This really is the week of the long working hours. Monday ran until 7pm. Tuesday similar - 7pm. Today was a rollercoaster. There was working until about 6.15pm, in a flurry of work-related absorption, a lot of which I can't quite remember, but which successfully managed to take me away from the personal email, gig seeking and blog reading which is a sure sign that I have some spare time to myself in any given day.

Then I rushed out to Tesco to get some refreshments. This was closely followed by a team curry - it was social, but there was a tension in the air. Something important was scheduled for the latter part of the evening. We had our curries and I even ordered a curry whose name "Jeera" sounds like a tool we're going to use at work - "JIRA" - sad, but true. For desert, there were "Punkies". The punky is a toy penguin with a punk hairdo and some ice cream inside. To be honest, the diet has been failing this week - a total write off.

Then the late night work session. We went to an office of a software support company and set about, with their help, going through the process of making some key changes to our main systems. With alarms ringing, as we took the system down, and with a lot of pressure, the procedure was undertaken. I had provided cokes, red bull and a box of Cadbury Heroes - hopefully as a vote of confidence to my team - "Guys, you're the heroes".

Gingerly, the system was brought back up, then it was tested. Then I did some sort of test of my own, which should have stormed it with requests. It was working.

Now it remains to be seen whether the system will survive. In truth it should be a very small change, but time will tell.