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War in the living room

Seems the man 'Faithless' may be losing sleep again but this time over a different stress. Great video, good song awful to think how long this war has been going on.

21 years of computing: Zero Advances in Productivy

A must read for anyone who needs the latest and greatest computer.

Me + 26 = yum

+26 Degrees that is.....

It is so OMG nice outside today (well for the last week) and it feels great (although almost too hot). We went to the Vancouver Landfill today for their open house day. We took a tour of the back 40 (the dump area) and saw all the current and future areas to be developed. The showed up that from the place they started the are going up 39 vertical metres before they stop using the area and the system is still available for another 32 years.

They showed up the falcons and eagles they use to keep away seagulls and the well system for drainage and gas collection for powering greenhouses and returning electricity to the grid. We got Veggie dogs from their free lunch and were facepainted and Sebastian even got to hang out in their big sandbox.

We had a great time there today. THEN we came home and had some lunch and filled up Sebastian's pool outside. He hopped on in and had at least two hours of fun till I noticed he was blue and brought him inside to warm up and watch sesame street.

Now we are going over to Brian and Shannon's to play some games and hang out for a little while. Should add even more fun to today.

People just won't believe me.

yell and you shall recieve?

Well I don't get angry much and I especially don't get vocal about it but I really got in to it with Purolator today. A laptop that I ordered was supposed to arrive on Monday and didn't... Puro says oh it'll be there by Friday. On Wednesday I see that it's on delivery and get excited... Nothing. I call them and they have address problems. Aparently Apple didn't put my suite number on the package and even though it says Andrew Forsyth - company name on it the driver who brought a bunch of other stuff up to here didn't think that it could go there. So anyway, I correct the address... Apples fault really. Puro gives me a confirmation number and says it'll get delivered tomorrow. So Thursday rolls round and no Puro guy and the system is still spouting off that it needs address confirmation. So I call in and ask WTF is going on?

Well the guy on the line says that the package didn't get the address correction and now that they had tried twice to deliver it that I would either have to go get it myself or pay $32 to get it delivered. This is when I flipped out and got ahold of someone who promised me everything would be ok... I mentioned how tempting it was to move all my business to Fed Ex and the package somehow got driven over to me.

So now, I have said Macbook and all is good. Kate is on the powerbook beside me blogging too which is kinda funny.

Now for the techno part

Here is some really cool stuff I was looking at today.



and if you haven't seen this already it's pretty cool too.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/04/16/intel_catwalks_concept_pc/

bloogin outside, oh yeah.

Well I am sitting outside, Sebastian is playing with trains, cars, trucks and boats in the sandbox beside me and Kate is taking a little nap before going out for dinner with her friend Shannon.

We had a baby ultrasound today and hoped to find out the sex of the new little one. Alas it did the same thing that Sebastian did and keep it's little legs shut tight and we couldn't tell. We saw the heart beat (and heard) and saw arms hands legs and feet as well as the Head. It was nice, I was very happy to see the little one in there and that everything was doing fine. I still get a girl vibe.

Who knows really, beans can sprout in many ways.

OPEN YOUR FUCKING EARS!!!!

Or as Sebastian likes to say just... fuckin earzzzz

So I messed this one up. yup. Said it out loud and now it's a favorite. bah.

Went to Spanish Banks beach today after work with Burritos and some chips n salsa. Had a nice time and was reminded YET again of why we moved here.

Doing Yoga now and really loving the refreshed feel my body has after the stretching, opefully I will be able to keep doing it as it has helped my body stress reduce. My mental stress has gone down a lot lately and I feel almost like someone who has given up a drug. My mind is clearer and I can think through problems easier, I feel more alive when I am at work or at home and my energy is up which is weird considering I am doing more active thing.... oh wait... now I get it. cool.

F9 where have you been all my life?

I have discovered what a joy the F9 key can bring me on a MAC. It's beautiful.

it's cold a blustery outside and I am wrapped up like a cinamon bun in my duvet writing this. It's a nice feeling being all warm and safe like this.

I am loving work. Loving it. Turning my blackberry off and leaving at 4 is the best thing ever. Who would have thought that going home on time could boost a persons morale so much?

Time Warped post

This is an insert for some pictures of a wonderful day trip we took to White Rock.

it's a go

I have had quite a day.

I started therapy. I went and saw Dr Benno today and had an interesting hour with him where we explored some of what has been bothering me. I was so apprehensive to go to this all day and spent most of my time awake thinking about what I would end up talking about. Turns out one of my biggest problems is work.

I also went and wrote my Apple Certified Help Desk Specialist test today and passed. woot! So I now have my level 1 certification with Apple. It's great, it's the first piece of formal education with a certification I have gotten since.... well. .... ever. First school since high school.

that's really all I had to say right now tho. so.....

What Doesn't Happen?

Well I am digging work in new ways lately. I have gotten back on top of the ticket queue and I am able to get other work done. My work ethic has improved and I am taking charge of situations to make the place work for me. Sometimes this involves circumventing my lead and sometimes not but either way it makes work a good place.

I found out today that I lost 9 hours of banked time because we just don't do that anymore. Well pissed off as I am about that I am kinda ok with it. I know that I helped people and I got recognition by those involved that I made that effort and people (I hope) will remember this down the road.

I am creating a document for training my coworker on MAC's and it was alot of fun to do the first part today. It looks pretty good and I think that it will help get the system running well for him. The more that he understands the easier it will be in the future when I want to move on or leave.

I am also taking charge of my work and getting things done before they need to be. this is letting me have the confidence that jobs will be completed on time and without stress because... well because they are done ahead of the deadline... and when things like today (a user asked for a new hires machine to be setup today and they don't start till wednesday) I was able to because I worked on that system last week. So yay. I got something done AND I get to be a hero to that user because their expectation of waiting another 2 days was given instant gratification. Woot~!

I mean really the easiest way to make people happy in a job like mine is to just over preform but be able to set the limits and say No when it needs to be said. The minute that people start to take advantage of the situation is when it needs to be shut down. As long as that relationship is maintained then I win.

Let's see how long that lasts.

Ahh sweetness

Today, Today, Today

We are moving today....

It's crazy... I got the place ripped apart... there is still tons of work to be done around here but until all the moveable stuff is out that door I can't even think of what needs to be done... lots around here for sale that needs to get moved out but right now is just in the way.

I think once we move all the stuff out of here then it will look almost empty and the feeling that there is a million things to do will subside. Really though... I am sure that the next 15 days we have to get shit done round here will be filled with stress... we even have to paint the place in the end. at least there is no carpet.

Ah well it'll all be worth it right? The new place is a 2 bedroom and Seb has been sleeping in the empty bedroom by himself the last few nights... He got up and came in to our bed (which was in the living room) both nights at about 2 / 3 am and neither of us even noticed him show up. So as long as we can start waking up and taking him back to his own room then we can start to enforce that he needs to sleep in there.

Should be fun fun fun. Moving truck should be here any minute so I am out.

OMG WTF BBQ

You heard me.

Why do you need an excue when there are so many reasons?

Well that's that.

I can not eat meat anymore.

I have read and watched some horrible yet mostly mild things over the last day and apparently I have been quite receptive because I can not even think about eating meat without feeling sick. Not over the taste or anything but over what the animals had to go through to get that meat on to my table.

I've always known. But it never really mattered. I never let myself believe that things were all that bad. That everything that people talked about and told me about could actually be allowed to happen in our world. Now I know. Now I have seen it and I am disgusted. Horribly disgusted with the way it all works.

I have never been for a 'cause' or anything, I have floated along on anti-war and ethical treatment but have never actually felt that it was right.

I used to have a Math teacher that said "you know it in your BONES" Of course he was talking about how you'd have to be retarded to not understand the basics of polygonal math or something but....

I know it in my BONES. If I was crammed in a feed lot, cage or pen... never allowed to be free, never allowed to just be what hundreds of years of built in instinct are telling me to be. Fed, Drugged jammed in a truck being scorched or frozen for 500 miles in the open air.... It wouldn't matter if I was a cow, a bird or a human... I'd still be scared out of my mind when I was hung upside down to have my throat cut.

And when the blade missed? Or didn't do it right? When I was dunked in to boiling water to rid me of my pesky feather or had my legs cut off and stomach split open while I was still alive?

fucking terrified.

I can't do it. Never again. Their suffering isn't worth my taste buds.

Just an additive.

Realistically it all boils down to sharing.

It is all about not segregating duties and sharing them instead. I did some laundry the other day, and it made me feel much much better about Kate doing laundry a few days later. She really just picked up where I had to leave off. I did some dishes, she had put some away. I had cleaned a diaper but not yet rinsed it and she rinsed it for me. She made dinner and I put toys away. I had never really seen life like this happening before my eyes… I just realized that as long as we are both helping out in whatever way we can the house runs smoothly and it’s clean.

Overall I want us to have a great place to live in and I would love it if we didn’t even have to think about the way its upkeep happens… if we just went about our days doing all the things we do and in the end of things the house was back together it would be perfect. Although, perfect never happens so we’ll have to just keep on trying.

Work work work…. What can I say about work that hasn’t been said?

Well, my MAC work has been heating up… the guys are piling on more and more issues and I am battling them the best I can. I think I am going to have to devote an hour or so a day to doing reading on the MAC forums and such so I can stay abreast of some of the more common issues. Also so I can learn the fixes of old issues… like I know now with XP and such. Really this is pretty tough… learning a whole new operating system, a whole new hardware system and on top of that learning all the tips, tricks and roundabouts on how to do things both competently and with ease.

I know that both will come with time but my main issue is that work expects me to take care of these problems ready or not.

I put together a quality email today that explained how I am going ahead with server maintenance on the Apple Audio server we have regardless of how much I know because it needs to be fixed. The issues need to be addressed and if I am not going to dive in headfirst and start to figure out the problems then who is? WHO I ask you, who?! No one. That’s who.

So sink or swim it’s up to me, I enlisted the help of one of our infrastructure guys and he is going to test some of the network issues and try to help out on the back end of things. I’m really glad, this is a big deal for the audio guys and I. Fingers Crossed here.

So I guess we’ll see where that ends up. On Friday and I take over my new luxury condo cube by the window and with the couch. YAY. Looking forward to that for sure. New Guy comes in to work a week Monday and I am excited about him being down here. He’s a great guy and I think that we will help each other out a lot.

Our Moving:

Well we are working towards a new place…. I am looking at a nice little house in a great spot for us… We view it on Sunday and with luck we can rent it out and move in ASAP (y’know, providing it’s not a hole) Fenced yard, 800sq feet, with 2 bdrms, kitchen, dinning room and living room. So with luck it’ll be nice and they’ll like us enough to hold it for a little while. Not likely in the market I live in but it’s worth a shot. Who knows maybe I can sell all my records and turntables, make $2500 and we’ll rent both places for a month. We’ve done it before that’s for sure. So again, fingers crossed here.

Ongoing - ongoes

Here I am writing an entry on my new Macbook on the train today, I have a lot on my mind. Helping out at home more, looking after my pregnant wife, taking care of my customers at work and keeping the peace between two guys I work with long enough to get something done.


Home life is troublesome lately. It’s not that Kate and I aren’t getting along, and it’s not that we are fighting a lot. It’s just the thing we fight over. I say thing because it seems to be a constant issue. It’s me. My amount of help around the house and the lack of stuff I do to make it a better place to live in. How I don’t take the same initiatives to do things around there that I did when Kate was pregnant with Sebastian and how I am lacking on the duties that I regularly take care of (eg: Dishes). Now while I protest any attack on me and dishes, since I am almost always consistent about doing them and although I let it slide on the weekends I rarely ever forget or don’t have time to do them in the morning. When I do miss them however it’s the end of the world.

I can’t really argue this point though. I know in my heart of hearts that I am wronging Kate in the way I treat our house. I never feel at home in apartments, I think that has a small something to do with it. It seems that when we are in a house of our own I am dynamite dan around the place but when we get in to an apartment I am mopey and lagging on the duties of Dad and Husband.

I sat down and had an indepth conversation with myself on the train on the way to work today and decided that I am going to take new initiatives to make a better life for myself and for Kate. I will try to do this consistently instead of just a few days worth and then lagging out again. I made myself a sheet that I am still working on to outline what I need to do and when I am going to do it. I won’t let time get in my way because I am setting aside certain sections of the day just to do these things. Like doing dishes between 7 and 8, making my lunch for the next day between 8 and 9 and so on. I really hope this helps me because I loathe daytimers and have a very hard time sticking to a schedule of events that isn’t when I begin and end work.

We’ll see though…. One of the things I am going to do is use this laptop to track my activities and the things I did both during the day and the nights before hand. I hope that this constant tool (that I also consider pretty cool to be using here at the back of the train) will help out significantly. We’ll see.

Now that I've posted it.... I've made food for the next few days for lunch so I do not spend money... is that a start?