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Well in  my current job I’ve done a fair bit of flying.  There was a time for about 1 1/2 years where I didn’t go anywhere, however in the last couple of months I’ve been to Brisbane, Melbourne and this morning I’m flying down to Canberra.  Today is different in the fact that it’s just a day trip and all I’m doing is packing up the office as we are closing it down.

I enjoy flying, so on that side I’m lucky.  However being very much a familiy man, I don’t like being far away from my wife and son.

I haven’t posted much (as I always seem to say) because I’ve been too busy or I just haven’t had much to say.

I made a goal at the beginning of the year to record an album…. I want to get that done, however I don’t know if I will.  I set a goal last month to write a song for a competition… I didn’t end up writing it.

I don’t know if it’s because i keep making excuses or if I dont’ manage my time right or if I’m not confident in what I do.

Anyway, QF803 is boarding for Canberra now so I had better end this post and jump on board.

On Sunday in Brisbane, I started to get a back pain in my lower back, just off to the left hand side.  Monday it was still there and started to make me walk funny almost as it if was in my hip.  Monday I hobbled around the Zoo after I flew back from Brisbane.  I was in the office on Tuesday and planned on leaving about midday… got out at 7pm due to some mail problems at my company.  I worked from home Wednesday, had Thursday and Friday off. Wednesday morning it had moved up my back slightly and was a constant pain.  The pain has gradually been getting better… it’s still not right..

The doctor put it down as ‘musculoskeletal back injury’ on my medical certificate.  It’s now the following Monday and I’m still in some pain… Stretching and pain killer are pretty much all I can do… I’ll give it another week and hopefully it should fully recover… ready for Melbourne at the end of the month (which will be organised soon).

I (well my wife) finally pre purchased my ticket to see the new Indiana Jones movie.  It will be at one of the first public sessions in the world to screen it… considering International Date Line etc, NZ will be the only country to see if before Australia and that the States will start screening it almost 18 hours after Australia has seen it (if not more).

I’ve been reading up about it on theraider.net and know from the rumours and photos a number of plot points…. I’m still looking forward to seeing the movie and know I’m really going to enjoy it.. will post a review once I’ve seen it.

(warning some ‘mild’ technical content)

I flew up to Brisbane to install some new servers in my companies office.

Following is a summary of the weekend… bolded are the things which went wrong

Last thing Wednesday..

• Find out that it’s a Public Holiday in Brisbane on the Monday.

Thursday….

• Plane departed 5 minutes late.
• Landed and decided to catch the train instead of a cab… beats the traffice, except I got off at the wrong stop and had to walk about 1 kilometer to the office. I got the stops confused because in the past I stayed at a hotel literally above the station.
• Got to the office and unpacked and ‘racked’ all the hardware.
• Find out a package which had programs on it for me to install on the Friday was sent Off Peak instead of Priority. Later in the day a second package was sent from Melboure
• Found out some network cards which we had originally ordered and were due to sent back couldn’t be found.
• Some of the documentation which I had was different from the way the hardware had been detected so I the documentation had to be updated.
• Installed the main software/OS fine.
• Headed to the hotel and slept.

Friday…

• Got in the office and configured the Disk Array which we are using (ended up taking 3-4 hours to initiate which was lucky as when it finished I was ready to configure the disks.
• Configured the OS/software on the servers. In the process found out that we were almost out of ‘IP Addresses’ for the migration…. this would come back later to cause problems.
• (Technical content) Created a new Domain controller.
• At 6pm (when I had planned on starting the migration), found out that staff in the office work back Friday nights until 7:30pm.
• Decided to finish up at 6 and go for a walk as there was a festival/markets over at Southbank (late night shopping is Friday night in Brisbane city).
• Had a nice walk and took a nice photo (below and is also in the gallery)… this was taken with my wifes camera and was NOT on a tripod..

Saturday…

• Got to the office about 10:30-11… got ready for the rest of the day.
• (Technical content)Had a few problems with DNS when trying to migrate a couple of servers.
• Copied all the files across and had a relatively successful day.

Sunday…

• Had a time frame for our Database server to be down (which also affected part of our website).
• Everything ran smoothly.
• Waited for someone from the office to come in so I could de-rack the servers. Did this with a slight pain in my back.
• After I had done all the ‘danger’ work… where I wanted someone to be there just in case. I continued on packing the servers up and organising the server room. In the process I manged to step on a dangling lead which was the power supply to the office alarm. After a few calls I was able to find out what I had to connect up (as there were 3 leads on one cable and 4 leads on the other… one turned out to be the earth which I didn’t connect.
• Got back to the hotel, found out there was a $10 charge to change Qantas Bookings on fully flexible fares.
• Called and organised a 5:40am wake up call for the next day.

Monday…

• 3:40am…. I get a wake up call from the hotel. I find out later that the person on the reception desk at the hotel couldn’t read the writing of the previous person on duty so called me 2 hours early!!!
• I got back to sleep and wake up by my alarm.
• Got up with a worse pain in my back, showered and headed downstairs, pay for the accommodation and they organise a cab (it arrived in about 2 minutes).
• Got to the airport and had time to sit down and have a coffee. Caught the flight back with no problems.

I will put up a few photos from that trip later.

Here is the take off from Sydney Airport, Aircraft: 767, Runway: 34R (no sound)

Landing at Brisbane Airport, Aircraft 767 (no sound)

Will put a fly past of Sydney and the take off/landing from the homewards bound trip later.