Back in Rocky for a few more weeks. Moving mailboxes from an old mail server to two new mail servers in Brisbane and its going _SO_ much slower than I had anticipated. It's going to take about 4 times longer than I thought, which is a bit of a bummer.
Looks like it will be another late night, but at least I have coffee! Unlimited coffee...
I'm currently working on a Presentation Sewrver 4 upgrade for a client... a very big client. This particular Metaframe farm that I'm upgrading has the most number of published applications in the southern hemisphere and I have done all the major architectural work on it for just over two years now. Anyway, the new build is fine, and works, and things are underway there. But the best part is that some of the farm members run a really fat application that handles mapping data. Currently only about 12 users can run concurrently on each node. This has always been a bit of a pain but today I got the go ahead to build a proff of concept farm on Windows Server 2003 64-bit edition with Presentation Server 4 64 bit edition. This is a really big deal for me, and citrix .au tell me that a deployment of this size on a 64 bit platform has not been done anywhere in Asia Pacific yet.
So, this is exciting, but there is obviously some pressure to make the bastard work.
I hope I can. I think I can...
Tomorrow we are running a bit of a "tech day" thing and we have a bunch of vendors coming along. Its like a mini conference really. It gets me out of normal work for most of the day so that's going to be a good thing :)
I'm staying at my sister's house this week because I'm working in the area. She's at home alone at the moment and the last thing I wanted was to be stuck in an apartment by myself all week so it kind of worked out okay.
My dad rang tonight and said that he and my sisters and brother are going out to mum's plot on Saturday. It'll be two years since she died. There's no way that I'm going anywhere near that creepy fucking place. Saturday is also our corporate golf day and I ended up deciding not to go. I think I'll just go home and dig holes in my back yard or something.
HAH!! Take that Wraiths! Yesss.... Stargate Atlantis is back.
But enough of that.
My university lecturer from last semester rang me up today, the one from the subject that I marginally failed. We spoke for about ten minutes and she said she was going to allow me to resubmit another assignment. I'd have three weeks to do it in, which will be tight, but is reasonable I guess. Last time I was late and the penalty deductions basically wiped my assignment out and made it practically impossible to pass (although I almost did! I was about 2% off). So, yeah, I should probably read the textbook now.
I also started studying today for the Citrix Presentation Server 3.0 exam. I think I have 4 or 5 that need to be updated.
I have four weeks work in Brisbane soon, and I hate the idea of that. Hate it. Four weeks alone in a hotel room again. Dramatic sigh.
Everyone needs some time alone, and its better if you wear socks.
Let me explain in a round-a-bout kind of way.
Last weekend was really, really busy for me. I got up relatively early and pumped a bit of iron. This is starting to get more addictive for me, just like it used to be. I always seem to come out the other end feeling better.
Headed up the coast and did some more work cutting and laying tiles. I had a super helper and had a lot of fun that day; the happiest I'd been for quite some time. I ended up with some blisters though which I guess is a consequence of the job. I stayed in town for the night and crashed early. The next day I went back and did some more work before heading off. Getting home about midday I then set to work shifting more dirt into the back yard. I have pretty much finished that now, and hope to start on the retaining walls soon, and some paving. Thats a shitload of work to do, but I think I am more than halfway done overall.
That was the weekend done with.
The next day (last Monday) I travelled up to Rockhampton to sit my Microsoft 70-296 exam. I was really just doing reconnaissance work and expected to fail. Microsoft have a 2-for-1 thing happening at the moment and I thought I'd take advantage of it. I passed though, which really did surprise me. And saved me a few weeks extra study. That makes me a Windows Server 2003 MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer). yay. another lowercase yay.
Tuesday morning I flew up to Townsville to do a few days worth of Metaframe consulting. I had to bump a week's worth of work for another client to manage it, but the priority was fairly high. I was still pissed though. Everything went well, fires put out, Earth did not spiral into the sun. Very long days... three and a half days onsite but 40 billable hours to do. Flew home Saturday morning on three flights again (they feed you after each connection... blergh).
Spent all of that Saturday getting ready to begin the retaining wall, then spent today tiling the other house again. I thought the job looked good though!
I am totally Fucked right now... with a capital F even.
I had a shower, got into my pyjamas, and put some socks on. The floor feels cold.
Everyone needs some time alone, and its better if you wear socks.
A slow couple of days really. I have been catching up on some documentation tasks and generally bummed around the office. This only happens a few times per year so I'm not complaining! Looks like I have to bump some work I had lined up for next week and fly to Townsville instead. I'm okay with that I guess. I hope I have some kind of transport.
Setup a mailing list for a friend's bachelor party today, and sent out my initial welcome message. Already some good ideas have been floated and I kind of like the idea of going along to a kart track for the day. Cool...
I have been slack with studying this week. Un-go me.
Good and bad today. I'm left feeling a little bit... meh.
Got up really early this morning. I think I had a bad dream. Even worse, I think I yelled out but I'm not sure. You know how that last bit of sound kind of echoes about? Maybe I imagined it.
Did the gym thing and had a long shower. Checked my uni results which were released today. I got a distinction, a credit and a fail. A fail! Bastard. I have to follow that one up because I was pretty confident that I did well on the exam. So confident that I conservatively thought I got about 90%. Maybe I can make it up or something. A distinction and credit is good news, particularly when I wasn't aiming for anything beyond a pass in any of those subjects. Enough time in my life just doesn't exist to do well in all of them.
I was at work exceptionally early because I had to travel today. My account manager, regional sales guy and myself went to visit some clients. I had a bugger of a cough all morning and when we landed at the first customer meeting I suddenly discovered that I was walking through nine people on an IP Telephony proposal. Crap and shit, there was no getting out of it. Three hours later... my voice was almost dead but everyone was happy enough. I got complimented twice on how well I made that shit sound. Yo, dawg, something something, a'ight?
A quick bite at Maccas and off to the next one. I fucking parade around all day, talking the shit up and pretending like I don't want to just walk out of the room at any moment and go sit under a tree. Those hippes were onto something...
Sigh.
Oh, and I bought my friend something, and it turned up in today's mail. She is rapt and I'm glad she liked it. I wish I could fib and say that it was all part of a cunning plan and I have been going to buy it for months, but alas, it was just a random thing I did because I could. Next time I will plan at least an hour ahead.
My day started off normal enough. Up early, 30 minutes of weights and a quick shower and change. Spent 30 mins checking email and getting a few things ready for the day and then headed off for the day.
40 minutes up the road I'm following this car that suddenly veers sharply off to the left side of the road and into the gravel on the side. It loses control and slides sideways nw half back onto the road. I narrowly avoid a collision at full speed and look into my rear vision mirror to see it spinning around in the gravel and then colliding with the embankment. I find a safe spot to turn around and go back, doing another u-turn and pulling up behind them and another car. There were two girls in each car (apparently travelling together -- the second car must have been somewhere behind me). They were all shaken up really badly. Apparently the car in front had decided to pull over to change drivers but hadn't executed the move very well. I reversed the car out and the damage didn't seem very bad at all. There were no leaks anywhere and the engine seemed to run fine. After a while the driver said she was fine to continue on, but thankfully her friend offered to take over. That shit can mess you up.
So I continue on for another 40 minutes or so and dropped into a shopping centre. I hate crowds. I mean, I hate so many people being in close proximity to me. The line at the ATM was about 12 people long and it seemed as though every second person was just learning to use the machine. I'm not sure ifit was warm in that place or if it was a nervous reaction from all those people edging closer and closer to me in line. I hate lining up for things!
A bit of loud music and some air conditioning in isolation and later I felt better.
I went and did a few jobs that I had to do, although not anywhere near as much as I had hoped (although I had two pretty good helpers -- still good even though one of them disappeared with a tool I desperately needed and another one went to the toilet 3 times during the job!). I constructed a bike for the chronic pee'er and pumped the tyres up and she was rapt. That still doesn't make up for her telling me I have a sweaty bum and should have a shower though :/ Kids...
It feels like two days in one. I will have a few more drinks now and see if I can't numb things up a little...
Another quiet day at home working. I got almost everything done that I wanted to which was great. I just finished watching the season finale of Roswell season 1 (yes, yes, I am years behind...) and I thought it was fantastic. I can't wait for the next season...!
A short road trip again tomorrow to see a friend and work on some projects. Excited :D
I worked extra hard in my home gym yesterday, and today I am being punished for it. I am sooo sore. I need a rub or something.
Feeling really bored right now, I should ring up one of my remaining friends or something ;-)
I worked from home today. I find it really challenging to do that. Along with the immense freedom comes a certain responsibility to not be a jackass -- it's easy to keep putting things off and not get any work done. I find that I need to get dressed for work just like I would any other day, and that I try and start at the same time also.
I did okay, and the writing came easy. The sparrows are flying, and all that.
What's up with London? The news reports are conflicting. People suck. Human race I divorce you.
Somebody little has a birthday today, I know it will be a good one :)
numb
hungry
exhausted
lonely