Journal of a Sysadmin

Close to Home

Last night as I sat in front of my computer trying to work out a problem with mailman, I heard a loud bang. Minutes later I could hear a chorus of sirens which lasted at least 15 or 20 minutes.

This morning I read in the Herald that a man died of his injuries from a hit and run at Richmond Road and Sarcee Trail. The person who ran was apprehended and is pending charges.

When I read the news, I felt profoundly sad that a person passed from this world and it was so close to home I could hear the moment of impact that caused his passing. I have no idea who he was, but I can only imagine he had loved ones who will feel his loss so much more than I. Even the thought of this persons suffering is saddening to me.

New Proposed DST change rules

OK, this is BS. Why, WHY are we wasting our extra and short hours in the middle of the f’ing night?

I propose these new simple rules:

• First Friday of March at 3:15pm we spring forward one hour thus shortening our work day on that Friday.
• First Friday of November Fall back one hour at 7:00pm thus giving us an extra hour on Friday evening to play or to just go to bed early and catch up on sleep.

With these new rules it will help with the, I’m so f’ing tired this morning I can’t function on that Monday after spring forward. Likely I won’t be able to function properly until at least Wednesday evening.. If I get enough coffee.

How did that happen?

This morning I took Jonah to daycare as usual, we parked the van and he had to walk through the snow (le neige) on our way into the daycare.

His group, le Papillon, were getting ready to go to the washroom. We hung up his coat, he gave me a hug and a kiss and as his group sped off he joined them. They were all jumping and laughing.

The sight of him being a little boy with all of ses amis était belle et joyeuse.

Notre fils, il est beau. Our son is beautiful and it makes my heart joyous.

99% effort 1% motivation

The gym is really hard this time around.

Last time I started a 12 week cycle there were a lot of things different. Head space wise. I know things aren’t right because of the cleaning and the caring about certain things including what I eat and drink. I see my weight going up but… *sigh* I wonder if I care?

So yesterday I went into the gym for cardio and it was *everything*, every last ounce of what I had, to spend a 1/2 hour breathing and sweating. My legs actually felt weak afterwards… This time last year an hour and I didn’t feel like this. Hell, I ran the CCC 10k in September and didn’t feel like that after.

So it took 99% of my effort to move my 1% motivation. Today I was going to try and get into work early (7:30ish) and go do my upper body workout before work so that I could play soccer at lunch. What am I doing? I feel like a slug, I have zero motivation for pretty much anything, and I still have to get the baby ready for daycare and get to work at the crack of 9…

And just when things feel like they could be good, it changes. Life is hard with 1% motivation…

Funny stuff

Saw two bumper stickers this morning, both on the same car (or should I say mini van just like ours).

First one, “why are all the really cool girls lesbian?”

Second one, “Do I look like a fucking people person to you?”

I think I want one of the second sticker for my cubical at work.

iPhones and Upgrades

Had Friday and today off work as we were going dog camping on the weekend. That went well(ish) and today we had to go and do something about phones…

See, we wouldn’t have had to today really except that I had to wash Jaime’s with the HE washer. I guess it washes phones as well as it washes cloths, as it washed the good out of it. The phone is now only usable as a wedge type door stop (the razor is too small to use as a coaster).

Of course, as soon as her phone went missing my phone decided too completely croak so a good part of the day was spent digging around finding papers and deciding what phone and plan to get Jaime. We then proceeded to go to the Fido store and pickup a new Z310 for me (to replace the dead one) and an iPhone for Jaime…

All the hype I think is worth it. The phone seems solid and she’s posted to flickr, facebook, and now her journal. Mail works, we works and most importantly the phone actually works. Visual Voicemail btw is kind of cool, integrating the iPhone with voicemail so that you can navigate your voicemail from the phone menu instead of having to call it. Nice feature.

Data plans still suck here. Currently we are on the limited time offer $30 6G plan. Hopefully it goes down from that.

Tonight I upgraded all 4 installs of WP here. I’m happy to report that my diff and patch method still works!

Yay, it means 3 minutes instead of 15 per journal!.

Happy Fathers Day to me

Fathers Day 2008 came and has almost gone and it marks something I think is special to me.

I’ve been a father for 20 years.

It was a great day, with a breakfast at my favorite breakfast establishment in the city (Nellies in the Loop), a good bike ride, gardening, and a quiet evening (so far).

As a dad I’ve been OK. I’ve been there at least, well mostly, ish. It was hard early on with 3 boys and me having so much luggage. Now it’s completely different.

I only wish I could change things that I did not do then. I would have tried much harder to be more responsive for them, and to play, and to take them out, and to camp and fish and hike. Things that I have always enjoyed but at that point in my life couldn’t even begin to think of. To me it was all hidden and there was very little Joy except I must admit from them, from my kids.

I worked, sometimes 20 hours a day (mostly from home). I didn’t really cook for them, I let them play outside on their own and sometimes they got into trouble. It’s not that I was a bad dad, I just had a lot of issues myself and to work through them took time… It has taken time.

By the time I realized what I was doing wrong it was too late for the two oldest boys, they had their ways set and although I try to get past damaged bridges which were not completely burned it’s hard. The third son, maybe it’s OK maybe it’s not but he doesn’t have some of the issues his older brothers had. They are now growing into more thoughtful beings although they are still a distance from that magical “34″, the supposed age where people actually become mature. I wonder if I’m even there yet…

Now it’s time for a forth son and a lot of change has happened since 1988. My world has gone from chapter 1 page 12 to… Well I’m not really sure but I hope it’s someplace south of the middle still.

We evolve so much as we age and travel down our chosen paths, and sometimes those changes take years and years. Finally at the end we will be able to SUM() our life’s changes and when all the ++’s and –’s are done we will know our score. From the time I first held Anthony until Jonah was born I had become a different person twice, once diving in and another coming back up to the surface in total taking a course of 18 years with many of them in places I will never visit again. And never have want to.

And I still evolve. I still try to evolve.

Jaime has helped, and continues to help. She sees things in a vastly different way then I and shows me as best she can how things don’t have to be “this way” or “that way”. She really does deserve most of the credit for the changes I have surprisingly sometimes taken over the last 2 years. As a father my attitudes towards parenthood have evolved from very “old school” to a far more holistic view; My entire being has been evolving that way for years.

This could be called Adult Education Unschooling.

And we know so much more now then 20 years ago.

And I will continue to learn, I must continue to learn.

And Jaime, Anthony, Richard, Connor, and little Jonah will continue to teach, I do hope they continue to want to teach me.

I love you all, and thank you all so much.

Snowboarding with…

jhb!

For the first time since she was preggers with Jonah we were able to go boarding together today. Since she wasn’t working, I wasn’t working, and little J was in daycare we went west and got a few runs in. She’s getting good too. We had lunch in the rather cramped lodge (a lot of people out today) and put a few runs in then drove home again. Long drive, well worth it.

Any time we get to spend time boarding together it’s great!

Babies Grow

Speaking of Jonah and presents he’s changing almost every day right now. jhb and I couldn’t figure out why he has been so restless lately and now we know.

He is learning to talk.

It’s preoccupying so much of his brain at the moment that he couldn’t even sleep right for a while. Now it’s getting better but it is so funny and so cute to see him imitating us and his big brother while we go about our daily lives. On Sunday before I took Connor up, he was helping Connor with some shoes. Connor was saying, “Dads shoe, Jaime’s (to which jhb yelled MOMMY’s) ^W mommy’s shoe, Connors shoe” to which Jonah replied, “SHOE!”.

There have been other things, Mommy and Daddy are more frequent and correctly targeted, puppy, kitty, num num (food), counting, up a couple of times. A lot of other things.

So many things.

First Evar

Today is my first ever holidailies posting, and in a style which is true to form, it’s a day late.

I only came to know about holidailies after I met my now wife Jaime. Some things this woman didn’t tell me about are the piles of yarn she will accumulate, the knitting needle sets she will have to buy, or the way she is part of this online cult^H^H^Hlub which posts miscellaneous bits of their lives for google to index and remember until the matrix swallows us all. I did know that she was an avid journal-mistress but I was unaware of the extent of her mistrossity.

Every other year she has made a fairly solid effort but last year she had problems doing holidailies as she was also dealing with being a new mommy, which is a lot of work in itself, and trying to organize all of us for a vacation to paradise to see her parents for Christmas. She had lots to post about, just no time or energy to manage it. This year I thought I would help.

I made a deal with her that I would attempt to also post every day, kind of a "keep up with the husband’" thing because she secretly loves to be challenged that way (at least in my mind…). So it came to be that yesterday was December 1, 2007 and it has slipped my mind how I was going to post and get my post out first and then use that the bait her into getting her post up before midnight…

So far it’s backfiring when last night around 1am I was reminded that I needed to write my post. I saw her post scroll past my RSS ticker line in my browser while I was at work, so now I’m playing catch up.

Her mistrossities online journal-world is now formally introduced to her husband. Please, have mercy on me and accept yet another journal owner who can’t meet his own self imposed deadlines.