Today was a beast at work. I upgraded the systems and right afterwards everyone started to complain about how slow everything had gotten with running reports. I knew I was cheating fate a little bit, putting SQL Server 2008 R2 on such an old server but it took and it ran and things were at least after a style, minimally acceptable. Of course, we instantly started to run into issues, mostly PAGEIOLATCH_SH locks galore all over the system. People noticed that immediately, it was a lot like running headfirst into a wall of gelatin. Wheee – fwap – splutch. The server is hosting a 15GB database and it’s got 3GB of RAM to manage. So of course I had to bite the bullet and advise TPTB that we needed a new server. My first design came in at $8500, the next design came in at $3500. I thought we had ordered it, this was all last week that this was brewing. In the meantime people were still complaining so I decided to see if I could write up some non-clustered non-unique indexes that covered most of our biggest and most used tables. That helped out just a little and I was putting pressure on our ordering department for an update for our server. Oh, they hadn’t ordered it yet. They wanted to inform me that they were able to shave $500 off the price, but had to tack on a $25 licensing recoupment fee and that we’d have to fill out the paperwork all over again and get it re-authorized. Well, after some gnashing of teeth and a righteous flurry of emails, the damn thing is ordered. Now all we have to do is wait. The new server will be set up with a 64-bit OS and then SQL Server 2008 R2 will play in that, with 32GB of RAM to play around in. Upon further inspection the PAGEIOLATCH_SH locks are all IO bound issues. Once those go away I should be right on top of things with respect to this report server. I have hope, and that hope extends to when this server IS GOING TO BE SHIPPED. Come on boys. Come to Daddy. 🙂

Of course, we all did the Q&A for what we were going to do for the labor day weekend and thankfully I have nothing planned. I was able to get down to Anytime Fitness on Stadium Drive right after 5pm. I couldn’t get in, but I think that’s because I have to register my keyfob with the management of that one, as Scott and I set up our account with the Anytime Fitness in Portage. A nice gentleman let me in and I got my stuff all stowed and hit the treadmill. I set it for 15 minutes and walked, then for 1 minute (which you can’t do, so it turned out to be 5 on the treadmill) and ran for about 3 minutes. I only had a 1-minute run actually scheduled through Nike+. Once that was done I set the treadmill for 60 minutes and pounded down my 5 mile walk very easily. While I walked I watched the Star Trek marathon on SyFy channel, which was very nice. After I logged that 850 calorie burn I took a short break and got my iPad out and plugged it in and hit the recumbent bicycle. I set that for 60 minutes and started to pedal. I shot another 600 calories and while I was pedaling for my life I was watching Netflix and laughing to a comedy stand-up show that Craig Ferguson did a while back. I was pedaling and laughing. It wasn’t half bad.

One thing that I did notice was that after I was done with the treadmill, and hopped off it, I had this overwhelming urge to move forward even though I really wasn’t. It felt a lot like vertigo. I had to shake it off several times or I was going to drop on the floor and start making little running gestures. I hope that I get used to that feeling, I knew it was coming but when it hit, I was still quite surprised. It’s a very strange sensation. Your body tells you you are walking but your ears inform you that you are not. The disconnect is very disconcerting!

My next step is to have dinner, then chug down 2L of water. Perhaps read some comic books or maybe get a little further on my Nook. We’ll see.