Making small bits of progress in various areas. I’ve just committed a couple of patches to gtranslator CVS (HEAD) to fix (well, improve) the messages table and make ‘gtkspell’ compile-time optional. Last night I was hanging out on #sysadmin, and saw someone report bugzilla was down, and on closer inspection found the mysql permissions table on button to be hosed (raised the alarm, patched up the table as best I could to get it working, called for a proper backup etc). Also upgraded mysql to 4.1.11, as per a request from the bugzilla guys (well, Olav). Whist sorting all that out, a customer called saying their mysql server has gone haywire and kept crashing randomly. Lots of unplanned support this weekend.

My main contract is suffering as a result. I had one day last week where I couldn’t concentrate (because of some problems with my work permit application that might mean I have to abandon everything I’ve built up over the last few years!) and one day ill (probably as a result of trying to look after too many projects and the stress of all these work permit/visa extension problems). Today, we’ve had an all-day powercut (I mostly sat doodling UML diagrams with a paper/pencil), and then I managed to hose my openoffice installation, so that’s on it’s way back down the modem line (only a few more hours to go!). Hopefully tomorrow, I’m back on track as I need to present the proposal completed by Friday! This one is important.

Also, contacted the Thai Linux contingent hoping to garner some interest in a ‘www.th.gnome.org’ page. Doesn’t look like there are enough people to really make it work, but at least I’m in touch with the beginnings of the Thai Linux community. Upgraded from Hoary to Breezy aswell recently (I know I’ll regret it), so lost my ability to input Thai for a while until I figured out that unpacking xkeyboard-config just creates a load of broken symlinks in /etc/X11/xkb/rules, rather than what ‘dpkg -L’ suggests it should have installed. Discovered ‘dpkg-deb -x’ which saved the day. It’s too late today, but I am hoping to start keeping a brief Thai language blog, as an excercise in typing, spelling and grammar etc. Perhaps one or two sentences a day until I get a bit more confident.