Rowan Tree and Red Thread

Why Incompetence Spreads through Big Organizations.

I've been attending a course on Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007 this week up in Dublin. It's actually looking like this application will prove useful in my work, though I'm slightly worried that we'll discover bucketloads of problems with our servers once we start proper monitoring on the server estate at work. Mind you, now I know enough to turn of the alerts!

It's odd to be back in Dublin at Christmas time. The place is swarming with shoppers and the glow of Christmas lights and shop windows in the gloom would blind you if you weren't intent, as so many seem to be, on heading to your destination in an crazy bustle.

It's odd to be away from my wife and kids, if only for a few days. I forsee BIG hugs tomorrow night when I get in. I'm going to be hit up for a backlog of bedtime stories by Rowan, I suspect.

I miss them and will be glad to be home. I hope the train's on time.

[edited to remove stupid email double post etc.]

That when I'm in the middle of a fiddly Blackberry migration at work, which of course involves the big names in the college, that the backup system starts to fall apart and I come down with a stupid cold complete with annoying cough, sweats and nose like a tap?

This question may be rhetorical.

Today was a day of SAN upgrades (failed due to firmware buggery and keeping me in work 'til 8pm), Blackberry odd behaviour (fixed with a good talking to and blasting a handset) and, thank God, a bowel movement from Oscar for the first time in a week.

Yesterday at lunch in the coffee room at work, one of my workmates commented on my hands. "You have real priest's hands," she said. I was taken aback. What sort of hands do priests have? Holy hands? Soft, work-shy hands? Stern, justice serving hands?

Anyway, everyone knows I have the hands of a surgeon. I keep them in a drawer next to the pianist's hands in a jar.

Last week I attended a training course on Microsoft's Exchange Server 2003. We're in the middle of a migration from the old NT domain to a new Windows Server 2003 based domain, and the e-mail system is scheduled for an upgrade as part of the move. The old Exchange 5.5 servers are being upgraded (or replaced in some cases) to Exchange Server 2003 and I was sent along from Operations to get some feel for the migration process and the changes to administrating Exchange in the new set-up.

I found the course interesting, but I suffered from the physical set-up of the training room workstations. The seating and the right-handed mouse seem to have triggered some sciatica and referred pain in my right hand, which I usually avoid at my normal workstation. It doesn't take much to cause aches and pains, and I found the chair uncomfortable. Coupled with a right-handed mouse set up I ended up feeling pretty crappy by Thursday. Live and learn, I guess. Next time I'll be sure to arrange the desk and mouse layout properly before getting started.