Article for the first full day of my sabbatical

content/blog/day1.md

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+---
+title: 'First Day!'
+date: 2024-07-29T22:12:53+02:00
+Tags: []
+Categories: []
+draft: false
+---
+
+## Morning
+
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/day1/kushsessions.png" alt="Credit: Kushsessions YouTube" >}}
+
+This morning I put the alarm at 08:30 -- you should know that normally I go to bed quite late, as I
+finish work at 22:00 or so, take some time to wind down, maybe drink a glass or two of vino, watch
+some Netflix, and before I know it it's 02:00. But yesterday I went to bed early because of all the
+schlepping I did in the basement. More of that today!
+
+Marina and I gathered some stuff around the house (not only my basement, I swear!) destined for the
+dump. We decided to drop that stuff off first, and then visit the local IKEA for some shelving or
+storage space, because the junk that is in my room, I mean the junk that is not junk, will still
+need a place to live.
+
+After a quick breakfast I started loading stuff into the car, and we managed to stuff it completely,
+old matrass and all, and made our way to _Remondis_, where I threw away north of 50kg of old
+computer gear, cables, chargers, and some old metal slingshot that I built for an RC flying wing
+once, and whatever else that was recycleable. With the remainder, which still managed to be a grand
+total of 51kg, we paid the guys, and they hauled it off into /dev/null for us.
+
+Off to the IKEA - did you know that the main reason they sell you CHF 1,- hotdogs at the end, is
+that psychologically, if you end a task on a positive note, you are more likely to remember the task
+positively? Well, sucks for us, because (A) we made our way through the entire IKEA maze, (B) ended
+up buying *way* more stuff than we came for, and (C) did not eat the hotdog because they are utterly
+gross. But, a few hundred Francs later, and I was the proud owner of an assortment of Kallax
+shelving. That'll come in handy, to store all the non-junk junk that I have laying around in heaps
+all over my room. Remember: the _reduce_ phase of my MapReduce is still ongoing!
+
+## Afternoon
+
+We get home for lunch and eat some leftovers. Quinn needs to bolt as he has an appointment with a
+tattoo artist, and he's all excited for that. I retreat to the basement and go hard assembling the
+furniture. I do it without yelling (there's nobody to yell at), and besides, I have an electric
+screwdriver with high torque, so I don't need to screw all those things by hand. Life saver!!
+
+There's a bit of moisture on the ground sometimes in the basement, and I think this is maybe because
+we removed like 10 trees from the backyard, and those trees tend to suck up a lot of groundwater per
+day. So I'd rather not put the Kallax directly on the ground. I make a run around Jumbo to get a few
+rubber feet for it, and am very pleased with my results.
+
+At 2pm I have a quick call with my buddy Hugo and we talk about LACP/MLAG, OSPF and BGP. He just
+bought two Arista switches (7060SX2-48YC6), and so did I i(7280SR-48C6), so we compare notes for his
+new network design. It was a fun hour, but now work beckons, and I don't want to spend my whole
+Sabbatical cleaning up my basement :)
+
+I finish the shelving, and it looks schmick. Now that I have the space, the _reduce_ phase goes
+really quick. I help Fred a little bit with an Ansible issue for his NGINX cluster at IP-Max, but
+an hour or two later and (almost!) everything is in its final place. If there was a law that
+goverened how many containers and _d&ouml;skes_ one is allowed to have, I'm pretty sure I am
+breaking it. But with everything in its own little _d&ouml;ske_, the place looks good as new, and
+I am very proud of my first few days of work here!
+
+## Evening
+
+I *love* warm weather - any temperature between say 15C and 30C is great for me. Marina is a bit
+more ... picky, and she likes it in the wide dynamic range of 22.1C - 22.4C, anything warmer than
+that, and a torrential rain of complaints is emitted. Anything colder than that, and she donns a
+sweater, pullover, jacket and mittens. I love her though, and especially today because she made
+me dinner! Because it's warm, she has decided to make a gorgeous salad, with lots of mixed toppings,
+some dressing, home made croutons (which I baked!) and some nicely seasoned chicken. 
+
+After dinner, Quinn takes a shower and we hang out outside for a little bit. When he comes back, we
+watch a few episodes of Stranger Things -- we're in S04E03+04, and Vecna is being quite the asshole.
+At about 10pm, Quinn turns in for the night, and I go downstairs to enjoy the cool air in the
+basement, grab myself a bottle of Rioja, pour a glass, and write my little story for the day, while
+listening to [[KushSessions](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjl6A8gKDBw)] on YouTube.
+
+Small bummer, the Mac Studio never came! I checked on the tracking, but it said that it was being
+handled for damaged packaging, with new delivery date tomorrow. _Le Sigh_! I will have to keep my
+two monitors powered off for one more day as I type this on my laptop.
+
+Tomorrow morning I'll bike to NTT R&uuml;mlang for IP-Max, to patch in a new Swisscom CES link, so
+we can migrate customers from Equinix ZH04 to NTT instead. Also, Fred ordered two new 10G links from
+NTT to Stollen - a really cool datacenter in Luzern that we're moving in together in September. More
+on that later!
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-07-29/IMG_0410.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-07-29/IMG_0417.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-07-29/IMG_0418.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-07-29/IMG_0421.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-07-29/IMG_0422.JPG" caption="" >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}
+
+