Sunday, October 25, 2015

It was just one of those things...


It was just one of those weeks. Something that I thought should be straightforward, but tedious, turned out to be really hard. Several times, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I thought I was going crazy because commands that used to work, generated screenfuls of error messages.

It got so bad at one point, I did the UNIX equivalent of "WhereTF am I?" and typed pwd (print working directory) and THAT generated errors. There was nothing left to do but to log out (of that interactive session on the supercomputer) and log back into a different node. I mentioned the odd behavior to a coworker, but neither of us connected that incident to the database migration that took place the day before.

I know, those of you more familiar with databases are probably laughing your head off right now.

Finally, after 4PM on a Friday afternoon, all but one interactive node and about half the (75,000) nodes lost contact with the disk system.  There was nothing I could do by hanging around the lab while the IT team worked to rescue the machine.

It was time to go out in the field for some riparian ecosystem research.
 I didn't use my car at all this weekend.
Boulder's bicycle network, and my condo's central location, let me do everything I needed to do by bike.  The trees are so glorious this time of year, I took the loooong way whenever I ran errands.

Oh, I bought the most expensive fabric I've ever bought this weekend.  I thought it was the Liberty Tana Lawn at $44/yard, but it was a heavier shirting at $66/yard.  I didn't check the price until after it was already cut and rung up.  But I love the print and the feel of the fabric; it is wide enough that 1.5 yards should yield a very luxurious shirt.  Think of all the money I saved on gas by not driving.  That can buy a lot of fabric.  ;-)

OOPS, I checked my receipt and Liberty's website.  It is a Tana Lawn after all, and I paid $66 for the 1.5 yard piece, not per yard.  

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