It never rains…
You probably know that I’ve been looking for a job for a while now (hmmm, maybe just a bit longer than a while!) … well, interest in my résumé picked up a month or so back, and I’ve been interviewing with a few places … and two of them called today … both have made me verbal job offers (contracts to follow in the next couple of days) … and both want me to start work on my birthday!!
OMG! I just realised – it’s exactly one year (today) since I was “let go” by OHTN! Is that timing or what?!?
Australian Grand Prix – Friday practice
Friday practice session 1:
Jani puts his STR into the wall
Kubica’s BMW engine goes bang
Winklehock, RS and KR all slide off course (at different spots) and recover
Davidson posts the fastest lap time – 1:28.259
Fastest non-Friday driver was JV – 1:28.595, but only ~10 of them set times
Friday practice session 2:
The track is still pretty green, and it’s not all that warm either
YI locks up and runs off across the gravel at Turn 1
DC loses the tail under braking, swaps ends but recovers OK
JM locks up but makes it around T1
VL puts a wheel on the grass as he brakes; it looked like he’d caught it, but ended up running off through the gravel
GF runs a little wide out of the last corner
MS uses all the track and a little grass too
JV takes the same line as MS coming through T1
YI runs a little wide (less than some others have done) but spins the car 360° around
VL almost gets all four wheels on the grass, tries to recover but spins the STR into the wall and has to retire
MW puts in a couple of slow laps – did he say there was a problem with the steering or the gears? Seems to have resolved itself though
Kubica runs wide and kicks up a lot of dirt but rejoins the track
MS passes a MF1 car in the pit lane entrance
Davidson is on a flier but JB’s Honda loses the tail under braking
MW runs wide in T1 – seems to be a problematic corner for almost everyone
CA’s MF1 is sitting against the wall – he ran over the rumble strip on the exit of a corner, spun it 180° and banged into the wall with his rear right wheel
JB runs wide and across the gravel again
SS takes the popular line through T1
Davidson posts the fastest lap time – 1:26.822
Fastest non-Friday driver was JB, just 0.391s behind AD
Slowest was YI, 7.402s slower than AD.
The server’s tale of woe
(Although I’m writing this after the fact, I’ve back-dated this post so it fits chronologically in with the rest of the blog.)
March 29: It looks like one of the server’s hard drives is having heat-related issues. I’m hoping it’s not the main (o/s) drive, but I’m giving a chance to cool down before I start investigating. External trackers (e.g. SiteUptime) suggest the server died about 7:45am … so only a few minutes before I noticed it. Posted info in our sysadmin blog (which is hosted on LiveJournal, not on our site for exactly this purpose!).
Mar-29: Initial investigations suggest one of the hard drives is overheating. 
Mar-30: Aargh! Looks like the main o/s drive has a problem! Linux won’t boot! That means no server for the foreseeable future!
Apr-03: Peter Moon of Paradigm IT (who I used to work with) suggested that I upgrade the BIOS … which worked … and I don’t understand why … but it worked 
Apr-04: The consensus of opinion is that the power supply may have caused a glitch on the motherboard which then mangled the Master Boot Records on the three drives. Fortunately (and with some invaluable help) I’ve recovered most of the data.
Apr-07: website and email are OK; blog and gallery still down.
Apr-29: Our blog and photo gallery are finally fixed!
So, a month to the day later, it looks like everything’s back to normal how it was before the server died. At last!
Given that CSS Reboot is just a couple of days away, I think it’s safe to assume I won’t be able to create a new style for the blog in time. Ho hum.
Amazon wishlist