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11/14/2004 Entry: "Happy Birthday Sawa and Punkie..." We had our birthdays this weekend. It was my first weekend on call, and it started out of the gate with a flurry of activity. First, we had a guy with one project who needed temporary root access, and he took forEVER to get done (like 5 hours). During that time, I got paged again, and this time, a server had rebooted itself twice and it wasn't scheduled to do so. We never found out why, and since it's in a computer room that has had power issues lately, we put it on another circuit, and I haven't heard from it since. Then another system reported a failed hard disk (but it was mirrored, so they just replaced it). Then another system reported faulty memory, and they wanted my permission to take it down and replace it. Granted. Then I got called at 6am with a machine that reported 2008 errors in 20 minutes. It stopped as soon as I got into the system, and hasn't happened since. Then another system had it's /tmp directory (where temporary files are written) full, and they wanted permission to delete old files in /tmp. Granted. At this point, I was like, "Gaaaah!" although I was not mad at the NOC, because all these were legitimate calls, and most of them were just asking permission or "FYI, we dispatched the vendor" kind of things. But, since 10am Saturday until now (about noon Sunday), no calls. Sawa made it to 23 on Saturday. She came to our house to have a party, and it was pretty cool. Travis, April, Dave, Sean, Lou, and their kids came by and stayed late. We talked, played Cranium, and had a good time. Sometimes I think I have known Sawa since she was 9 (but only on a peripheral level, because I sort of knew her mom), and then really started being friends with her at 16. Now she's a savvy and smart adult who is going to school, has her own place, two jobs, does responsible shopping... if she were my daughter, I'd be damn proud of the person she's turning out to be. I hope her mom is. But I don't think of her as "a ward," so to speak, but as a friend, and I am really happy she's my friend because she is so cool. At midnight, I turned the magic number 36. I gave myself until 36 to fix the first 18 years of my life but thinking it would take another 18 to unscrew it all. Well, as I said before, I got about 80% there. So I don't know how long, if ever, the other 20% will be, but I think I will tackle less about mental issues, and focus more on diet and health. Travis also got a good look at my bathroom and Den, and gave positive reviews. He said the bathroom looked better than he expected, and the floor probably does not need replaced. Yay! He also gave me some good tips about getting down the tiled wall. Yet another awesome friend. Today I am taking it easy. I can't go anywhere because I am on call, but my party is next weekend, so I can wait. The day after that, we celebrate Rogue's birthday! Yay!