Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Worked from home
I acted like a big lazy bum today and stayed in bed until 9am. So since I was late already and did not want to be even later I decided to work from home. Of course, that meant I had to work later to get my regular work day in. Not really a great plan.

Other than that, a pretty uneventful day. My wife has been done almost two days now, and we have yet to go out to eat. That may not seem a big thing to you, but last time my wife went out of town we were eating out every meal. So a great improvement there.

Apparently my mother-in-law is "rallying" and is not doing as badly as before. It is a good thing, but that brings a different set of decisions to be made. I don't envy them. On the plus side, I got to chat with my wife today, so it was good.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:31 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
First night alone
Okay, so I am not alone in the house as my daughters are here. But I am thinking about my bed where I will be sleeping alone since my wife left today to go care for her ailing mother. We did get to talk to her late tonight and she sounded good. All of her flights were late but she did not miss any connections.

I took part of the day off to take my wife to the airport. Of course today was the first day that we had the first snowfall of the season. Fortunately, it did not snow enough to really hamper traffic although we saw one car that had skidded off the highway into the grass median.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 9:24 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Sunday report
Being Sunday, the morning was busy: getting ready for church, practicing the songs to be done at church, setting up the microphones on the mixing console I have rented to try at the church, and then of course taking everything down after the service.

We then went out for lunch as the girls were hungry. After coming back from lunch and taking my older daughter to work, we came back home and watched the football game. No, not the Grey Cup - even though Montreal was playing. I must confess I completely forgot it was on. The game we watched was the Giants-Seahawks game played in Seattle. It was a good game - after all our team won. But you have to wonder how much longer that luck is going to stay with them. The Seahawks won in overtime after the Giants were not able to convert on three different field goal opportunities to win the game. Maybe it is time to jump back on the Seahawks bandwagon now that they are 9-2 so far this season and have the best record in the NFC.

My wife is leaving on Tuesday to go down to help with her dying mother. Her liver cancer - which could not be treated - is progressing to the point that they do not think it will be much longer. I know it will be a difficult time for her and I know I will keep her (and her mother, as well as her siblings) in my prayers.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:53 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Busy day
Well Saturday was a pretty busy day. It started early around 9am and I spent most of the morning fixing and updating the slide presentation for the church service Sunday morning. Then it was off to church to set up the mixing console I have rented to try and give the church access to more microphones than the one there at the moment (this does not include the wireless mike the minister uses). As I should have known, the mike wiring at the church is exactly opposite to what it is on the mixing console so I had to go back to the store to get connectors to get everything working. Of course, one of the connectors I got (a last minute replacement since they did not have the one I needed) would not work - so the one mike that was on the podium would not work with the mixing console and had to be removed until I get the right connector.

Then after that we went and watched "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". I enjoyed the movie even though they had to make some changes to the story for the sake of fitting the book in the time allotted. Still, very enjoyable. We then went out to have a bite to eat - not a whole lot since we were still full of popcorn.

Then it was back home to rest for a little while and then work on the slide presentation for the singsong at the church. And now it is time to update the blog and go to bed.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 1:10 AM | Permalink | 0 comments
Friday, November 25, 2005
Three for three
Okay, so I am living vicariously through my children - sue me. I am feeling pretty good today as my younger daughter (with the rest of the family in tow) went to her High school to pick up a scholarship: the Esquimalt Good Citizen scholarship - $500. And that means that all three of my children received scholarships when they graduated from High school. Now I know I did not have a lot to do about the result, but I cannot help but be proud of what my children accomplished. Of course, it goes without saying (but I will say it anyway) that I am very proud of them.

Slow day at the office today since I actually have time to write this entry while at the office. And a quiet day as well even though it was fairly busy this morning while trying to make sure that all of the tape robots had enough spare capacity to last the weekend.

Good afternoon!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 3:16 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Office bound
After taking both Monday and Tuesday off I went back to work Wednesday. Nothing special to report, just the usual run of the mill problems.

My wife's injuries are healing; she has been doing more stuff around the house. She even went shopping today - but she did take advantage of the store's motorized chair to make her shopping easier.

Finally got around to watching "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and I must confess that I do not think I would have missed much had I not seen it. We rented it a week and a half ago and finally got around to watching it mostly because keeping it for another couple of days would have meant that we were buying the movie. I think most of use subconsciously knew this was not going to be a great movie which is why we were not really keen on watching it. Oh well...

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:58 AM | Permalink | 0 comments
Monday, November 21, 2005
Day off
My wife tripped and fell on Friday afternoon and wrenched her right knee and banged up her lower right leg as well so she has been spending most of her time in bed. Although it is getting better, she is not yet well enough to venture up and down the stairs. Which means that I am staying home today since we are having the kitchen floor redone. We had been waiting quite a while for it so we could not reschedule. And who am I to turn down a day off?

Good day!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:17 AM | Permalink | 0 comments
Saturday, November 19, 2005
I gotta learn to keep my phone off
This is another one of those days where I wonder why I turned my work cell phone on. I did not have to as I am not on call. But because I did, I found out that our main backup server was having trouble with the disk drive that houses the catalog database - the information about all the backups. I waited a while to see if someone would call, but no one ever did. So I decided to go in and work on the problem.

I guess I could have called the "on call" person; but 1) I don't think she has the expertise to deal with a disk problem on Solaris, and 2) The laptop was required to access the disk array and I was the one with the laptop. (Note to self, find out what it is that Wendy did before becoming part of our group - maybe she does have Solaris experience).

Anyway, I have so far spend 4.5 hours working on that problem, and it's not over. We still have to replace the drive. The replacement drive was shipped to my house (there is no one to receive [sign for] packages at the office after hours and on weekends) and I am now waiting for the Sun Engineer to call me so we can make our way to the site to replace the drive. The engineer is busy on another call until hopefully 12:30am, although it could take as long as until 2am. We are all hoping for the earlier time.

On the home front, we have been pondering moving our phone to the new Shaw Digital phone offering. That should save us about $10/month over our current phone bill (from Telus) and on top of that we get unlimited calling to anywhere in Canada and the US - anytime. I went to the Telus store to see if they had something similar to offer; after all I have been a Telus customer for something like 30 years. But no, they have nothing - the current plan we are on is the best one for calls to the US. I guess it's bye bye Telus.

Well I better go spend a little time with my wife before I had to head out the door to replace the disk drive.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:40 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Friday, November 18, 2005
Lazy way to make an entry
"I'm tired and I want to go to sleep." I think that it is a song lyric - if not it should be. Anyway this is how I feel right now so I am going to cheat. The way I feel today is pretty much described in the entry I made in my other blog: Christian Life and Work. Go have a read there if you're interested.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:59 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Working from home
I woke up late this morning - an hour later than usual - so I decided to work from home instead of going in to the office. That is one of the great things about having broadband internet, I can work at home and everything is pretty much just as if I were at the office. The only bad thing is that my co-workers are not right next door, so I cannot just raise my voice and talk to them.

We drove my older daughter to the ferry tonight; she is going to San Francisco as part of the course she is taking. I hope she will have a great time. Her going out of the country reminds me that I have yet to renew my passport. I better get right on it.

I was going to say it was nice to spend the evening at home, but I guess I just forgot that I went to choir practice tonight. I have been doing a lot of overtime these last couple of weeks so it feels like I have not been home much. Since this is not my week to be on call, I expect that I will have more free time.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:18 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Me, write music?
I have written some music for some words that were lying around the house. Now I only mention this because I have not written music since I was a teenager some 35 years ago. It just came to me while I was reading the words. This is not something I normally do.

Work was okay - nothing to write home about, or even blog about.

Since I spent a good part of the evening letting the creative juices flow (hopefully there are no puddles for anyone to slip in), there isn't much else to say.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:39 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Monday, November 14, 2005
Token entry
All right, this entry is just there because I wanted something under today's date.

After all the activities of the week-end, it was a quiet day at work. My co-worker came back from her vacation, so the group is back to full strength. Now we can get back to some proactive work as opposed to all reactive work.

Great dinner at home tonight: home made enchiladas! Yummm.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:15 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Less work, more results
As I had feared, none of the things I did yesterday made an iota of difference in the backups last night. Those things had to be tried first, though. Just as many jobs failed as had failed the night before. Since I had been told that there did not seem to be any errors on the fabric side of things (all the tape drives are fibre attached), the only thing left to check was the robot itself. One of the drives had a tape stuck in it. Now usually I do not call for service on a weekend - after all that is only one of 24 drives - but since it was the drive through which we were talking to the robot I wanted to play it safe. So I opened a call with IBM and the Field Engineer came and replaced the drive. He also had to reset the library as, for some reason, the control panel on the front had become unresponsive. I do not know which of the two things fixed the bus reset problem, but something did. It is now 8 hours since the library was brought back on line, and I have yet to see a single bus reset (knock on wood).

The ladies of the family are singing in a women's choir, the Avalong Singers, and they are having their fall concert on Sunday. They are singing war songs since this year is the Year of the Veteran. I am looking forward to listening as I have been hearing parts of the songs sung around the house for the last month or so. Should be fun, hopefully....

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:59 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Friday, November 11, 2005
Bus resets
Well this was an eventful day work wise. Yes, I had the day off as Remembrance Day is a statutory holiday here in British Columbia. However, there was a problem with a server (lost a couple of drives) and they needed one drive restored - and they could not wait until Monday. So I spent a good part of the morning starting and then monitoring the state of the restore so I could tell them when it was over. It was also then that I found out that there were a lot of bus resets on the tape drives. Enough of them that Netbackup downed most of the tape drives. That made for an interesting day as I was also trying to figure out why this was happening. I am afraid that I did not figure it out as it seems to still be happening tonight. Should be an interesting day tomorrow.

Well I better get to bed.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:58 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
iPod fund
Since tonight was the first night since my birthday that the whole family (living at home) was at home, I got to get another birthday present - Yay me! When the iPod Nanos first came out I was going on and on about them and how I was going to get myself one - so my present is a box labeled "iPod fund" with some money in it already. I think I will add the money I got from my parents to it so I am already halfway there! Thanks everyone!

We are going through backup tapes as if they were candy. In the last week alone, I have had to put 300 tapes in the robot! That is not a cheap proposition as each tape costs around $70 so you can do the math (and if you cannot, your computer can ). To give you an idea of the amount of tapes we go through in a year, we are budgeting a half million dollars for tapes this year. Like Wow!

My older daughter and I had to go to a meeting tonight so I have not spent much time at home - and it will be the same tomorrow night as I have choir practice (well the rest of the family does too, but in another choir). Maybe I should have saved this comment for tomorrow :)

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:45 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Tired
I don't think I have been getting enough sleep so far this week. As you can see from the posting time of this entry, I am obviously not doing anything about it just yet... And I think my being tired is making it a little harder to find something to say.

Pretty boring day at the office. Another one of my co-workers has gotten a Blackberry; it has taken her less time than it did me to get the Blackberry and also to get the activation password. Either someone has it in for me or someone is trying to teach me something - I'm hoping for the latter myself.

For someone who used to read voraciously, I find it somewhat ironic that I have just had to renew, for the second time, this one paperback I am reading. Which means that I have been reading the same book for 6 weeks now - a paperback of that size would have lasted me maybe 3 hours before. Of course, reading was my main hobby then. Now I have many other things clamoring for a piece of my time. Oh well...

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:25 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Monday, November 07, 2005
Car trouble
After dinner my wife was going to drive me to my meeting and the car refused to start. After trying a few things and getting the gracious help of our next door neighbour, it became obvious that our battery was dying and not carrying enough of a charge to get the car started. Our neighbour came through yet again and drove me to Canadian Tire when I bought a new battery. After installing the battery, the car started up right away. One problem fixed.

Work was actually pretty good - I did get my Blackberry set up so I have changed to my new cell phone. My old cell phone has found a new home with one of my co-workers. This was all part of the greater plan that allowed me to get the Blackberry. I think I will enjoy using my new phone.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:45 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Birthday
Today was a great day. Okay, so maybe I had to do more work related stuff that I had planned, but nevertheless I had a great day. I want to thank all of you who sent me "Happy Birthday" wishes. It make this day very special.

My wife prepared lasagna for my birthday meal - and I must say it was the best lasagna I have eaten in a long time, maybe ever. And since it is the custom in our household that the birthday person does no work, all I had to do was enjoy.

Back to work tomorrow. My co-worker is on vacation this week so it will be fun. Hopefully, I will get the activation password for my new Blackberry this week. I will believe it when I see it.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:29 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Friday, November 04, 2005
And the week ends
This is the end of, overall, a pretty good week. I did get my new Blackberry. On the down side, the Blackberry needs an activation password to set it up - which I have not yet been able to get. So I have a brand new phone, and I cannot do a thing with it. It's like giving a bottle of water to someone who is thirsty, but with no way to open the bottle. Oh well, it looks nice :)

I have been staying too late pretty much every night this last week and I think it is catching up with me. I think I will be going to bed early tonight.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 9:42 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Two for one
Did not really have a good reason to use that title, except for the fact that you are getting one post in two days. Makes no sense - I know.

Not a whole lot happened either at work or at home. Probably the only interesting thing at work is that I am about to get a Blackberry - model 7100r. Yay - a new toy to play with :). We did find out at work that when you update the firmware on tape drives, Windows servers think that they are brand new devices and you have to manually rescan the bus to get them to be recognized. That is the problem we were having last week where most - no all - of our Windows media servers began not being able to mount tapes - and the software decided that the problem was obviously with the tapes and began to freeze them all - thereby making sure there were no scratch tapes left.

On the home front, we got the tire fixed yesterday - as well as the oil changed. I guess the next thing to do will be to get the brakes done - I think they're due.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:36 PM | Permalink | 0 comments