Updates

Friday evening: Badminton meal at the Brookhouse Mill. Much gossip, food, music and people dancing in odd ways. All good.

Saturday: Ruthin in the morning for speedo cable installation. Just £10 labour but the cable was £40. Still, saved £50 by not taking it to the garage. Went to the delicatessen I sometimes go to for lunch but it was quite different being there when things are still warm. In the evening it was round to Vicky's with Rob, Em and Andy for lots of Mexican food, including chilli, fajitas, wraps, crisps and all sorts, accompanied by many cocktails. It was an excellent evening and everyone retired to bed quite late.

Sunday: Rob,Will and I went to the car boot sale in the morning and took a wander round some shops. The car boot wasn't very big and the only thing of interest was an old Toughbook. It was a PII of some description and was missing some parts. It had the BT logo on it. I didn't get it although I was slightly tempted. The rest of the day was spent relaxing with yet more Doctor Who.

Monday: Up at the crack of dawn to drive to Birmingham for disaster recovery testing. I was a bit anxious about this due to having never driven the AX that far before. But fortunately it proved to be surprisingly competent on the motorway. Once up to speed it was quite comfortable and when necessary I mingled quite happily with the usual outside lane BMWs and Mercedes. The traffic was OK although it slowed down a bit once near Birmingham itself. Took about three hours door to door.

Once at the DR place I parked up in the visitors section of the car park next to two X5s, a Lexus and a Honda Civic Type-R. Yeah, the AX was slightly outclassed. Once inside it was the usual story of chucking all the tapes into a library and getting it all up and running and ready to restore servers. After that we went to the same ghastly French hotel as last time. To be fair though the beds are comfy and the food OK except you seemed to get cabbage with EVERYTHING. My colleague got salmon with rice...and cabbage.

Today: More DR. This morning I assisted with the recovery of an AS/400 which was interesting even though it was only the second time I've ever touched one. It's good though because when our one was backed up, it generated instructions on exactly what you need to do to restore it, right down to the tapes you need, and the actual commands you need to enter. It was a bit of a beast, coming up to face height on me. Still ran really well for something approaching ten years old though. Then left and came home. Again the journey was fine, taking about three hours again, including a couple of stops to find out why my stereo kept only playing out of one speaker and to pick up chips in Denbigh.

Tired now.