or 'A short-lived shutdown for maintenance'
[The morning brought a rewrite to this long entry, though it's probably of no interest to anybody but close friends. It was a little tricky to write, and certainly needed illustrating...]
"When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude."
Wordsworth, in 'Summer Vacation (Bartleby text)'
 Monday took me north of the Seine for only the second time since May and that month's onset of the Condition.
To the factory, no less.
While the three-hour visit involved a good deal of paperwork, I enjoyed it very much, particularly the fond welcome I received on the English Desk, where it turns out that I'm not yet forgotten.
Something I appreciate about AFP is that since it constantly sees comings and goings, you can walk in after almost five months' absence and many people neither know nor even care where you've been.
So I only had to sum up my medical adventures about half a dozen times. And used really foul language just the once, when a techie told me he knew my forgotten log-in code but wasn't authorised to tell me what it was.
That outburst showed them I haven't changed all that much.
But something I've noticed about life is that, often, when one's feeling gruesome but really prefers not to show it, many people say "You look well!"
Jo, the desk chief, was the only one to temper the observation in detail, remarking on the weight loss, the grey pockets under the eyes and other small signs of fatigue.
But then Jo and I were face to face for longer.
 With the first day of Autumn, however, came trouble. Again. I put the computer out of service for more than 24 hours.
It was time to optimise the hard disk, which I did more thoroughly than planned. On tackling one partition, Micromat's Drive 10, which I've never quite trusted but used anyway, froze up.
After waiting more than an hour, the only way out was to shut down the computer the worst way, by switching it off in mid-process.
More than 10 Go of data got hosed. Even DiskWarrior couldn't recover it or rebuild a directory. I guess I could get it back, but have decided that this partition probably deserved wiping anyway and can soon be put to better use.
So that's not the problem.
Where I really wrote myself deep into one or two bad books was by going off-line myself an hour before the AFP trip and then afterwards.
Without warning, once I realised how drained I was. I simply stopped answering the 'phone for almost a day.
I know this was uncharitable and mean, but I need the rest. (The rest is elsewhere...)
1:14:45 AM link 
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