Journal: November 2006

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Have you tried turning it on?
30/11/06 (Link to this entry)

Rather embarrassing experience today - David and I spent about twenty minutes pondering why one of our servers wouldn't power on after our lab shutdown last Friday. We were checking everything - the PSUs, the breakers, the power cables, the power distribution strips, the lot. We couldn't work it out until it was pointed out to us that the rack had a keyswitch and someone had set it to the 'off' position...

New phone
Mon 27/11/2006 (Link to this entry)

Huzzah! I can now get mobile phone reception in the comfort of my own home. My old crappy Sagem was pissing me off enough with its lack of reception or battery life (not to mention a properly working "unlock keypad" button) that I decided to invest in a new phone.

Unlike your average geek, I haven't gone for an all-singing, all-dancing handset with integrated mp3 player, bluetooth, camera, kitchen sink and rubber dildo; instead I've gone for a Nokia 1112. It makes calls and sends texts and not much else. It's got good reception and great battery life. Job done as far as I'm concerned.

The only bad thing about all this is that my thumb now hurts like hell. This is because the aforementioned crappy Sagem didn't have an option to copy all my contacts into the SIM card's memory, meaning that I had to type them all in again. Oh well, at least my number's staying the same so it saves me texting everyone :-/

Mmmm... goodies
Thurs 23/11/06 (Link to this entry)

Well, I've just spent a little over £600 of Craig's money on some pretty neat computer hardware and once it arrives I'll be building him a fairly beastly PC. It's going to be a nice bit of kit, and it's going to be rather upsetting having to hand it over as it will knock the proverbial seven shades of shite out of my own rig :(

At the end of a storm is a golden sky
Tue 21/11/06 (Link to this entry)

I'm somewhat pleased at the moment. Celtic's game against Man Utd tonight was actually on the telly so for the first time this season, I got to watch my team playing. How fortuitous then that Celtic chose tonight to have the result of their season, humping the Red Devils 1-0 in dramatic fashion.

I watched most of the first half through my fingers, Man Utd got their game plan spot on to start with. That being said they didn't take the chances they created and Celtic came right back into it in the second half, ultimately resulting in a sublime free-kick from Naka which raised the roof. Absolutely unstoppable shot, really beautiful to watch (even if we were a bit jammy to get the free kick in the first place).

Controversy not over yet, though. Before the end of the game, Saha had time to miss a gilt-edged chance and also have a soft penalty saved by Boruc at full stretch. All in all, a most satisfying result, given that it actually means that Celtic have qualified for the CL knockout stages with a game still to go. 'Mon the Hoops!

z0mg ph34r t3h kn1f34g3*
Sun 19/11/06 (Link to this entry)

I've made the mistake of buying a copy of Battlefield 2142, the futuristic new version of Battlefield 2. Say goodbye to your spare time, Liam. You won't be seeing any of it for anything useful and self-enhancing like reading or eating...

It's got some nice additions to the customary Battlefield statistics, such as popping up screens at the end of the round saying how well you did with what weapons, kits, vehicles, etc. From the above screenshot it would appear that I like the knife a lot. Funny, that :D

* If you understood that, go get your head looked at. It's not healthy, really.

Restoring Ethon
Thu 16/11/06 (Link to this entry)

This week's been fairly interesting at work. David, who's really the main man as far as running the lab is concerned, is in Singapore this week which means it's down to Paul to keep things running (with our help) on top of all his usual managerial work. Which is all fine until one of the US lab's main servers decides to blow up.

The handy thing about being a global company is that there's always someone around in one of the major labs, be it in the US, here or in Singapore. So the Singapore guys (ably assisted by David and William, who were actually supposed to be over there doing other stuff!) were able to do a lot of the work in getting the dead server (called 'ethon') back online. They ran out of time though, so the work passed to us...

Normally if David was here he'd be handling things, but he's not so Paul got myself and Wilson to help out with carrying on restoring all the backups. Thankfully the bulk of the work had already been done but we still had to set up some of its network storage, which was fun given that it was a storage array I had no experience of.

Then I got the fun task of making sure all the metadevices for the missing filesystems were correctly reconstructed, which was rather scary given that I was laying down the foundations for an important production setup. If I'd screwed that up they wouldn't have been able to easily mirror the data, which would have meant redoing the whole lot. Thankfully it seems to have gone all right... fingers crossed!

Your car awaits, ma'am
Sat 11/11/06 (Link to this entry)

From geek to chauffeur in just one day... Today I'm helping Charlotte out with getting to Kingston in London for a late-night 21st birthday party. She's insured me on her car for the weekend so she's free to enjoy the night without having to abstain so she can drive home (last train is at 11.30 so not really a great option).

I'm just back from dropping her off and will be heading out again later to pick her up once the night is over, ably assisted by Lewis' satnav unit which he was kind enough to loan us for the night (no Dott-style Arnie voice though, most upsetting). It's fun to be behind a wheel again, even if my clutch control still leaves a little to be desired - lots of bunny-hopping!

Watchman
Thu 9/11/06 (Link to this entry)

Last night I finally got around to finishing Watchman, an early novel by Ian Rankin which my boss lent me some weeks ago. Unlike The Flood this one was a lot closer to Rankin's usual style, the main difference being that the protagonist is a spook rather than a detective. Thrilling stuff, though, and a decidedly murky look at our shadowy intelligence services. Strongly recommended.

I also have to take time to poke at the Rangers again. Their latest capitulation to St. Johnstone in the league cup makes Celtic's exit from the same competition at the hands of Falkirk easier to take. Another trophyless season for the Teddy Bears?

Bonfire night
Sun 05/11/06 (Link to this entry)

In a slight break from tradition, we had a bonfire last night, the 4th (well, the 5th is a Sunday and people have work the next day...). Jay and I went out to the woods and gathered several barrowloads of firewood. We got through it pretty quickly and ended up scurrying out for more... I think we burned around 10 trees' worth of wood :-D

In addition to appealing to my general pryomaniacal side, the fire provided a good opportunity to play with my camera. Out of the hundred or so shots I took, there's around half a dozen pretty cool ones, including the ghostly shape above. I had to stop after a while though, as the fire was big enough to be seriously heating the camera up!

MON THE HOOPS
Sat 4/11/06 (Link to this entry)

Huzzah for the Bhoys, who provided an extremely exciting finish to the top-of-the-table match against Hearts today by winning with the very last kick of the ball (this after being 1-0 down after 80 minutes or so). Very satisfying, although it does give the Currant Buns a chance to overtake the Jambos by beating Dundee United tomorrow... :-/

Edit (5/11): LOLLERSKATES at the Rangers getting beaten 2-1 off the Tangerines. This season just keeps getting better and better :-D

200 emails :-/
Fri 3/11/06 (Link to this entry)

My SAN course finished today which means it's back to the working world for me next week. This could be rather scary as I just had a glance at my email and there's around 200 emails waiting for me (that's after filtering out all the uninteresting automated messages, etc). Looks like I'll be too busy catching up on Monday morning to do any actual work...

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