Dale Miller

This weekend hasn’t turned out as expected. I ended up going back in yesterday to help out at the UA system office. We had fits with a domain controller (that still haven’t been resolved). I was there until 2:00 A.M. working on it. Fortunately we came up with a plan to move everything to the Exchange server, and use it for the moment. I still didn’t really get a good night’s sleep, but at least I’m not quite as bad as yesterday. I’m afraid that me sleep schedule is not going to recover for several days. I’m getting too old for this.

Today was quite tiring. I expected to be working late, so I slept in this morning (until 6:30!). I spent the main part of the day doing more of the same — OS installs, software configuration, administrivia, etc. Then at 5:00 I headed up to the UA System office to help with the major upgrade we’re doing for them. Everything took longer than anticipated. The file server move started at 5:30, and was still running when I left at around 1:45 am. The exchange move was just as bad. They don’t have very many users, but some of them have over 20,000 mail messages in their mailboxes. Why would anyone need/want to keep that much mail. Ah well. I finally arrived home around 2:30, and I’m quite worn out.

Good night, all.

It’s lovely outside. It’s actually cool for the first time in weeks. The drive home this evening was so nice I decided to finally stop and buy yet one more lawnmower. I mowed a very small part of the yard tonight, but I can now walk down off the deck without hitting 4-foot plants. I’ll finish up this weekend.

Over the last two nights I have watched 5 hours of the Wonder Woman TV series. It’s been years since I saw it. I was struck by two things I had forgotten

• Just how campy that show was
• How pretty Lynda Carter was. Yes, she looks good in a bustier and bloomers, but she’s just really pretty as well.

Today was spent messing about with Solaris some more. Guil managed to get one of the systems to the point that a break wouldn’t return it to the console prompt. I didn’t think that was possible. He’s becoming quite good at re-installing Solaris 10. I think he managed it 3 times today on the same system. Hopefully tomorrow will be better on that front.

I spent my evening watching “Saved“. I recommend it.

While that was on, I also spent some time cleaning up my book list. I found a number of typos that had crept in over the years. I need to get shelves built now, so I can see if I really do still have all those books. :)

After boxing up the paperbacks (since I haven’t yet built bookshelves), I started thinking about the fact that I’ve wanted to add the ISBN to my spreadsheet where I keep up with books. Of course, with nearly 3000 entries, it would be rather a pain to either go through each book or look them up. So… I sat down and wrote a Perl script to query amazon.com to find the ISBN. It works pretty well, and is returning about 80% of the ISBNs. Given that a number of my books are out of print, and some probably have titles slightly at odds with what Amazon shows, I think that’s pretty good. Yep, I’m bored.

While I was doing that, I watched the movie “Tart“. It was somewhat interesting, though not at all what I expected. There were a few humorous moments, but it was more of a downer than anything.

I really need to do something with the yard. It’s getting up to at least three feet in some places. I never did take the lawnmower back to Wal-Mart, so I guess I’m just going to be buying yet another one. I won’t be getting another of the same kind, though.

I stayed home last night and so far today. I spent some of my time today logging

The books I’ve read since February 2004

. It’s not as many as I would have expected. I obviously haven’t been reading as much recently.

I’m still not feeling all that great, but I’m better.

Thursday and Friday at work went pretty well. I was fairly productive, and even enjoyed it, for the most part. I rack-mounted several new Sun systems, installed Solaris 10 on a couple, learned to clone system disks, delved a bit into redundant network interfaces, and just generally kept busy. I even managed to clean up my office a bit. That’s always a good thing.

Outside work, however, is a bit of a different story. I find myself just coming home and sitting here. That’s good for my budget, but not my psyche. I have enjoyed doing some reading, but now I’m out of books that interest me. I’ve also been spending lots of time in front of the television recently. I’m currently in the middle of the HBO mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon“, which is pretty good. I also watched D.E.B.S. earlier in the week. I didn’t expect much from it, and was not surprised when it delivered exactly that. It had a couple of cute moments, but was mostly forgettable.

I’m fighting with myself about going out anywhere this weekend. If I go out to dinner I almost certainly get a better meal than what I would cook, but at far greater expense. I’m not at all sure it’s worth the trade. I justify going out as a possible way to meet someone — it hasn’t happened yet, why should I think it would start now? So, I’m probably going to stay at home today and tomorrow. I need to just face the fact that I’m here by myself and learn to enjoy it. I did want to find someone to take to Wild River Country this year, though. :(

Days like today almost make me understand why people turn to alcohol or drugs. I just want something to turn off higher brain functions temporarily. I don’t feel well, and I am having trouble concentrating on anything. This means I have a lot of time to lie around and brood. I go back over things that have happened recently and not so recently, and imagine how I could have handled situations better. This does nothing to cheer me up. It only makes me realize how badly I have handled some aspects of my life. I need a good project at work that I can really become involved in. Setting up several Sun systems isn’t such a project. It takes a reasonable amount of work, and needs to be dons, but doesn’t really require any thought. Once you’ve done one, it’s just repetition. I’m probably going to spend the rest of the week doing that, though, because it gets me out of my office, and allows me to say I have accomplished something.

I woke up this morning and felt lousy. I called in sick to work and went back to bed. I’m just now getting up, and still have a headache. At least I stopped at the grocery store last night and have some food in the house.