What's new? Not much thanks. What's new with you?

Not too too much.

Was told yesterday that my last day is actually Wednesday and not Thursday as originally promised. I'm kindof sad about that. As you all know (if you read this crap at all), I really love my job and the company I work for, so taking a day away from me is like shortening my vacation. I'd rather keep the days thanks. That said, I could go in the extra day but won't but whatever.

So Wednesday is going to be a sad and boozy day. Thursday I'll go back to the office and collect my things as well as the things I'm buying from the company. I'm buying my Aeron chair. Look it up, ahh, here, I'm too good to you. We have a bunch of them at work, and they're allowing us to buy them and for the price they're asking, I'll never, ever be able to buy a better chair, so yeah, I'm buying mine. And I'll pick it up on Thursday.

Today is Saturday, so again, if you read this crap at all, you'll understand when I say that I bought Wall-E. Watched it tonight with the kids (not that I bought it for the kids, I love it for myself) and it was excellent. I think its the best of Pixar's movies so far.

I also bought an Airport Extreme Wireless base station today too. Had an old gift card for Future Shop and was going to get it when the office was built, but given that we've been having wireless problems, I thought I'd get it now. I already had/have an Airport Express, and it extends the range of an Airport Extreme base station so it was a logical choice. Funny but I've had wireless for many years and have struggled with the range of the networks. Our house is older and is quite large and is all on one floor. So some of the other wireless routers I've had over the years have had range extenders, the problem with them is that when you use them, the extender becomes a different network. So if the family room has a signal, it might be on a network called steve but when you install an extender, it needs to be it's own network, , so you might call it steve1. Well when you move from room to room, you need to disconnect from steve and connect to steve1. Not acceptable.

Apple's Airport is the only one that allows you to have range extenders (called Airport Express) that just extend the range of your network without them becoming a different network altogether. Email me if you want to full picture. As usual, Apple have really thought this thing through and although it certainly wasn't as easy to set up as promised it sure works well. Airport Express'es have a whole other bunch of really cool features too, look it up if you like. No, do it yourself. Dammit, here! I really do care too much.

Having a few glasses of wine tonight, that's something of an exception for me too. I don't usually drink at home.

My project for when I'm out of work (apart from my office construction project and finding a new job) is to digitize all of our video. We started shooting video before our first son was born, and he's now 7. I've never done anything with all the video, but now it's time. I have a project in mind called my son, from 0 to 5 in 5. A 5 minute video of his first five years. I want to do this for my second son too and he's 5 in February,  so I'd better get my thumb out and get busy.

End of line...

Post op redux

Doing pretty well after surgery last week.

Back at work now, not walking too well or too far, as it's uncomfortable, not painful at all, just uncomfortable.

Catching up on all my blog entries, one good thing about not moving too far or too fast.

One of my good friends leaves this week. If you read this at all, you know that my last day is coming up soon too. It's not really sunk in I suppose, but it is now, with my friend leaving. Soon for me, about a week.

My wife has been fantastic about my surgery. It's not like I've been unable to move, but she is aware of how uncomfortable it is for me to do much and has just taken over my normal duties. She's great and I love her.

Had some problems with our wireless at home this week so I'll take a look at it this weekend.

Wall-E is released on DVD this week! Going to buy that on the weekend for sure!

Signed up for a Twitter account this week too. Can't decide if I like it or not. Actually, I guess I can. It's almost worse than FaceBook (and I hat (no, not hat, hate), FaceBook, although I use it most days) and I've already got more than a dozen people following me and me following them. Don't see it lasting long though.

Hmm, what else? Been busy at the office. Trying to wrap stuff up. Also trying to build a website for a new Freelance Mac Consulting venture - VanMacGuy.com - not having much creative success though (you checked it out right? Told you). I got the domain and all the tech stuff is done and working, but I really am not inspired -  creatively speaking. Never had much of a creative eye, but I did used to have more than I have now. Wonder what that's all about?

End of line (for now)...

Looking for a job

We all know that my last day at my company is coming up soon. So I'm looking for another job, right.

Well I finally landed an interview, and had it yesterday. It went well, I was interviewed by one person and then by two. The interview with the first person went well I thought, we connected well and got along fine.

The second interview was with an engineer and a consultant and I wasn't so happy with it.

But we'll see what happens. The company is a real tech company, and I would be the only IT guy, which would be really great, I'd be able to run the whole IT show and I'd really like that.

No idea what's going to happen (obviously) and I hope I get it, but we'll see.

End of line...

Post-op

Well, I had some guy-surgery the other day.

90 minutes of surgery, 3 hours of post-op recovery, a lifetime of getting used to the difference.

Not comfortable telling the whole world what I had done, but the recovery is painful and uncomfortable. Fine if I'm hanging around home in a robe, but when I have to wear clothes, umm, not so much.

Anyway, as the Urologist said, hurts for a while, but not forever, right?

I honestly believe that daytime TV is mostly responsible for Post-Partum Depression. It's horrible! New Mothers that are at a loss for what to do and switch on the TV are *going* to get depressed. It has to happen. So when a new Mother starts a conversation with "today, on Oprah", help her, reach out stand guard.

End of line...

Linky linky

It's a link-type day today.

Firstly, I must have one of these! Talk about improving my weekends! Pity I can't afford it and probably never will.

I always enjoy a good dig at Microsoft. "There are just some sites that no-one should ever visit", love it.

Some 'demo reels' from the guys I've been working with. First one here and the other one here. More of these to come later. Such talent...

Poor Facebook dude. Idiot.

And finally... The Earth on the Jesus phone. Sweet.

End of line.

General stuff for today

My bad back is back - with a vengeance. It got worse again on Friday, this time only my right side, and continued on until on Sunday afternoon I was walking with a limp (limp what you might ask...?) and my right leg was going numb.

Got no sleep Sunday night, lots of drugs and came to work late. I'm trying to get in to see someone, massage, chiropractor, anyone to no avail. I'm seeing my Doctor this afternoon though. So we'll see what happens.

Now then, glasses. I finally found and ordered some new ones. Got them from Lens Crafters of all places. The LC in Metrotown has a huge selection. I went for top-of-the-line everything lenses-wise. Should have them in 2 weeks or sooner.

They also have a 30 day money-back guarantee in case I don't like them. They were 650 all told, but that's just what they cost.

We have house-guests this week. Rhylin's Mum and her friend are here for the birth of Mum's friend's grandchild. So home is busy.

Going out on Friday night. A friend of mine from work is leaving both the company and the city and is heading back to Trawna. So there is a huge group going out for drinks. Should be a fun and drunken night. Look out for hangover on Sat AM.

End of line.

Glasses update

So, I went to order said glasses today.

As I was being measured for the new top-of-the-line-you-really-must-have-these lenses, the woman behind the counter was tallying up my bill.

That's 1158 in total, she said. Umm, I said, I was told 849 yesterday. Oh, that's without the frames at 309 was the reply.

I asked the woman doing the measuring to stop as there's no way that either my wife would approve 1150 for glasses, or that I would pay 1150 for glasses.

When I got the price, I asked for all-inclusive. WTF do I care about the cost of the lenses on their own?

Boy!

RAW

So, people 'in the know' have told me that once I started taking digital pictures in the RAW format, that I would love it.

Last weekend I decided to give it a try and yes, they were right, I loved the results.

Here's a link to my Mac.com gallery containing the RAW images.

Enjoy.

Glasses

Went for an eye test today. I did this for a number of reasons.

Firstly, my currently glasses are getting scratched, or are already scratched to be more precise.

Secondly, I've noticed that my vision is getting worse, particularly without glasses.

And finally, due to my leaving this company, I want to make the most of my benefits before I leave.

So, I had them tested and found that they have indeed deteriorated since my last exam and that my glasses are no longer as useful as they were.

After the test, I took a look for new glasses, and found some. I have a wide head (must be to contain all the brains?) and so a lot of frames don't fit. The glasses stores in Vancouver must cater to smaller people than me. 

Now for a little history lesson.

When I was growing up in England, our Health Care Service was called the National Health Service or NHS for short. The NHS would give you glasses so you didn't need to buy them, but they only had one style. When I was younger and not nearly as nice as I am now, I and others could always tell when a kid came from a poor home because he/she would wear 'NHS frames'.

So, forward on to today. NHS frames actually turned out to be exactly the same frames as Rayban Wayfarers. And dammit all if those shape frames weren't the ones I picked out today?

So, I'm going to be wearing glasses that I wouldn't have been seen dead in when I was a kid. 

Glasses who's wearers were mocked when I was a kid. 

And I'll be paying 850 for them, when people I mocked got them for free.

Dumb, huh?

Oh well, best get back to work so I can afford to pay for them...

Post-interview

Well it turns out that it wasn't an interview after all but was a meet n' greet.

It was good though, I got to meet the owner and we discussed his need for a full-time Macintosh Admin and the requirements that he has in the coming months and years. It sounds like I will have to do more than just consider a freelance-type role if I want to stay in the Macintosh field.

That said, I applied for a Windows Systems Administrator position this afternoon. Eeew. I had to reach for the wet wipes as soon as I sent the message as I felt so dirty. But I spent years in Windows and can do all that stuff standing on my head and the position was for a mixed Windows/Mac Administrator, so it might be great! We'll see if I even get a call back.

Later people.

Interview today

Today I have an interview. It's my first one since officially looking for work this time. 

I'm calling it an interview anyway, although the person I'm meeting with is calling it a meeting to determine whether a 'fit' exists or now.

The company is a Vancouver-based Video Post-Production facility that handles some TV movies and documentaries. They are quite well-known and have been around for a number of years.

The fit is going to come because they are a 100% Macintosh company and are in the process of deploying an Apple XSAN. I really hope they're deploying XSAN 2 and not XSAN 1.4, XSAN 1.4 is horrible. It's probably (in my opinion) one of the worst pieces of software to come out of Apple and I'm sure they purchased it and just dumped it out - it doesn't display any of Apple's normal usability features and stability at all.

Anyway, lets hope today goes well and that there is indeed a fit for me. Then I can stop thinking about trying to find another job and go and work somewhere that I can set up from scratch instead of inheriting others design characteristics. It's always better to do the whole thing yourself, although it's not always possible.

Good luck to me.

Restore a Mac from a .dmg (Disk Image)

I'm a Mac guy. I'm a Mac guy at home and professionally I'm a Macintosh Systems Administrator.

I learned something today that I wanted to share with my loyal readers.

I needed to take the hardware back from a team and replace it with a different machine but with the same software. The machines in question are both iMac's. And here's how to do it without having to rebuild it.

Use Super-Duper to take a full disk image of the old machine and save it to an external FireWire drive.

Connect the FireWire drive to the new machine, insert the OSX Install DVD and reboot the machine with the Option key held down, once it's up, select the DVD and continue as if you were doing an install. 

Once you get past the first couple of screens, select Utilities and Disk Utility.

In Disk Utility, both the volumes Macintosh HD (or whatever the local Boot volume is called) and the FireWire drive will be listed.

In Disk Utility, click on the current boot volume and click Restore.

Next to the Source input field, there is a button called Image. Click it and navigate to the FireWire drive and find the Disk Image you put there. Click the Image and click OK.

In the Destination input field, just drag the current boot volume from the left pane of Disk Utility.

Make sure you select the Erase destination check box, and then click Restore.

You'll get a progress bar that will tell you how long it will take. Once it's finished, there will be no message, but you'll see that the progress bar has gone away. Quit Disk Utility and quit the installer. When the installer is exiting, it will give you a few options. The one you need is to select the Startup Disk. Select the Macintosh HD volume that you just restored to and continue the restart process.

Once it comes back up, you'll have the same hardware, but a new install which will be the same as the image.

Simple, huh?

A little girl!

I know I said I would post more last week but everything happened so fast and I didn't have access to my Mac so...

We had a baby girl. At 5:44PM on September 5, little Lenaya Margaret Bailie was brought into the world. She weighed 9 lbs 2 oz at birth and has all 10 fingers and all 10 toes.

Here she is.

Both Mother and Baby are doing well. We all came home from the hospital on Saturday afternoon and Lenaya had her first public appearance on Saturday evening at our neighborhood block party.

Cheers.

Contractions every five minutes...

My wife just called with contractions every 5 minutes.

She's calling the hospital right now to see what she should do.

More news later when I get some.

False labour?

My wife reported this morning that she was in 'false labour'. It began at about 3AM, and the reason it's called false labour is that while the contractions were pretty much equally spaced, they were of different durations.

In real labour, the contractions are evenly spaced but get consistently longer, this wasn't the case.

Still, this false labour may be a precursor to real labour? Let's hope so.

More news as I get it...

Hmm... Redux

No more activity I'm afraid.

We thought that might have been it yesterday but nope.

So we're still holding for launch!

Interesting evening last night. I went for drinks with the other Systems people from my company. As mentioned earlier a lot of people have been laid off, so last night when I was out with them I realized that of the 13 people that were there, I was the only one that didn't have a job with the company after November. Felt a little odd I have to say.

More soon.

Hmm...

My wife just emailed and reported pelvic pressure...

Is today the day...?

Let's see how good medical science is shall we?

Regular readers (right) will know that my lovely wife is pregnant.

We've been expecting a new addition any time now, but the Doctors all said that the due date was September 2. The other two children we have had together have been a few days early and that's what we expected this time too but no, this one is reluctant to debut.

So let's see when it actually happens shall we?

Later.

As reported earlier... Oasis

I saw Oasis at GM Place last night. They were awesome as usual.

Oasis are not a band that I would tell everyone to go and see just for the show. But if you're a fan of their music, even in a small way, then you should go and see them. It's rare that you see *everyone* in the audience singing along to every word. It happens with Billy Joel, but Oasis fans nail it every time.

They played all the favourites and 4 new songs. The new songs sounded good too.

Well worth the ticket price and GM Place is a great venue too.

Very kewl.

Soon.

New job required...

Yes, the company I work for has laid me off. Actually, me and a bunch of other people.

They're reorganizing and a lot of us had to go. I am not mad, or upset with them at all. I completely understand.

All I am in fact is sad. I have really enjoyed my relatively short stay here (been here since December '07) and really enjoy my job and the people I work with.

They've been pretty much the only company that treats it's employees as adults, and I shall miss that most I think.

We've all been given three months working notice and the company has said that we can use as much time as we need to find other jobs. Our HR department has started 'reverse recruiting' so they're all working to try and get us hired by other companies. They're sending around postings and contact information for all kinds of other companies.

They're treating us all very well (why does that sound like a message from a hostage?).

But I still have to find another job. Sigh.

Later.