Saturday 27th February 2016 1.20pm

After a week of doing nothing but researching and writing out a server new configuration and migration plan, and then another week of practising it and throwing away the results, this weekend is D-day for my cloud server migration. The existing four year old rental expires on Tuesday, so all my running services must be relocated to the new server by end of day tomorrow so Monday can go on securely wiping the old server. Then comes rebuilding the local cloud node here at home to match the remote, and to configure nightly ZFS replication from the remote to home all of which I expect will take another week. Finally I really need to do something about my email virtual machine which is old and creaky and beginning to fail - it needs to be rebuilt, but I am unsure if I'll get the time given the ACCU conference in April, so it may need to be postponed till after that. So if nedprod email goes down, you'll know why.

Each new year after Christmas is the busiest time for me annually, a never ending slog of unremitting 55 plus hour weeks with all the remainder going on sleep or child minding up to usually May but from this year onwards, April which is an improvement. I haven't had a vacation since Easter last year, so I decided to drop a few grand on a full week in Killarney this Easter as the pace is beginning to get to me. The aim is for complete bed rest, cycling, no phones nor internet nor computers and most especially, no deadlines which between work ones, career ones and family ones, are stressing me out.

So here's to Easter break: may you roll in quickly!