CV of Andrew Forsyth

I've made a side blog that is just a hosting page for my CV (Resume).

On other notes... 18 days left!!! dear Dog this is getting close. We went shopping today for the last of what we need for the birth. New (disposable) sheets, towels, cloths, blankets etc etc etc... A home birth means we need to get a lot of stuff together to handle everything that the hospital usually would. Kate is also totally ready to get this baby born.

A great push towards that was the discovery that my landlord (who lives upstairs with his wife and occasionally many grandchildren and sons) is DOUBLE THUMBS UP for us having the baby born at home. He kinda trapped me in to telling him that we were doing that and then when I revealed the "awful truth" he was excited and offered to help in anyway at any time of day, cook for us, volunteer his wife and sons, and told me to "take care of Kate and pay rent whenever". wow.

I am amazed that they were so open to the idea but I couldn't be happier. We were pretty scared that Kate would have to be quiet, that they would call the cops on the noise, that something something something... evict us... etc. So it's a great load off our mind.

Teacher for a day

Well tomorrow morning I have to pull out a server, setup my classroom and teach server stuff. He's going to be my backup while I am gone for new baby so I need to let him know how to do that.... So I need to teach him all the ins and outs of server manager, workgroup manager and etc etc etc.... and that in a day. This time he better not fall asleep.

New Baby

I swear Kate's belly is doing that rumbly noise like it's hungry.... but I know she isn't hungry. It's like the baby wants out..... 22Days...

The Laundry Alternative

In our continued effort to Green up our lives we have now eliminated the laundromat. Which for lack of better words F*&$in rocks. How you may ask did we do this thing? Well, through a bit of determination and a small amount of work and time we should be able to wash all of our diapers (cloth) and our clothes from the day at the end of everyday here at home in about 15 minutes.

We got a portable washer and a portable spin dryer. The washer is a hand crank unit that takes about 3-4 Quarts of water and a tablespoon of soap to do a load of laundry (about 4-5 pounds of clothes) and then 3 quarts for the rinse. All in all a good sight less than a conventional washer and it uses no electricity. After that the centrifugal spin dryer uses only the spinning to eject water from the clothes and no heat. It lasts for a max 5 minutes as seems to work on most of what we have washed thus far in about 2-3 minutes. The clothes come out slightly damp and we hang them to dry in the hallway clothes line.

This whole setup was part of a gift from my parents for the new baby. They also bought our entire cloth diapering setup for the new baby, again... this rocks. We are very happy to be cloth diapering baby #2 from the start and with every thing we need in abundance.

25 More days left.

Got till it's gone....

Basically my parents have sold their house in Edmonton. The house I grew up in, the house my brother grew up in, the only "home" I have ever known. My brother is pretty broken up over it and I am too, to a slightly lesser extent. I miss the place and I know I will for a while but, I am so nomadic and have moved soooo much that the one place that is home, has never been as important. I'd like to use a quote from Garden State to fill this post.

"You know that point in your life when you realize that the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore…all of the sudden even though you have some place to put your shit, that idea of home is gone…or maybe its like this rite of passage…you will never have that feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, for your kids, for the family you start. It’s like a cycle or something. Maybe that’s all family really is: a group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

Where do they come from?

So I was looking at the tracking reports for my blog tonight and thought WOW where do all these people come from? I see that tons of people get to me by searching for something that has NOTHING to do with me. Like Pro Tools 7.4 (that added an extra 10 hits right there) or some part of a movie quote that I have used.

So I have to say to everyone that comes here and possibly even stays here.... Add a comment somewhere, a shout out to say you were here from there and China... where you at?

This is Septembers countries vs my blog.

United States of America	39.19 %
Canada	25.68 %
United Kingdom	8.11 %
Brazil	4.05 %
Czech Republic	2.70 %
Other	20.27 %

Country	Visits	%	Trend %
United States of America	29	39.19 %	+59.6%
Canada	19	25.68 %	-52.8%
United Kingdom	6	8.11 %	+54.1%
Brazil	3	4.05 %	+131.1%
France	2	2.70 %
Norway	2	2.70 %
Czech Republic	2	2.70 %
Ukraine	1	1.35 %
Turkey	1	1.35 %

Sweden	1	1.35 %
Poland	1	1.35 %	-23.0%
Philippines	1	1.35 %
Republic of Korea	1	1.35 %	-23.0%
Australia	1	1.35 %	-61.5%
Israel	1	1.35 %
Germany	1	1.35 %	-23.0%
United Arab Emirates	1	1.35 %
Belgium	1	1.35 %

Baby Shower Today

Well Kristi, Shannon and Corey with the help of others threw us a baby shower today at the Coal Harbour Coop. It was a blast. I got to see people and kids I have not seen for a while, eat some chow and play in the park outside.

We got some very nice gifts from the folks who came out and even though they are all small things (like onesie's) they are just the things we need and are also just the things I needed to make upcoming baby much more real.

It's neat to think about the new baby coming along but when I really stop and think.... it's 31 days away.... I have a preschooler who still doesn't sleep through the night and who takes up to an hour to put to sleep some days. Those small things are the ones where I go.. whoa. Are we really ready for this? We're really doing this? Jeeze.

I am the excited.

I just found this awesome little application through the Apple Software site, called Screen Recycler. This app for Mac basically allows you to use any other Mac with a monitor attached as a second, third, forth or so on monitor for your own. Why buy another monitor when you can simply annex your neighbours computer!?

Awesome.

Second highest on my OMG that's sweet list was the application to allow you to use any (well almost any) application with your mac remote. There were two there but I think this one seemed to have the nicest interface. This one is called Mira.

Also Awesome.

Third highest is iRAPP. Now this is sweetness in a dmg. iRAPP allows you to use your mac from a PC. It runs your Mac fully, access all programs, all files and folders even have you system bar at the top of your XP session. Plus using it multiple users can use the same Mac or you can make your Mac a terminal server. How hot is this? and it's shareware. BOOYASHAKA!!

Lastly is this application called Passenger which allows non administrative persons (such as a help desk or what not) to add user accounts and do password creation with your OS X server without having to access the server. It's a nice utility I look forward to handing out at work.

So if you are on a Mac and are not familiar with this stuff, I would suggest checking it out.

A Week Without

Without Kate and without Sebastian. It was a long boring stretch without any real interaction with anyone. I painted Sebastian's room, did a whole bunch of this and that around the house, stayed late at my work a few days and saw a couple of friends for Beer and Cake on Friday.

I made this....

Man / Woman vs Toddler / New Bed

OH - MY - GOD!

6 hours of hardcore battle against the toddler loft bed of doom!

Well in the end the Man / Woman team won out over the Toddler and his new bed..... sorta. The bed is built and it is awesome.... however the toddler proclaimed " I DON'T LIKE THIS!!! WANT TO SLEEP BIG BED!!! " and lo... here we are, toddler in between us while we both write in our respective blogs about this epic battle.

Sebastian was amazing all day long, with all the shopping, running around and change of panning we did. He came through it like a trooper and in the end his crazy 9pm to 11pm run around and non stop talking while trying to put the last of the bed together was really not all that bad.

The bed, which we got free is a loft bed and has a nice little ladder up to it... and a SLIDE to get down!! Can you believe it?! Now we just have to move everything else in the room to make space for it.