So my day was supposed to start with sleeping in. But around 8:30 my phone rings and it's a coworker calling about the exchange server being down. Turns out the thing is still somehow latched to one of the two domain controllers for the domain, and won't fail over. That one domain controller was down since the power switch is in a crazy spot and couldn't be reached during the big shutdown, so it was left for us today. We finally realized what it was after about 10 minutes on the phone, so was able to get a bit more sleep. Got up and went in for lunch at Eddington's with the crow. Had 3 bowls of Emily's Chicken Potato Chowder, which is IMHO the best soup they have. Then I got to start my work day. Went reasonably well. The whole avalon restore process is sorta depressing and casts a dark mood across everything, but thankfully is more just a nagging thing than a constant hastle. We have to be around pretty much all the time and check on it routinely, but don't have to sit there and poke constantly or anything. I managed to clean up a few other things, and got a few that need to wait until the avalon thing finished sorted out and temporily hidden from the to do list. This is the first we've really been able to look into non-avalon problems that weren't critical since it started. Started poking at a this crazy IE error that I think is profile related. Found one possibility (a common machine) but nothing big that I've seen before. We'll see how profile resets work for the users. For dinner went and bought Dew to restock my fridge in my office since I sold out again. That stuff goes quick. Then stopped by home and grabbed my headphones so I could enjoy some music for the evening. It's rather loud in my office with 9 10k RPM SCSI drives in there... Evening went pretty smooth, a couple tape swaps but nothing too big. After work headed over to my parents' house for a bit. My bro was back in the states and brought back my camera with lots of pictures, so was good to see him. Started poking with his cell phone a bit, and discovered it didn't receive calls and attempting to make one resulted in an authentication error. Turns out when the number changed, the verizon person forgot to reprogram it, so it still had the old number and settings (it was on a business account so they canceled it and recreated which was easier). Luckily she had changed the ESN in the system so I was just able to go into the programming on the phone and redo everything, but sorta frustrating as a user shouldn't have to know how to reprogram their phone, especially when they buy it from the store in person. Updated the firmware and PRL and should be set, so hopefully no more messing with phones for a bit. Also loaned my dad my new camera for a day so he can play with it at my sister's BB game and possibly the Ice Palace tomorrow. Should be interesting, hopefully he won't want one too bad. So a few days ago a box from Cisco shows up for me at my parents house, and tonight I got it and opened it. Turns out it's this funky mug with their logo, IBM's and Mainline along with a hockey game in the base, trying to get me to go to a conference on SANs in the area and offering me free tickets to the Wild game that night if I go. I guess companies are bumping up a notch or two in advertising... Then there was going home. Snow is interesting to drive on when it's this cold. It's hard enough that at low speeds it's hard to get a grip, but at higher speeds it just rips apart, so it's actually harder to accelerate from a stop than it is to brake. Weird feeling. Then there's the fact that it's cold enough the torque converter reacts differently and the transmision hesitates before shifting until it warms up for a while. It's like driving a whole different car. Anyways, my internal clock is messed up. 9am will be way too early.