Today has not been the best of all possible days. I spent the majority of it messing with hardware, which is probably my least favourite sysadmin task in the entire world. I think I'd rather spend four hours restoring files from tape than four hours taking machines apart, swapping memory between them, swapping drives between them, putting it all back together, discovering something is wrong (_something_ is wrong -- the machine doesn't boot. But what? It's hardware, who knows?), re-swapping everything, and so forth. Gah.

At least the end results were satisfactory. Our name/mailserver is now running on a _real_ Sparc10 (well, except for the CPU... but let's not get too picky) instead of a cheap clone with buggy ethernet. So far the new arrangement is behaving admirably -- ie: it hasn't yet mysteriously fallen off the network. This is probably worth the hassle.

The rest of the day was spent answering stupid questions from people who should really know better, cleaning up disk space on some of our more overloaded machines, and making painfully stupid errors as I try to teach myself Java. This last is actually more fun than it sounds. Now all I have to do is learn enough Java that I sound decent in an interview, and then perhaps I can end up switching careers to programming & working with Rachel. Not that I'm certain I actually want to do this -- well, I definitely want to work with Rachel -- but it's a thought.

I spent the weekend in Mountain View. This was not as much fun as it could have been, mostly because I got sick, which meant I spent a lot of time lying around feverishly reading and wishing that I felt better so that I could interact with Jim more. I did successfully go to La Fondue with a bunch of people on Saturday, and afterwards I went to Milpitas (!) with Jim & Rachel & Jeremy to see Grease again. There were only about six people in the theatre, including us, so I gleefully sang along to all my favourite songs under my breath -- and was very amused to discover both Jim and Rachel doing the same at various points.

Sunday I was no longer feverish, but managed to get horribly depressed about all the complications of moving back from LA (such as: what happens to my relationship with Earl, where do I live, where do I work, how do I move, _when_ do I move, what do I do about my mother's impending visit -- and on and on and on, including a spate of despising myself for being sick & sad & thus ruining my all-too-rare time with Jim). Jim was both patient and as comforting as his nature allows (which is sufficient -- maybe even ideal for me -- but more on this below), but I still didn't manage to get over it and relax until around 2200. By that point I was annoyed enough about having been a mess all weekend that I determined to take advantage of the time I had left, so Jim and I ended up staying up until talking and such until 3am. We then got up at 6am so I could catch my 7:30 airplane, and I was far too fried all of yesterday to do anything except stumble around blindly and then fall asleep thump at 2130. I slept 11 hours. Very nice, and it was definitely all worth it.

'As comforting as his nature allows'. It really wanted to be written that way, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps because my mental image of Jim doesn't have 'comforting type' in it. Perhaps because we're both so incredibly, stubbornly independent, to the point that one might think that getting/receiving comfort from each other would be difficult. It's not, actually, but it seems like it should be.

Then again, maybe I've just read too much Pamela Dean.

It's almost 19, which means time to go home. I got through a day and a half of the 21-day Java thingy. Hopefully tomorrow I will refrain from making mistakes which are both stupid & obvious and thus be able to accomplish more.

Other good points about the weekend: lots of time with Rachel -- we spent an hour and a half on the phone Friday night, and then the movie-trip to Milpitas. I also had a chance to interact some with Czr, which was unexpected but very pleasant. Plus, well, Jim. Seeing Jim is always a good thing.