whew!

So, work's fairly busy. There's a lot to do, not much time to do it in, and then I'm going to be off for 2 weeks in the new year. And it's frustrating to discover that something we had made so much progress on still has another issue. Grr. But I also had an interesting problem late this afternoon - it was one of those problems that first looked like it could be one problem, then investigating gave more evidence to suggest it was something else. Figuring what was common to the servers having a problem, but not common to others... it wasn't easy. But I've just realised I solved it like playing Zendo. I tried several servers that had the problem, thought we had the common piece, so started looking at the system that I thought was affecting it, but that seemed fine - indeed, looking at some other servers that used the same system weren't having the problem. But... I did have a "half rule" in Zendo terms. All the servers being affected were indeed using the system that I'd thought was the problem in the first place, even though we could find several that used the system that weren't affected. However, none of the servers that didn't use that system had the problem. Then I remembered that that system had two network interfaces, and that all the affected servers contacted the system on one interface, and all the unaffected ones that used the system used the other interface. With that information, a closer look on that system again showed that one of the network interfaces was down. A trip over to the datacentre to replace a loose network cable fixed the problem.

So, first of all, I am pretty sure that playing this game, and others that I play has improved my critical thinking, and how to figure out problems. And, figuring out the root cause of the problem... well, it was fun. I came away from the problem once it was all resolved, and I knew I'd enjoyed myself. In fact, just thinking back about how I figured out the problem still makes me smile!

Leaving work, I went to my Board Game Group, and played 5 games of Dominion, with four players. It plays significantly differently with four rather than two, but was still very enjoyable. It's a great game, and going to get a lot more play over the coming months.