So my partner and I spent last week in Helsinki, visiting for Midsummer.
The place was lovely, albeit "too damn hot"tm. (Despite my regularly shaved head I'm a pale-skinned redhead covered in freckles. In sustained sun I can be burned in the space of 10-20 minutes. Ouch.)
I ate cake, went to a sauna, and all the usual things. I also had personal interviews with all the mosquitos.
The only downside to the holiday was the timing:
- Friday Worked.
- Saturday woke up early and flew.
- Time passes, Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
- Sunday flew back.
- Monday .. worked.
- Tuesday worked ..
I'm a sysadmin and sometimes that involves out of hours work, so you can shuffle virtual machines around, upgrade processors, and do all the kind of "disruptive" work outside core business hours.
Yesterday I was awake for 22 hours and I was working for 14 of them. Today I'm doing nothing that involves a computer other than a token check-in or three to make sure everything is fine.
99% of the time I don't mind working late, starting early, or scheduling an event outside working hours (e.g. last night I worked from 10PM-3AM ). But with the holiday I've definitely been feeling burned. My sleeping is screwed up, and I'm just getting grumpy and stupid.
Still there were some highlights and I took some nice photos, met some good people, and learned some more Finnish.
I actually tried to find some Finnish instructor(s) here in Edinburgh, upon my return, and was amused to discover that there is an Edinburgh-based Finnish Society. Amused? They cancelled their midsummer event due to poor weather.
For the rest of the week I'm going to be very careful to count working hours and do nothing excessive. I've also got to get back into my gym-routine.
Still there is good news on the horizon. I get a new computer next Monday.
The new machine will run Wheezy, and Awesome. With 8GB RAM I'll stop hitting OOM conditions once I process many photographs, and I'm going to be very dedicated in using revision control for everything.
(I've noticed I've gotten lazy and have started storing bookmarks locally again, instead of under revision control which is a bad sign.)
Rambling. I woke up early (10:30AM) because "Microsoft Technical Support" called me and told me my computer had a virus ..
Steve,
did you tried carrot juice? I had the same problem with direct sun burning me in 20-30 minutes and last year after a daily diet of one glass of carrot juice I can support 1 to 2 hours in the sun without being red. I continue the diet now every summer. It works for me. Hope it helps.
Regards,
Jerome