Normally, leaving a job for a new one involves a considerable amount of joy; leaving a place of work is usually motivated by dissatisfaction, and so leaving is pleasurable; a new job should really be a lot better than the old one, otherwise why bother?

This is the only time in my life that the old job wasn’t irritating me, or rather it wasn’t irritating me enough to leave. This is also the only new job I’ve ever taken where I’m not supremely confident about my ability to do it. In self-defence I was totally honest about my skills when I interviewed, and I genuinely think I’m up to it – but it doesn’t have the same comfort level as if it were a Linux admin/developer post. So the nerves are there and strong.

It has been inhumanly hot in the past week, but thanks to civilisation, we have air conditioning, so it was completely cope-able-with. For us. “Civilisation” evidently implies a lot more to me than it does to your average American cracker: I sincerely believe heating, A/C, medicine and transport are all part of being a civilised nation, but that is a very unpopular idea here, especially amongst the oppressed for some reason. They make such great pawns for the ultra rich.

As for last weeks computer problems, it seems the whole problem was down to a simple GRUB issue, which could have been solved in about 10 minutes if we were physically present – or if we had access to an on-site engineer who knew his shit. The RAID (5, not 1 as I previously stated) was fine, as it fucking well should be. That’s what it’s for. The box will be back home next week, but for now we have resurrected most services from backups. Still feels like a shot in the groin though.

New job tomorrow. Hopefully it will be inspiring.

I miss you all.