Simon Butcher

For all but the extremely lucky in the IT world, there comes a point when you realise that your backup procedures are somewhat inadequate. Backups are often not taken into serious consideration by management, and with the modern more-with-less attitude to IT departments, nobody really has the time to maintain backup procedures.

I had my wake-up call yesterday, mid-afternoon, when we suffered a series of unexpected and unlikely failures that ultimately combined to cause serious file-system corruption on the disk that houses an important database's master database file (.MDF). With the database gone, but the previous night's backup and the transaction logs (.LDF) intact, recovering the database to the point of the incident wasn't particularly easy for someone who's not a DBA.

I'm flying home today, surrendering the fantastically warm and sunny weather here in Melbourne and returning to the gloomy, miserable, cold weather in Brussels.

This also means psyching myself up to return to the office: Urgh.

Sadly I missed out on seeing a few of my friends, but maybe you lot can come over to Brussels at some stage!

So long Melbourne; I'll be back!

Continuing the theme of tourism in my home town, my father and I visited Eureka Tower, tallest building in Melbourne, Australia, and the world's tallest residential building (if you disregard spires). This building is 91-stories high, at 297.3 metres, and officially opened on October 11, 2006.

Whilst in Melbourne, a trip to Luna Park^[RCDB] was inevitable for me. This is the park that introduced me to the buzz of amusement rides in 1986, by way of the Gravitron (which was unfortunately removed from the park in 2004). Naturally I was horrendously ill after the ride, and vowed (rather unconvincingly) never to do that ever again!

Four Gs is a bit much for a five year old, but never-the-less it was not long until I took up the challenge on all Wittingslow (now Amusements Australia) rides at Moomba, the Melbourne Show, Hobart Regatta, and the Hobart Show. Needless to say, both the Gravitron and Luna Park have significant sentimental value to me.

Today I took my nieces, Neve and Millie, to visit this tiny but amazingly historic little park.