“It’s very important to takea long, hard, cynical look at your servere state”

I’m sure I am not the only person who, to some extent, hides away behind the technology when bad news comes to visit. The only problem this time is that the technology is part of the problem. The 50% hikes in energy prices look to be only temporary, but they are nonetheless painful intrusions into life both at work and at home. Looking around my own bijou machine room, I thought I had done a pretty decent job of minimising energy spending. All I had to really think about was why, if I closed the inner door (the outer being an up-and-over garage door, with lots of air movement through metal slats), the room would be at a comfortable, not to say oppressive, 28?C by the following morning.

I thought I’d been paying attention to energy consumption, which in old network nerd terms means that my servers with the extra-large 15A mains plug aren’t left connected for very long, but there can be no denying the secondary ability of the room as a wet cycling gear drying rack. I tried to forget the issue but it came back to haunt me at my most vulnerable, bored witless over Christmas: I couldn’t get away from the fact that in my network Browse List, I could see