BOFHJournal - November 2018

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30/11/2018 [16:00] It's the day of the big firewall switchover, so obviously I'm getting out of here as soon as I can so that I don't have to have any part of it. Other than that today has been another day of doing lots of small, useful things, learning new stuff, facilitating and ammeliorating, and getting saddled with chunks of work that'll require me to work a weekend in January. Still, if it means less work for my most-overworked colleague, that's a good thing. I'm off to the train station now to make my way to Croydon for the weekend. Rachel awaits!

29/11/2018 [17:25] An incredibly useful day today. It started early with a 1 hour run while I'm still very slightly under the weather with this cold (although my nose doesn't appear to be running all that much... probably because I'm under-hydrated, but never mind). At work in the morning I helped keep on top of an issue with a web application we host but have no real control over. It was suffering under an extremely high level of usage, and getting very upset about a number of things. Eventually that sorted itself out, but we're not sure that the developer is going to help fix things for the future as the committee that's supposed to pay him isn't, and they seem to want to get rid of him and hand the code over to someone else. We'll have to see how that pans out. After that I got on with a few other useful things, then headed out to collect a delivery from the center of town. Back in the office for the afternoon I got everyone to look at all the helpdesk tickets we have open and managed to, eventually, clear down everything but one of mine. I'll be attempting to deal with that next week when the person I need to talk to is back. Combine that long overdue work with another delivery arriving for me, my being able to clear down a mass of emails from both of my email accounts, and a few seconds of chatting with Rachel on Skype and today has been a really productive day. Great! I'm going to head home now and enjoy the fact that I'm not running tomorrow morning, or at all, but will be leaving early to head to Croydon to see Rachel, and also Max and Stacey.

28/11/2018 [17:15] Another day of doing Stuff. Nothing huge to report. I did some useful work, got some emails sent. Got some useful emails back. Negotiated, discussed, decided, acted. Mostly more of the usual. Went for a run at lunch time which was slower/shorter than previous weeks for the work out (hill reps) because I'm in the depths of a cold at the moment and stressing my system over-much isn't going to help that go away any more quickly. Honestly, I think that's everything for today. Steak and chips for dinner tonight. Run tomorrow before breakfast. Hopefully it won't be raining.

27/11/2018 [17:05] It was lovely of Rachel to come home last night. I just wish we both hadn't been full of cold, and therefore able to enjoy the evening a little more. Still, we got to spend some time together, which is always wonderful. This morning she had to get up quite early to get out to the train station and to London in time to do some things, so I got up a little after her so I could do some truncated morning exercises (I seem to have lost a lot of strength), shower, and still get to work at a nice relaxed pace. At work today I've achieved... some things, I think. Nothing concrete, but it feels like there's been some progress. What's also progressed is my cold, which has, in the last hour or two, moved on to the streaming stage. I may just make it home without having to stop to blow my nose more than five times. We'll see. No run today, thank goodness, but I do have my hill repeats session tomorrow, which I intend to take as easily as I did my Monday lunchtime run. Not that that'll help my slowly expanding waistline that I appear to be suffering from more and more. I'm getting more and more inclined to consider going back to rowing full time towards the end of 2019, if only to keep the advance of fat over muscle at bay. I think that's about it, otherwise.

26/11/2018 [18:05] I'm back after an extended weekend, and I have a cold. I'm pretty sure I do anyway. I probably got it from Rachel, who got it when she was on a transatlantic plane ride back from the US last week, or something. Maybe I got it from someone in the building. Either way, I have it. I had a sore throat for a day or so, and now the nose running has started. I still managed to get my run done at lunch time, and even took it nice and easy, which made it almost a complete pleasure. Otherwise the day has been filled with doing small useful things, as my work life seems to solely consist of, these days. On Thursday night I met Rachel and then her parents at a hotel near the train station, and then we all headed via various modes of transport to a nearby restaurant for a nice meal. On Friday Rachel's parents came to the house for a coffee and to see what I'd done to it since they saw it prior to me moving in. We then all headed via various methods of transport into town to collect a mobility scooter for Rachel's father and then wandered around town looking at various things, having lunch, and then visiting a museum. Then it was time to return the scooter, get Rachel's parents to the train station and see them on their way. Rachel rewarded my patience (not that I needed any; her parents are lovely) with a Chinese takeaway, which I'm sure wasn't all that nice for her. On Saturday morning she left for Croydon at a horribly early hour so she could play hockey for her team, and then do other useful things. I got up a little later on and did very little at all for most of the day, other than going to Tesco and tidying the house a bit. On Sunday I did my long run in the morning and then did more of the same (very little) for the rest of the day. Truly a day of rest. And now it's Monday evening and I've been at work too long and I need to go home and work out if I have time to shave sensibly before Rachel arrives for the evening.

22/11/2018 [17:20] Today started well, as I decided to stay in bed past my 06:30 alarm and only get up after the news headlines at 07:00. Then I had a great 30 min run (15 min out, 1 min stationary rest, 14 min to get back the same distance) which gave me the chance to open the taps a little rather than going along at the same old pace like I have been recently. A shower, breakfast, and to work via the bike shop to spend altogether far too long working out what extra/replacement bike lock to get to replace the one that got cut over the weekend. Do I get one that's more expensive but probably more secure, or another cheap one on the basis that whatever bolt-croppers someone brings to the party they'll probably go through both kinds of lock almost as easily. In the end I went for the more expensive one and will hope that it does the job of keeping my front wheel safe, in conjunction with the D-lock doing the rear wheel and the frame itself. I intend to part somewhere a little more visible tonight when I leave it at the station for a little while while meeting Rachel and her parents. Then she and I will be cycling a short way closer to the center of town for dinner with said parents and I have to worry about where I'm going to park the bike while we eat. Hopefully somewhere that's nice and visible and a high traffic area. Then it's home with Rachel and not being in work tomorrow. We'll be sight-seeing with Rachel's parents after a 1 hour run before breakfast and them coming to see the house which they haven't seen since before I bought it. I'm not 100% on what the weekend will bring considering things are still somewhat in flux, but I do know there'll be a 1 hour 50 min run on Sunday at some point. Nice and slow though, thank you.

21/11/2018 [15:00] After going to Tesco last night after I got home I really couldn't be bothered to cook anything complicated, so it was pizza. Probably not the heathiest thing to have, but it filled a hole and that's all I really cared about. I ended up drifting off to sleep on the sofa at just past 21:00, so allowed myself ten minutes (or so) of dozing there before I threw myself into the bathroom to clean my teeth and go to bed. Oddly, I didn't get to bed until around 21:55, so maybe it was a bit more than ten minutes. In the morning I decided to get up at around 06:30 for no readily apparent reason, which therefore got me to work well before I needed to be considering that the patching I was planning on doing wasn't supposed to start until 10:00. In the end I had to go and prod someone at 11:40 before I was allowed to go ahead and do it. That took all of ten minutes, so I wasn't too bothered. After that I headed out for a slightly cool (but not chilly) one hour run, incorporating one of the two 'hills' that're close enough by that I can get to them on foot in a lunch break. Now I've just had an hour or two of getting things sorted and organised on a few servers and I'm off to help Cormac move his broken washing machine to the town dump/recycling center, and then have him drop me and my bike off at my favourite bike shop so I can buy a second D-lock for my bike. Tomorrow morning I've got an interesting 30 minute run (15 minutes out, stop for a minute, run the same thing back in 14 minutes) before work, and then a day of work before I head to meet Rachel and her parents at a hotel near the train station for dinner.

20/11/2018 [17:10] Well, that was a fab long weekend, with a sting in the tail. I got home early on Friday and had a gloriously long lie on the sofa doing very little at all before ambling out to get a delicious Chinese takeaway and slobbing down on the sofa again to watch things. On Saturday morning I couldn't stay in bed past about 08:00 so got up and did very little out of bed instead. I couldn't manage that for all that long so ended up raking the front of the house for leaves and tidying the outhouse where I keep the bike. Later on in the day I headed out to celebrate a friend's birthday in town, but while I had a lovely time seeing people and catching up, the food took a while to arrive. I headed home shortly after eating so I could get to bed early for a likewise early rise on Sunday morning. This I did, and was out of the door to cycle to the train station by around 07:00. This meant I was in time for an early journey to Croydon. I found Rachel's bike in the cycle park and locked my bike a few meters from hers so we'd be close by when we came to collect them on the Monday evening. Sadly, the train was delayed by points being broken, and then both St Pancras and Victoria being closed for trains down to East Croydon (I know because I took the Underground to both of them only to find I couldn't get a train from them). In the end I had to get to London Bridge, which then allowed me to run for a train heading where I needed it to. All things considered, I only arrived about fifteen minutes later than I would have done if everything had gone to plan. As Rachel's plane was late landing, she'd only arrived home about forty minutes or so before me, so that was good. After she'd recovered a little bit from her overnight flight with very little/no sleep we headed out for a run together, but I ended up a little too far ahead, then took a route I hadn't announced and we got separated. We ended up doing our runs separated and only met up again when I got back to the house, so that was silly of me. We put it behind us and had a hungry lunch, before settling down for Rachel to have a series of short naps on me as we watched inconsequential things on Netflix. Towards evening Rachel made us some dinner and then later on we ended the day. On Monday we headed out semi-early and visited Bletchley Park, which was really interesting. I'd say more, but I wouldn't do it justice compared to all the history that's available to read about. After we'd finished there we got the train back to my place and went collect the bikes. This is where the sting comes in. Despite my bike being surrounded by less well secured bikes, someone had cut through the cable lock securing the front wheel to the frame and the bike stand, and undone the quick-release skewer... but not take the wheel. It's likely they thought the bike was only secured using that cable, and not seen the D-lock through the chain stays and the rear wheel. I'm just glad they didn't take the front wheel. We cycled home together and I tried to get over the near-theft of another bike and the loss of a lock. I'm going to buy another D-lock to secure wheel to frame, I think. Cable locks just aren't worth it any more. Once we were home we were hungry enough to go out for food quite quickly, and then after eating and relaxing, headed to bed. Rachel seems to be pretty much back on local time again, so we had a good night's sleep for the most part. This morning we both rose early, and headed out to the train station and work respectively. I patched a few servers without incident, and then settled down to a day of working on the small things and getting my inbox back under control after not being in work on Monday. I also managed the run I should have done yesterday at lunchtime today, helpfully. I'll shortly leave for home, on which journey I won't be able to buy a D-lock from my favourite cycle shop as it'll be closed by now, but hopefully will be able to before Friday. Then I'll pop out for a delayed Tesco shop, then be home for the night. Since I found the cable lock cut yesterday I've been stressed about my bike being stolen (it had died down a bit since my last bike was stolen, but is now back up to high levels of stress again), as well as worries about my house being burgled, and Rachel and I being knocked off our bikes. I need to work hard on relaxing somewhat.

16/11/2018 [15:00] OK, another day of early starts and successful patching and rebooting. Then a morning of doing this and that which helped stave off the march of entropic decay for a few more hours. An hour of running, a shower, lunch, and clearing down my inbox of things. It's now time for me to go home and I've spent far too much of my life this week at work. Over the weekend I'll be staying in bed past 07:00 on Saturday morning, and then probably going to some birthday celebrations/meal thing in the evening. On Sunday I'll be getting the train to Croydon to see Rachel when she gets home from America, and going for a run at some point (Rachel may sleep, or power through to get back on UK time a bit more quickly). On Monday I think we might be going to visit Bletchley Park as I haven't been in decades (weird to say that), and Rachel hasn't ever been and wants to also investigate it for taking her nephew to, too. We'll then head back to mine after that so I can, of course, get to work early on Tuesday morning for patching. See you then.

15/11/2018 [18:10] Another early start, another late finish. Today I was patching at both ends of the day and, aside from a few hiccups here and there, everything seems to have gone fairly well. At least there aren't any more red lights on the status board than normal anyway. This morning's patching was three big database servers, and other than something taking a bit of time to respond at one point that was all fine. I then had a day of working on bits and bobs and generally making sure my inbox was under control (not as easy as you might think), dealing with incomplete or totally confusing requests for information or work, and then at the end of the day getting a master/master replication pair of database servers upgraded together. That took a lot longer than it should, even though the hardest part ended up not needing to be done. Hopefully it'll all survive overnight and I won't come in to bits of the databases scattered over the floor. Tomorrow morning I can't run fasted/before breakfast as I need to be in to patch two sets of servers, so I'll have to run at lunchtime instead, which should be fine. I'm definitely leaving work early tomorrow as I've put in more than my necessary number of hours for the week already. I'm quite tired, I have to admit. Hopefully Rachel will send me a few emails if she has time that I might get to read before bed.

14/11/2018 [17:35] I've had a pretty useful day, I think. It started early with me getting a decent fasted one hour run in before breakfast, then getting to work in one piece and settling down to do useful things. This continued throughout the day to some degree, although I've had a lot less to do this afternoon. I supplemented things, therefore, by printing out a lot of useful maps for Rachel and my South Downs Way 50 course recce in December. Here's hoping the weather is tolerable for both days, otherwise it's going to be a bit of an adventure above and beyond the fact that we're running ~28 miles one day, and ~23 miles the second. We're also running the first day with a moderately packed rucksack, which should be even more interesting. As we're staying in the same nice hotel for the second and third nights (AirBnB for the night before we start) we can dump most things there after the end of the first day's run and just use our ultra packs for the second day. Then again, if Rachel gets her way we'll only bring enough to fill an ultra pack anyway... Where was I? Oh yes, running before breakfast, a morning of work, an afternoon of work and mapping... and plenty of emailing and adjusting Ansible playbooks and roles and other things to help get some new ODI servers up and running. There'll be lots more of that tomorrow, not to mention that I'm in early again tomorrow to patch three database servers. Rachel seems to be doing OK in America at the moment. Right now she's probably arriving into Washington DC by train from New York. I've only taken a train in America once or twice before, and that was when I went to visit Andy, and we also ended up in Washington DC.

13/11/2018 [17:25] I came in early this morning to patch 20 or so servers. Luckily only one of them was a physical host, so it didn't take long and was relatively free of worry. The physical host failed to update its BIOS firmware once, but as I was well ahead on time I had the opportunity to restage the new firmware and have another go, which worked. The remainder of the morning I then spend doing lots of useful things, some of them from my own todo list, which was good. Over lunch, after having got a VLAN presented to the switchports for the VM farm, I went to the place I buy my running shoes to ask about the insole in the left shoe which keeps folding in the middle (the front slips backwards, did I mention this previously?) when the shoe gets wet (rain, or even sweat, maybe). Luckily, there are a lot of people who fit custom orthotics and leave the insoles behind when they buy running shoes there, and the manager tends to keep them, so I ended up with a pair of insoles that not only have some texture on the bottom (as compared to the ones my shoes came with, which are smooth and slick on the bottom), but they may even be from a better pair of shoes. Either way they're brand new, so my month old, already 200km+ of wear, shoes feel almost brand new again. I'm going to try them on a 1 hour run tomorrow morning (fasted) to see how they do. I almost wish it would rain, to check properly, but honestly I'd rather it was dry. This afternoon has been mainly about working on my email inbox and lamenting the fact that my browser seems to be really unhappy with something since late last week. Whether it's connected with the firewall work I don't know, but it's really starting to bug me on some sites.

12/11/2018 [17:45] So this weekend was pretty great. It started on Friday evening when I got home and found Rachel was there. This wasn't a surprise, but it's always awesome when it happens. We had a lovely evening and then headed to bed. On Saturday morning Rachel had to head back to Croydon for her hockey game, so I... honestly can't remember what I did for most of the day, but I did head to Tesco at some point, so there's that. Really, there must have been more to the day but I'm drawing a complete blank, disappointingly. I think once Rachel got home we had an evening of doing some useful stuff, and then having takeaway Indian, which was truly delicious. Sunday morning started quite early as we needed to fit in a 1hour 30min before we got cleaned up, ate, and then cycled out to get a train with our bikes so we could cycle to a museum with free opening for Remembrance Day. We got to wander around the museum, had some food, stood for the silence, did some more wandering, and then came home again. I'd been full of energy during the run and after it, but the minute we got back to the house I felt a desperate need for a lie down on the sofa and a solid relax. I think it was more dehydration than anything else, though. I was fine later on. Rachel made an amazing roast dinner that evening and then it was the end of the weekend. This morning Rachel headed for work and I got up at the same time and got into work in time to log a new support case with Red Hat regarding a server which rebooted some time on Sunday evening. We set up a space for the kernel to dump core, but of the 384GB that should have been there there was only 5.3GB, which is disappointing. Still, that's been sent off to Red Hat and they're apparently in the process of analysing it. More on that if I get anything. I went for a run at lunch time, but in my last generation road shoes as the pair I bought about a month ago have an issue where the insole of the left shoe starts to ruck up around the midfoot. This only seems to happen when it's raining, but it's problematic enough that it stops me running until I've taken the shoe off and pressed it flat again. Running extremely toe first seems to keep it in place, but that's not going to work over any significant distance. I'm taking the shoes back to the shop I got them from tomorrow lunch time and we'll see what they say. This is the first time it's ever happened, and as I said, to only one shoe. The solition might just be to glue the insole(s) down, but I shouldn't have to do that. More on that tomorrow, I imagine. As I write this Rachel is now just about over the Atlantic, heading west to Washington and New York for a week of meetings. She'll be back in Croydon on Sunday morning, and I should be heading there in time to meet her as she arrives, I hope. We'll do our weekend long run from there, although she may be quite jet-lagged. We'll see.

09/11/2018 [16:30] We woke early this morning, but slightly too early to get up and run. Eventually the need to get up and do things was too much for me and I got up and made coffee for Rachel while she headed back to bed to hide under the duvet after brief trip downstairs. After that it was just a case of getting ready for, and then heading out to, do our run before breakfast ("fasted"). I took us on a route I've only done once before and it was rather enjoyable, even though I nearly went head over heels on a slippy patch of mud. We got back, showered, generally wasted a bit of time, and then I went into work, a little bit late. Over the course of the day I've done more of the things I seem to be doing these days, that is to say things for other people rather than off my own list of jobs. Then again, most of my jobs aren't all that urgent or important. I still got lots done, I think, it's just that I can't really look at my things and say that the list is getting smaller. Still, lots done, so I can't complain all that much. I'm going to head home now, where Rachel will be waiting for me (although she won't stop work for at least another hour after I arrive). Then we've Friday night together. In the morning she'll need to catch an early train to her hockey match, and then head home again after that to get cleaned up and collect things for her trip to the US on Monday. Then, eventually, she'll come back here for the remainder of Saturday and all of Sunday. Which is lovely of her. We've got a 1hour 30min run to complete on Sunday at some point, so I guess we'll plan the route together, which'll be nice. At some point I'll head to Tesco for the weekly shop (probably Saturday, while Rachel isn't around so as not to waste any time together). I think that's everything. Have a good weekend.

08/11/2018 [17:40] It was more of an effort than usual to haul myself out of bed this morning. I didn't go to bed too late last night, my evening meal wasn't overly huge, and I slept fairly well until around 06:00 or so. So, I can't really say why. In the end though it was needing to go to the loo and the toilet being pretty much as far away through the house as it's possible to be that got me up and moving. Showered and shaved and lunch made I headed to work to spend the day doing... not a huge amount if I'm honest. I mean, I did loads of tiny, useful things. But nothing I can really hang my hat on and say "today I did something that helped". I did have conversations with people about how the future might look here in terms of management structure just above me, and how the people around me might be structured in new and interesting ways, but that was about it, really. I sent plenty of emails, got a few back, replied to those, and generally kept the place running. Probably my highlight was getting a major firewall change done this morning tweaked just a tiny bit so things continued to work for people with regard to network access. Otherwise, other than a harder-than-it-should-have-been run at lunch time (my VO2Max seems to have dropped another point, too), I think that's everything. Happily, once I've gone home and washed up, and maybe had a tiny snack of nice bread, Rachel arrives. She'll be working from home tomorrow, and then heading back to Croydon to play hockey on Saturday. We need to work out what we're doing for the remainder of the weekend given she's off to the US on Monday. I imagine I might head there and to work from Croydon on Monday morning. We'll see.

07/11/2018 [17:25] So the morning was spent going between the two server rooms making a list of all the servers we have which are due for decommissioning or WEEE Disposal, and then creating an email which asked everyone who might whether or not they wanted any of them for play/pet projects. Thus far the response has been less than overwhelming with only one person responding. Even the person who has two of the servers already reserved failed to pipe up and confirm that he still wants them. I spent the remainder of the morning getting up to date on some other configuration stuff with regard to Oracle Java and Red Hat not providing up to date RPMs of it after the end of this month. This afternoon I've mainly been reading up on the upgrade from Red Hat Satellite 6.3 to 6.4 and working out (still undecided) if I wait for 6.4.2, which has a fix I've been waiting for since I moved from 6.2.x to 6.3.x a while ago. Other than that the day has been fairly quiet, thankfully. I have had an inital one to one with the person who's probably going to be my new line manager. That was interesting. I'm going to continue to reserve judgement on him until I have more information. The fact the he's finally been able to get a PO done for a workstation I've been trying to get for my colleague is a tick in the positive column for him at this point, though.

06/11/2018 [17:40] I honestly can't work out if I had a good day today. It started with cycling to work with a number of very worrying car drivers who didn't seem to think I should be on the road, the devolved into a series of fixes at work to make servers and services behave again, had a reasonable run in the middle of it (literal run, outdoors), a meeting at which things seemed to be moved forward, but I can't quite decide if they were or not, and then devolved into a messy series of events, such as a delayed replacement part delivery, an inability for me to get hold of server specification information because IBM's web site is useless if your server is out of warranty, and other things too small to mention, but annoying enough to register. I'm going home now, at which point I'll then need to go straight out and to Tesco as I didn't get a chance to go last night. That's because I got home last night and immediately showered and headed out again to meet Rachel at the train station. We then cycled to the boat house to watch the fireworks, and then on to a pub where we met a few friends for dinner and conversation. After that we headed home before it got too late so we could have some quiet time before bed. And that's everything, I think. Tomorrow I'll be out of the office looking at decommissioned servers in both server rooms with a view to creating a document that'll allow someone to decide which servers he wants to keep and which can be sent to WEEE disposal, fitting a replacement HDD (it arrived just before 17:00 today, in the end), and generally getting on with things which people say they're doing, start doing, and then they just stop doing until I prod them about them, repeatedly. I despair of this place sometimes.

05/11/2018 [17:10] Had a good weekend, all in all. I suffered from a bit of Down during the course of it, but nothing that lasted too long. I headed off to the train station on Friday and was perfectly timed to get the train I needed. At the Croydon end of my journey it was a quick tram journey and I was there. Friday night was lovely and relaxed, as was Saturday morning. Rachel went to her hockey game after we'd had breakfast in her local cafe of choice, I relaxed and watched some stuff on Netflix. The remainder of Saturday was all about doing things on our todo list, including sending emails for parental visits, hanging a painting my father did of a photo I took in Kenya, and some other stuff. On Sunday morning we had a light breakfast and then ran our own training runs, going in different directions. Mine ended up incorporating a fair amount of trail as well as plenty of contours, which is different to where I normally run, so that was good. After we both got back and I'd done the washing up it was time for lunch, as well as some more ticking things (slowly) off our todo list(s). Then it was pretty much the end of the day. This morning we got the same train into London, and then we said our goodbyes and I headed off on my own. Unfortunately all the toilets on the train had been locked, and I was in dire straits so I managed to unlock one before there were serious problems. I don't think I caused any damage, so no harm there, I hope. It would have been a lot worse if I hadn't been able to get in to one, anyway! At work I've done a useful update/upgrade of my Red Hat Satellite server (both the application and the OS) which doesn't currently seem have broken anything. We'll see what things look like in the morning as to whether I have to revert to the VMWare snapshot or not. There are fireworks tonight, and Rachel is coming back to see them (and me), so I need to head home and get prepared to meet her at the train station before we cycle to the boat house to watch them. If all goes well we'll go to a pub on the way home with other people afterwards for dinner, which should be a nice opportunity to catch up, too.

02/11/2018 [16:00] More useful stuff done for the team rather than myself. So I'm counting today as as win. I also got a 45 minute run done at lunch time, too. So that was good. I'm off to Croydon shortly to see Rachel for the weekend, although she'll be off to a hockey game for the middle part of Saturday, which time I'll use to do a bit more relaxing and reading, probably. I've a longish run on Sunday which I'm sure Rachel will be joining me for, and then it'll be Monday and back to work to look at Satellite updates so that I can update the underlying operating system.

01/11/2018 [17:05] Rachel came home last night. And there was much rejoicing. Not masses though as she was incredibly tired, and had a stomach ache. Plenty enough, though. We had a lovely quiet evening and weren't disturbed by anybody ringing the doorbell, which was nice. We also got a very early night as she was falling asleep on the sofa. This probably contributed to me getting a rather rubbish night's sleep, with me waking at 02:00 and thinking/hoping it was 06:00. It wasn't. The loo also decided to continue flushing after being used at whatever time in the night, so I've no idea how much water got wasted between then and me getting up and discovering it in flow. Frustrating, to say the least. We left for work together though, which was nice. Rachel to the closest train station, and me to work. That was good for my peace of mind (that Rachel went to the close one) as it was raining quite heavily and I was much happier that she stayed drier than I ended up by the time I got to work. At work today I've again done a number of things for my team/the infrastructure rather than anything I felt I should be getting done. It still feels like I'm ending the day having moved things forward though, so that's OK. We've got some big, department-wide projects coming up soon, and I think some of them are going to go wrong to a greater or lesser degree. I'm just hopeful they don't, or that they're easily fixable. In the meantime I hope to keep pressing on with the things which are slowly becoming more and more urgent, in the hopes they get resolved before certain deadlines pass. For now though I'm off home in the dark, but hopefully no longer raining, evening for a quiet night.