Been doing all the adulting. Last night I finally went through the staffing
agency's insurance, and made choices. Keeping my current insurance,
but added some other stuff to flesh it out. Went to bed about midnight,
and I'm testing reducing my sleep meds. Pshrink suggested this months
ago, but given my anxieties about getting enough sleep I haven't even
thought about it til recently. But my stress levels have been dropping,
so I gave it a shot. Night one, slept decent, was up around 10ish. No
really groggyness. We'll try again tonight. Yay for lack of stressness.
Got up and did the adulting. Trash, cleaned out the car, cleaned up the
kitchen and bathroom, and changed the sheets. Oh yeah, and checked
mail. Which is almost all the things I wanted to get done today of the
non-fun things. Still want to clean off/under the futon in prep for
getting rid of it, but that's not a priority. Just something that's
been on the TODO list for months. We'll see. I also need to sit
down and do my taxes, so I can figure out if I need to plan, and how
much I need to plan for. Given how things went last year in regards to
money, it's going to be...interesting.
Now I'm watching movies and updating VMs. General vegging time. I was
thinking about going to be semi-social, but I think hermitting is more
in my future. That and my allergies are unhappy. And given how things
tend to go, I'll feel worse the later it gets. We'll see, it's only
noonish. But for now, it's movies and geekery and being comfy. Catch
you all later.
And it's Friday. Was a very long week, but a good one. Trying to finish
up my 'install cacti and nagios on everything'. And I am jinxed, I added
so many entries to cacti, that the VM hosting it started having CPU issues.
So I disabled a bunch of the new additions to keep the load from spiking.
We're going to upgrade the VM, but didn't get to do it today. I also
broke my first biggish thing today. The developers run their own
nagios server, for...reasons. I added their nagios to the master
nagios server that IT runs, and in the process broke how their nagios server
worked. Was an easy fix, and the developer who reported it was cool.
(so was a certain A person who helped me reinstall the missing plugins)
Again, I like this job.
Came home after work with takeout. Allergies are acting up again, stupid
Texas weather. Been watching horror movies starring actresses I find
attractive. Picked up a touch, did dishes, but really haven't been
motivated to do much more than catch up on twitter/facebook and update
software that I install from source. Oh yeah, and balance the checkbook.
Oy. Plans for tomorrow is to catch up on assorted chores, and do adulting
things like my taxes and double check the insurance provided by the staffing
company. There will also be general down time and relaxing. Sunday, I'm
planning to go see 'Gods of Egypt' (insert laughter here) with Amythest
and Nymaz. I know it will be painfully bad in a historical/mythological
sense, but it should be entertaining. (I enjoyed 'Troy') Should be
a good, relaxing weekend.
So yeah, I'm doing pretty job. New job is still good, home is comfy,
and I have epic numbers of books to read.
Well today was interesting. Was in a bit of a funk yesterday, Sunday
blahs and being anxious about work. Nothing horrible, I just have a
bunch of stuff due this week and I've been spinning my tentacles a lot.
Had a good night's sleep, including a great dream about sailing a replica
tall ship down the Brazos river here in Texas. Woke up, and I was so tempted
to call in and try my damnest to get back into the dream. But, I decided
that between not having PTO yet, and having the above mentioned amount of
work, that calling in would be a bad idea. So I headed on in.
Decided to put what I was working on with Nagios on hold, and start working
on the Cacti (another monitoring software) part. Now I've used Cacti
for years and years...but pretty much only to monitor network gear, not
servers. It's not really different, but there was some frustration as
the nuts and bolts were giving me issues. But after some muttered Assyrian
curse words and a bit of Googling, I figured out most of the issues.
There's still some servers that have weird issues, but I'll get it figured
out. And what I figured out for Cacti will also apply to some of the
Nagios issues. So yay there.
I also got an email, my dead tree edition of 'Cthulhu Lies Dreaming' is
due in this week, and I got the ebook edition now for instant gratification.
I was really wondering what I was going to read tonight, nothing really
was hitting my interest at lunch. I also got home early enough to get
the package waiting for me, another nifty statue from Cryptocurium, of
Zhothaqquah (Tsathoggua). Always good to add another Great Old One
statue to the collection. I really need to build/buy some kind of
display cabinet for the collection. *grin* And I also decided to go
ahead and buy the soundtrack to 'The Witch'. Made good, eerie music to
configure software to. Now I'm home, I've consumed
leftover Chinese food, and will probably go to bed with a book in
short order. Amazing how today changed gears so well, glad I got up and
got moving. Go me !
Fhtagn Friday has been fun. Nothing wild, made dinner at home vs getting
take out, and have been watching movies. After 1.25 stinkers, I decided
that life is too short to watch unpleasant movies, so I switched to
'Harbinger Down' and 'Dead Shadows'. Two of my favorite movies from 2015.
Doing the weekly VM updates, though I'm saving the servers for tomorrow
to try writing some Ansible scripts.
Speaking of tomorrow, going to see 'The Witch' tomorrow afternoon. I've
heard good things from fellow creepers online, and I have a special place
in my heart for New England horror. I'm also probably going to get some
chores done tomorrow, since I've done very little this week. Wild times
at Château Innsmouth.
Been reading Warhammer 40k/Horus Heresy fiction rather obsessively, though
I'm thinking I'll pause to read a 20's French horror novella that was
recommended to me. Tentacle horrors are a universal language. Been reading
more than usual, when I get home after a day in Carcosa, I don't tend to
spend much time at the computer. So many books, and more time to read...
yay!
That's about it for tonight. Not sure if I'm going to stay up later with
movies or go read weird French fiction. Hope everyone is doing ok, and I'll
catch you all later.
I'm reaching milestones at Carcosa Corp. Tomorrow is my one month anniversary
there. In some ways it feels longer, in others it's shorter. I'm starting
to get my tentacles into stuff more interesting to me, and I'm getting a
rep as the guy who'll cheerfully give you a hand. As in going to people's
desks to see exactly what the error is, or offering to come in early (or
stay late) to get stuff done. Like tomorrow, showing up 30 min early to
help the desktop guy with rolling out some workstations (I get to move the
network cables, all that wiring foo at the Shoggoth Pit paying off).
I'm still wrestling with getting things to work, but I'm getting into the
swing of things. And I like the location, the coworkers, and definitely
the commute. Oh yeah, and the money isn't bad at all. *grin*
Milestone two was tonight. I made my first change to a production server.
In English, I got to make a change to something that customers use. What
amuses me is having to go through the whole change process that Carcosa
uses, vs what I used to do at the Shoggoth Pit. I made two system
changes, and added a logrotate entry. At the Shoggoth Pit that would
have been done probably been done live as the customer requested it, really
minor change. At most, I'd have scheduled it for a weekend/late night
change to be nice. At Carcosa, I tested it on a test box, made some
changes to my plan on advice from a coworker, then set it
up in a staging enviroment, then got a coworker to sanity check my change.
(which took the longest), then made a service change ticket laying out
all I was going to do, how it would impact, when would be the best time,
and how I'd back out if there were problems. Then I got...*counts* 4?
execs to approve, then had to check to see if said change would interfere
with other planned stuff, then finally got approval. Then I backed up
the files I planned on changing, waited til traffic stopped, made the
change, tested it all kinds of ways, wrote notes on both the request
ticket and the change ticket, let my two partners in crime know verbally
how to roll things back, emailed the project manager letting him know it
was done, and I left. So many more steps, so much more work and process...
I like it this way. Yes it's slower, but that's expected. The exec who
requested the change didn't hover or push, he let things take the process.
If it hadn't worked, I had time to fix things, and a plan to back out
gracefully. That's how they do everything that could have customer impact.
None of the 'Well we need to upgrade, and if it breaks...well, we'll try to
fix it before dawn. or Monday.' Redundacy, capacity, rules that are
followed. These are the things that help me sleep at night, and keep me
from hovering over work email (about the only thing I can hit from remote
since I'm contract). I sleep so much better, I can go to bed and read without
checking my phone every little while. I don't jump when my phone goes off.
This is what I needed.
It's not perfect, I get in way early (for me), I have to attend way many
meetings. Sometimes I am very confused as to what's going on. I spend
a lot of time twitching my way through various versions of software, and
ye gods I wish I was running at least one Linux workstation. (I do a lot
of Windows stuff that is just easier to do in a Windows workstation). I
miss having a remote connection to home. But I don't need the lifeline
like I did.
So here's to my first month, and my first prod change, and to a happy
fox. Tomorrow I'll be in early, and probably leaving early. Definitely
going to get some celebratory dinnerness, and watch fun movies. Go me :)
Saturday dawned with lots of coughing and wheezing. Finally got up
around 10:30, futzed around for a bit, started a couple loads of laundry
to knock out the epic pile. Been watching movies, including a very boring
one about cloning...the scariest part was the religious protestors yelling.
I'm currently throwing together a Ubuntu VM to act as a loghost. Random
project idea. I'm also going to move the server VMs on Dagon over to
Hydra. My life, it is so wild. Going to head down to Amythest's to hang
out with her and Nymaz, watch 'Sharknado 3' then go see 'Deadpool'.
Yay over the top superhero movies. Well, not sure if he's a 'hero' so to
speak. But it should be to fun.
Not much else going on. Glad it's Saturday and there is no needing to
rush about. Guess I'll call this a post. *waves a tentacle*
Thank Cthulhu it's Friday. The annual Deathcold/Allergy fest kicked in
last weekend, but I managed to avoid calling in. The allergies have mostly
passed, but I'm now in the middle of the coughing fest that comes along.
Not fun. But I've felt much worse in years past.
Carcosa is pretty decent. Was given root access to all the linux instances
yesterday, which makes my life easier. Mostly have been dealing with
Windows foo still. Somewhere the linux gods are laughing. Did try to get
some Nagios foo done today and made a series of oopses that were bloody
annoying. I am rather out of practice with Nagios, something I should
correct in short order. Also had multiple meetings that were...multiple.
Oh well, that's the life of Corporate Cultists.
Came home after work, was originally going to get take out. But after
today I really just wanted to come home, and I had plenty of food here.
So home I came, got into comfy clothes and cooked up a pot of mac and
cheese. Queued up the 'Re-animator' trilogy and I'm vegging here at
Château Innsmouth. I was going to do a set of assorted chores, including
catching up on the laundry...but I think I'll just be here at the
Desk of Doom (tm), and watching movies. Oh yeah, and catching up with
the internets that I've missed while working.
I'm doing ok, a little blue, seems I'm losing touch with an old friend, and
it makes me sad. Oh well. At least I get to see my besties tomorrow,
and watch 'Sharkando 3' and 'Deadpool'. And I have a metric shoggoth
load of books, and cheesy horror movies...and oh crap, I never turned on
the external disk array on Dagon. Bugger. *scrambles to fix and start the
rsync process*. I really, REALLY need to make these things fail with a
notification *facetentacle* Oh well, better to catch it now, before
horrible things happened. Guess I'll call this a post, and get back to
watching backups run, and Dr West reanimate things randomly. Ciao.
And it's Saturday, and I've got a small cold, or allergies kicking in kind
of hard. Do. Not. Want! At least it waited til the weekend to kick in.
Hoping it passes on through before Monday.
Had a pretty good week at Carcosa. Spent most of my time on Windows 2008
servers, because the universe has a twisted sense of humor. Got my first
full paycheck on Thursday, which was nice...both for financial reasons,
and that I could put a hard number in the 'income' field on my budget. Yay
monies. Was also highly social this week, Sunday dinner with the
Musketeers, Wednesday hangout with Amythest, dinner with my friend who
got me the job at Carcosa, and his wife on Thursday, and hangout with
some other friends last night. Yay socialness, though I'm glad I have today
to hermit and chill.
Upgraded the RAM on Hydra this morning, went from 4 gigs to 12 gigs. Planning
on migrating the on-all-the-time server VMs I host on Dagon over, maybe
today. I am working on my usual VM upgrades. I had a fairly long list of
chores to do today, but I think I'm going to just do what I can as
I feel up to it. The only downside is I'm kind of lacking in foodstuffs,
as I was planning on going to the store today. Oh well, I'll improvise
and/or order in.
That's about it for today. Quiet Saturday at home with computers and movies.
Wish me luck on feeling better, and I'll catch you on the flip side.
Week three has started. I had a major case of the insecures about if I
could do a good enough job at Carcosa. No specific reason, just me
being insecure. Do not like, but it's part of my messed up brain meats.
Hopefully as time passes I'll be less twitchy.
Saturday and Sunday I was social. Saturday I visited some friends,
introduced them to 'Deathgasm' and was entertained by kitties. Sunday
was laundry, NCIS episodes (almost caught up), and me taking Amythest
and Nymaz out to dinner as a late celebration of gainful employment.
We went to local hibachi place, so dinner and a show. Had sushi as
well, my usual yellowtail, eel, and as is my habit, I orded something
new to me, tamagoyaki (chicken egg omelette). Oh that was good, very
sweet and eggy. Definitely will be adding it to my usual orders. The
hibachi was pretty good, tasty. Added to my 'try new things' zuchini.
I'm not a veggie fan, but it was ok. Wouldn't go out of my way to have it,
nor would I turn my nose at it either. Was fun in general, got to hang
out with my bestest buddies. Oh yeah, and I fixed Amythest's Windows
issue before I packed up my laundry and headed home.
Work was well, work. Once I got there and got moving my anxiety and
feelings of 'imposter syndrome' went away. Got two good walks in,
got the keys to a few more things, as well as SOP for fixing some things.
Was going to go by the store after work, but by the time I drove by I
just wanted to go straight home. So I did. I'll be surprised if I'm not
in bed by 7:30. So hope everyone is doing ok, and I'll ramble later on
this week.
