impaired mobility from St. Pancras to the Olympic stadium and all the way to their seat. That solved/sorted I got on a train home (which didn't leave for ages due to a missing driver, and then stopped at every blade of grass on the way home). I swapped the bike I'd been using as my daily and station bike for my other spare which Rachel had been using and then cycled home. The end of the day was mostly about dealing with passwords and LastPass before having a quick Chinese takeaway for dinner with a terrible film.

Today I waited at home until the foreman of the installation company arrived and we discussed the things I needed doing (as well as the ventilation issue) and then headed to work on my new bike (finally!). If I'm honest a lot of the day was spent tightening up my web site users' security, and not getting to the gym at lunch time. I'm about to go home and see if the plumbers have done anything to the house today, and see if I have any passport photos so that Rachel and I can buy a joint railcard this weekend coming. Also, leave out all the light fittings for the electrician tomorrow, and go to Tesco for the week's shopping. Lots still to do today!

13/07/2018
[16:10] I got home last night to find that the scaffolding had been removed from the house. This was more upsetting than anything else as I'd asked them to tell me in advance so I could get up on it and clean the upstairs windows without having to pay someone to come along with a ladder. They've promised to clean them for me, but I don't think that's going to happen. The house does look pretty good, even without the fencing having been redone or all of the plumbing and electrical bits having been put back. Hopefully all that'll happen next week. I feel pretty pleased with it, and especially that it all got done with pretty much zero rain getting in the way or in any places that would have been unhelpful. I would like some around the end of next week to wash away some of the dust and detritus that's around, as well as proving that everything is waterproof.

At work today we had a PSU failure in something I don't normally administer, but have managed to get a new one ordered for. That should arrive on Monday. I ran in this morning to collect my station bike as I rode my new one home last night, so there's that, too. Otherwise the day has been pretty much a case of keeping things running with a few judicious spins added to plates here and there, and otherwise keeping out of trouble (by which I mean starting anything important).

This weekend I'll be doing parkrun, then very briefly attending a barbeque before heading to London to meet Rachel. We'll be spending almost a full night in a hotel before getting up very early in the morning to run two legs of the London Relay. After that we'll get back to the hotel in time to shower and still make breakfast, which I imagine we'll demolish. After that we might use the hotel facilities a bit and then go our separate ways as she has social things to do and I need to be at home for Monday morning in case I need to talk to either the plumbers/electrician/carpenters about house stuff. So, we might not even be together for 24 hours, which is a bit of a shame. Still, while we're together we should have a lot of fun. I might not make it back to my Tesco before it closes on Sunday afternoon, but that probably won't matter, and I've become used to going on a Monday evening instead.

I think that's probably about it. I'm going to head off, and see if I can't get a bit of vitamin D before the end of the day.

12/07/2018
[16:40] After plenty of false starts, delays, and other issues, I final have a complete bike ready to cycle home this evening. In the end I had to resort to the workshop here to hacksaw and drill a few bits and pieces, but everything fits and, I think, should keep me safe and dry in the wet, too. Well, dry from road water anyway. I'm just scared to leave it anywhere that isn't home or work now, so I will definitely not be leaving it at the cycle park at the train station for a while. Not until I feel a whole lot less precious about it. I might not even park it at the boat house for the evening races next week, either. Although it should be pretty busy there, so far less likely to be stolen than usual.

Workwise I got some stuff sorted with Red Hat about a bug I've been seeing with the new version of Satellite, solved a few people's issues with various things, and even signed up to a Red Hat Forum in August in London. This morning's early rise and cycle to work meant I could get four servers upgraded to a slightly less neolithic version of PHP, so that was good, too. Tomorrow's the first test of an automated patching script (being run manually tomorrow) which we hope to push out to many servers in the future.

11/07/2018
[17:05] They've put what I think is the last coat of render on my house. It looks... pretty good, if very white. When I got up this morning someone came round and started doing the mastic around the edges of the windows and doors. That should hopefully hide a good few bits of missing render I noticed in a few places. I guess in a day or so they'll be putting the over-sills on all of the windows, putting back the last bits of guttering that needed to be modified, and hopefully, hopefully doing the right thing with regard to my side gate. We'll have to see about that. At the moment I can't honestly say if the house is any cooler in the heat at the moment. And obviously the jury is still out on how much warmer it's going to be come the proper cold weather at the end of the year. I'll be booking out the IR camera from the council again some time in December/January to see what differences are visible with regard to external wall temperature.

At work today I've filed a bug report about my Satellite issues, and then upgraded it to a support call to see if that progresses matters. I also put the final touches to a VM I built quickly last night, prodded people about disk space on various servers, went to the gym for a short workout, and peeled some stickers off my bike for something to do while I waited for things to happen on some servers.

Now I'm off to have a rowing outing for the first time in a year, if not more, via Evans to pick up some stays for my pannier rack so I can fit that tomorrow. With luck the inner tubes and tyres will also arrive tomorrow or Friday and I can cycle the bike home, finally.

10/07/2018
[17:55] Today was a somewhat better day. But not 100% awesome, by any means. I got in semi-early, but not as early as I would have liked owing to the EWI guys arriving just as I was wheeling my bike out of the gate, and therefore me going back to make them cups of tea. At work I started the Satellite 6.3.2 upgrade and attached the toe clips/straps to my new bike while I waited for it to do its thing. There were far more errors in the log files than I'm comfortable with, but I have to hope that the process was successful. There have been all kinds of new and interesting error/warning messages in the log files since the update too, possibly just because I've been stressing the software out by doing the client side software changes using it. The bottom line is that I've managed to get everything done on that side bar two servers. One because I have no idea where it is and it's possible it's sitting in a store room somewhere rather than powered on (which it definitely isn't) and the other is such a busy server that its ext3 filesystem can't cope with doing 'yum' commands which rebuild its cache at the same time as the massive amount of I/O it has to deal with as a load balancer. I've asked a colleague to deal with that on Thursday when it can be failed over from for a few minutes and the relevant commands run.

At lunchtime I managed to squeeze in a 30 minute erg, which seemed far harder than the last one I did for only a few more meters of distance, but them's the breaks, I guess.

Other than that, I went via Evans last night to order some extra long supports for the pannier rack for the new bike so it'll actually fit. I've also ordered slimmer tyres and, after a few hours of not remembering I didn't have them, inner tubes to go with them. Also a bell or two for this bike and the other station bike I have that Rachel's using at the moment. Hopefully I'll be able to collect the supports tomorrow evening on the way to the boat house for what may be the only rowing outing I have before the races next week, and the tyres and stuff will arrive either on Thursday or Friday. Only a few more days of having to cycle the station bike with a chain that slips whenever you put down any power at all. I may walk to Tesco this evening rather than deal with loading it down with shopping, such as I can given the poor pannier rack it has.

09/07/2018
[15:35] I've had a really poo day, and I don't really want to talk about it all that much. Nothing terrible, just a series of annoyances when it should have been a good day due to my new bike arriving. There are issues with the bits and bobs that go on it, my trains back from Croydon were terrible this morning, and the major update of Satellite I started went horribly wrong when my workstation's graphics card went nuts in the middle of it all. Luckily the latter was saved by me doing a snapshot of the VM beforehand, so I can try again tomorrow, but still. I'm off to get a haircut shortly, which might help my mood by cooling me down a little. However I don't get to go home on my new bike, and therefore don't get to go to Tesco with the new pannier rack this evening.

This weekend was nice, if a bit too hot. I did parkrun with Max and Stacey, then had them round for flapjack and cool drinks. Then I went to Croydon to see Rachel. On Sunday morning we ran in the heat and then marshalled for her local Race For Life event. The afternoon was mostly spent trying to keep cool. That's it, I'm afraid.

06/07/2018
[16:40] Sadly, Rachel's been having train disruptions in her train travels north (via going south) today. I hope things have gone more smoothly since she got on her second train. We had a nice evening last night, although it was fairly subdued owing to some of the conversation topics we covered. This morning I headed off to work and left her to have a nice relaxing morning in bed, although we now realise that getting an earlier train would have been sensible, if we'd known just how poor the timetabling still was.

At work I did a few things, but nothing really of note, had lunch with everyone in the office at a local pub, and then gently sweated in the office for the afternoon catching up on a few emails and watching a bit of the Henley Royal Regatta online.

This weekend I may be rowing in a boat, but still haven't had confirmation. If I'm not then it'll be parkrun in the morning with Max and Stacey, with them coming back to my house afterwards to have flapjack and cookies that Rachel baked this morning before she left (she's so wonderful). Then I'll head to London to meet Rachel coming back from her parents. On Sunday we'll go for a run in the morning, then marshall at a Race for Life event local to her. If I'm rowing on the Sunday morning then I guess I won't be meeting her on Saturday, and may not make it to her on the Sunday. We'll have to see.

05/07/2018
[16:20] The last of the early mornings for now. One server to patch, and one repeat issue of it not booting after a firmware update (solved by going into the BIOS and reconfirming all the settings). Since then there hasn't been all that much to do other than downgrade a few servers' version of Puppet via Ansible and go and do another 30@20 erg at the gym (improvement of just under 100m on Tuesday).

Rachel arrives this evening, but won't be staying for the weekend after all due to family issues. I had considered going with her, but I think it's something better done without me.

Tomorrow I may consider doing the big Satellite upgrade from 6.2 to 6.3, but then if anything goes wrong overnight I won't see it until Monday, so I may wait until then instead.

04/07/2018
[16:55] A reasonable night's sleep was had, even though I did wake early again due to either heat or light pollution. In the end I just got up and was ready to offer the EWI people tea before going to work. At work I managed to see my club's boat not manage to make it through to the next day at Henley Royal Regatta before cycling out to get some documents witnessed/verified/whatever by my friendly solicitor. That took the place of any lunch time exercise, which was a bit annoying, but I probably needed the break. Otherwise today there was some bad news from Rachel that I can't do anything about, but is still distressing, and preparations for tomorrow's patching of the last server in this round of OS patching. I've also been told that my new bike and all its bits will be arriving on Monday (after having been teased that it might arrive tomorrow). Disappointing, but not all that bothersome in the grand scheme of things.

03/07/2018
[17:10] Saw Rachel off this morning after a slightly better night's sleep due, in part, to going to Homebase last night and picking up some blackout curtains to make the bedroom just a little bit darker during these summer months. It was still far too hot (something I hope the EWI eventually helps with a bit), but far nicer for us to be together than apart.

At work I've had something of a placeholder day in terms of getting things done. Things have been done, but not really anything of any import. I did go over to one of the server rooms and do a major set of firmware updates on a server which is currently between services, and everything seemed to go well on that score. I also went to the gym at lunchtime today rather than run and did a 30 minute erg instead. Something I haven't done in a very long time.

02/07/2018
[17:30] It was Rachel's birthday weekend, so I tried to do all kinds of things that Rachel would enjoy. We didn't do anything amazing, but we did do some fun things. Saturday morning was parkrun, which resulted in her getting her fastest time of the year, and me trailing behind her by a good minute and a half, then there was food and lots of relaxing and reading in the sun, followed by Indian food for dinner. On Sunday we made the slightly ill-advised decision to get a train away from the city and run back to it along the river. It was a bit too hot for me and we ended up having to walk bits and bobs of it rather than having me collapse with heat exhaustion. Still, I survived, we had a lovely time (relatively speaking) and then there was the chance for ice cream while we walked to retrieve our bikes from the closest train station. After that we met Max and Stacey and a few others at a local pub before going home for a roast dinner.

We had another moderately poor night's sleep last night, owing to both heat and light in the bedroom, so we're going to go home from the swimming pool this evening via Homebase to buy some blackout curtains to see if that helps. Not that I'll be swimming, I'll be relaxing on the grass and reading whilest Rachel swims for England. One day I should have some proper swimming lessons so I can do front crawl properly and maybe enter a triathlon or two.