I’m on sabbatical from work right now, so I’m hoping to be able to get out to this hashpoint while the kids are at school.
Expedition
After dropping the kids off at school, the geopup/hashhound and I set out for the hashpoint. Coming up the “short side” of the bridleway from Botley would be a shorter walk, but we
opted to park in Cumnor and come up the “long side” of Harcourt Hill to avoid Oxford’s traffic (and the inevitable fee for parking on the city’s side of the hill).
Harcourt Hill (like my village of Stanton Harcourt) doubtless gets its name from the Harcourt Family, who supported William the Conqueror during his conquest of Great Britain back in
1066 and were ultimately granted huge swathes of land around this part of the world in recognition of their loyalty. To this day, you find “Harcourt” in a lot of place names in this
neck of the woods.
The hashpoint was so easy to find, we almost walked right over it: it’s right in the centre of the footpath/bridleway. Even my dog, who often doesn’t like long walks or muddy paths,
didn’t get a chance to complain before we got there. We arrived at 09:35 and took the requisite photos, which can be found below. We also kept a GPS tracklog and vlogged our experience,
all of which you can see below.
I’ve not properly hashed in a long while, so it was great to get back out there!
Six or seven years ago our eldest child, then a preschooler, drew me a picture of the Internet1. I framed it and I
keep it on the landing outside my bedroom – y’know, in case I get lost on the Internet and need a map:
I found myself reminded of this piece of childhood art when she once again helped me with a network map, this weekend.
As I kick off my Automattic sabbatical I’m aiming to spend some of this and next month building a new server architecture for Three Rings. To share my plans, this weekend, I’d
been drawing network diagrams showing my fellow volunteers what I was planning to implement. Later, our eldest swooped in and decided to “enhance” the picture with faces and names for
each server:
I noted that she named the read-replica database server Demmy2, after our dog.
It’s a cute name for a server, but I don’t think I’m going to follow it. The last thing I want is for her to overhear me complaining about some possible future server problem and
misinterpret what I’m saying. “Demmy is a bit slow; can you give her a kick,” could easily cause distress, not to mention “Demmy’s dying; can we spin up a replacement?”
I’ll stick to more-conventional server names for this new cluster, I think.
Footnotes
1 She spelled it “the Itnet”, but still: max props to her for thinking “what would
he like a picture of… oh; he likes the Internet! I’ll draw him that!”
2 She also drew ears and a snout on the Demmy-server, in case the identity wasn’t clear to
me!
This post is part of 🐶 Bleptember, a month-long celebration of our dog's inability to keep her tongue inside her mouth.
A round of especially-crazy zoomies on the morning of this Twenty-Sixth of Bleptember was apparently too much for this little pupper, who’s now looking like she’s in need of a morning
nap.
This post is part of 🐶 Bleptember, a month-long celebration of our dog's inability to keep her tongue inside her mouth.
The Twenty-Fourth of Bleptember will go down as a Good Day in the diary of our warmth-loving dog. It was finally cold and autumnal enough that we lit the fireplace, affording her the
opportunity to snuggle up as close to it as we’d permit her too.
This post is part of 🐶 Bleptember, a month-long celebration of our dog's inability to keep her tongue inside her mouth.
It looks like a rainstorm is imminent this Twenty-First of Bleptember, but that won’t stop this optimistic blepper from waiting near the front door in case anybody’s willing to take for
a walk.
(She hates the rain, but sometimes if she’s found it to be pouring down out the back door she’ll insist on checking out the front door to see if it’s raining there too.)
This post is part of 🐶 Bleptember, a month-long celebration of our dog's inability to keep her tongue inside her mouth.
When she’s in need of some love and attention, like this Twentieth of Bleptember, my dog will place herself underfoot at my desk. She won’t necessarily put her blep away, though.
This post is part of 🐶 Bleptember, a month-long celebration of our dog's inability to keep her tongue inside her mouth.
She might not have completely slept through me serving her a dog treat this Nineteenth of Bleptember, but our dog was still dozy enough from her nap that she didn’t notice for a while
that I’d placed it directly onto her bleppy tongue. 😅