4.16pm. Well the synchronisation is still going, and I am off home soon. I will check it again in the morning.

In the mean time I have been learning a little Perl with the oh so popular emacs(23) editor. It appears to be pretty similar syntax wise to PHP right now, but hopefully I will discover some more advanced features soon.

2.40pm. Ok so backups complete on Internet payment system, however I need to remember that a performing a full synchronisation between our database and the externally hosted database takes hours!

11.30am. So it looks like the lack of space on the Windows partition on our print server has had a negative effect on our Internet payments system that is running on the same box. I am in the process of re-running the database backups now after a stuck process managed to stop the whole system.

All in a days work as a sysadmin I guess :-)

10.30am. So I just got back to work after the half term holidays (enjoyed a great week skiing), and sure enough it appears that all hell has broken lose since I have been away. Glancing at the 'ICT Support Dashboard' as I walk in I see a plethora of "cannot print" tickets.

A quick glance at the primary print server shows me the problem; there was no space left on the Windows partition, a quick clear up, and restarting the print spooler fixes that problem. Note to self: need to get a good networking monitoring software application installed to catch these problems before they arise.

Walking out of the office I am stopped by the Reception staff who tell me the phone answer phone system has stopped working; quick reboot of the telephony server and we're back in action. Not a lot I can do about this, the software is written by a small company who consider "reboot the server" as the fix for all their software's problems.

Now its time to check the weekly backup ran and tackle the 3 4 malware infested laptops.