Entries from 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.

Being back in Melbourne feels weird. It's been two years since I was last here, but this time around I feel like a tourist in my own home town. Melbourne is a city that has always grown fairly rapidly, and much has changed — new structures and the conversion of many shops into yuppie fruit-shake bars being the most prevalent.

At the end of the day though, is it the city that's changed, or have I changed?

For me, a real Christmas is one spent in nice warm weather in a relaxed atmosphere. The word cold should be applied only to the food and drink, and not the weather; Snow should never enter the equation, unless it's fake.

In quite an atmospheric contrast to last year's Christmas in Bristol with friends, my Christmas this year has been spent baking in the Australian sun. Oddly, this year could have possibly been the most relaxing family Christmas on record, being a simple barbecue over at my sister's house.

˙ʇsǝɹ ǝɯos ʎΙΙnɟǝdoɥ puɐ uns ǝɯos qɐɹɓ oʇ ǝɔuɐɥɔ ɐ
— sɹɐǝʎ-ʍǝu puɐ sɐɯʇsᴉɹɥƆ ɹoɟ suoᴉʇdɐɹʇuoɔ ǝqnʇ ɓuᴉʎΙɟ
Ιɐʇǝɯ snoᴉɹnxnΙΙᴉ puɐ ǝΙqɐɹǝsᴉɯ ǝsoɥʇ ɟo ǝuo uᴉ ʞɔnʇs
„‘pΙɹoʍ ǝɥʇ ɟo puǝ-ǝsɹɐ„ ǝɥʇ oʇ ʞɔɐq ʎɐʍ ʎɯ uo ɯ,I ‘ʎɐʍʎu∀

˙sɹǝuǝɥʇɹoN ʎpooΙq noʎ ‘ʇᴉ ɹǝʌo ʇǝ⅁

¡pɐoɹ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝpᴉs „ɓuoɹʍ„ ǝɥʇ uo ǝʌᴉɹp
ǝʍ ʍoɥ ʇnoqɐ ɓuᴉuɐoɯ ɟo ʇuᴉod ǝɥʇ oʇ uǝʌǝ
‘ʎΙsnoᴉɹǝS ˙spɹɐʍʞɔɐq ʇsɐǝΙ ʇɐ ɹo ‘uʍop-ǝpᴉsdn
ɓuᴉɥʇʎɹǝʌǝ op suɐᴉΙɐɹʇsn∀ sn ‘ǝɹǝɥsᴉɯǝH
-uɹǝɥʇɹoN ǝɥʇ uᴉ ǝΙdoǝd ʇsoɯ oʇ ɓuᴉpɹoɔɔ∀

A friend of mine has recently started working for Thalys, and therefore she's gained access to some free tickets for the Thalys network as an employee perquisite. We decided to exploit this for some time away from the Christmas-shoppers in Brussels by going to The Hague for a weekend of tourism.

Well, at least the original idea was to go for a bit of tourism…

At the risk of seeming a bit like Seven Up!, I thought I'd have another crack at this day in the life stuff. After last year's effort, I was curious to see what had changed.

Apparently, not much!

I couldn't possibly have a Christmas without my Mother asking for pictures of Christmas lights in Brussels. Not much has changed since last year, although this year's lights on the Grand Place are even more tacky…

Every Christmas, a whole bunch of presents arrive from our various vendors at the office, quite often chocolates, or some chocolate related theme.

I seem to wind up receiving a new toy to play with at the office around this time of the year too: Last year it was the Google Mini 2.0, and this year it's a pair of Sun Fire X4600 servers.

I've always had a penchant for Sun hardware, and while we're normally an HP shop at work, I was able to convince the powers-that-be that these two servers would be ideal to replace our horrible ML350 G4 based SQL server, which was chosen before my time.

After eleven years and four terms in office, Australians finally decided today to say goodbye to Mr. Sheen, and replace him with the hopefully more sensible Milky Bar Kid. In fact, it was such a resounding victory for Rudd that Howard may even become the second P.M. in Australian history to completely lose his seat.

Once again this proves that democracy can bring down the destructive “axis of evil” between George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard — Two down, one more to go!

I'm having a hell of a time trying to wake up on weekday mornings these days. Oversleeping has become so regular that my boss has even given up on joking about arriving an hour late in the morning.

I rely heavily on my E70 to drag me out of bed in the morning because I have some particular requirements for my alarms. To this end, I decided to revive one of my old distractions and create some new alarms.

It was one year ago today since I started a little experiment, and that little experiment has since grown into somewhat of an outlet for my thoughts and frustrations. In fact, through the hundred-odd articles of the past year there's been a fair bit of relentless bitterness unleashed upon the masses.

I’ve been trying to avoid using my holiday time from work so that I can use most of them for my eventual trip to the arse-end of the world at the end of this year, thus keeping as many holiday days for next year as possible. To this effect, I haven’t taken much in the way of time off this year at all.

So hectic was last month, I didn’t really get much time for myself to decompress, and the national holiday of November 1^st gave me the perfect excuse to was time to relinquish some holiday time to finally unwind a little.

Fortunately Aline was kind enough to offer an escape by way of her family’s chalet in Chiny, so on Thursday morning we trundled down towards the French border with John for some well-earned time away from everything and anything for four days.

…Or so we thought.