I'm working another all night outage tonight!!! Let the running diary begin . . .

• 2317 - Well, I've been here at the data center for about a half an hour, got all my stuff set up, haven't started hallucinating yet. Annoyingly, I've actually been working since about 6pm, since the guys on the SAN (Storage Area Network; basically, they have massive amounts of disk that they allocate to my servers and attach to them via fiberoptic cable) team are doing a change that requires me to periodically check a couple of servers to make sure they haven't disconnected all my disk. Of course, my servers are working fine, because HP is the bomb. The NT boxes, as usual, are having all kinds of issues. So I was stuck on the phone for 5 hours for no reason. Not good times. Horrible times. Depressing times.

  At least I was at home; it gave me time to tune the piano a little bit. I got it about half done, although it's not exactly accurate because I lack the necessary mutes to tune individual strings exactly (which I have just ordered from Ebay; I love Ebay). After moving it twice since it was last tuned (in about April of 2000), and having it finally end up in a very dry house, it's dropped about a half step low. So I'm gonna just get it back to actual concert pitch, and then have trusty Pete Mayforth come out and temper it properly.

  Of course, Lord knows when I'll actually be able to finish it up, since I'll be stuck here all night, sleeping tomorrow morning, and then going to various parental units' homes tomorrow for a day of fatherly homage. I'll need beer, and plenty of it.

• 2359 - Nothing like typing "Oops . . ." to a coworker over AIM and have him think he's going to have a myocardial infarction. (At the time, I was performing a possibly destructive change to a production server.) Good times . . . good times over here.

• 0100 - Eyes starting to get heavy. I'm not sure if the coffee I drank has done any good. I don't even have the usual diahrrea or anything. Perhaps a large Pepsi is in order.

  I should've brought a hip flask full of gin. I have some excellent gin at home. I can't remember what kind, but it's got a little dancing dude on the front; Gordon's maybe? Gilbey's? Gilbert Grape? Oh well. (SAY THANK YOU GILBERT!)

• 0158 - Second cup of coffee, and my innards are starting to squirm from all the caffeine. In other news, it's hot in here. I'm going to take off my clothes.

  Much better.

  Okay, so all I took off was a sweater I put on to enter the raised floor (which is kept at a temperature of about 60 degrees F). It was a sexy sweater, too, all vertical ribs making me look hell of slender. You should be sad I took it off, but happy that more of my skin is exposed.

  Looks like we actually might get out of here early. Not sure, though. All the work appears to be done on our part, but as usual the DBAs (DataBase Administrators) have to test a bunch of crap and we have to wait until they're done.

• 0203 - Yay! Milo's up!

  matthearndotcom: I've decided I need a tuba.
  matthearndotcom: A guy played one at the memorial service this (yesterday) morning.
  MiloBloom34: you should have beaten him up and stolen his.
  matthearndotcom: You haven't lived until you've seen a guy playing "Amazing Grace" and some showtunes on a C tuba.
  matthearndotcom: I couldn't have beaten him up; he was really cute.
  

  (Plus his mom had just died, so it probably would be bad form.)

• 0207 - I really do want a tuba, though. Somebody hook me up, as I am poor. (I also need my garage cleaned.)

• 0234 - Holy crap. I'm going home. This is good news for me, I suppose, although it means this particularly diary doesn't get all that interesting, because I haven't yet begun to hallucinate, which really is the bread and butter of all quality writing. Next time I'll bring some Quaaludes to the data center with me. (Do they actually still make Quaaludes? I dunno. Better ask Dad.)

  Hey look, Walter's sprouted horns. Good times. Good night!