Server Patching from Hell.

Oh by Dagon's scaly scrotum, tonight's last few server patches were more trouble than all the other servers I've done this round. Nagios upgrade broke our nagios setup, adding hosts in templates and other goofy crap. I was able to fix that without issues, but still some minor stuff is goofy, will be working on that tomorrow. Cacti updated to some rather big change, which the database setup for it could not handle. Rolled that one back (yay listening to the voice in my head saying 'this one is trouble'), or I'd be up half the night teaching myself mysql magic to fix it. I'm calling it done. Going to eat a snack, read a book, and go to bed.

And if I get called again tonight...well, I won't scream at anyone, but I'll be a tad pointed to the people involved.

Cthulhu grant me more dreams of fencing, and/or squidgirls, or even the epic dream bookstore I can't seem to find in real life.

Night hominids.

A week of ups and downs (the ups)

And since we covered the downs a minute ago, here's what's up in Château Innsmouth. Work is going good, busy but good. I'm actually working tonight, prepatch work on our Windows servers before the Corporate Windows group does the actual updates. Unlike last time, I'm probably not staying up to 3am just in case. It's just easier for me to get up early tomorrow and check things. I've also gotten most of my usual chores done. I'm reading a bunch of good books, 'Bond: Unknown' probably the purest form of Spies vs Shoggoths. A history of Pyrrhus of Epirus (where we get the term Pyrrhic victory, among other books. I've been bouncing between subjects, a small lack of focus. So many books, so little time.

(Time passes...)

Chores are done, well done for today. Need to go to the store tomorrow, and I need to put up the dishes once they dry out. Went to pick up some dinner, came home, snagged a quick shower and going for classic Vincent Price movie, since my other picks today were less than spectacular. But I can always count on Vincent Price, especially in period horror flicks.

Windows snapshots are being taken. Not sure what I'm going to do when it's done, and 'Tomb of Ligera' is done. Maybe another classic horror flick, or hide in one of my books. I don't know. Probably go for the movie. Well a movie.

Not much in the way of plans for upcoming stuff. Friend's spawning day party next weekend, but that's about it. Next year I'm hoping to make some changes. A trip or two, probably moving out of Château Innsmouth 1.0 to a bit bigger (and better laid out) apartment. Been snagging pictures of ideas, floorplans and study/library shots. Of course, to be honest, I just need a place for a bed, a closet for clothes, kitchen, bathroom, etc and a desk for the shoggoth wrangling, the rest will probably be bookshelves. That's my style, Late Biblomaniac.

And on that note, I'm running out of words. So I'll catch you next time. *waves a tentacle*

A week of ups and downs (the downs)

Well this week was a lot more ups and downs. Lets get the downs out of the way. It's official, I'm not doing the magnetic treatment, seems that 'we figured out the insurance problem' actually meant 'oh what the hell, lets try again.' How am I doing about that? Resigned. I intentionally kept my hope to a minimum. Pshrink visit went ok, all things considered I'm handling things alright, so same meds, come back after the holiday season, unless stuff changes. Which given the silly season is their busiest time. I also had a case of unexpected sadness earlier this week. Got a wild hair to look up where my uncle's name was from, and I found his obituary from 2011. I knew he'd passed, I thought I'd mourned when it happened. But seeing his face and hearing about the good he did in his community, well I started crying. And the next day I wrote something about it on Facebook, and the tears started up again. Guess between losing my friend's dad, and seeing my uncle well, opened up the waterworks. Otherwise it's been anxiety and feeling down a good chunk of the time. I'm rather down right now. News, worries about people I care about, and my anxiety spiking up randomly. I was going to try to work on cleaning up some of the clutter in the the areas that are out of sight...but I don't have the tentacles for it, so I'll do it another weekend.

Coming very soon, a more positive post.

No title for this post, it’s from the peasant class.

Not been a good fortnight and change. We lost a friend of mine's father last week, and it's been hard. Not just seeing someone I care about hurting, but I had my own relationship with him. And I really haven't had much time to sit and process. I also have a feeling the TMS treatment is back off the table, as all I've heard from my insurance was 'denial, review, silence' and from the provider 'silence'. I have another pshrink visit on Wednesday, which means it's been a month since this got put back on the table. At least I'm not also trying to go off seroquel as well at the same time. Allergies still suck. Not much to say about that though, Texas is hell, and we're coming up on cedar fever season.

There are positives in life. Work has been busy, between database issues, patching, and schedules with my fellow admins. Averaging about 10 hour days, but that's ok. I've worked harder for people I like less. My boss is talking about sending me off for database training (probably virtually), in part due to the issues we had. Which, given my general lack of knowledge about databases would be good. Books are still my friends, even if my ability to focus is all over the place. I've started a bunch of books, but only finished a few, mostly those of favorite authors. On the movie front, I did go see the latest 'Thor' this last weekend. It's a very funny movie, the kind I wish more comic book movies would be like. (that being said, 'Black Panther' doesn't look to have a bunch of comedy, but boy does it look awesome).

No big plans coming up. Mostly I just want to take care of myself and my friend, and see what comes up after the New Year. And on that note, I'm going to call this a post. Catch you all later.

And now…the post.

Well, when last I posted, I'd had a stressful week. The weekend before my spawning day was alright, had Egyptian food with Amythest and Nymaz, then stayed up massively late for work. Worked from home on my spawning day, still did stuff done. First year since 2000 that I didn't make a blog post on my Spawning Day. Felt weird. Work is keeping me busy, occasionally stressful but not bad.

This weekend was vegging at home on Friday night, Saturday being social with two sets of friends and a Half Price book raid. Today is...less perky. Sunday blahs + anniversary of Dad's passing = a day I really didn't want to do much. And I really haven't, store run this morning, repairing the Wordpress install today. I'll probably get the dishes done, and the bed made. But my nemesis, the laundry pile will stay probably. I think I have clothes enough for work...

In geek news, I moved my various domains' email to Google. Been having issues with mail getting blocked, and I'm tired of arguing with mail providers. So yeah, paying Google to manage most of it for me. Yeah, I know, I lose major geek points, but geeking has lost some of it's sparkle lately, since I do it all day long at work. Oh well. I still run mostly my own DNS and website foo still.

Still don't have details on how the TMS is going to work, need to give them a call tomorrow. Have a number of other things I need to deal with, but nothing that's an OMG emergency. Lots of books, finding new history foo to dive into, plus lots of Lovecraftian fiction, with a bunch more coming out in November. So many books...yay for me. Ok, calling this a post and going to go make some early dinner. Laters everyone.

And we’re back!

Well it took a bit of crazed database and XML hackery, but I've got the blog back up and running. Still have to finish up the bits and bobs, and work out a better backup solution. I'll have a real post in a while, but for now, yay me.

Hello from a week of stress

This week has been crazy amounts of stress for me. Between the news, sleep and dream issues, worrying about friends, and my usual anxiety, I've been what the cool kids call 'a hot mess'. I think it peaked on Thursday where I got so frustrated with a website/javascript that I actually made a loud snarling noise that coworkers thought was me about to murder a desktop tech. (Scared the tech too) Either than, or I invented a swear word in Enochian. (Damn angels don't curse all that much). Today started off better, but it didn't last. Of course now I'm home and safe. Watching 'Friday the 13th' movies as in traditional. Starting with the remake, then I'm not sure. We'll play it by hockey mask.

In brainmeats news, it seems my insurance is now willing to pay for most of the TMS treatment. That's part of the anxiety, trying not to get my hopes up in case A. insurance changes it's mind and B. It doesn't do any good. Like most mental health treatments it's a dice roll. But it would be effective, and who knows, it may also act like a Tillinghast Resonator from 'From Beyond'. Oh, that might end up having me eaten by a transdimensional monster. I'll let you know if anyone at the treatment looks like Barbara Crampton. *wink*

My spawning day is Tuesday. So, the quasi plan is to celebrate tomorrow with Amythest and Nymaz. (I also have to work Sat night/Sunday morning, so no really wild partying) I have to wort on the actual Spawning day, but I'm going to try to work from home that day. Next weekend I'll be hanging out with other friends. No big shindigs for me, trying to limit the social anxiety issues. So here's to getting older. I'd say like a fine wine, but I'm all cheese, baby.

So that's about it for this week. Wish me luck on a nice, fun weekend.

A Weekend of Films, Snacks, Tentacles and Books

So the home film Fest continues. Been watching mostly shorts, either the shorts from this years Fest, or shorts from the last three Fests. Which is the opposite of what I did last year, where it was all feature films for me. But the shorts are fun too, lots of ideas that couldn't be made into feature films. Makes sense, since a story that's 4 pages long requires quite a bit of padding to make into a 90 min film. Today was the last set of shorts from this year's fest, which had some of my favorites. I'm now watching 'In The Mouth of Madness' Maybe I'll watch another movie afterwards.

Besides tentacles, I've been eating pretty good. Various snacks, sushi last night for dinner (and breakfast), and chicken for lunch. Can't keep up the chanting on an empty stomach. Yay for food.

I also went on a book hunt today. Since I couldn't go to Powell's in Portland, I went to Recycled Books in Denton. Got a first edition of Colin Wilson's 'Space Vampires', and a couple of other things. Yeah, I know, my spawning day is coming up...but what's Lovecraftian Horror without looking for forbidden tomes in a strange bookstore ?

SO that's about it for this eldritch week of films and fun. Back to the mundane world tomorrow, with work and allergy shots and stuff. Oh well, such is life. Catch you all later.

Spawning, books, and VPN insanity.

It's almost October. My favorite month of the year. Halloween, hints of cool weather her in Texas, my spawning day. All good things. Not much in the way of October plans yet, well other than watching the livefeed/short film stream from the HP Lovecraft Film Festival next weekend, and the traditional marathon of "Friday the 13th" movies on Friday the 13th. I'm not planning to have a party, crowds are still pretty high on the stress-o-meter. But I will try to hang out with my friends (almost all couples, so that makes thing easier) around my spawning day.

This week has been mostly work foo. Doing the world's slowest test, trying to get our VPN to stop timing out after 8 hours, which seems to be the default. The settings look pretty simple, and my first, short test seems to have worked (with some unexpected quirkiness). But there's no way to test it, except to connect to the VPN and let it sit. Should have an answer in a little while.

Otherwise, I went bookstore raiding this morning, found a new small bookstore and gave it a look. Nice people, nice place, if a little unorganized. But since it was small, I could still go through the shelves pretty quickly. Gave me ideas of the space I'd need for my dream library *wink* I was planning on doing a bunch of chores today, but as I went for chilling out instead. Tomorrow I'll try to get some more errands done. Then it's back to Carcosa Corp. At least I'll have a VPN that lasts longer than 8 hours. Which will make my developers and devops people happy.

That's all I really have right now. Going to list to some audiobook foo for a while, then off to bed. Night cultists.