The bank holiday was a nice day. Went for a 27 mile bike ride with Andy and Steve, which went pretty well, although it was rather hot. Second ride on the mountain bike and it was still OK.
Yesterday was not a good day. A couple of systems had issues and I had to do a lot of troubleshooting on the main Unix server and eventually shut it down to run disk checks and restart it. Not good. Then the backup system decided it didn't like one of the tape drives any more, so that was all fun.
Today was a bit meh after all that. Although Andrea came into work who I've not seen for ages so it was good to see her and little James, who has grown lots since we last saw him.
After the trouble I've had with my knees over the last couple of weeks I've decided to play it safe this week as I don't want to risk messing them up again before the Tour de Mon on the weekend. After that I'm not sure about running. It's good exercise and I would like to be able to run further. Having said that though, last time I screwed my knee up it was playing badminton.
State of mind fluctuating.
Oh well. Wonder if it would be any better if I'd started exercising earlier on in life. Who knows. Who cares.
Wednesday 28 August 2013
Sunday 25 August 2013
Good / bad / indifferent / ???
The 5k went OK. It was not easy. I had to walk a little bit after the first hill, and then got a really bad stich on the last stretch. At the end I wasn't sure if I was going to have a drink, puke, or pass out. Possibly all three.
To get by without the road bike, my Dad and I set up my mountain bike with some Schwalbe slick tyres, some bar ends and the SPD pedals. The bike had a proper outing a couple of weeks ago with the Denbigh Harriers on a social ride, and although the others were much fitter and on proper road bikes I didn't get all that left behind. It was actually really good fun and the bike rode a lot better than I expected.
Running hasn't been going well since. I went to the gym last Tuesday and did a workout, and then on Wednesday tried to go for a run and my knees were shagged. It's only today when I was up at Kirkham visiting my cousin that they finally settled down. I was all set to give up on running completely on Thursday since they were pretty bad. I'm not sure if I need to go quite that far, but I'm going to be a little more cautious about my knees in general since they seem a bit fragile.
Bike ride tomorrow with Andy and Steve. Need to get some miles in due to the Tour de Mon on this coming Sunday, which is starting to feel a little scary. Can't believe it came around this quickly.
Not much else to report really. In a slightly fragile state of mind. Tired of how my life is at the moment and so utterly helpless to do anything about it. Almost enough to just give up completely. Sometimes it seems that if you're single, and not with someone/getting married/dropping out a baby that you're a complete nobody, which is a stupid way to feel but can't stop myself dwelling on it sometimes. Don't like feeling this way because I tend to avoid people and sit in front of DVDs eating shite. As it is I'm wondering why I'm bothering to exercise at the moment.
One of my favourite Metallica songs, with Robert Trujillo doing the bass full justice.
To get by without the road bike, my Dad and I set up my mountain bike with some Schwalbe slick tyres, some bar ends and the SPD pedals. The bike had a proper outing a couple of weeks ago with the Denbigh Harriers on a social ride, and although the others were much fitter and on proper road bikes I didn't get all that left behind. It was actually really good fun and the bike rode a lot better than I expected.
Running hasn't been going well since. I went to the gym last Tuesday and did a workout, and then on Wednesday tried to go for a run and my knees were shagged. It's only today when I was up at Kirkham visiting my cousin that they finally settled down. I was all set to give up on running completely on Thursday since they were pretty bad. I'm not sure if I need to go quite that far, but I'm going to be a little more cautious about my knees in general since they seem a bit fragile.
Bike ride tomorrow with Andy and Steve. Need to get some miles in due to the Tour de Mon on this coming Sunday, which is starting to feel a little scary. Can't believe it came around this quickly.
Not much else to report really. In a slightly fragile state of mind. Tired of how my life is at the moment and so utterly helpless to do anything about it. Almost enough to just give up completely. Sometimes it seems that if you're single, and not with someone/getting married/dropping out a baby that you're a complete nobody, which is a stupid way to feel but can't stop myself dwelling on it sometimes. Don't like feeling this way because I tend to avoid people and sit in front of DVDs eating shite. As it is I'm wondering why I'm bothering to exercise at the moment.
One of my favourite Metallica songs, with Robert Trujillo doing the bass full justice.
Saturday 10 August 2013
5k tomorrow
It's been a good week, even if the running on Wednesday was a bit rubbish. I had a slightly dodgy tummy all day, and so when it came to running, I was really poor. Kept having to slow down to a walk. Given it's the 5k tomorrow, it's a bit worrying, but I hope I'll be OK.
Have also signed up for the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon on the 1st September. Unfortunately my road bike has had it, and I can't afford to go and drop a load of cash on a new one, so my stopgap solution is to use the mountain bike. I took it over to my Dad's today and we put some new slick tyres on it, some bar ends to get different hand positions, and put the SPD pedals on it. I've only ridden it up and down my Dad's drive so far, but the tyres really made a difference. Will have to test it out properly soon.
In other news, DnD was really good fun on Tuesday. Typical session of combat, banter and outright abuse. How the team stays a team, I don't know. It's amazing they haven't tried to kill each other yet.
Otherwise it's been a quiet week. Work hasn't been too bad, just a few things causing trouble that weren't too bad to fix.
The recent things with Lavabit closing down and other revelations are a little troubling. I remember when I first encountered the Internet that it was such an amazing resource, with so much potential, and it's depressing to see it seemingly being twisted into a tool to reduce privacy and monitor people.
Running the MacBook Pro on battery to see how long it lasts. It reckons it's got over two hours left, which isn't too bad.
Have also signed up for the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon on the 1st September. Unfortunately my road bike has had it, and I can't afford to go and drop a load of cash on a new one, so my stopgap solution is to use the mountain bike. I took it over to my Dad's today and we put some new slick tyres on it, some bar ends to get different hand positions, and put the SPD pedals on it. I've only ridden it up and down my Dad's drive so far, but the tyres really made a difference. Will have to test it out properly soon.
In other news, DnD was really good fun on Tuesday. Typical session of combat, banter and outright abuse. How the team stays a team, I don't know. It's amazing they haven't tried to kill each other yet.
Otherwise it's been a quiet week. Work hasn't been too bad, just a few things causing trouble that weren't too bad to fix.
The recent things with Lavabit closing down and other revelations are a little troubling. I remember when I first encountered the Internet that it was such an amazing resource, with so much potential, and it's depressing to see it seemingly being twisted into a tool to reduce privacy and monitor people.
Running the MacBook Pro on battery to see how long it lasts. It reckons it's got over two hours left, which isn't too bad.
Monday 5 August 2013
Grumps
Last Thursday we went to badminton for the first time in a while. It was OK, except one of the women there got very crotchety about people getting onto the court and started to use physical violence, which was a bit crappy. We were also a bit weighed down by the food we'd eaten at Steve's, which was a BBQ in the sunshine.
Friday was a quiet one. Saturday was a good day. First thing was an eye test at Asda in Llandudno, which went well. It was a little surreal though to be sitting there having an eye test with the constant beep-beep-beep of the cash registers. They had an interesting machine there which the woman said would show me a little house. It came up, completely out of focus and then instantly went into perfect focus, and from that they got an idea of what my prescription was. Then went through the normal tests. I've ordered some glasses from there anyway.
After that, it was hanging out with my Dad. He's just bought a nice new bike, a Specialized Sirrus Elite Disc, which is a complete break from the old-school drop bar bikes he normally rides. It's really nice, and has hydraulic disc brakes, which are pretty scary in their stopping power. We also went to look around some places in case they had a bike that might suit me. I wasn't really looking, but after I looked at the drivetrain on my road bike yesterday, it's completely shot. I thought I heard it creaking on the last ride.
In the evening it was over to Rob and Em's for a BBQ, which was good. Al and Becky were up from down south, so it was a nice long evening of chat and food. It went on longer than we though, suddenly it was nearly midnight.
Sunday was a day of not much at all apart from deciding the road bike is fucked and I need a new one. Andy and I are planning on doing the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon at the start of September so I need one pretty sharpish. Not quite sure what to do though really, whether to go used or new or what. Either way it's going to eat into my savings until payday, bah. A cyclocross bike would make sense for the versatility but I don't think I can stretch that far in good conscience, since most of them seem expensive.
Today was an annoying day, and I was due to meet Andy and Rob after work for running, but on the way there I just couldn't cope with the idea of it and came home to do some tidying and list some stuff on Ebay to try and raise bike funds. But now I wish I had gone running, since the 5k is on this coming Sunday. Oh well. I need to try and get used to the treadmill at the gym too, to get ready for winter.
Latest geeky project was to install ESXi on one of the old broken Latitude E4300s I had lying around. It's got two hard drives in it for a total of about 820gb storage, although memory is tight at just 4gb, but it's enough to play around with virtualisation on it. So far it's got a Windows Server 2012 VM on it. This came about because I discovered the old Optiplex I was using for the same purpose didn't have a VT-x CPU, so it couldn't run 64-bit guests. I have a feeling I probably knew this way back when, but forgot. Oh well. It'll be interesting to see how the E4300 copes, but this time I installed ESXi on a flash drive, so if necessary I can take that and the hard drives and hook them up to a completely different machine and it should just fire up exactly the same.
Friday was a quiet one. Saturday was a good day. First thing was an eye test at Asda in Llandudno, which went well. It was a little surreal though to be sitting there having an eye test with the constant beep-beep-beep of the cash registers. They had an interesting machine there which the woman said would show me a little house. It came up, completely out of focus and then instantly went into perfect focus, and from that they got an idea of what my prescription was. Then went through the normal tests. I've ordered some glasses from there anyway.
After that, it was hanging out with my Dad. He's just bought a nice new bike, a Specialized Sirrus Elite Disc, which is a complete break from the old-school drop bar bikes he normally rides. It's really nice, and has hydraulic disc brakes, which are pretty scary in their stopping power. We also went to look around some places in case they had a bike that might suit me. I wasn't really looking, but after I looked at the drivetrain on my road bike yesterday, it's completely shot. I thought I heard it creaking on the last ride.
In the evening it was over to Rob and Em's for a BBQ, which was good. Al and Becky were up from down south, so it was a nice long evening of chat and food. It went on longer than we though, suddenly it was nearly midnight.
Sunday was a day of not much at all apart from deciding the road bike is fucked and I need a new one. Andy and I are planning on doing the Tour Bach version of the Tour de Mon at the start of September so I need one pretty sharpish. Not quite sure what to do though really, whether to go used or new or what. Either way it's going to eat into my savings until payday, bah. A cyclocross bike would make sense for the versatility but I don't think I can stretch that far in good conscience, since most of them seem expensive.
Today was an annoying day, and I was due to meet Andy and Rob after work for running, but on the way there I just couldn't cope with the idea of it and came home to do some tidying and list some stuff on Ebay to try and raise bike funds. But now I wish I had gone running, since the 5k is on this coming Sunday. Oh well. I need to try and get used to the treadmill at the gym too, to get ready for winter.
Latest geeky project was to install ESXi on one of the old broken Latitude E4300s I had lying around. It's got two hard drives in it for a total of about 820gb storage, although memory is tight at just 4gb, but it's enough to play around with virtualisation on it. So far it's got a Windows Server 2012 VM on it. This came about because I discovered the old Optiplex I was using for the same purpose didn't have a VT-x CPU, so it couldn't run 64-bit guests. I have a feeling I probably knew this way back when, but forgot. Oh well. It'll be interesting to see how the E4300 copes, but this time I installed ESXi on a flash drive, so if necessary I can take that and the hard drives and hook them up to a completely different machine and it should just fire up exactly the same.
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