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Ben
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 9th, 2010|04:55 pm] |
Counting down another day. I went to see the Tax Man yesterday
afternoon. After about an hour of him looking through all of my available
documentation his opinion was that the money I apparently still owed was not
what the paperwork said and was in fact not enough to worth bothering with and
should be removed from the system. Unfortunately because of a combination of
them having moved to a new system a few years ago, a screen problably not
having been filled in correctly at that time and the guy who knows how to
fiddle the system there's nothing he can do about it this week. Hopefully it
will be sorted for good next Monday and from now on my tax code will be the
same as everyone elses. That would be nice.
I went home to find that Kris had done the lion's share of the washing up,
which was pretty awesome. She got some good huggage for that. Even though
apparently I was looking pretty shattered I went down to the boathouse and
tried to do the AT erg session. I didn't do too well but I think that's OK
for having been out of rowing-specific training for the last few weeks. I'll
pick up quickly and get back to where I was before, if not better. It'll help
that there's a good chance I'll be back in the boat again come tomorrow and
next weekend. Especially (although it shouldn't only be the case) as there
are a few injuries in the M2 squad at the moment.
Today I've been increasing my knowledge on a few things I should know properly
anyway as well as starting to learn some new stuff about XML, LDAP and general
Perl for Systems Administrators. Definitely all good things I should know if
I should happen to need to apply for another job (or do better work in this
one). There's also some SQL and SNMP I should brush up too.
Right now though I'm off for a cocktails and dinner date with my best girl
before we head home for a nice night in. Whee! |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 8th, 2010|02:25 pm] |
An early entry today. This is because I'm off shortly to see the Tax
Man (or as it may be, Woman) in a few minutes to work out just what the hell
is going on with my tax code for next years (April 2010-April 2011). I've got
all the documentation I can find as well as two proofs of identity and my
actual National Insurance Card (something I've never ever needed before in
the 'flesh' as it were). More on that tomorrow when it's all hopefully
sorted.
The bathroom work done last week has been 50% successful. The toilet cistern
no longer leaks but the drain trap in the sink still does so we're having our
new best plumber friend back on Thursday to completely replace the plugging
mechanism with something which doesn't suffer the same issue.
This weekend gone Kris and I blitzed the house in preparation for friends
visiting and staying the night after a big meal out with lots of people, only
for them not to be able to make it due to illness. It did mean that we had an
awesomely clean house though so having run another 5K race beforehand we felt
perfectly justified in not doing much else for the rest of the day. The meal
in the evening was great (having already paid for it out of money left over
from the Salcombe holiday we'd all been on in 2009) even if the kareoke after
we'd finished was almost enough to bring on indigestion.
Sunday, being our last full day together before probably some time in mid-June
(me visiting Kris in the States notwithstanding) we spent relaxing, catching
up with some rather good television we'd been saving up to see together and
cooking an amazing leg of lamb. Basically, close to the perfect day (although
there are many variations on that both more and less energetic).
I think that's everything to report at the moment. I'm back erging this
evening, Kris continues to work on her dissertation and write packing lists
and we have climbing, a date out and lots of quiet time together still to go
before she leaves very early on Friday morning. As soon as she's gone I
intend to start counting down to when I go over to visit (although I may go
more than once depending on how long she's over there for, and then there's
what happens if she gets the job) and blocking out segments of time to do
small but important bits of DIY to the house which will be perfect for filling
up the quiet evenings and weekends that I'll have for the next little while.
I will keep busy, productive and useful, especially as whatever happens the
house needs to be in excellent shape for the autumn. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 5th, 2010|04:50 pm] |
Tentative yay! Kris rang at around 11:00 this morning to tell me that
the wonderful new plumber (here's hoping he stays wonderful) has fixed and/or
dealt with all the issues we'd written down on the bit of paper we'd both be
noting issues down on. Hurrah! This could be the last you have to hear about
it all. Double hurrah!
Lunchtime was another 8km run with the person I'm helping train for the London
Marathon trailing behind me slightly the whole way around. Somehow, despite
it feeling slower we seemed to have clocked her in at the same speed per mile
as Wednesday. We'll have to see what Monday brings, especially as it reckons
she ran further today over exactly the same course. Well, 50m further, which
I really can't believe.
I've been struggling to get my Firefox 3.6 working with all the plugins I have
at the same time as helping a web developer find out why every time his script
runs the development Xen box he's working on has a sudden onset of OOM (out of
memory). Both seem to have been solved through dilligent work and brute force
on my part which means there's no real reason for me to still be here. Have a
good weekend! I intend to spend it running (tomorrow morning) with Kris,
enjoying a mostly free meal with friends, brunch with Kris and some good
friends on Sunday and then a little more time with Kris. Monday is work and
Tax Man day. I really don't care how the tax thing works out (unless I'm
lumbered with more tax to pay than right now), I just want it sorted. Oh, and
the hole in the back of the house is now full of expanding foam. I imagine
someone'll come along on Monday to slice it smooth and plaster over it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 4th, 2010|04:55 pm] |
It looks like the work done to the house yesterday was pretty
neatly done. Concrete cut back, edging put in, gravel laid down and soil dug
away from the house, big crak repointed and cracked bricks replaced. The guys
even filled in my apparently useless vent in the rear of the house. Of course
this meant that they shoved the pipe inside the vent back into the house in a
small explosion of plaster but one of them's come over for the first of two
trips to fill the hole with expanding foam in preparation for coming back
early next week to slice off the overflow and then skim some plaster over the
top. This is good as I needed to break out the paint for that wall again
anyway to go over the water staining from when the gutters overflowed a few
months ago. I was waiting for the wall to dry fully, that's why I didn't do
it sooner. Honest.
We've got the new plumber coming tomorrow morning. I've 'authorised' Kris to
be as nice as she wants to him (within reason, even if he may be making
everything better again and saving the house from slowly flooding and helping
make sure the money I spent on the bathroom wasn't a total waste). I imagine
there will be offers of tea/coffee and her chocolate and carrot torte (which
is truly fabulous).
Work today has been fairly OK. I didn't have to make lunch as one of our
longest-serving staff members had his retirement party today. I've done some
patching written some documentation and caught up on some newsgroups and tech
blogs and things. I think I should go home and see some more of Kris.
There's a Thursday tonight. It's the day after Groundhog Day, but I still
think we should watch the Bill Murray classic. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 3rd, 2010|03:45 pm] |
We had the builders arrive this morning at about 08:00 to do the work
to the back of the house which should help lower the damp problems affecting
the house a little more. I think I mentioned that the concrete 'patio' which
had been laid for the house behind mine when mine was being extended actually
came up above the damp proof course in some places thus leading to cold and
slightly damp brickwork when the weather was bad. Well, they were here to
deal with that as well as hopefully slap some waterproofing on some other
bits, scrape out and repoint the major crack in the rear wall and replace some
bricks which the crack had gone through rather than round. I'm going to head
home in about 30 minutes to catch them before they go and make sure everything
looks OK. They're going to have to come back to deal with some minor damage
they did to the inside of the house as they filled in an unncessary vent but I
don't think that's going to be an issue (at least I hope it isn't).
Kris, as per, has done a sterling job of dealing with the builders but I need
to be there to, you know, deal with my own house now and again as it's really
not her job (no matter how brilliant she as at it).
I've been trying to log and have dealt with a failed hard disc with the
company who supplied the kit. Unfortunately despite them doing a complete
audit (with their personnel) last week all of our details seem to have
vanished from their system. Every single serial number, all our addresses and
our representative persons (like me and my team) have vanished. Unhelpful. I
just hope we get a replacement disk out before another one fails.
Damn, now I'm on hold when I need to start preparing to leave. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 2nd, 2010|05:25 pm] |
Toilet's leaking again. We've resorted to turning off the water to it
and emptying (flushing) the cistern at night to make sure it doesn't soak the
floor while we sleep. Hopefully Kris had a call from the replacement fitter
and plumber this afternoon when she got back from working in town and then
having lunchtime burrito with me. If not, well, he's still apparently due out
to see things on Friday. Here's hoping anyway.
In other news the other work to the house is apparently going to take place
tomorrow. This is good.
Kris dosed me up with decongesting thingies and dripped other things on my
pillow last night and I honestly think I had the best night's sleep I've had
in about a month. And today I think I've only sneezed three times and blown
my nose twice. This may be the shortest-lived cold in recorded history. It's
a shame we're not going climbing this evening on account of our driver being
ill and Kris' wrist being a bit painful from the bike fall she had on Saturday
morning.
We've opted to have our date tomorrow evening rather than tonight given the
weather. I hope this turns out to be a good idea. I'm sure we'll have a
wonderful time at home tonight anyway.
I've managed to solve my weird warning error deprecation warning thingy on the
RHEL5 servers which were exhibiting it. It turns out it was all do to with
shared libraries and Oracle and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It took me a while and it
required the use of strace (which I guess was cool to do) but hopefully it's
all sorted now. No, I have no idea why it happened.
Anyway, home time I think. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 1st, 2010|05:00 pm] |
The year is no longer new. We're into the second month where
everything starts to settle down and get serious. Serious things which have
happened since last I spoke is that Kris and I discovered another issue with
leaking things in the bathroom (leaking pipe in the sink), the loo cistern
which we thought we'd fixed and therefore told the fitter we didn't like not
to come today is still leaking (luckily only very very slightly) and the Tax
Man has really confused me with regard to how much tax I may or may not owe
for the tax year 2010-2011. I have arranged for an appointment next Monday
afternoon to Talk Over all the documentation I have in an effort to try and
get my PAYE reset to the normal, standard and completely unspecial tax code
that most people have.
This weekend was pretty good actually. Saturday I did lots of little tiny
house DIY things including finally putting the first coat of the actual colour
we want in the bathroom and doing some filling (sanding to come). It feels
like every single floorboard creaks in the house at the moment, every crack is
huge and every problem is massive and insurmountable. I'm probably not helped
by the lack of sleep I'm getting at the moment and the variety of other things
on my mind right now.
Saturday morning Kris and I cycled out to take part in a regular-from-now-on
5km run at a local park. I managed to get a little lost owing to finding
myself in a hole between packs of runners and ended up doing about 860m less
than the full distance. I wasn't the only one though so there're plans to
make the signage better next week. We'll go and run it again before I head
back to rowing again and Kris heads back across the Atlantic. It'll be there
whenever we have a free Saturday morning, which is cool.
Sunday was much more relaxed. We'd have cycled somewhere but the snow from
the previous day and the thick frost was going to make the roads just a little
too 'exciting' for us so we opted to stay in, do housework, bake cakes and
generally be moderately achieveful.
I have to say Kris is just the most awesome person ever. There's too many
things I could tell you with regard to what she does for me and my life. I'm
not going to go into them because of that and because some of them are
wonderful and personal. Actually, I will tell you one thing; she handled
dealing with the whole bathroom issue(s) stuff today after I had a bit of a
minor meltdown with regard to all the things I feel are on my plate at the
moment. But there's so much more to it and her than that. And that's why
she's Just That Wonderful.
Anyway, I should go home now as I seem to have developed a torrential cold
(yes, that means exactly what you think it does) after returning from my 6km
lunchtime run. Maybe it was getting up early this morning after a poor
night's sleep so I could come to work, get my payslips and then cycle over to
the Tax Office to spend a fruitless hour finding out that I needed another
hour's worth of appointment to... never mind. I'll just tell you when it's
all over. Like Kris did when she emailed me just past 09:00 this morning to
say she'd Handled Things with the bathroom people.
Totally awesome, that girl. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 29th, 2010|04:50 pm] |
Kris and I have worked out that she'll need to head back to the US on
or very close to 12 February. This is, of course, majorly poo but something
we've been expecting to be the case since she reentered the country back in
October. Bothersome, yes. So, this means we have approximately two weeks to
get things we want to do together in person done, get her as packed as we can
for what she'll be allowed/able to take back and to say our goodbyes for the
time being. Obviously I'll be going over there at least once while
she's busy doing her job interview(s), getting her Ph.D finished, defended and
awarded and going through all her stuff in NC in preparation for wherever she
ends up after that. Right now it's almost certain to be either be here with
me or somewhere on the eastern side of the US. I don't think there's anything
else we're interested in.
With luck we'll be able to get two things about the house fixed next week by
Kris being home during the day. The cistern leak (by our most unfavourite
fitter bathroom and not-plumber) and the rear wall crack (external) and
damp-proof course clearing (by our slightly more favoured builder). I just
hope nothing goes wrong once Kris has gone as her no-nonsense American
attitude is awesome for dealing with tradesmen.
I should head off to be honest as it's well past going home time. I ran at
lunch time today and tried to do that whole striking with the front of the
foot rather than the heel and ended up pulling something in my right calf
muscle which is a bit annoying considering Kris and I are doing a 5km run
through a local park tomorrow morning seeing as I'm not rowing again until
after the next race my boat (which I'm not in) is doing. This means that
we'll actually get to sleep in on Sunday!
Work was pretty dull today but I spiced it up by learning all about linux
kernel schedulers. Wow, how cool is that? Yeah, I know, totally. The more
you know the better you are and all that. I just wonder what other knowledge
I had was forgotten to make room for those totally essential and vitally
important bits of information. You know how they say that the brain can only
hold a finite amount of information? Well, there goes my childhood memories
of winning first prize in the egg-and-spoon race. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 28th, 2010|05:10 pm] |
Another quiet day. It's also my one day of the week when I don't
actually do any exercise per se. Of course that doesn't stop me cycling to
and from work nor stopped me from cycling into town at lunch time to a) close
a bank account which isn't worth having open any more, paying in the cheque
from it and, b) enquiring as to whether I'd be charged if I moved my ISA to
another provider (one that actually gives a better (any) rate of interest.
The move has been requested and now I guess I wait for the paperwork and fill
in what I need to. I know very little about ISAs and tax and Money Stuff
generally so hopefully this and all my other money matters (insurance, life
insurance, life assurance, mortgage, etc.) all continue to be as straight
forward as I believe they are at the moment.
I think I'll go home now. I have papaya spears in my bag and I need to give
some to Kris and Cat (who were keeping each other company this afternoon) so I
don't munch them all myself. Standard Thursday although there might be a kick
in the tail of it, if I'm lucky. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 27th, 2010|05:15 pm] |
The climbing last night was pretty awesome. Obviously I wasn't very
good after so long away from The Wall, but a lot of fun was still had by all.
I'm sure I pulled a muscle or two in my left shoulder and both forearms went
completely solid musclewise but it was great, even if it was absolutely
freezing (after about seven holds your fingers would go numb). We got home at
a reasonable time considering how far we'd had to drive, had some food and
fell into bed. I don't think I slept terribly well but still managed to drag
myself out of bed, shower and walk to work in time (bike having been left last
night when getting picked up from work to go climb).
The morning was spent, aside from working, trying to get in contact with the
coordinator for bathroom fitting at the company I had it done with. It turns
out that whenever you flush the toilet now the join between cistern and pan
leaks a noticable amount of water. This obviously needs fixing soon. Last
night we were too tired to be able to tell if it was leaking all the time or
when flushed so we emptied the cistern by turning off the water to it and
flushing. It's just this morning that we're a bit more certain it's not a
permanent drip/leak.
There's some big machines coming down the pipeline to me in the next few weeks
I think. Fully loaded X4140 and X4240 servers which I'm going to be loading
up with something like eight Xen guests each. I should really review my notes
on how all that stuff works...
Tonight, rather than erging (I did run 8km at lunch time, and did the route in
reverse too which is probably harder) Kris and I are going to have a date. It
will be a 'home date', but a date nevertheless. We've got food, drink and
entertainment planned so hey, I'm off home! |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 26th, 2010|04:30 pm] |
I let myself be convinced by Kris to not go and erg last night. I
didn't say anything (that was part of my agreement with myself) and just
waited to see if she suggested it. As she did I acquiesced to her request and
installed myself on the sofa while she went to yoga. When she came back we
had pork burritos which were very tasty. I have to admit, I think I was very
tired. Even though we went to bed early I went out like a light and still
felt very logey when we got up early again this morning. Happily I'm getting
into the spirit of things now and was up and out (with help from Kris on the
lunch-making front) in time to be patching the last two machines before 07:00.
As per usual for the last machines in a long sequence of tasks they were
annoying and recalcitrant and required shoving to do what I wanted them to do.
Still, I managed it and was across town and into work proper before 08:00.
The rest of the morning and the first half of the afternoon passed in a bit of
a blur due in small part to a rather fun and very simple Flash game called
Civilization Wars. I don't recommend playing it if you have something to
do. I had to tear myself away after ten minutes to get on with the things I
get paid for.
I'll shortly be heading off to meet Kris outside of work so we can wander down
to where Cormac works. We're going climbing again for the first time in what
seems like years (and probably is). Just a few of us, just to see what it's
like. Kris is packing snacks and things to make sure our blood sugar doesn't
dip into the "snappy zone" given how late we're going to be getting home this
evening. I'm really looking forward to using my arms and legs for something
other than running and rowing again. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 25th, 2010|04:35 pm] |
Man, I really do seem to be much tireder than I thought I would be
today. Getting up to be in work for just before 07:00 wasn't too difficult,
nor was the firmware patch and reboot of the server anything other than
routine (seeing as the stop and start scripts for the services on it work, for
the first time ever) flawlessly. I'm doing two more machines tomorrow morning
and then hopefully that's pretty much every machine in the X4x40 class we have
patched for SP/BIOS/RAID. That'll be pretty awesome and save me a whole lot
of trouble in the future when one of them isn't cold cycled for a few months
or more.
Anyway, no, I think it was yesterday's total of 18km running at high speed
along the tow path next to the boat I wasn't down to be rowing in (I wish
someone'd told me that before I got up at 07:00 on a Sunday) which tired me
out. 3km interval training isn't something I'm used to, even if I felt fairly
OK at the end of it as I jogged back to the boat house. The Saturday morning
(aside from an even earlier morning start) was great as we were out in two
smaller boats and did some OK rowing. Pretty much everyone thought the crew
mix would be the same the next day but it turns out that I hadn't been
selected for the racing crew going to Peterborough on 6 February so the people
who had been selected who hadn't been with us the day before turned up and it
was assumed by all that they should go in the boat. I was very close to just
packing up and going home but as I hadn't run on Friday due to popping home at
lunch time to see Kris I thought maybe a run would be just the thing. It was.
It was just a bit more of the thing than I thought.
Both Saturday and Sunday afternoons were very much about the relaxation, the
downloaded TV and some truly scrumptious food. That's something I'm really
going to miss when Kris heads back to the US for her job interview come the
early to middle part of next month. I reckon I can do most of the things
she's/we've concocted during her time here, but certainly not all with the
same style, flair and amazing skill that she has. We've eaten so well since
she became more fully part of my life. And so much healthier too. The
interview is for a rather cool place in the US that I think she could do
brilliant things for, at, whatever. I want her to get the job, them to offer
her relocation funds and to help me get some kind of job commensurate to my
skills close by so that moving there isn't a problem for me... at the same
time as I want to help her work on an INF4 form and to come back to me here in
the UK once she's finished her Ph.D and had it awarded. I want them both to
happen, they just don't reconcile.
Obviously, when I know more you will. Right now we're still in the usual
place of not being able to Plan for Stuff until we things pan out. Oh how I
wish they would pan out. I mean, right now I'm all calm and OK about
everything and I really do reckon that once things are set (whether that be
knowing Kris is coming home to me again or that I've got to pack up a box or
two, rent out the house, move to the US and start a new phase of my life) in
stone for a few years I'll be able to just accept how things are and move
forwards calmly, cooly and with a fair amount of excitement about what will
happen next.
For right now I'm shortly going to go home, kiss my fiancee, pack for the AT
erg session this evening (it's going to hurt), go to it, come home, have pork
burritos and totally flake out with zero energy remaining. It's not like I
slept terribly well last night or skimped on my 6km run at lunch time today.
I also need to be up and out at stupid o'clock tomorrow too, remember. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 22nd, 2010|04:30 pm] |
After a fairly OK evening yesterday Kris and I decided it was just
easier to have an early night. This developed into a slightly late morning
when we both woke up in the early hours. Neither of us are quite sure why but
we're hopeful it doesn't happen again tomorrow, especially as I have an
earlier rowing outing than previously thought due to there being races on the
river at the time we'd normally be out. Still, that should mean that unless I
go for the 90 minute cycle ride afterwards Kris and I will have even more of
the day together to do Stuff and Things. Among those things are me cleaning
the extractor fan in the bathroom in the hope that'll up its extraction rate,
painting the bathroom walls (nope, I've still not done that), mounting the
replacement toilet roll holder (nope, that neither) and painting the bathroom
ceiling with some new anti-moisture paint.
Sunday should be back to normal with regard to rowing (i.e. still no sleeping
in) and then we'll do something if the weather's good or stay home and do
chores and things if it's like it is right now (raining and generally
miserable).
The rain and general miserableness of the day (let's face it, the last few
days) didn't stop me from going home at lunch time to see Kris rather than
sitting in the office and eating my delicious home-made egg mayonnaise
sandwich on my own. No! Instead I went home... and then ended up eating my
sandwich back at my desk again anyway. Still, not a terrible problem. I do
like living this close to work.
In a few minutes I'm going to be leaving to meet Kris in the cold, wet weather
to head to Tesco for what is going to be a large and heavy and quite probably
annoying shop. Not because of anything other than the fact that we need a
whole lot of bulky and heavy things this time around. Ah well, I should go
and battle through the weather so I can meet my girl and do things with her
(no, shopping and stuff this time). |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 21st, 2010|05:00 pm] |
A quiet day as days go. Useful considering that last night was mostly
about doing good things for Kris and going rowing in the dark. It was a
reasonable outing with nothing much to report other than me catching a crab
about a minute before we got back to the boat house. No problem really, I
didn't even remember it again until I was writing the previous sentence. So
yes, looking after Kris and rowing. Cue me coming home after the latter
extremely hungry. Luckily Kris was on hand to join me in making some quick
and tasty dinner.
Back to today and it was one of those rare mornings when I didn't need to be
work early. So Kris and I took our time over getting up (by which I mean we
were up and about by 07:30). Other than that all I've really done today is
learn some more about Solaris 10, read a lot about upgrades to some of the
software we have here, discover the amount of gas and electricity my house
consumed over the last four months and get a rather tasty burrito for lunch.
I think that for today that's not too bad now I think about the last few days
of stuff that's gone on.
There's a Thursday tonight, but before that I'm going to head home and take
care of some important things, hopefully have a visit from an electrician to
offer some advice on replacing the extractor fan in the bathroom with
something a little more beefy and do the washing up.
Domesticity. You've got to love it.
Oh, Kris had an interview with another American college/university thingy
today (telephone). Seemed to go moderately OK. I guess we'll see what
happens there. Wedding planning still seems to be causing us some mental
logjams. Hopefully as other parts of our life fall into place a bit more
we'll be able to get more ideas firmed up into plans. Right now though it
looks like the initial idea of something overseas probably isn't as feasible
as we first thought. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 20th, 2010|03:05 pm] |
Quick entry today as I've decided to use some of my accrued time off
to go home early for once. I was ina gain for 07:00 this morning patching a
machine. That (and the shutdown and startup scripts) went almost flawlessly.
It's just a shame the machine hadn't been rebooted in over 413 days as the
fsck of the filesystems took almost fifty minutes.
Went for a run at lunchtime and combined it with my collection of some money I
was owed for being on standby for an fMRI experiment. Other than that Kris
and I totally blitzed most of the house yesterday (tidied) as it was getting
really bad. Much better now.
Now I'm off home to look after Kris for a few hours before I go rowing in the
cold and the dark. See you tomorrow. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 19th, 2010|04:35 pm] |
Hurrah for early mornings! Not really. Still, I was in before 07:00
this morning and patching another box successfully. After that it was just a
case of arranging how the last few machines would go.
The rest of the morning was spent trying unsuccessfully to set up tomcat5
(RHEL-stylee) on a few of the newer web team boxes. Unfortunately this didn't
go terribly well and I was laughed at (again) by my team leader who as well as
being highly intelligent and knowledgable can be a wee bit annoying when it
comes to showing me where my mistakes are, repeatedly. Still, sometimes I do
manage to impress him.
Much of the afternoon (after I'd turned over the tomcat configuration stuff to
my team leader) was spent learning how to use Dia and creating a diagram of
some of the application/database infrastructure we have here. I think I've
managed to make a reasonable fist of it. I've sent a copy to my line manager
and am waiting for his feedback.
Last night's ergo session was really quite good to be honest. 20 x 1 minute
on, 1 minute off at 80% or better of my standard 2K test wattage. I managed
to do much better than 80%, then shower, then get out to have dinner with Kate
all in good time. The food was nice and I managed to get home before I fell
over being as I was quite shattered.
Tonight, rather than go climbing as we'd like Kris and I will be doing a whole
lot of tidying and cleaning and stuff. Not totally exciting but it really,
really needs doing. Then it's early bed again for the last early morning of
the week when I patch one of the last database servers. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 18th, 2010|04:30 pm] |
So this weekend Kris and I were away from the house for 35 hours and
traveling for at least 14 of them. Getting up at 04:00 was a seriously
unpleasant thing to do but we managed it. All of the trains both to and from
Manchester were perfectly on time, uncrowded and generally fine. I had plenty
to read and Kris had plenty to do (with her work). The drives across the
Pennines went equally well and basically all was well. Other things went well
were the visit to my grandmother itself where Kris was obviously accepted as
the best thing since sliced bread, Kris (with a smidgen of help from me)
cooking an evening meal for my parents and ourselves once we got back to
Manchester in the evening and Kris agreeing that when we got back into town
that we'd walk home and spend slightly too much on take away Chinese.
We're both pretty shattered right now even after a good night's sleep. Part
of that for me was because I got up at 06:00 this morning so I could get into
town to do a server firmware patch on a machine I set to have its connections
drained last night. That went perfectly and was over so quickly that I was
able to get into work itself and after failing to solve the reason why
someone's X session was crashing every time they logged into another server
and ran an installer, went for a run. Happily, on the run I was able to work
out what'd changed to cause the issue and solve it when I returned. 1 - 0 to
me (even if it reverses the solution I came up with for stopping Firefox 3.5.x
from crashing on certain pages).
The run itself was pretty tiring, probably due to me being quite tired anyway
and also doing the route backwards for the first time in I don't know how
long. It was lucky that I went and did it then because I then ended up
spending over two hours trying to get a Dell Optiplex 745 to display 1920x1080
to a Dell 2310H monitor. I did manage it a few times but not with
any kind of stability or repeatability. I've asked if the box can be replaced
with a 760 which doesn't seem to have the same issues. I don't really care if
it's not, but part of me thinks a piece of kit should be used to its full
potential.
The rest of today I've been working out why a certain path
(/var/lib/php/session/ in fact) had its ownership changed when updated RPMs
were installed. I intend to leave right on time today (even though I could
leave early), go home and get ready for rowing (erging) and then go
out for dinner with a friend. After that all I have to do is come home, go to
bed and get up for another 07:00 server update tomorrow. Hurrah!
I think that's everything. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 15th, 2010|04:30 pm] |
Quiet day which started well with some conversation with Kris before
we even left the bed. Always a good thing. What was also good was the fact
that as it was raining I decided to go and have lunch with people instead of
going running. Admittedly I had lunch before we went to the pub as I hadn't
been expecting to go, but it was still nice to see the old networks guy and
shoot the breeze for a while.
I've managed to arrange for the original person who fitted the extractor fan
in the bathroom to come around on Monday (which is turning out to be a very
busy day for both Kris and I) to see about an upgrade which will suck more,
more quickly. Awesome.
Speaking of awesome, last night's Thursday was. We all got sucked into an
episode of House (autistic kid with the PSP and worms in his eyeballs) before
actually not chatting through most of Gosford Park which most of us hadn't
seen before and found it was really rather good.
Kris and I are off to see my grandparent (last remaining) this weekend. This
means getting up at 04:00 tomorrow morning and after about five hours of train
we'll then be getting in a car for a further 2 or so hours of drive to get to
where my grandmother is. After we've been and visited and said hi and stuff
we're then going to drive all the way back to Manchester again and stay the
night. However it goes it's going to be a Long Day. We'll be heading home on
the Sunday and collapsing pretty heavily once we're home. I need to remember
to set one of our load balanced nodes to drain once I'm home so that I can get
to work for 07:00 on Monday morning and do another one of those firmware
upgrade things.
For now I'm going to go home and do a wodge of washing up before packing,
eating dinner and relaxing before a very early night. Have a good weekend.
Oh, yes, before I go, I've been overdosing on Wil Wheaton's collected podcasts
for Memories of the Futurecast and Radio Free Burrito these past few weeks. I
have to say I feel some kind of weird kinship with his geektastic, science
fiction genre-knowledgable same-age-as-me good self. Picture me shrugging
one-shoulderedly now. If you're into funny, in-joking stuff about random
things and Star Trek: TNG then go have a look for him. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 14th, 2010|05:00 pm] |
So I headed down to the boathouse last night with the thought that I
might get to be in a boat in the freezing cold (which would have been fun, oh
yes). Instead, as I'm not in the boat for the race at Wallingford this
weekend I was told/got to stay at the boat house and instead do a 30 minute
ergo. Apparently it was supposed to be a UT2 session. I have to admit I
didn't find it too hard but it was probably harder than it should have been.
That'll change as I get more into the swing of things again. At least, I hope
so.
Coming home it was awesome to find that Kris was all ready to make dinner with
me as I was really very, very hungry. That plus some recorded divx TV made
for a nice, relaxing evening.
Today the weather's been mostly cold and wet. Wet enough that I didn't bother
going out for lunch and instead stayed and tried to get some new monitors
working with RHEL5. I'd ask you to take a guess which of the Dell Optiplex
620, 745 and 760 desktops I haven't been able to get working with the Dell
2310H widescreen monitors but you already know that it's the 745 with the
stupid 965Q chipset which refuses to work with the 'intel' driver when it's
supposed to and instead only works with the 'i810' driver, which it isn't. I
have some firmware updates and a DVI breakout card which may help me to
circumvent the VGA connection issue which I think is the problem.
Anyway, I should head off and do an awful lot of washing up before the
standard Thursday evening socialising commences. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 13th, 2010|05:00 pm] |
Hurrah! Today I got to sleep in. Or lie in at the very least on
account of waking up early after a very odd dream or two. I've been feeling a
little odd emotionally these last few days. I'm hopeful/pretty sure it's just
the weather and the few minor stressors I have in my life at the moment rather
than anything with any substance behind it so I continue to continue and keep
taking my Omega 3 capsules every morning. Kris, obviously, is wonderful and
is helping keep me on something of a more even keel. Part of how she does
this is with some awesome meals. I swear that woman was designed to make me
look back on the batchelor life and not regret at all the leaving of it
behind. Especially when it comes to companionship, food and Stuff.
Anyway, enough about that. Today has been a tidy up day from yesterday's bits
and bobs. Nothing much to report other than me taking yesterday's kickstarted
server into town by taxi, getting it set up, having a quick midmorning snack
with Kris who was working on her dissertation in Starbucks 30 seconds away
from where I was before walking back to work, and a run a lunchtime in some
very, very light snow. After Monday's ergo session I really do feel like I've
lost a whole lot of cardio fitness and most definitely strength. I know I'm a
lot older than many of the guys I row with but I really do feel like I could
be pushing a lot harder than the limit I find myself at these days.
Definitely something to work on this year. When Kris goes back to the States
(hopefully temporarily, but you know, I'd be OK if it wasn't (in that I'd be
OK moving out there)) I may rejoin the gym I went to for three or so years to
up my strength again because - damnit - I like being fit.
Speaking of which I should head home, see how Kris' massage (part of a
Christmas present from me to her) went and then get ready for either a UT2 erg
session or a row out in the snow and dark. Back tomorrow! |
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