Friday

Friday morning was better than Thursday, although a text message from Rav saying he’d had to take his wife to hospital and so wouldn’t be in work didn’t help matters. I also got a text message from Chris C in Dallas on my way to work (he has been trying to get the hang of international dialling codes ever since a message he sent me about their trip to the UK never arrived!) A short burst of mental arithmetic revealed that it was something like 3:30am in Dallas and a brief conversation ensued. Turns out the poor guy woke himself up coughing (he has been under the weather for the last few days) and was sitting waiting for the cough syrup to take effect. It was a toss-up between watching TV and having another go at getting a message through to me. (I’m not sure why that was really a decision, but perhaps American TV improves in the small hours…)

At work there was a definite feeling of progress with the server and by the end of the day we were confidently pushing 800Mb/minute back onto the disks. It will still take most of the weekend to completely restore, once we’ve allowed time for the regular system backups to run and for tape changing delays (yes, part of the restore is being done through a single, manually loaded drive!) but for the first time in a week I feel I can say my confidence is high that we will have a usable system on Monday.

Had lunch with Ping at the new Strada which has opened under the Festival Hall and he was fairly buoyant. He has been going through some difficult times lately but seems now to be getting a handle on everything. He has finally talked it through with John W (which is a relief, as I was having trouble tip-toeing through certain conversations with him, trying not to break any confidences without actively misleading; not a happy situation.) Somewhere along the line, despite being in a riverside restaurant, we also managed to miss the whale in the Thames, which has been keeping the media busy since Friday morning.

Friday evening we were supposed to be having dinner with Scott L but he had cancelled a day or so ago (due to “prior commitments”) and my sister had subsequently asked us to go over to her place as she’s been off work sick since Tuesday and was wanting to see someone to alleviate the cabin-fever (as Andy is away in Aus at the moment.) So once we’d all gotten home (and I’d called security with the number of the next backup tape to load) we headed up to Battersea and ordered Chinese with her. Her Sky+ is now working and she has been making full use of it, so there was plenty of TV to watch (my sister’s favourite pastime.) We watched the opening of the new series of Desperate Housewives and a couple of shows of Bones, another variation on “brilliant-geek-meets-streetwise-cop-and-they-help-each-other-solve-crimes-and-evolve-grudging-respect” theme; a pleasant diversion from reality for a few hours before heading home to bed.