The last *edit*

Well it's morning.... ask a toddler what Daylight savings time is.

Sebastian decided that morning started at 5Am today, I found out quickly that it was in fact 4Am and coaxed him back to bed. We got 2 more hours and got up at 6. He is now chomping on ice and playing with Lego. I on the other hand am trying to wake myself up as I have been having trouble getting up to operating speed lately. I don't really think it's due to Rigby being around as I have been having this problem for a while now. ( About a month or so )

It's really hard though, I feel like my head weighs a ton and my eyes hurt to be open. I fall asleep sitting up or standing or whatever for a few seconds regularly and even coffee doesn't seem to jump me up. I get going by about 8:30 / 9Am and feel fine after that. I have also been realy easily falling asleep while sitting at night. I have fallen asleep during our movies the last three nights for sure. When Kate and I met I was almost narcoleptic ( I just fell asleep while trying to decide if narcoleptic was the sleep thing or the dead people thing ) Then Sebastian came over, I changed his diaper and we cuddled on the chair at which point I fell asleep again.

Maybe there is something wrong there.....

Rigby and Kate are both doing well now. Kate has been out and about and has been fine with it. Ribgy seems to enjoy the time regardless of where she is. ( Ok Seriously it just happened again ) Sebastian is coping better with the new one around I think. He seems to be fully aware of what she is, who she is and the last part is the (asleep while thinking) wait for him to accept her fully. He likes to kiss her, hold her and helps us tell her that "It's ok Rigby" when she cries. So I don't think it will take long at all until he never remembers the time when she wasn't here.

Arrgh, I seriously want this to stop.

**SO I just read through this post and I wanted to clarify a few things here and there. I did keep falling asleep while writing this post and it was frustrating because I obviously lost my train of thought a few times there. "Sebastian coming over and getting his diaper changed" is what actually happened after I woke up when I fell asleep thinking about the differences between Narcoleptics and Necrophiliacs. I also seem to remember the two mincing together in my head for a moments and I was thinking people who fall asleep randomly while fucking dead people..... man that's messed up.

So long Caio

So Caio came by tonight to visit, meet Rigby and explain what the hell was up with the "Caio has resigned" email that I got today. It's true, Caio is resigned and that's that. I was putting Sebastian to bed after he left and thinking to myself about what that means to me. I mean... how many posts in my archives contain something about how I hated this or that about Caio's ways. Mostly the singing. I know Caio read them and he still went about his business of arguing with me over trivial things, grilling me for information over everything and despising everything I brought up. Y'know... like eating.

Caio once (probably more than once) told me how he hates eating. He considers it a chore, a bore and basically a pain in his ass. He wished that you either didn't have to eat or could ingest some sort of "super pill" that could satisfy all your needs. Personally, liking eating and liking food I think he's crazy. These little things were all around and usually contrary to what I thought was usual or normal. They were things I complained about and things that I figured drove me a little crazy at work.

I do however realize that all these things are and were just things. That the personality traits that Caio has exhibited are only one part of his being and that the more importantly, he is a good, caring individual and someone whom I could trust. I realize that while I might have secretly prayed for the time that Caio was gone from EA and " out of my hair " I'm now pretty sad that he's out of there.

So, since I am sure that you will read this man. Arguments and quibbles aside.... this sucks.

The Aftermath

Well it's been a little over a two days now since Rigby was born. Her *real* name is Lilian Rigby Forsyth and she is named for my Grandmother of my Mothers side. Lilian Appleby. Although I have no memory of her, every image I have ever seen paints a picture of someone compassionate, caring and maternal. My Grandfather was someone who cared a great deal about me, and he was a very good role model for me as he ( Possibly due to my youth ) seemed to be an honest, kind and strong man. Sebastian ( Arthur DeWolfe Forsyth ) gained my Grandfathers name as well as Kate's Grandfathers.

Lilian seems to be a good soul, Sebastian seemed to be a return visitor when he was born and I somehow get the sense that she is also here with age behind her. They both have the same warmth to them. Of course I am their Father and I would totally understand the criticism that I feel their warmth because of this fact but at the same time I have only felt like this toward a small handful of people in my life and generally speaking they were the kindest and most heartwarming individuals I have known.

Gordon came by yesterday and remarked how much he likes the name Lilian and how it was a good old fashioned name. He did something very similar with Sebastian and some how it feels like a comment on this idea of them both being 'old souls'. Again, criticism aside, I do like the feeling that my children are simply beings embarking on the next round of their existence and that we [ the ones who are learned ] get to help them remember the things they once knew.

So, welcome back.

The Arrival

I will make this more detailed later but..... We had a daughter last night at 9pm. Kate had a 7 hour labour start to finish and Rigby is gorgeous.

A Trip to the Beach

Well, Kate is now term +6 so we are still waiting on this baby to decide to come out. This morning after Sebastian convinced me to get out of bed we went to the living room to have some breakfast. I decided, after seeing this weird thing thing I'm told is called "The Sun", that we needed to hit the beach. We took out the RC Boat that my parents gave Sebastian and sent it for a spin about in the waves. It doesn't go very fast which makes it a little boring but it is still pretty fun.

Then Sebastian and I walked down to the Pier and looked underneath for sea creatures. We saw Crabs and Star Fish and Fish Fish. Sebastian claims he spotted at least 2 slippery fish and an octopus under there as well but I'm sceptical. We left Kate to sit on some driftwood to knit her new hat for the baby.

There was also a great big Heron hanging out by the pier who would swoop down and scoop some fish out of the water every so often.

After all this we walked back along the beach throwing stones in to the water. It was really relaxing. The beach was quiet and the sun was out so it was nice and warm with a light autumn chill and the ocean was nicely behaving itself.

Sebastian loves throwing rocks in to the water, I think mostly for the splash. He discovered today that you can throw a handful of dirt and get multiple splashes. So needless to say he got a little muddy for a little while.

After, we walked down to where Kate was sitting we got together an took a little family photo.

Aren't we just so bloody cute?

Lastly Kate and I took a few pictures of her belly before this baby comes out (COME OUT DAMN YOU) and we caught the good luck bug. A little lady bug came by and did a walkabout on Kate's tummy.


I guess that lady bugs are the bearers of good luck. So hopefully something joyful will happen. :)

mmm ascii

       d8888                   888        
    d88888                   888        
   d88P888                   888        
  d88P 888 88888b.  88888b.  888  .d88b.
 d88P  888 888 "88b 888 "88b 888 d8P  Y8b
d88P   888 888  888 888  888 888 88888888
d8888888888 888 d88P 888 d88P 888 Y8b.   
d88P     888 88888P"  88888P"  888  "Y8888
           888      888                 
           888      888                 
           888      888 

Total Molecular Inversion

Well. We're still waiting on the baby to make up it's mind and come one out. I'm off work and we've been hanging out watching a ton of movies lately. Now out of that I've seen a pretty good movie ( V for Vendetta ) and a horrible movie ( Nacho Libre ) and a bunch of mediocre stuff. We saw the first part of Good Night and Good Luck but have not yet finished it.

Sebastian seems to be loving having me home all day. I know Kate is. I'm enjoying it also, I mean I was just writing about how I wanted more time to spend with Seb and to play with him more and here it is. Once the new one is born I am sure that this build up of play and bonding will serve us well.

I decided to play around and build up what I would love to see purchased for the Audio team and It team in Mac form. The bill is about 248K. It's all pure sweetness though. I mean, how could you go wrong with 20TB of data storage and a buttload of 23" dual monitored Mac Pro 8 cores? and a Server with 32GB's of ram... I mean COME ON!! I have requested that a copy of Leopard is purchased for me so that I can begin checking it out before people start asking me questions about it. With any luck that will be at my desk when I come back... nudge nudge. I don't actually think that the person I have asked to purchase it reads my blog but hey, it's worth a shot.

We are currently listening to an OOOOOOOO0o0o0o0o0LD Rave style Trance mix that I made. This is actually the first mix I ever made and it's also the first gift I ever gave Kate. Romantic huh? Hey baby! Have a Rave Trance Mix. Oh yeah... you know you want it. unce unce unce unce unce unce unce bwaaa ba buhn unce unce unce unce.

She says she listened to it all the time. "He made it... It's beauoootifull"

Kate is also knitting a set of booties for the new baby next to me right now. They look like they'll be very cute (according to the picture) right now though they are just a solid rectangle of yarn.

We should get some glowsticks!

Just Do It Already

We want a baby. Hurry up.

Against All Odds

Man vs Netboot with a capital B.

It may appear the there has been a lot of 'Vs' going on in my life lately but that's only because I have been fighting some epic battles against myself. This one is no exception.

I've been trying to get a similar system to our PXE booting for Windows machines going at work for the Mac's. Netboot is built in to the OS X server and is relatively easy to setup. The issue is that it is offered on local subnets only. Our Network Guru (NG) was working with me to try and get the system to work across subnets with some router adjustments to allow for the BSDP process, I was trying to get the image put together and neither of us was having much luck at first.

NG got the network side running and was forwarding packets to my server but there was still no dice in the boot process. He captured some data of the boot process and watched traffic going between the two units. Much to my dismay he couldn't see anything wrong with the data going back and forth other than the fact that it simply stopped after a short time.

Well, I then worked on my end. I created new images from different machines and made sure that I had a solid creation process going on. No Hiccups there. I also tried removing my local switch from my test server, putting the server and client together on a switch within the network and putting them on a Dlink router completely isolated from the network. When this last environment did not produce a boot I came to the conclusion that it was not a network problem. I thought long and hard about what the issue could possibly be...

I checked the whole system over and over... I made a new image (again), I redid the configuration of the Netboot server (again) I also made sure that there were Netinstall and Netboot packages and that if I OPTION booted my Mac I could see an image available. Everything was pointing to A-Ok but still... I could not boot the image. It would see the server, start loading the image and then Kernel Panic. Everytime.

I worked on this late in to last night with no luck and again this morning. I finally decided to start at the most basic level. Making sure that I had not screwed this up in any way. That's when I saw it... In order to load the images, you need a specific set of folders setup in the /Library level.

/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0

My problem, and the only problem in getting those dang images to load... a Capital B.

I had written it out /Library/Netboot/NetBootSP0

I changed the B and tried again... Instant success. I'm glad I figured it out but I'm so annoyed that I was temporarily beaten by a lowercase letter.

Anyways, the final issue of booting this image across the 5 subnets I have and then to a whole other studio was still present. Bombich provided an answer to that in a simple little application. Now both studios can boot various install and NetBoot images from my server with ease. I am so Happy.

Now, after the baby comes ( 6 Days ) I can go back to work and see if I can get a dual boot system working on this.

I'll make sure to get a fresh bottle of Advil.

11

There are 11 days left till Kate's due date. We got rid of our dresser and cabinet in the bedroom today in preparation for new shelving coming from my Parents during their visit tomorrow. They are coming over from the island for a day trip and we are going to be hitting up IKEA and then dinner with Kate's family at The Vancouver Club. Gordon has invited all of us out to the event and it should be fun.

I look down at the private pool and exercise areas of the club from work and have always though it looked pretty swanky, what with it's Valet parking and all. So a buffet dinner in a suit should be an interesting experience for sure.

As we near the time of the 4 (new baby) Sebastian is getting away from us a little. I notice that we are spending less time doing his stuff and more time doing... well nothing really. WE are eating crap, feeling like crap, the house smells like crap and all kinda behaving like crap. Kate and Sebastian have been having some issues this week but Kate is also learning from this book she picked up some great techniques for handling Sebastian's behaviour. All in all I think that she is doing great with him and herself. I on the other hand need some training and I also need to get back to playing with him. I have been kinda neglectful of late and it's driving me a little batty when I do spend time on his level. I feel I am out of tune and I just expect him to play by my rules and do the things he's always done. This is obviously not the case and I end up feeling frustrated and exhausted.

I think the combinations of Eating better, reading anything to exercise my mind and playing with him instead of playing to kill the time before bed will really help us to restrengthen our bond and connect again in the way we used to.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not like we are at odds. We both still play together, he listens to me and helps me and I listen to his requests and feelings and try to respond in a kind, caring and constructive way. I know that we both still have immense love for each other and that it the most important thing. He is only 2.5 and I'm still Dad and he is still my boy and that is what it is... fantastic.

We hit the coffee shop, beach and playground this morning and had a great time doing each. He was pleasant and polite to the coffee lady, fun and interesting at the beach and also very inquisitive and understanding. He was looking for crabs and found a crab leg. He asked what happened to the rest of it. I pointed out to a heron standing in the shallows. I told him that one of those birds probably ate the crab. That some animals eat other animals as part of nature. He seemed to think about it for a second, a little distressed but with a look of understanding. Next thing I knew we were off to look at a big rock a few feet away.

After we hit up a school playground near Gordon's new house and had some quick play. He was counting off all of the numbers on the hopscotch and other games drawn all over the inner courtyard of the playground. Then we played on the grounds and took the rain soaked slide once before leaving. It was honestly (especially the beach) some of the best fun I have had in a while. I don't remember the last time he and I just went out and did something that wasn't (again) to kill time.

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.