On co-ops and all nighters

Monday during the daytime we noticed that the login system for our website was unusually slow, it turned out the LDAP (password authentication) server was running a process, LSASS.exe that was spinning. I read up on the Microsoft forums and there seemed to be two suggestions, reinstall the service pack, upgrade the memory to at least 1GB. (Remember when 1MB was a big deal? The first system I saw that had one gigabyte was a pretty awesome sight, it was a Gould Mainframe that was used by Air Canada for their pilot training flight simulator.)

As both changes would require a reboot I would have to wait until off hours, 9 or 10pm to do the updates. At 10pm sharp from home I realized I forgot my password... got that mess sorted out, then, on the VPN from home still, wouldn't you know while reapplying the service pack the system blew up in my face. At 2am I gave up on repairing and in disgust, took a shower (I felt filthy from working on Microsoft crapware for the previous four hours) got on my bike and by 3am was in the office... yes I was insane I rode my bike to the office at a quarter to 3am! By 6:50am I had restored from a backup and we were back in business.


Naturally my boss gave me Tuesday off, so I took a nap for about 90 minutes, then drove Lesley to work. When I got home I decided not to go back to sleep, or my body clock would get completely buggered, instead, I ate some breakfast and went for a nice 62k ride. Here is the general route:

In fact the Don Valley trail is longer than I depicted and I made an ugly hill climb in Sunnyside Park for no reason, I thought I could exit and go East it turned out when I got to the top of the hill there was no exit to city streets. Ultimately as the map shows I went West and explored a bit. There are some very pretty houses in Etobicoke just South West of Dundas and the Humber River.

Wednesday my manager and I went to my old stomping grounds at The University of Waterloooooooser. We had to interview candidates for our role as IT Co-op. Some candidates were alright, some were appalling. If anyone wants advice for their resume, drop me a line, or just put a comment, maybe one day I'll go on some long schtick on why a resume should include work experience. (Honest to god, we had a C.V. without any work experience, turned out the candidate was actually reasonably strong, but that resume was brutal and I told her so.)

Wednesday afternoon I stopped by the office, hey I hadn't been in the office in two whole business days!, I stayed and worked for a couple hours on a big disk (SAN for you IT hacks) upgrade, we put in a new pair of Fabric Switches. I left work at about 11:50, after announcing I would take Thursday morning off (so I could go for a group ride with the Beaches Cycle Club). I got home, cleaned the cat litter and hit the sack around 1:30. At 6:15 my manager called me, there was a problem... needless to say, by 9am I was back in the office, the only ride? 7km to the office. I think I am going to call in sick on Friday. I am sick, sick of work!