Well, I suppose it will all return to normal. Soon.

The party last night was fine. I sat with my boss and her sister, which was a very good thing. She teased for a food fight, but because we were front and center just below the head table that idea died. The food was good, and the roads were only wet, not slick.

Went by the office this afternoon and rebooted the server with a different keyboard. It worked. For now. I cannot wait until I get this machine into the shop.

Hhmm. Something is amiss in the code. This is a test.

Woke up to snow this morning. This is the third time in 10 days. Since 12/4 we have had over 6 inches of snow, 1 inch of ice, and several inches of rain, and my pond is still pitifully low. Some people just got their power turned back on yesterday. For this part of the world this is very severe weather. I wonder what the rest of winter will bring.

One of the casualties of the storm seems to be the server at the office. It has rejected two keyboards and loses the mouse often since the power out. No one had seen fit to have any sort of alarm for the UPS kicking in, and after 12 hours, the whole setup died. It all rebooted, but the server has been fussy about I/O devices since. The data is OK, will try another backup tonight.

At every location that I have visited in the last 2 weeks the VPN worked well, and all drives have mapped. I am starting to feel like this project will survive. Need to get 2 more locations up, and then Phase 2 begins. (Of course, the ED does not realize how long this will take, or that there even are more than 1 phase to the project, the sales rep from the telco who sold it is long gone.)

*Company Christmas Party tonight!*

Today was pretty good. Drove to C. City, and did updates at two locations. Everything worked, and the VPN is still humming. After all the power outs last week, and coming in and finding the Server dead this morning, I wasn't sure.

I have learned so much out in the field that textbooks just cannot hope to cover. Things like User Errors, or "Ooops, I think that I clicked the wrong option. Can you help me?" asked from 60 miles away. Umm, no. I cannot see down the phoneline, and you just toasted the VPN connection, so I will have to drive there tomorrow on Company Time, and fix it.

Last week went to B., and finally got the network drive to map through the VPN tunnel. I had been to that location four times previously, and tried two different machines, uninstalled and reinstalled all the software, and nothing worked. This time I brought along a telco technician, and the Magic worked! (Don't ask what we did differently, we don't know)

Tomorrow is three locations, SR, RW, and FF. Hope everything goes as well.