Exsanguination

I am tired of being sick. I was just getting back up to full involvement in my kenpo...
And then I got pneumonia.
And I was just getting over that, and ready to go back to class after almost two months off...
And now I have bronchitis.
My lungs hate me.
Right now, I'm not too fond of them, either.
Breathing can't be that hard; I see lots of other people doing it.
And the codeine. Yeah, I'm trying to turn my lungs inside-out with coughing fits, but I'm taking so much codeine that I can't remember what it is I need to get done...and wouldn't be able to stay focused to do them anyway. Since getting back from the doctor, I have been asleep for all but 1 of the last 19 hours.

Oh - Boingo.
Boingo is a company that runs wireless access points, like in airports. They have per-hour ($4.95), 24-hour ($7.95), and annual subscription for folks who travel a lot.
I will never try to use them again, and I'll say so loudly, clearly, and frequently to anyone whom I find out is traveling. Note that I work in the travel industry...
Why?
I got to the Minneapolis airport at 1400, Friday last. My flight didn't board until 1850. Thought  I might get some things done... Computer being used was an Asus Eee 4G Galaxy, which has excellent wireless and has never failed to connect anywhere else. Browser was the latest Firefox.
1. Took over 30 minutes of following their pages in circles just to get my account made, running into several different log-on screens, all of which said I had an invalid password. I FINALLY got "logged in" to the Boing account I made...
2. S. L. O. W. I have never used a network so slow. I'm talking 28k modem dial-up slow. Specifics, according the timer in the FasterFox plug-in:
Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com), page load 4 minutes 30 seconds.
Yahoo.com, page load 3 minutes 5 seconds.
Google, page load 4 minutes.
Google mail, never finished loading.
3. Trying to get some help, or something... I went back "inside", to the internal Boingo pages. The faq/help page took over 5 minutes to load. None of the stuff in the faq was of any value. I decided to try the "contact us" link, as suggested by the faq.
4. I never got in to the contact page. It would time out, give me a blank page and claim it was done, or (most often), go to an "internal server error" page.

If there had been a physical office that I could find somewhere in that airport, I'd have demanded my money back.

In the future, if it's a choice between not getting online, and using a Boingo/Concourse service...I'll read a book.

I've been back in sparring class for a couple of weeks (had a shoulder injury).

Man, I NEEDED that.

Regular class is all well and fine (American Kenpo, if anyone is curious), but after a typical day of Users, Management, and Non-Local Drivers, I need to make contact.

For those of you who don't spar...it's not just throwing fists and/or feet about. It may LOOK like that...but it is really a high-speed chess match (especially anything involving locks and pins, like wrestling/ground-fighting). If you just react, you're going to lose. If you have to think about what you're doing RIGHT NOW, you're going to lose. You need to do both - you need to think about what you're going to be doing three, six, ten moves ahead...while your body is reacting to what's happening at the moment.
It's incredibly fun, a VERY tough physical workout, and relatively injury free (pads are used, and it's "light contact") (okay, with some of us, it's medium) (and some nights, the instructor runs a "heavy contact" ring...).
It puts me in a great mood, and I'm seriously WIRED afterward.

None of which has anything to do with sticks...
Except that one of the instructors has decided to offer Kendo classes (that's KenDo, with a D, as in Japanese fencing). I've already ordered my armor and shinai (which is a "practice samurai sword", made of slats of bamboo).
So, SOON...

I get to hit people with sticks.

I can't WAIT.

No, not that kind of stiff.
After being unable to fully participate in my martial arts classes since June, I finally got to be in sparring class last night.
(Brief aside for the curious: the injury was an impingement on my right rotator cuff (tip of collar bone was pinching shoulder muscles - and yeah, it hurts as much as it sounds like). The martial art is American Kenpo (as in Ed Parker, Jeff Speakman (movie: "The Perfect Weapons"), and Elvis).)
I won most of my matches, and wasn't laying on the floor gasping for breath, so it was a pretty good night. My lower back is extremely stiff; even though I've been doing my regular class during most of my recovery period. Even though it's light contact, repeated blows to the head and torso (and repeated blocking of same) puts a lot of stress on the core muscles at the middle of the body. So does hitting and kicking someone.
It's a hell of a workout, and it is one of my favorite things.
My lower back is very, very unhappy with me. It will get over it.
And I am very, very happy.

It's midnight.
I'm in the office.
I don't WANT to be in the office...but for some unknown reason, nine of my servers went stupid. Happily, on the production bunch, the database servers weren't among the ones that lost their minds; I only had to kick four of my application servers, and all was well.
But the development and test database server, THAT one was hung. I made the system work again, but no, of course, the databases won't start.
Naturally, the DBA isn't answering his phones.

I dislike having machines not being ready for my users. On the other hand, I can't really do anything about it until the DBA does his thing.

Sigh.

And it's been another week of short AND erratic sleep periods, which helps neither my mood nor my troubleshooting skills.

The sad part is this is one of the better DBAs I've worked with. He knows his stuff, and doesn't try to blame the operating system (my part of the equation) for everything. He's just hard to get hold of.

Well. Productions works. I'm going to call it a night.

Right after this comment:
I kind of like Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I kind of like HP/Compaq. But I definitely do NOT like that the 30% of my servers that are RHEL running on HPaq boxes make up 90% of my reasons for having to come into the office in the middle of the night.
I wish they were all Solaris, running on nice hard-to-break Sun boxes.

You know, this isn't exactly the sort of thing I had in mind for this blog. I'm tempted to delete it - it's just whining. I hate whining, especially when I do it.