Firstly and foremost, apologies for the absence of either new posts or a blog to post them on for the last week or so. Last Saturday, Trouble got attacked through an XML-RPC vulnerability in these very blogs and turned temproarily into a Spam relay site for some evil mofo Brazilians. If you were a recipient, my heartfelt apologies for your pain. I killed the server immediately, and Korny staunched the security hole last night, so now we’re back on the air. Yaaay!
In the intervening time, apart from tearing my hair about the server and experiencing deep inner doubts and uncertainties about my competence as a sysadmin…

• I went caching again with Miss S. We found two caches and one DidNotFind, and a merry time was had by all, except E, who had to work.
• I got sucked into a terrible vortex at work as a certain anonymous wine-and-spirits-warehouse in which our CEO has a stake went through another growth spurt. To give credit and blame where due, the CEO is a miraculous salesman, seemingly capable of appeasing the most ferocious wrath with a few well-placed words. A capable manager he is not. Far too much of this project has been “organised” in the sense that people have been told what is needed from their respective departments on or after the date when it was needed, and no attempt has been made to schedule anyone’s time. Bloody awful.
• Some news which probably isn’t blogworthy yet has reached me which means that my life is about to change again; The one remaining bastion of sanity and stability to which I have clung for many years is about to get up and shamble off, and this has left me understandably shaken. More discussion later, when it’s official.