Memory prop failure
May. 29th, 2010 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgYesterday was notable for a whole bunch of reasons. That much I remember, but last night I was too tired to blog it all (although I did end up writing about tetanus). So now, as I let Eurovision record and wait for Midsomer Murders to come on, I thought I'd catch up.
Do you remember that feeling you used to get at the very beginning of reading time in an exam at your first glimpse of the questions? That feeling of blankness, of void, of complete ignorance? The feeling that the world had collapsed and that you'd wasted anything from one to four years of study because clearly you knew absolutely nothing at all about the subject of the exam? The feeling beyond panic, of cold, of doom, of utter stillness?
I don't have that feeling. A bunch of stuff happened yesterday but I'm a bit fuzzy about it; Heaven forbid that I should oversell a blog post. One of the reasons I failed to blog was that I used up my writing and communications mojo on interacting with family members and other assorted humans, which resulted in the following items of interest:
Family #1/Shopping
Thanks to London-Based Sister (Keeper of the Exiled Geraldton Wax) and thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
doctor_k_ for the rec and heads up about acquisition trauma, I will be importing an artificial sunlight machine from the UK. Hopefully at significantly lower cost than buying one in Australia, where clearly the market for artificial sunlight is underrepresented. At least, I'm hoping it will be lower once shipping, customs, taxes etc are paid.
LBS herself has been busy with technology access programs, including this. I am still amused by the contrast that she is helping the elderly with technology, while I am helping the young with animals and mud.
Family #2
I arranged a time with Middle Sister to collectively visit the folks and Brisbane Uncle tomorrow. As is traditional I chided her gently for not sharing her news. She said she had no news to speak of. I asked her about her recent trip to Sydney to see Wicked. The show was good, but the trip was a bit, um, "interesting".
"A bit, um, interesting" is clan code for anything up to catastrophic and in the past has included multiple near misses from terrorist attack (Bali, London, AND Tokyo (it's a co-incidence I swear)). In this instance she happened to be staying at the same hotel as Justin Bieber, and so got to run the gamut of security, media, and a crowd of dedicated minifemfen* on every entry and exit. Whenever they went by, there would be a ripple of movement amongst the crowd as the girls looked up, established that it was not ZOMG JUSTIN BIEBER!!!!!! walking past, then it would be all attention back to their mobile devices. Like a pack of meercats with iPhones.
Work
At work (I went to work!) I got to work some more on a disaster recovery guide. I really like writing disaster recovery guides.
A bad thing has occurred. Take a deep breath, don't panic and do the following...
This bit I'm researching at the moment is the bit at the end that never seems to get included in these things:
You've restored your backup. That's great. But here's how you handle the weird messy bits of data you lost in the meantime, and the stuff that came in from the terminals while you were in the middle of rebuilding the server.
I almost certainly won't get to use any of these words in practice, but I hope the spirit comes through. I might be able to sneak in "A bad thing has occurred"
Shopping
I have acquired an electric fan heater to help to dry the washing on those cold misty days when simply being under cover is insufficient to dry wet clothes. Further to this seasonal requirement I have strung up a series of drugged-spider indoor lines in the back room. I left enough clear space for Husband to rehearse so all is well.
The heater is a small oscillating tower which hopefully won't catch on fire. It has a timer so on really cold nights I might set it to run a bit for the cats at night. Acquired from Rick Hart Seconds, for those keeping score at home. Rick Hart Firsts had nothing of sufficient grunt, and I couldn't bearsed bothered hunting further.
In other shoppping news I have given myself permission to buy a new pair of boots, as my current pair now require the minor but critical services of gaffer tape and they're now outdoorsy wear only. I've had them a couple of years, so I think that's fair service.
In other other shopping news I am in the market for a raincoat (see vigorous outdoor use, above). Remember when the winter roads used to teem with overheated bright yellow plastic-clad children? Not any more it would seem. It looks like I will have to go back to the outdoor/camping place to find something suitable to keep out the rain without frightening the horses.
In other^3 shopping news I had a wander through a nearby-but-not-nearby-or-big-enough-to-usually-go-to shopping centre and checked out the open-7-days gourmet deli section I'd always meant to visit, and a range of shiny thing shops. Charming, pretty, and outrrrrrageously expensive, like a little patch of Claremont. One of the shiny thing shops was a spices-and-sweets specialist; they did not have caramel butters and the reasonably informed shopgirl didn't think they existed any more. It would appear that this little piece of my childhood is truely dead :-(
Networking
Have hooked up recently with a few more former colleagues on LinkedIn, which is nice. One declared that I was famous, because she'd been hearing about me from another colleague who went to ACS meetings. Hello fame Perth style.
I'm missing something I'm sure, but I've done enough to pass the exam and will wrap up now.
ED: I had a massage. How could I forget that? And a bath, in which I finished a book on horse body language, and discovered that there's a glass ceiling for mares in horseracing. And I have yet to attempt to describe the experience of reading Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan.
(*) Minifemfen (collective noun): Young female fans. I just made that up and google hasn't heard of it so it's MINE! ALL MINE!
Do you remember that feeling you used to get at the very beginning of reading time in an exam at your first glimpse of the questions? That feeling of blankness, of void, of complete ignorance? The feeling that the world had collapsed and that you'd wasted anything from one to four years of study because clearly you knew absolutely nothing at all about the subject of the exam? The feeling beyond panic, of cold, of doom, of utter stillness?
I don't have that feeling. A bunch of stuff happened yesterday but I'm a bit fuzzy about it; Heaven forbid that I should oversell a blog post. One of the reasons I failed to blog was that I used up my writing and communications mojo on interacting with family members and other assorted humans, which resulted in the following items of interest:
Family #1/Shopping
Thanks to London-Based Sister (Keeper of the Exiled Geraldton Wax) and thanks to
doctor_k_ for the rec and heads up about acquisition trauma, I will be importing an artificial sunlight machine from the UK. Hopefully at significantly lower cost than buying one in Australia, where clearly the market for artificial sunlight is underrepresented. At least, I'm hoping it will be lower once shipping, customs, taxes etc are paid. LBS herself has been busy with technology access programs, including this. I am still amused by the contrast that she is helping the elderly with technology, while I am helping the young with animals and mud.
Family #2
I arranged a time with Middle Sister to collectively visit the folks and Brisbane Uncle tomorrow. As is traditional I chided her gently for not sharing her news. She said she had no news to speak of. I asked her about her recent trip to Sydney to see Wicked. The show was good, but the trip was a bit, um, "interesting".
"A bit, um, interesting" is clan code for anything up to catastrophic and in the past has included multiple near misses from terrorist attack (Bali, London, AND Tokyo (it's a co-incidence I swear)). In this instance she happened to be staying at the same hotel as Justin Bieber, and so got to run the gamut of security, media, and a crowd of dedicated minifemfen* on every entry and exit. Whenever they went by, there would be a ripple of movement amongst the crowd as the girls looked up, established that it was not ZOMG JUSTIN BIEBER!!!!!! walking past, then it would be all attention back to their mobile devices. Like a pack of meercats with iPhones.
Work
At work (I went to work!) I got to work some more on a disaster recovery guide. I really like writing disaster recovery guides.
A bad thing has occurred. Take a deep breath, don't panic and do the following...
This bit I'm researching at the moment is the bit at the end that never seems to get included in these things:
You've restored your backup. That's great. But here's how you handle the weird messy bits of data you lost in the meantime, and the stuff that came in from the terminals while you were in the middle of rebuilding the server.
I almost certainly won't get to use any of these words in practice, but I hope the spirit comes through. I might be able to sneak in "A bad thing has occurred"
Shopping
I have acquired an electric fan heater to help to dry the washing on those cold misty days when simply being under cover is insufficient to dry wet clothes. Further to this seasonal requirement I have strung up a series of drugged-spider indoor lines in the back room. I left enough clear space for Husband to rehearse so all is well.
The heater is a small oscillating tower which hopefully won't catch on fire. It has a timer so on really cold nights I might set it to run a bit for the cats at night. Acquired from Rick Hart Seconds, for those keeping score at home. Rick Hart Firsts had nothing of sufficient grunt, and I couldn't be
In other shoppping news I have given myself permission to buy a new pair of boots, as my current pair now require the minor but critical services of gaffer tape and they're now outdoorsy wear only. I've had them a couple of years, so I think that's fair service.
In other other shopping news I am in the market for a raincoat (see vigorous outdoor use, above). Remember when the winter roads used to teem with overheated bright yellow plastic-clad children? Not any more it would seem. It looks like I will have to go back to the outdoor/camping place to find something suitable to keep out the rain without frightening the horses.
In other^3 shopping news I had a wander through a nearby-but-not-nearby-or-big-enough-to-usually-go-to shopping centre and checked out the open-7-days gourmet deli section I'd always meant to visit, and a range of shiny thing shops. Charming, pretty, and outrrrrrageously expensive, like a little patch of Claremont. One of the shiny thing shops was a spices-and-sweets specialist; they did not have caramel butters and the reasonably informed shopgirl didn't think they existed any more. It would appear that this little piece of my childhood is truely dead :-(
Networking
Have hooked up recently with a few more former colleagues on LinkedIn, which is nice. One declared that I was famous, because she'd been hearing about me from another colleague who went to ACS meetings. Hello fame Perth style.
I'm missing something I'm sure, but I've done enough to pass the exam and will wrap up now.
ED: I had a massage. How could I forget that? And a bath, in which I finished a book on horse body language, and discovered that there's a glass ceiling for mares in horseracing. And I have yet to attempt to describe the experience of reading Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan.
(*) Minifemfen (collective noun): Young female fans. I just made that up and google hasn't heard of it so it's MINE! ALL MINE!
