What do you run on your monitor server?

Do you think you're too small to run a monitoring server? Well, I have two local servers, a remote web server and a remote e-mail server that I'm in charge of worrying about and I run a monitoring server. It's not much of a server, really, just an old workstation to which I added a bunch of spare memory and a large, clean hard drive. Naturally, I run Linux on my monitoring server, which, ironically enough, I named Monitor. Specifically, Monitor runs Red Hat Fedora.

I finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson last night.

So, a funny thing happened Friday night.

As I wrote in my last entry, I went to dinner with three friends Friday, to celebrate one's birthday. The prettier half of the married couple, actually, L. To make things easier, I ran by their apartment and rode with them to A's apartment. As per usual, I snuck past the security gate behind someone else and popped up to their apartment to visit for a moment before we left to gather up our last gustatory adventurer.

So, a married couple, a recent widow and a divorced man go out for dinner...

No, that's not the start of a joke. Those are my plans for the evening.
It's a sad, little personal life, but it's mine, all mine.

(An interesting side note, though there is a word for a divorced woman, namely divorcee, there is not, apparently, an equivalent term for a man. How odd.)

Okay, not actually coffee, but a coffee mug.

In the same vein as T-Shirt For Tough Guys, a UK company is now offering a "Knuckle Duster Mug". For those of you not familiar with the phrase, a "knuckle duster" is slang for brass knuckles. From what I understand, they're quite nasty. Can't say how well the coffee mug will stand up if you use it that way, though.

It's the perfect thing for those of us who are thugish in the morning before we've had our coffee!

At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Tuesday night, I took "before" pictures.
Knowing that the Queen of the Damned will likely read this, I hesitate to mention how heavy I've gotten. Let's just say that I'm the heaviest I remember being, ever, and I'd like to lose forty pounds or so. And, it's not like I haven't been meaning to get back in shape after last year's "little episode". Chemotherapy takes that weight off great, but it all seems to come back with the hair! And, every pound seemed to bring a buddy!!

I know everyone's communication strategies differ based on personal experience, but when someone walks into my office and says "Two hole punch", do they really think that's enough information?

Luckily, I'm cool under pressure because several of my potential responses to that are not safe for work, but, instead of using those, I calmly asked "Um, yes, what about a two hole punch?"
"Do you have one?"
"Ah, no."
Then, without further ado, she was gone in flash of blond and a puff of lilac.

I hate having my office open up into the copier/fax room.

I think I smell a little hyperbole.

I'm more of a server monkey myself, but, still...

Okay, so this has been around for a bit, but I just got it the other day. A friend sent it to brighten my week, which was getting rather tedious. (Incidentally, in searching for links to the actual song in MP3 format, I discovered that this happens to be the theme song for Code Monkeys, the 8-bit cartoon on G4.)

At least, if you're in Australia.

Actually, things are looking pretty good in Houston, too, though I can't vouch for the rest of the country. Things in Australia, though, seem to be especially good. I subscribe to a lot of news feeds via e-mail and I got one update from Australian IT that had two articles about how good things are for IT workers there right now.