Yesterday involved getting to work to fine that the Hobbit is behaving itself wonderfully and is becoming the "de facto" web page for people who need to know. Introduced it to a couple of new (to it) systems and they're all being monitored now. I have given them something that has been on their wish list for about a year. Go me! \O/ The best trick that I've found with it is that you can set up a proxy system which will relay hobbit stats/info from a set of servers onto the server. This is very useful when you find that most of the systems I'm looking after are based in the DMZ and there is no way on Earth would I set up a hobbit server somewhere where it could possibly be read by the public internet! (Major security no no, in my book!) Anywho, I have one system that tunnels through (legitimately!) the gateway between the in-house systems and the DMZ. So, pop the proxy on that system and now all the systems in the DMZ are reporting what they're upto.

One kick-self to that, though. It's great getting in in the morning to see a server status screen that is green (Green is good!) but when you set up the hobbit client on a new system it starts reporting back to the central server and suddenly... Oh! Oh! SCREEN RED! Red is NOT good! However, it has meant that some of the systems have been "streamlined" so that they all come back to working tolerance levels (although one alert on one system has had to be "ignored" until we can get the space to mve all the crap off that system!)

Next things up will be getting the 'files' check rolled out. That'll be a useful way of toughening up the systems and also the 'procs' test is turning out to be great too. Sure there's always a "ps -ef" at the commandline but doing it regularly and on several systems would be a tedious task.

Towards the end of the day an email goes around saying "Drinks tonight!"... ok! End up drinking with Chris, Donna, Jo, Gavin and his alloted female at some dodgy bar in Kensington. Far too many Guinnesses to be healthy, far too long spent talking tosh and twaddle.

Leave there after a couple of hours and eventually wend my way to TSTBBLRPIT. Busy venue, lots of people out. Most amusing thing to notice was that there were more people out the front smoking than actually in the venue. Mind you, the music being played didn't really help. It sounded like a really crap noize/techno mess, over-distorted instruments, rave beats. I think EBM would've been preferable. As usual, people were talkig loudly to be heard above the music. The whole experience really wasn't to be cherished. After about half-hour of gritch-kritch-grigrigritch I decided to call it quits.

Head out (at some point). Ended up at the Hobdevlin