Sysadmin Brain Dump
MAN!
I am not at all on my game today. I went to kick the tape robot, right? Then I check on the backups server to see if it can see everything, and it seems like it lost its SCSI capabilities. Huh? Reboot the server, and get kicked off IRC. Stupid Sysadmin brainfart! I was on the wrong server.
I hope maybe my brain comes back soon, I got work to do.
Yayoi’s been working at the cafe, which tends to mean she’s out for the evening. I love spending time with her but a little quiet time to myself is good for non-work geek productivity. I’m worried if maybe my brain has a finite capacity to function and I used it all up last night working on my WordPress Flickr plugin. You can see it taking shape. I am very excited about that. And, no, its not that my brain has finite capacity, its just that maybe its too busy being excited about other things. The least of those being PHP code.
First item of interest is, I am a tad burnt out lately, and while I’m saving vacation days for our expedition to Japan in May . . . I need to get out! I’m thinking to take the week of President’s Day off, since it’ll cost me only four vacation days. I have looked at London–cheap flights, as well as Mexico, a bit, then decided that what would really sooth is to just take a long train trip. The US transcontinental stuff with a private bedroom would rock, but that is expensive these days. How about overseas? I rode First Class, private sleeper overnight in Thailand for $25, and you can do the same in Vietnam for two nights between Hanoi and Saigon for $60. Vietnam sucks, though, since the entry Visa is $80. Well, the flight’s going to be $1,000 anyway.
So, I looked at maybe Bangkok to Cambodia, see Angkor Wat? Ride the boat down to Phnom Penh, and on the way back, take this fantastically crappy train where the best seats are what Thailand bills as “Third Class” . . . rolling through the countryside at 20kph . . . you can ride on the roof, if you like. Man! That appeals to me . . .
But maybe best to save some airfare pennies for Japan, so . . . at the moment I’m thinking take the train to Santa Barbara, then to Los Angeles, then to San Diego, then maybe visit Mexico, and ride the train back up . . . we shall see. The Coast Starlight to Santa Barbara is $98 for the two of us, and while that’s no “soft class” 2-day private sleeper through the rice paddies action, it saves us $2,000, nearly two days of flying, Visa hassles, and the rest.
What would also be helpful is if we hired another SysAdmin before I tried to act on my vacation fantasy. We recently approved funding, and haven’t even wrote the req, but we got lucky and . . . well, an old friend of mine might accept a position here, which would rock tremendously, but he’s got to take some time to consider an alternative offer as well.
So, there’s a brief dump of what’s been going on with the brain. Maybe by yammering about it here I can flush it from my primary CPU enough to get some work done, as there is certainly work to be done . . .
