Sunday, April 30, 2006
Changes went okay?
Network services was moving the backup infrastructure at 1515 to its own dedicated network this morning during the Sunday morning change window. Which of course meant that I received a lot of pages and got called because of the incidents opened. I had foolishly gone to bed at 2am the night before and was awaken an hour earlier than planned by the phone call. Of course I missed the call because it took me that long to get my act together since I was just waking up. On the plus side, it would appear that the move was successful.

I did spend a little time, both before and after church, making sure things were going the way they were supposed to and closing most of the incidents that were opened.

The rest of the day was spent sitting in front of a computer (I moved from the Linux computer to the WinXP laptop to do the "Da Vinci Code" puzzle on Google). It is a contest but I do not think it is opened to Canadians - at least I did not see anything that would have indicated it - I play only to solve the puzzles.

Well tomorrow is going to come pretty quickly if I don't get to bed soon. It would be nice if I got enough sleep for a change...

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:37 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Not consistent
As I mentioned yesterday, I have been playing with the online word processor Writely. One of its feature is the ability to post your document to your blog. Unfortunately that feature is not the most consistent. I have tried 3 times now to post and only once have I been successful. It is apparently due to Blogger as it is definitely the one blogging site that has the most comments in the Writely Forum.

I had a pretty good day until I found out that the person that was supposed to prepare the powerpoint presentation for church tomorrow decided not to do it which left me in the position of having to do it myself unless I was okay with no overhead for church. Of course, that was simply not an acceptable solution for me so I spent the time required to get the slides ready. Which explains why I am still up at 1:40am.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 1:44 AM | Permalink | 0 comments
Friday, April 28, 2006
A new toy to play with!
I had heard of this online word processor called Writely and had been meaning to try it out. When I got around to do that, it turned out that the company had been bought by Google and they had decided to close registrations while they moved their infrastructure to Google. So I figured I would have to wait until they re-opened registrations.

Well today it dawned on me that since existing members could invite people to collaborate on documents, there was a possibility that there were people offering invitations. And it turns out that I was right. I found someone who was offering invitations and asked nicely; and Voila! I am now a member of Writely. Yeah!

Apparently it is possible to use Writely to make a blog entry. So I am writing this entry in Writely and hoping I can figure out how to get that transferred.

Update: I have not been able to get that working, so I just copied and pasted for the time being.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:31 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Nothing to talk about?
I sometimes toy with the idea of not making an entry whenever I do not think there is anything worth mentioning in my day. But then I worry that I will get into the habit of not making an entry and soon would not be making any entries at all. So to prevent it I make entries like today that really do not say much at all.

Oh right, food news: tonight's supper was beef stir fry. Very yummy. I ate entirely too much - should not have had that second helping. But there was still left so I get to take some to work tomorrow. Should be very good then.

I had choir practice tonight so I did not spend a lot of time at home; but choir practice was fun.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:16 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Pretty quiet day
Today was supposed to be the great backup infrastructure move, but it was postponed at the last minute as the network environment is not ready to have our backup servers move to their new location. A lot of work has to be done on the weekend before we can move. If the weekend work is successful, then the move of our backup stuff will go ahead on May 3rd.

Since our big move was postponed, I did not have a lot to do today that was out of the ordinary which of course made for a pretty normal day. And of course that is a good thing; for some reason the changes were are making these days are being done by other members of the team. Therefore I can sit back and just be available for questions/help, and to continue monitoring the part of the infrastructure that is not being changed at the time.

I had a meeting tonight so I did not spend a lot of time at home this evening. We did go out for dinner at Mayfair Mall so that we would not be rushed to get dinner on the table because of the meeting. That made for some quality family time, something that there is never too much of.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:20 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Monday, April 24, 2006
Still not done
Before the beginning of April, we were spending about an hour a day every weekend to monitor what the backup environment was doing. Since the beginning of April, we have moved to a model where there is always somebody on-call during non-business hours. While this is a step in the right direction, I do not think that we have the monitoring completely set up to handle all contingencies.

Take this last weekend for example, we had a server crash Sunday morning around 3am. In the previous model, the person checking the backup environment on Sunday would have realized that the server had crashed and something would have been done about it. What happened this weekend is that nobody noticed that the server was down until Monday morning; not quite the desired result. The server crash was noticed by the monitoring, pages were sent out (but not to the person on call), and an alert was opened but no one was notified. So as you can see there are a few things that need to be addressed and that is one of the things we were doing today.

Very quiet on the home front today. We went out for fast food for dinner and brought back some donut holes. That was probably a mistake as I am sure I will eat the majority of them before they have been in the house for 24 hours - under the pretense that they will be stale if we leave them. Right...

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:23 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Sunday, April 23, 2006
This barely counts as a weekend
After a 4 day weekend, this weekend never had a chance. Only two days? They have gone even before I knew they were there. So here I sit on Sunday evening and it feels like I never had a chance to rest even though I do not really remember doing much of anything for the afternoon. I guess I just need more sleep - and that will happen as soon as I finish updating my blog.

Obligatory food reference: lunch was roast and baked potatoes. Very yummy once again.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:21 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Friday, April 21, 2006
Where has this week gone?
It seems to me like time just flew away all week. Every night by the time I was ready to blog it was way too late to start, so I tried to be good and enough sleep - which meant that I would not make an entry in my blogs.

You would think I would have lots to write about since there has been a dearth of entries this week; but it would appear that I cannot come up with anything. Work was kind of blah this week, so there is nothing much to report on that front. And I think I have already mentioned my problems with the OS install(s) on my workstation. I have been toying with installing the latest beta version of Ubuntu 6.06, but since I installed Fedora Core only 2 days ago I just cannot "waste" more time in trying different distributions on my workstation.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:12 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
The wonders of OS installs
Today I decided that I was going to install the latest version of Ubuntu DapperDrake Flight 6 on my workstation at the office to see how it was. Now I was running Ubuntu BreezyBadger (5.10) on the workstation already, but I decided on a clean install to see how it would work. Unfortunately for me, it did not work very well. For whatever reason, on both tries the install did not install X, or xfonts, or gdm. And even after I installed all those manually, I could not login as the login process seemed to hang after putting up the "Windows manager" icon on the screen. I am now running Fedora Core 5 on my workstation.

One of our dogs apparently developed an allergic reaction to something she ate (or sniffed) yesterday. She was wheezing all the time and sounded really bad. So my wife and younger daughter (it is my younger daughter's dog) went to the vet today and he gave them some anti-inflammatory medication. Vanilla (that's the name of the dog) is feeling much better now so we are all relieved.

I fixed dinner tonight - I went out and brought pizza home. I am a very good cook (hahaha).

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:21 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
This IS a journal
I have been reading comments on Digg and there is always a lot of complaining about people using blogs as a journal. Somehow, they think that everyone should share their knowledge to the world on relevant blogs. Well sorry to disappoint, but all I want to do with my blog is write down about my day and what happens to and around me. But I do not advertise my blog, and only mention it to people who might be interested in what I have to say so if you end up here you were looking for something that matched their search.

And I also mention food, like the great dinner my wife cooked tonight: Ham with scalloped potatoes. Yummy! And I once again ate too much, but when the food is so good it is very easy to do.

I worked from home today, not because I did not feel well, but because I woke up late and missed my bus. I then decided that I would miss too much of the day if I took whichever bus was next. I think I got as much accomplished by working from home than by working at the office. I just had to make a couple of changes to how I monitored things to account for the change of location.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:05 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Hoppy Easter!
I hope everyone had a good Easter. Are you sick of candy yet?

I have had the kind of day I like to have: quiet. Except for church this morning and a couple of quick errands, I have been home all day. Although I can say this time around that I was not on the computer all day. I did spend a couple of hours I guess finishing "The Da Vinci Code". It was an enjoyable book. I have now read 2 books from Dan Brown, the other being "Angels and Demons" and both of them kept me guessing. I have another book of his, "Digital Fortress", and I will be reading it once I finish some of the other books that are ahead of it in the queue.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:16 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Saturday, April 15, 2006
A day of rest, almost
Saturday was almost a perfect day. Almost because of two things:

  1. I found out mid afternoon that I was the one supposed to prepare the presentation for the church service tomorrow; and
  2. My wife had one of the muscles of her right ankle "freeze up" on her and she was in agony, or at least some significant pain, for a good part of the day.

There seemed to be no reason for the muscle problem, and about 5 hours after it started it just went away. Very mysterious...

The family was taken out to dinner at Boston Pizza by my younger daughter (Thanks a million!!). The food was very good, once we all got what we had ordered. My wife (why is she always the one to whom this happens?) was served a wrongly prepared meal. But they were quick to fix the problem when they were made aware of it.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:58 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Friday, April 14, 2006
Good Friday
This Friday was good for a couple of reasons. There is the obvious religious one, and the other is a result of the first one as Good Friday is a statutory holiday. So I was able to get up later than usual and spend most of the day at home.

Of course, I spent most of that time at home on the computer, looking around for a template to update my other blog. Just as the template for this blog, the template was made by Pannasmontana. If you are looking for a template for you Blogger blog, you should go have a look.

And once again, my wife made a great dinner: Beef stir-fry. And once again it was very Yummy.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 9:07 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Still doing okay
I went to the doctor today so that I could get one of my prescriptions renewed. Since the prescription is for high blood pressure, she (yes, my family doctor is a woman) checked my blood pressure and found it to be normal (125/88). Of course, all this means is that the medications I am on are doing their job; I am sure that if I lost 100lbs I would not need to take those pills.

The change window at work went pretty well, except of course for the small problem that we were going to do a large change of tapes to get ready for the 4 day weekend. We forgot that the work being done was changing the fibre switch between the servers and the tape library. And for those of you not familiar with the equipment it meant that we could not communicate with the tape library. That made it impossible to tell the library to eject tapes so we could replace them. That job has now been scheduled for tomorrow.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:09 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Yet another meeting
I had another meeting at the church tonight so I once again spent part of the evening out of the house. I must say though that once again my wife outdid herself for dinner: mushroom quiche. It was yummy!

I spend a good part of the time I was home playing with the look of my desktop. So now it is much later than anticipated (do not let the post time fool you, it is an hour later than is says) and I am still up. Maybe I will just work from home once again for the morning since I have to go to the doctor's office for a routine appointment to get my medication renewed.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:53 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Monday, April 10, 2006
So three blogs is one two many
I think it has now become clear to me that trying to keep a separate blog about work happenings is not going to work. So I will return to including work stuff in this blog.

I do not remember if I mentioned it before, but work has finally decided that we need to have someone on stand-by 24/7. We started this on the 2nd of April as April is the beginning of a new fiscal year at work. Before April we were offering coverage on a "best efforts" basis which basically meant that they would just call everyone on the call list and hope someone would be home and be willing to take on the problem. And I think that pretty much everyone felt that we were being taken advantage of under that system. So at least now we are getting paid for being on stand-by.

I had a long meeting tonight at church so I have not had much time to spend at home. I was home long enough to get dinner: "pigs in a blanket" and fries. Interesting name but very good nevertheless.

Fortunately for me I read more yesterday than I had planned, so not having time to read tonight will not affect my ability to finish the book before I need to return it to the library.

Good Night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:24 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Got some reading done finally
Well it only took a week, but I finally got around to reading today. Of course it is not any of the 4 books I had on the go already, but rather a book I had had on hold at the library for quite a while: "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. The movie by that name is coming out next month and I wanted to read the book before watching the movie. I am enjoying the book so far, and I have spent quite a bit of time reading it. I kind of have to since I have the book on a 14 day loan from the library; the usual loan period for a book that is in demand.

I did not do a whole lot today: went to church, had a great lunch (roast), played some Pogo, and read the book. I played chauffeur for my daughters during the evening but that is it.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:59 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Saturday of rest
I have spent, once again, most of the day plopped in front of the computer. Well that is not quite true. I did go to church for a meeting this morning at 11am with my daughters, and then went out for lunch with the whole family. But since after the lunch, I have been at home working on the computer - well I did play as well.

Since today was Saturday, a good part of the day was getting ready for the Sunday church service. But I did manage to rack up another 10,000 (points, tokens?) on the badge I am doing on Pogo. So I am now 60% of the way to the required number (50,000). I am pacing myself so it should take me another couple of days to finish it.

Supper was Tuna casserole prepared by my wife: another culinary masterpiece!

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:58 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Friday, April 07, 2006
She's home!
My older daughter had been away from home for the last 3 months on a course and today she came back home. We went to pick her up at the airport around 1830 and then drove back into town for a celebratory dinner at Boston Pizza. Once again everyone ate until they were full to bursting and everyone said their food was good.

I did go to work today, not that I really felt like it but it did not really feel bad enough to stay home. The day was okay with nothing much happening out of the ordinary. My co-worker did give me a ride home which turned out to be fortuitous as we needed to leave home earlier than anticipated since my daughter's plane was early.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:58 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Overeating habit
Our younger daughter took us out to what is probably our favourite restaurant: Cafe Mexico. This is the one place where I regularly overeat whenever we go there. I know I should eat less, but stuff is so good there. So I am now being miserable because of it. But it is obviously worth it since I keep going back and overeating again and again.

I stayed home from work again today. I slept through the morning and got up just before noon. I am trying to get to bed earlier than usual again tonight hoping that getting more sleep will help me get better sooner.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:56 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Coming down with a cold?
I was not feeling well this morning so I decided to work from home. I am afraid that I am coming down with a cold, but I am hoping that getting some extra sleep will prevent it.

Another great dinner tonight. This time it was spaghetti. We fixed enough this time that I will be able to have some for lunch tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it already.

I do not have much to write tonight as I want to get to bed early. And hey, maybe I will read in bed for an hour or so. Stranger things have happened!

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 10:21 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
How about no minutes?
I spent a nice evening with my family last night. We went out for dinner at the Four Mile House restaurant and had a very nice meal. My wife and younger daughter had very nice burgers and I had the daily special, Baron of beef, which was very good.

We then went to Blockbuster and rented a couple of movies: "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" and "Touching Wild Horses". We spent most of the evening watching "Narnia". It was a very enjoyable movie.

Which of course meant that there was no time left for me to set aside for reading. I think it is a global plot to keep me from ever reading again...

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:59 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Monday, April 03, 2006
Would you believe 30 minutes?
I know I said yesterday that I should set aside an hour every night for reading. Well it is not going to happen tonight as I have just come back from a long meeting at the church and I do not want to stay up for another hour. So I might limit myself to 30 minutes (if that) tonight.

Oh, I do not want to forget the food report. My wife fixed pork roast and mashed potatoes. There is none of it left; that should give you a pretty darn good explanation as to how good it was (very!).

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:15 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Not reading enough
I was just realizing earlier that I was supposed to read a chapter of a book for church (for a meeting tomorrow night) and had not yet done so. Which led me to realize that I currently have 4 books on the go (a 5th one was sent back to the library as it dawned on me I would never get around to reading it before it was due back) and I have made no progress in any of those books. This is particularly hard to take for someone who used to always have his nose in a book.

Of course nowadays my nose always seems to be about 18 inches away from a computer monitor which leaves little time for reading. The sad thing is that those 4 books I am trying to read are actually very interesting; I wonder why I have not finished them yet. I obviously need to set some time aside - maybe an hour every evening - for reading. I am sure my computer time will not suffer as I have been finding myself more and more just sitting in front of the monitor wondering what to do next. Let's see if I can follow through on this.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:59 PM | Permalink | 0 comments
Saturday, April 01, 2006
This is the weekend right?
Okay so this was actually a pretty good day. I did not get up until almost 11am and then went out to lunch with my wife and younger daughter (compliments of my younger daughter - Thanks a million!) We all ended up having food from Taco Time, and from the comments around the table it was all good.

Spent most of my day on the computer, as usual, but this time spent a good portion of it working on this Wiki site that I think will help me pick songs for singing at church for the pre-service singing. It will probably end up being more useful than for just that, but we will see. I guess the first thing to see is how long I will stay interested in that project.

Well tonight is the night we "spring forward" to Daylight Saving Time. The linked article is quite interesting; I did not know there were so many exceptions even in BC alone. As you will hopefully read in the article, next year Daylight Saving Time will start earlier and end later. Should be interesting to see how that works out.

Good night!
 
posted by Christian Thibodeau at 11:59 PM | Permalink | 0 comments