I didn't feel good but I straightened the house anyway. You may bow before me now.

My body tried really, really hard to get sick today.  I don't think it fully succeeded.  But it gave it the old college try.  Finally it stuck me with a migraine.

I think today was officially, in every way, a Monday.

I went to our weekly sysadmin meeting wherein they informed us that they wanted us to do a new inventory.  And they wanted to know which machines were servers, and which were REALLY servers, because apparently there is some distinction.  Am having much hate of this kind of inventory.

One of our machines has been having odd problems, so we made the decision to replace its memory today.  I trundled up the stairs, kind of hating life (because I was achy, and dumb) and found that this was one of the last of the old model of machines.  Which meant I couldn't just slide it part way out of the rack to work on it.  I had to pull it all the way out.  Over my head.  And they're heavy.  I managed to maneuver the server to somewhere flat, and I replaced all the memory, and then I called a coworker to help me get it back into the rack.  And it booted with an error.  One whole bank of memory claimed to be operated at 261 fahrenheit.  That's pretty suspicious to me, because it's 127 celsius.  127 is the highest signed eight bit integer.  It's kind of a special computer number, and likely the highest number the sensor registers.  If the temperature sensor were going to fail, it would likely fail to 0 or 127.

To test this, we took the server back out of the rack and scanned the memory with an infrared thermometer.  (These are the coolest things ever, btw.  Everybody needs one.)  The memory all tested to within a few degrees of the same number.  Definitely NOT 130 degrees higher for one bank.  So I reassured the boss that it would not die of heat, but that it was time to retire that machine.  (Also, its video card is totally dead.  Not a huge problem for a server, but annoying.)

At some point I looked up and realized that the day had passed by without my permission, and I left the office.  And came home to start straightening the house.  Today is the day when we do that.  House-straightening day does not always combine with physical ickiness and work problems, but today it sure did.  I attempted to soldier manfully on (if manfully soldiering involves taking ones temperature and needing extra hugs, which it might for all I know.)

Assuming that my puny immune system won today and I am not showing the classic symptoms of the Black Death (or any other Death) tomorrow, JD and I are going to go downtown after work.  I know!  On a Tuesday!  DC-SAGE is finally having a meeting.  It's been years.  And one of my favorite people is presenting.  I'd like to attend to be supportive.  Plus, you know, learn stuff.