I accidently let the cat out of the bag about my domain name to John today. Have decided I should do what I've been meaning to do for a while now - censor my blog. That is, remove stuff that makes people (including myself) too easy to identify, and perhaps some of my more embarrassing or heated comments. Not that I'd mind if people like John/Luc/George actually read this.. really the only person I'd rather not have read it is my mother. So I've been through 3 months of entries, and have 19 to go.

Today was a much more civilised temperature. In fact it was just about the most perfect you can get. Warm, with a fresh breeze. Not too hot or humid. It was great. Got home and opened every single window in the place to get rid of some of the heat pent up in the past three days.

There was a video night at Striker's tonight, but after finding out what movies were on offer, I decided not to go. It's rather a long way to go by yourself if you don't want to watch any of the movies. So just catching up on stuff instead. Will prolly go to bed soon!

ok so it's a little late. Actually I've had the FridayQ website up in a browser window *all week* waiting for me to get around to doing it.

FQ1: What's the coldest you've ever been and where was that?
Dunno about coldest ever. One time many years ago we stayed in Perisher just after the ski season and I went outside one morning in bare feet and realised it was very cold and I wouldn't be able to stay long. Last time at the snow I had to stop skiing and warm up my wet hands that were starting to go numb.

FQ2: What's the warmest you've ever been and where was that?
Again, plenty of times I've been hot but don't know hottest ever. This week was pretty hot, but not humid so bearable. I once was on a bushwalk and started to get a little delirious, and the people I was with said I had heatstroke.

FQ3: If you had to choose, would you rather be too warm or too cold?
Too cold - it's easier to warm up than it is is to cool down.

FQ Ego: What's a moment you were at your coolest? Your hottest?
I don't think I've ever been either. Except perhaps at NY2K, where I had rather a slinky little top on (see the pic at the top of my blog)

The problem I have with a huge todo list, is that I don't know where to start. I'd like to do the fun things, but then I feel guilty for not doing the more important but boring things. So nothing gets done as I sit in indecision.

The problem with looking for gifts for people that have everything, is that they have everything, and can't tell you what they'd like for a birthday, and chances are anything you can think of they already have.

So the file server went live Sunday night.

This afternoon one of the disks in the array decided to disconnect itself from the array. No reason. It just didn't want to play anymore. So I pulled it out, plugged it back in, and it started rebuilding.

Now this is a 7x146gb disk array, and rebuilding a single disk takes hours. 30 of them at the current rate.

If we lose another disk before it's done (which is more likely to happen than not, given that there was no apparent error, it just felt like doing it). And then several hundred people will be pissed off at losing all their days work since the last backup, not to mention not having access to the rest of their files while we figure out how to get everything back for them without a working disk array.

I am absolutely terrified about what could happen between now and tomorrow night. It's the level of stress I could really do without.

Going to get up at 2am after the current backup job is finished and crank up the rebuild rate and hope it can rebuild itself before work hours tomorrow.

Last Night: Watching The Princess Diaries. Not really for any reason except that I keep seeing the dvd on special, and it had Julie Andrews in it. Pretty average movie, except there's this one magical scene where Joe the chauffeur practically seduces the Queen and they dance and I just melted, it was such a beautiful scene, one of the most romantic I think I've ever seen on screen. Then I found this on imdb:

The on-screen relationship between Queen Clarisse Renaldi ( Julie Andrews ) and Joseph ( Hector Elizondo) was not scripted. The dance scene and the underlying affection was added by the two actors. According to Hector Elizondo, "We felt that a romance after 50 was important to tell and it can be sensual and sexy while keeping your clothes on."

This Afternoon: I think I physically got hit with a good mood tonight. Very odd. Was just leaving cia, and a blast of warm air hit me. Plus it was just at that nice time at dusk when the sky is very bright, but it was overcast so no direct sunlight to blind you. Was just gorgeous.

This Evening: My good mood evaporated somewhat when I discovered I'd missed three great bargains on lego on ebay. Was annoyed because I would have paid the winning amount on all those lots. argh.

Tonight: getting my Jason fix with Black Hawk Down. I actually saw this movie sometime last year but didn't realise he was in it! And now watching it, it's the weirdest thing in the world to hear him speak with an American accent! Not to mention seeing people like Eric Banna be taller than him on screen. He's supposed to be taller than everyone! :) And he still can't shout.

Have I ever mentioned I how much I hate mess?!? Especially when other people come along and mess up stuff you've kept beautifully tidy for years. So I spent the better part of today cleaning up other people's messes, so that I can make an attempt at finding which web pages need to be updated tomorrow.
urghh.

On a lighter note, I finished the latest lego mosaic I'm making, with the exception of some yellow and dark grey bricks that I'll need to procure a supply of. And I drove northbound on the southbound Tom Ugly's bridge which was a novelty. Pity it was dark otherwise I would have taken some photos like I did on Southern Cross Drive one time

FQ1: What is the biggest fear you've had to face? Now that it's over, would it scare you to confront it again?
Having to rebuild a production commercial web server in the middle of the night when it died in a heap.
Beyond belief.

FQ2: What is your greatest fear that you've not yet met? If you were paid loads of money, would you willingly face it?
Having my house burnt down.
Never. I'm the sort of person that gets attached to inanimate objects, and I get distressed when I lose them.

FQ3: What is something most people are afraid of, but you don't have a problem with? Why do you think that is?
Dying.
I know I'm going to heaven, which will be a helluva lot better than being on earth

FQ Movie Night: Your readers are looking for a thrill! What's the scariest scene from a movie you've ever seen?
Friday the 13th. It scarred me for life. It didn't help that I was 11 when I saw it.
Oh I just reread that - scariest *scene* .. um.. the worst one from Friday the 13th was where Jason squeezes someone's skull til it pops and the eyeballs pop out.

"The only thing worse than creating/maintaining documentation is not creating/maintaining documentation"

Tried to match up with actual group membership with documented group membership today. It turned out to be a several hour marathon cleaning up all the mistakes made mostly by other people. But at least I got it done in the end and the main culprit is going to be away for a while so I should be able to completely redo the "system" so that mistakes will be a lot harder to make in the future. Unfortunately I can't think too much about that at this stage - have six days left to get this server ready.

And then Vic decides he wants the Host1 pricing redone by October 1. Arghh! It wouldn't be so bad, except that the directory where all the pricing forms are is full of old crap, old forms, backup forms, old scripts and just crap that I don't know if it's even active or not. So now I essentially have to completely sort through the whole site and try and figure out what's active and what can be "archived".

It's going to be a very long week :/

First problem of installing new pdu (power distribution unit): find long enough 15A power cables. String two together. Not ideal, but what can you do?

Thread cables. Disconnect old pdu. Earth new pdu and connect it. Connect power cables from servers. Nothing.

Swear.

Disconnect new pdu. Earth old pdu and connect it. Connect power cables from servers. Everything happy again.

Fine.

Powercycle file server (which had yesterday lost connection to its keyboard, and domain admin accounts don't have permission on the box, and no remote control access to the box - ie, you have to be able to logon to the console with a local account to do anything to it). NT4 machine. It decides to run a checkdisk. At 8am when people really want to start using it.

Swear.

Wait the 20 minutes it takes to do the checkdisk. Machine comes back up. And hangs. Power cycle server. Machine comes back up. And hangs. Power cycle server. Half an hour later.

Test new pdu without anything important attached. Nothing. Connect pdu to different ups. Works. Reconnect pdu to first ups. Works.

Fine.

It's always the first rule of tech support (is it plugged in?)

I love the sound of "received pronounciation" .. I always have, but additionally because that's what Jason Isaacs uses in my four favourite films he's in - Peter Pan, The Patriot, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Dragonheart. The funny thing is, poms that don't speak it have a tendency to not like people who do. At least, some of the ones on the ski trip I went on don't. Probably because it defines some sort of class distinction (much like people that say "yous" in Sydney tend to be uneducated "westies"). I remember once hearing a talk by someone who said that he liked Australia so much because the speech was so "classless" and I guess I can see why. So I guess that's why Jason's bad guy characters speak in received pronounciation cause it defines some "upper class" that the general public doesn't like very much .. Richard, Paul, does that make any sense? (I've had some vodka tonight so things are a bit rambly :) )