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Ben
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|06:00 pm] |
The weekend was lovely. Warm weather, a bit of cycling, no rowing and
some housework. Kris and I bought some new sheets for the bed which should
mean we're a whole lot cooler over the summer as well as having a lovely lunch
at Pizza Express. We didn't manage to get a fan, but other than that a very
successful Saturday.
Sunday started off with a great run for two around the greener parts of town
before a more expensive than we thought trip to Tesco. This turned out to be
because of an over charge for five bottles of olive oil (we only bought one).
Happily, Tesco refund double the amount the overcharged when queried about it
so that was a nice little discount. Especially as, while Kris was having a
nap, I cycled back with a Clubcard to collect points on the original amount.
After that the day was all about large amount of relaxation and chilling out.
We chilled out so much that when dinner time came around we just opted for
delivery Chinese (although I made egg-fried rice) and Top Gear on the
television.
I was in town first thing this morning to help move a Sun L25 tape drive from
one server room to another. Amusingly it turned out that I was the only
person to figure out why the thing wouldn't come out of the rack. It would
have been a two person at most job normally. Still, nice to see the server
room we got it out of (to make sure everything was still running OK).
Otherwise I managed to take another whole minute off my 8km time today
(although mapping it this afternoon it appears to be on the order of 8.2km
after all) and discover I've been moved from the 4th boat to the 3rd boat for
the week of races coming up in two weeks or so. The training for that,
coupled with the training for regattas, running, AR training and events and
my morning exercises should really boost my fitness over the next - fraught
and filled - five weeks! |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|04:25 pm] |
Rather than go straight into town after work yesterday I left a little
early and went home to put up the tent in the garden. with the door facing
away from the driveway it felt very private inside, which was exactly the
feeling I was going for. It was also the first time I've put the tent up on
my own, strangely. Still, having helped put up about seven almost identical
ones (sometimes on my own) at the Peterborough Regatta just a few weeks
previously it didn't take too long, even in the heat. I was perspiring quite
heavily afterwards, especially after I'd humped down rollmats, blankets,
towels, a duvet and pillows to make it a reasonable place to sleep. After a
quick shower and a change into smart clothes I rushed off to get into town in
time to meet Kris and pretend I'd come straight from work. Having to turn
back and get the voucher for Loch Fyne meant I had to cycle even faster to get
to the bar in time. Luckily she was a little late so I could mop most of me
dry and try to look at least a little debonair.
We had a lovely cocktail each sitting on high bar chairs and chatting about
the day and then wandered down the street to the Loch Fyne restaurant where we
devoured the appetiser bread in minutes as we sat in the outside seating area
enjoying the shade and the hum of quiet conversation around us. The starters
and mains (I had my first ever oyster, opinion: salty) were delicious, as was
the single glass of wine I had (more alcohol in one night than I think I've
had in the last three months). We walked and then cycled home to give
ourselves time to digest, chatting and smiling all the while until Kris
noticed the tent in the garden. Cue excited noises and a happy lady. After
plenty of water to drink we retired to the tent for the night.
While a perfect evening, the thing about sleeping on the floor is that it can
never be as comfortable as an expensive mattress (which is what I have, told
as I was by a clever person a long time ago that given the amount of time you
spend in bed a good mattress is essential to a happy life). As a
result I didn't sleep terrifically well, but I was lovely and cool. It also
rained in the night, which is always great to experience from inside a
waterproof tent.
After waking for the last time this morning we enjoyed the feeling of the
great outdoors before getting up and on with our days. Kris stayed home today
to put on the inordinate amount of washing we appear to have accumulated in
the last week (I blame the heat and lots of exercise). I headed into work
where I spent a little bit of time working on an XML + SSL + Flash + IE issue
which I've been looking at on and off since the beginning of March. During my
8km run in what turned out to be much cooler weather (more rain too, which was
lovely) someone I'd mentioned the problem to came up with a URL which allowed
me to create a two-line 'response' rule for our Zeus ZXTM load balancers to
set the Cache-Control and Pragma headers to useful values. With that one
minute's worth of work: success! Hurrah for me (and people on the web who had
already run into and solved the same problem in another guise or two). That,
coupled with the previous 12 hours and the minute or so I took off my 8km time
has made for a very good day.
I'm now just half an hour away from going home, doing a bit of housework and
then going out for a row in what should be a rather good 4+ outing with some
better-than-usual rowers. Roast chicken and potatoes for dinner... and then
it's the weekend on top of that! I might just go and see the new Transformers
film while Kris is at a girly night tomorrow. No rowing on account of many of
the club heading down to see the Henley Royal Regatta tomorrow and Sunday. I
think I'll get some cycling in.
Tell a lie, it's Friday! I'm out of here in five minutes! |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 2nd, 2009|04:30 pm] |
Eurgh! Early morning outing this morning. It was... interesting.
Someone who normally sits at the 2 seat was stroke for the boat. Not
something I would have decided on in terms of crew order, I tell you. Still,
couple that with last night's 4+ outing and yesterday's 8km run and we have a
reasonable amount of exercise in the last 24 hours. What I don't have this
evening is any exercise or social activities planned so I'm getting the
opportunity to take Kris out for our delayed date from Tuesday. With luck and
a following wind it's going to be a lovely evening with a mini-surprise at the
end which will either be brilliant fun or no trouble at all. Just so long as
it doesn't rain.
Work today has been pretty much empty with just a few patches to test and
install. We've reached a trough between project work at the moment so it's
really more a case of keeping things running and tidying up bits we haven't
had time to deal with before. That and pushing the web team to get off the
servers we wanted to decommision more than two and a half years ago and onto
the shiny new Xen boxes I built. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|04:45 pm] |
Frustration abounded this morning Kris as she suffered a bit of a
disappointment. Hopefully I was helpful in showing her that it wasn't
anything to do with her but all about the person who made the decision.
Something like that anyway.
Work has been quiet but with the occasional oddity here and there. One
machine's RAID subsystem went psychoschizoid overnight and refused to believe
all the disks in its RAID5 were supposed to be there. Only after rebooting
the whole box and telling it to accept that the 'new' disk was in fact
supposed to be part of the array was it able to rebuild onto it and get on
with doing its job.
I went for another hot and tiring 8km run at lunch time (something like 26degC
according to the BBC weather) and managed to knock perhaps fifteen seconds off
my time. This is actually quite promising for when the air temperature drops
a few more degrees or so. I'm rowing this evening. If the weather is
anything like it was last night when it turned out I was going to be in the
stroke seat for a bow-rigged 4+ rather than the 8+ I'd assumed we'd be in I'll
be dripping wet by the time we get to to lock. I was rather angry to find
that not only could I have not turned up and those people who had turned up
could have still had an outing, but that it was probably down to our crew
organiser not getting himself in gear and contacting people a little more in
advance. As it was Kris and I were extremely upset to have missed our date
evening/celebratino of her getting her third (of five) chapter of her Ph.D
submitted to her supervisor. Still, I did go home an hour early so we could
have iced chocolate drinkies on the lawn and calm down a bit from the
excitement and heat of the day. Same routine this evening for me, except that
I'll be washing up. Kris is out running. I don't envy her as the weather's
supposed to get even hotter around about 19:00 tonight. At least I'll be near
water. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|02:50 pm] |
I hear nothing for over a week (even though I had access to email
while while on holiday) about rowing outings and things like that. I come
back on Saturday and hear nothing between then and lunch time today either.
I send out two emails to everyone in the crew asking if anything is
happening and only after the second email do I coincidently get an email from
my boat's organiser asking for a sub for this evening. Apparently (contrary
to rules laid out by the men's captain about publishing schedules to the
mailing list) all outings are on unless we hear otherwise. I've now had to
cancel a rather lovely date I was going to have with Kris this evening which
was going to involve mojitos and lovely restaurant food and go row in what
will be admittedly lovely evening weather. Not best pleased is pretty much
how I'd describe Kris and me at the moment.
In other news the builders came around again this morning on account of the
sealing stuff around the picture rail that was put up in the room I had the
lintel done outside cracking and shrinking, and the curtain rail falling down
and tearing a smallish hole in the ceiling. The latter was due to the lintel
blocking half of the depth of the hole the middle fixing screw for the curtain
rail went in to (but oddly not the left or right hand ones). Anyway, I called
them yesterday and they came out this morning and seem to have done a much
better job (probably by drilling a hole right through the cast iron (or steel)
lintel and ramming a dirty great screw right through it while casting it in
something akin to quick-set concrete. I think it'll stay up this time around.
Work consists of holding the fort at the moment. Although I did patch and
reboot a machine from home this morning while the building work was going on.
That went well up until the point I tried to shut down all the Oracle gubbins
on it and it turned out all the scripts were crap. After bringing everything
down manually and rebooting the box had some major fsck issues which took me
about 20 minutes to work through before the machine would come up cleanly.
Still, this is what they pay me the big bucks for. No, wait.
Kris and I had a lovely meal out on the lawn (or the yard as Kris would say)
on picnic blankets and beanbags yesterday. Definitely a lovely way to spend
the evening. It's a shame that the house gets in the way of the sun at that
time of day but the air was still more than warm enough. Other than that, it
turns out that mornings are better than evenings. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|03:25 pm] |
Hello there! I'm back and feeling good! Kris and I (and fifteen
other people) are back from Salcombe in Devon where we had an absolutely great
time. The train down to London and back out again went according to plan with
all the people we were due to meet up with being where they were supposed to.
The drive to the house from Totnes station was short and uneventful and the
house pretty much perfect for what we wanted (even if the hot tub was broken).
Days consisted of getting up nice and early and going for wonderful long runs
up and down actual hills into, around and back out of Salcombe and then
breakfast. The rest of the time was spent walking around in the brilliant
sunshine, kayaking in the estuary, going to Overbeck's (a National Trust
property) and sometimes just hanging around reading and playing (get this)
Croquet. A real shame about the hot tub but there was a whole barn
(seriously) filled with air hockey, pool and table tennis tables as well as a
sauna. Not that I got around to using the sauna when I was getting hot enough
out on the roads. Food was great although I might have eaten a little too
much rich/good food than was good for my waistline (but what're holidays for?)
and obviously a lot of people drank a lot of alcohol. The fact that pretty
much everyone took a turn in the kitchen making a meal for the rest of the
house (Kris and I did fajitas and salsa and other accompaniments which went
down really well) meant that food costs stayed pretty low for the most part.
Kris and I did go out for a meal one night to a lovely restaurant to celebrate
well, us being so happy. Lots done, some photos taken (they'll be pretty
Kris-heavy I'm afraid, but she is very pretty so you probably won't mind too
much) and a return journey which wasn't too bad considering the lack of booked
seats and a very hot Underground. The photos should be up soonish, as well
as some older ones of a weekend Kris and I had with her parents visiting
Blenheim Palace a while back.
This weekend just gone (well, the Saturday night and Sunday) were spent
firstly in a curry house (no-one wanted to cook once we'd arrived home again),
rowing with the Dev squad in an 8+ on Sunday morning and finding that the
curtain rail below the work I'd had done in Kris' room had come down due to
the middle screw just not being bedded in enough and the filler around the
edges of the room shrinking and cracking. I've called the builder, again, to
see if he can do anything about it all.
Today, just like the weather on almost every day of the previous week's
holiday (although one day we had a temperature inversion and a very cool (and
cold) bank of fog rolled in for a few hours), has been very hot. Probably not
the best day to run 8km at lunch time, even though I did it in a fairly good
time of 37:45. I've decided I won't be exercising this evening (unless I
decide to go Hashing) and may just work on the photos I have outstanding
instead. Kris and I have a Top Gear to watch as well as some other stuff and
some more lovely mozzarella and tomato salad to eat for dinner. Not that I'm
actually fat, but I could really do with losing a little bit from around my
middle at the moment in preparation for some rather energetic activities
coming up soon. Perhaps even tonight!
On a final note, Kris and I have been discussing certain issues relating to
the fact that she's a US citizen and this is the UK. You know, visas and all
that. It's not a simple thing to decide about but I have some thoughtful and
permanent ideas on the subject I'd like to mull over for a while. Nothing's
certain at the moment and there'll definitely have to be a period of time when
she's back in the States and I'm here. On the order of a few months, at
least. As and when I know more that's worth telling I'll let you know. Put
it this way though - there's a wonderful chance things could all work out in a
very lovely way. Maybe. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 19th, 2009|03:35 pm] |
Hello hello! The day's barely more than half over and has been a
brilliant one already. Starting off the day in the smashingest way Kris and I
got to work in time to be able to leave early this evening. Its also been a
really busy day at work, which is good. It's just a shame the preceeding four
days were so empty. Somehow, I don't know what I did, but I got to patch
three of the machines which've been needing doing for the past month. And
another one was released to me as a rebuild, which was even better. I'm now
only six away from having a fully up to date set of machines. This is
rare.
Capitalising on this productive and enjoyable morning I went for a rather fine
run at lunch time and reckon I got a pretty damned great time... I just wish
I'd taken my watch with me so I could be sure. It was horribly humid outside
but that's the kind of weather I need if I'm going to be competing where I
hope I might be in a few months. We'll see on that score...
This evening Kris and I'll be going to the gym, coming home and packing for
the next week away. Seeing as it looks like we won't be doing more than
some bouldering because of the need to bring a complete rack of climbing stuff
(which weighs a lot) I'll be hoping to remember to pack a power kite and
plenty of spare clothes for running and stuff. It's going to be odd in
places, this holiday. Not only are there going to be two of my exes there
(one married, with a child) but with a recent death in one of the people who
we're celebrating a birthday for's (by doing this thing) family there's a good
chance that at some point in the next seven days someone is going to get
stressed. I for one don't intend it to be me, or Kris. Part of the way I'm
going to help with that is making sure I'm always doing something either
engrossing or exercisey. That or being totally relaxed somewhere quiet with
Kris. Given I have a few rowing regattas coming up and the possibility of
some big AR events in the next few months it won't pay to get out of the
groove, as it were, when it comes to cardio/muscular fitness. Also we have a
hot tub and sauna. So if nothing else I can totally kick back and chill out.
Anyway, everyone have a great week and I'll see you soon. |
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[Jun. 18th, 2009|04:55 pm] |
Frustraingly, after getting up at 06:00 and even suffering the
wonderful indignity of being last to the boat house at 06:15 we still didn't
get to go out in the beautiful morning weather because we'd failed to secure
the possession of a cox cupboard key. This meant that we stood around for
about half an hour until the coach arrived and apologised. We ended up doing
1min, 2min, 3min, 2min, 1min piece work on the ergs instead which was at least
some form of exercise as a reward for dragging ourselves out of bed.
Work has been rewarding too in its own turn as I've been setting up secure
socket layer stuff for the new online course bookign and payment system we're
buying in from elsewhere but still using our own URLs for. That, updating
some machines, trying to work out why our firewall management station went
nuts and planning when I'm going to be doing some other work took up the
morning. Lunch was with Kris in the glaresome but cloudy, warm and windy
midday outdoors.
This afternoon has been pretty empty to tell you the truth so I'm looking
forward to going home, putting a wash on and maybe, just maybe having a very
wonderful and pleasant evening. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|01:05 pm] |
A short entry today as I'm in a meeting all of this afternoon. Rowing
last night was 'interesting' in that in my new role at 7 seat (great shoes) I
have even more effect over the six people behind me that I thought (and I
imagined it was quite a lot). High point of the outing was me actually doing
some decent rockovers which really seemed to translate down the boat. I think
being at bow has really soften my technique. It's going to be good for me to
be shaping how the crew moves.
I slept like the dead last night but still woke tired this morning. Stress
about this and that has dropped somewhat but I'm still... I don't know...
very slightly frustrated/peeved at myself and some of the small but important
logistics of life. I know they're going to sort themselves out, but until
then I just have a tiny niggly feeling that... I'm just not doing things
exactly right. Then again, what is "exactly right" and who gets to say what
is and isn't anyway?
I should finish patching this machine and write up my notes from my appraisal
this morning. Nothing amazing or surprising to report. I let my line manager
know what I've been doing, what I want to do and what I think he could do
better. There wasn't anything unexpected and he's promised to punt more
things my way. You know, as and when something actually appears. One of
those things is some proper commercial financial stuff tied in with sales, our
load balancers, some SSL certificates and people who really don't know what
they're talking about. It's going to be up to me to get them to understand.
This could be fun.
More rowing tonight. I think it's going to rain, lots. I'm off now to go to
a meeting and listen to what others of my ilk have been or will be up to. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|04:55 pm] |
I didn't go to the gym in the end. Nor did I cycle around the place
with Cormac. Instead I went down to the boathouse to fit some decent shoes in
the 7 seat that I'll be occupying for the forseeable future and then bank
partied the Dev crew (which Keith is in) for a Head race on the river. It was
an OK row but a lot of the crew really needs to work on their flexibility and
timing (not that my crew doesn't).
The logistics and other things associated with Kris' continued presence in the
UK has been on my mind these last few days since her return and run-in with
the Border and Immigration people. I really don't know what we're going to do
to solve that particular issue except that we have to if we're going to stay
together. At least in England, where I'd like us to be. As we discover more
information we can make more informed choices and I guess we'll take it from
there. Suffice it to say that when those kinds of things are on your mind
your mojo can take a bit of a hit right at the moment when you were hoping to
use it.
Work is quite dull at the moment. I'm playing around with Fedora 11 on the
assumption that it's going to form the basis for RHEL6 when it comes out some
time next year (with the beta some time towards the end of this year). Other
than that I've got rowing this evening (so leaving soon) and my appraisal
tomorrow morning. Neither I nor my appraiser know exactly what we're going to
talk about considering how quiet it is at the moment but I'm sure I'll think
of some things to bring up with regarg to expanding my role and getting some
more out of this post. For now though, I think it's time I left, met Kris,
gave her a bit kiss and then cycled home in what's turned out to be a rather
lovely spate of weather. Considering I actually left work early to avoid a
torrential downpour and thunderstorm which never materialised I'm kind of
assuming it's hiding and will dump on me and my crew this evening. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 15th, 2009|03:40 pm] |
After a gym session on Friday Kris and I were all set to relax for the
evening. This we did. Saturday morning I was out in the 8+ with the rest of
my crew while Kris was getting her hair cut. The outing was pretty good all
things considered, even if our coach wasn't hugely impressed. With two new
crew members in the boat (one of whom hadn't been in a boat since before
Christmas). We finished in good time so that meant that after I was done I
was able to meet Kris in town for a lunch time date. We ended up going to a
GBK and sitting at the back of the restaurant by the open doors/windows.
After that things are a bit hazy but I think we ended up wandering around town
and poking through the market before heading home. Kris had a girly evening
with friends around 18:00 so I was left to my own devices with TV and books
and the internet. Fairly pleasant, really.
Sunday morning we were seized by the urge to tidy the garden and house in
preparation for people coming over to help organise the week we're spending in
the south soon. I mowed the lawn and trimmed a hedge, etc. Kris took a good
section of the lavender bush back as well as trimming a chunk for her own
uses. A few hours later Cat, Keith, Cormac and Steph arrived, all with
netbooks or iPhones or similar and with Kris on her iBook I felt a little
silly with my 2001-era Dell Inspiron 8100. Still we achieved a fair bit of
organisation (something we hadn't managed to do until now due to people
being away or family emergencies) as well as Kris (and to a lesser extent I)
doing some baking and cooking. I mean, she did pretty much all of it, I just
did some mixing and washing up and other ancilliary tasks. Oddly, after about
two hours or so I felt the need to lie down for a bit of a relax and before I
knew it I'd slept all the way through to about 17:30. Some combination of the
previous day's rowing, the heat of both days and probably a sugar crash left
me basically comatose.
I was fine by the evening so we settled down to have a nice dinner of
leftovers and watch some television together. Going to bed early meant an
earlyish morning this morning even though we decided not to go to the gym in
lieu of having a good talk about a few things on our minds. Kris had had a
bad night so went back to sleep while I went to work. We'd have been going to
the gym together this evening but Kris has yoga and so I've decided to go for
a (hopefully) forced-pace road cycle with Cormac (if he manages to get his ass
in gear). As it is I've been for a good run this lunch time in what was truly
hot and humid weather. I detoured at the end to Cormac's work place to
collect some bike bits (cycle computer mounting kit, brake blocks) before
getting back to the office.
I'm going to spend a few more hours doing this that and the other today before
I head off for an evening of either cycling or gym. Hopefully the weather
will stay as good as it is at the moment. Work is quiet right now. |
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[Jun. 12th, 2009|04:20 pm] |
Today has luckily been really quiet. So quiet the hopefully newly
regular lunchtime 6km run has been the highlight of the day. I really don't
know what else to be doing considering it's a Friday afternoon.
It looks like some of my crew (the 8+ I'm in) have started to get their act
together when it comes to outings and regattas. As a result we're going to
be training regularly a few times a week. It's going to get in the way of a
few things (like AR training and the continued climbing hiatus) for a while
but we'll see what happens after a few regattas and other events in town.
This weekend I've got one bit of rowing on Saturday and a whole lot of
individual errands to run in town including - potentially - getting new
glasses (finally) and... something else I don't recall right now. Kris'll
remind me, she's good at things like that. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|12:00 am] |
Ooops, I forgot to do this before I left yesterday.
Probably something to do with Kris turning up at 12:10 and me needing to be
home before she was. Her 20 hour journey from North Carolina seemed to go
perfectly, which was great. Once she was home, cleaned up and luncheoned she
went to sleep for a good few hours while I worked from home. We had a usual
Thursday where we arranged some of the stuff we'll be doing in Devon in a week
or so.
The morning's work consisted of dealing with some strange SSL certificate
weirdness which I have no idea about. That and installing about seven new and
replacement ones. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 10th, 2009|05:00 pm] |
Torrential rain has a way of making you not want to go erg training
after work and instead go home and get warm and dry. I'm really feeling like
if no-one else from my crew is doing any exercise this week I shouldn't have
to. Not that I didn't go the gym last night and I won't try and do something
tomorrow too.
Today has been one of those days when you do all kinds of tiny things which
should add up to a fairly satisfactory day's worth of achievements. Only
somehow it just doesn't feel like it. Still, talking to Kris and realising
that she is, as you read this (if you're reading it today) in transit home
again is a Very Good Thing. She won't get back until gone midday tomorrow
because of timezone stuff, two flights and a coach ride so I've got the
morning to work and then the afternoon to work from home while making sure she
can relax and recover from the journey.
I need to go to Tesco this evening to get flowers and food and a few other
things before I get home for good tonight. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 9th, 2009|04:30 pm] |
A brief bit of excitement this afternoon when it turned out one of our
cgi scripts used for sending out "email a friend" links was hijacked and used
to send quite a bit of spam out. We quickly shut down everything involved
while keeping everything else running, purged mail queues and asked for
forgiveness from our upstream mail people. Given it wasn't my group's fault
and not 100% the web team's fault that seems to have been pretty easy to get.
Suffice it to say we won't be allowing other scripts of that nature in the
future without someone taking a look at it to check for those kinds of holes.
I went to see Terminator: Salvation last night on the spur of the moment (and
also because I know Kris wouldn't have wanted to see it). It was...
entertaining. Not really that impressive story-wise but certainly a fun way
to spend the evening. As we saw it so early (pretty much straight from work)
I was able to go home and do an initial clean up of the house and Kris' room
for plaster dust and general muck. Next up is vacuuming before I put things
like curtains back up and reassemble her room again.
Even though today was burrito day I'd intended to run at lunch time as I'd
forgotten that. Still, as I'd also forgotten my trainers I wasn't able to
actually run anyway. I'm going to go to the gym after work instead before
doing some more housework. There's supposed to be something happening in town
this evening with friends but I really don't have the energy to do two things
and I really do feel like a gym session today.
Finally today I've been setting up a dual-homed machine to act as a Wake On
LAN server for the Windows team. Of course it's a linux box but at least I
get to control it and keep it up to date. Having a machine which bridges two
VLANs is never great, but at least it's not Windows. |
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[Jun. 8th, 2009|11:45 am] |
I just got back from Peterborough and boy my arms are tired. OK, that
joke doesn't work too well as I neither flew (as the pun requires) nor am I
particularly tired. We drove up on the Friday evening (late, as usual for our
driver) and then proceeded to do things like put up the tents and go for a
pint (I don't really drink) rather than light the barbeque. As a result we
didn't actually start putting meat onto it until gone 22:30. Silly. I don't
think I suffered from eating underdone venison burgers but only because they
were good quality. Happily no-one really drank much that night so we were all
pretty OK for the 1000m races on the Saturday. It rained a little here and
there but our heat (which we won convincingly) was rowed in the dry. Later in
the day we took part in the final but only came last (although only five or
six seconds separated 1st and 4th (us). No pot won there many of my crew
decided to get completely rat-arsed Saturday night and stayed awake until gone
02:00. In fact, our Stroke was so ill the next morning he not only went back
to bed between 09:00 and 13:00 (our heat being at 13:48) we also moved him
out of his seat to one where he only had to follow. As a result we showed a
decent turn of pace in our 500m heat by coming second and qualifying for the
final. Unfortunately our chance to win a pot and break our Novice status was
stymied by the crew we'd come second to in our heat. What was doubly galling
was that the same club's previous Novice crew last year had done exactly the
same thing to my boat (I hadn't been available to row as I was in New York
seeing Kris) and gone up to the status above (currently known as IM3) then
too. Still, this probably means we're in good shape for the Bedford Regatta
next month where we should have a Novice race against much slower crews.
The drive to Peterborough and back were pretty damned fast on account of the
driver being a lead-foot. It did mean that I got to have a fair proportion of
the Sunday evening to myself at home after a hot shower. I decided to make
the executive decision of getting delivery food (and even stumped up the extra
pound delivery charge for the order value being so low) and didn't regret it
one bit.
Happily I'm suffering no ill-effects this morning although I don't think I'll
do any exercise this evening. Work is quiet, especially since the RAID
failure which occured seconds after I posted Friday's entry has turned out to
be one of those Dell PowerEdge reseat-the-drive-in-its-bay-and-the-error-stops
things. I'm running some diagnostics now but all seems well. Monday, another
week, but one in which Kris comes back to me, even if it is towards the tail
end of it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 5th, 2009|04:35 pm] |
Obviously now that the weekend is nearly upon us the weather has taken
a turn for the worse. Yes, it has been raining on and off since lunch time.
This means that it's more than likely that I'll be putting a tent up in the
rain this evening. I hate that. Still, it hopefully won't take too long and
at the end of it at least I'll have plenty of space, probably to myself unless
I'm actually making room for one or two other people. No-one's actually said
as yet. Still, I'm getting picked up at 19:00 this evening and then being
driven so it's not like it's much effort on my part before then.
We figured out why the machine I tried to build yesterday wouldn't get its
Kickstart information from the network. Turns out the network guy had put its
port on the wrong VLAN. All solved the machine installed as usual. I'll pass
it on to the people who know what strange and weird perl modules and other
things need to go on to it on Monday.
Between now and then I've got washing up to do, packing to finish and then a
drive to Peterborough. Two sprint races (1000m tomorrow, 500m on Sunday) and
then a drive back and boat trailer unloading. Hopefully there'll be barbeques
and potentially even some winning to look forward to... but you'll find out
next week whether that's the case. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 4th, 2009|03:50 pm] |
Just after I got in this morning I got a mail (and a text) telling me
that this evening's rowing outing had been cancelled. Frustrating, as I'd
already cancelled this evening's Thursday session because of it. What I'm
going to do now is run alongside the 4+ containing two of the people from my
8+ who couldn't make their own morning outing and have instead decided to use
the evening slot for themselves. As I said, a bit frustrating, but it means
we definitely go to Peterborough off the back of a good outing.
I'm getting my hair cut today. It's just too damned hot (and would get too
waterlogged if it rains over the weekend) at the moment for the amount of
thatch I've got going on right now.
Work continues to be quiet this week. I've got two machines to build (one
server, one workstation). I should go and get one done before I leave. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 3rd, 2009|05:05 pm] |
Didn't get into work until gone 10:10 this morning on account of the
builder(s) not arriving until close to 08:00 this morning and over running. I
guess I shouldn't complain as the more time they took filling holes, sanding
rough plaster down and doing mortar pointing the better job they hopefully
should have done. Still, apparently they're all done now. I'm going to head
home in a few minutes and take another look with fresh eyes before I go to the
gym or something for today's exercise.
Last night's exercise was another rowing outing. Our next to last before the
Peterborough Regatta this weekend. I don't know if it was me haranguing every
person in the boat beforehand, the cox getting a bit more of a grip or our
coach for the evening but now and again, for significant periods of time we
really seemed to be switched on. As a result, for the most part the outing
went quite well. We'll see how tomorrow evening's outing goes before I
express any kind of hope for the weekend's 1000m and 500m sprints.
Nothing much happening at work today. I attempted to upgrade ViewVC but the
new version seems like a step backwards so I've left it alone for a bit to
have a think about what I want to do. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 2nd, 2009|04:50 pm] |
Pleasingly I've been in contact with Kris and now know that she
arrived safely in North Carolina. After having dinner with Kate last night
(mmmm, spicy squid) I stayed up late on my own for the first time in months
because I didn't really want to lie awake for too long. Anyway, I got up this
morning and went about my morning things at a leisurely pace as I was
expecting the lead builder over to collect his final acro support and other
bits and bobs, only to remember that he's actually due this evening at 17:15.
Happily as today was burrito day I left for work as soon as I realised.
Work's been pretty boring today. A couple of machine restarts and some clean
up of the ZXTM load balancer configuration. I'm actually hoping that this
evening's rowing session is good otherwise I'm going to be a bit peeved. It
also looks like it's going to rain over the course of the Peterborough Regatta
this weekend, which is really annoying as I'll be camping. Only one night,
it's true, but still annoying. Rowing in the wet is also bothersome as it
makes the blade handle slippery.
I guess that's it for today. The Polish builder is coming over again
(hopefully for the last time) tomorrow morning at 07:30 (yeah right) and then
that should be it. Well, apart from the large amount of sanding and painting
Kris and I are going to have ahead of us. Still, as she's decided that I'm
apparently not the worst guy in the world she could spend a bit of time with
she's chosen to make here here mission control for a while longer, which is
nice. All I have to do now is help her get her Ph.D (not that she needs any),
a job (somewhere good in every way), let her paint her room whatever colours
she wants and decide when we're going to do the bathroom. That and have lots
of adventures and fun and things like that. |
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