Tag: personal

Things have been quite busy at work lately, with 14 or 15 hour days not being uncommon. I have finished up one particular project which was causing a lot of that, and I am now focusing my energy on another project which I find if not more interesting at the moment, certainly more enjoyable.

And there is a light—I’m not going to say at the end of the tunnel, but perhaps a crack in the side of the tunnel. I have booked a trip to Edmonton for a few days in November. I’m really looking forward both to the break from work, but more importantly visiting Mike, my friend from Dalhousie. I was also born in Edmonton and the only time that I’ve been back since I was less than a year old was for a week in 1991. Yea, I was nine and I certainly didn’t appreciate it as much as I could have. So this is my chance to soak it in. That soaking may well take place through a camera lens, but so be it. It may well take place in a series of restaurants and pubs as well, and so be that too. :)

So if I don’t post anything before I venture into the heart of coldness that is Edmonton, know that I’m still kicking, but also working away diligently.

I am talking literally high above the earth, as I have now moved into my 28th floor apartment which will be my home for the next couple of months anyway. It has taken me just under two hours of being here to get my Internet sorted out with the provider and to get things like my computer setup. I’m still very much not unpacked, which is what I plan to spend Saturday doing.

Many thanks go out to my aunt, uncle and cousin who helped me move all of my accumulated crap out of my cousin’s place and into this one. I seem to have managed to acquire more than I thought over the past couple of months. If I had spent more than one day packing I might have been able to go through some of the junk that I have and thrown out some of the stuff I don’t need any more. But two car loads were all that it took, and I suspect that with the right car, and careful packing, one car could carry it all. But we had to rush it since I managed to mess up the time I was supposed to meet the owner and get the keys.

The place itself is small, but modern and comfortable. As I may have mentioned, this place as a washer/dryer en-suite, which is a huge convenience. There is also a dishwasher, which I likely won’t use much, but would be nice if I was entertaining a couple of people and didn’t want to wash up myself. The pool and the amazing proximity to the Skytrain are the final two pros that make this place a good spot for me. It’s been a long evening though, and I have to go and spend the first night in my new bed. Photos of the apartment are forthcoming.

The real question is, which half? The organized part of my brain tells me that I have been collecting cards a suit at a time, and that I’m up to two at the moment. Probably clubs and spades at this point in time, because I’m lacking some hearts and diamonds at this point. But in reality it is likely a mixture given my somewhat hectic and random life recently, what with living in five different countries in the past three years.

So if I had to postulate, I would say that I’m holding:

A♣ 2♣ 3♣ 4♣ 5♣ 6♣ 7♣ 8♣ 9♣

2♠ 3♠ 5♠ 6♠ 7♠ 8♠ 9♠ 10♠

3♦ 5♦ 8♦

A♥ 3♥ 4♥ 6♥ 9♥ 10♥

There is a distinct lack of face cards, but I suspect that my upper years will bring more of those. Thanks to everyone who has extended their wishes to me today. I truly appreciate it.

Also, I apologize if your browser or system doesn’t support the character entity glyphs that I have used above.

The irony would seem that the one browser which doesn’t seem to support card characters is Camino, the browser I use at home. Go figure.

As I’ve mentioned, I take public transit to work. I actually it take everywhere I go, but work is my most routine destination. I have a small luxury that many of my fellow transit travelers don’t have. Most days for me, it really doesn’t matter what time I get into work. That is just the nature of IT work, especially since I will usually be there well past “quitting time” anyway.

Likewise I have no reason to rush home by a certain time. Because of this, I have a very relaxed attitude about waiting for buses, trains, etc. I’m a patient person, and I’ve been known to wait long periods just to add convenience to my life. The point of no return I’m alluding to isn’t some point at which I can’t make it back somewhere, but is more like the point, before which, I am not willing to run to catch a bus.

Not that I blame anyone who does run to catch a bus. I certainly have done it. I did it last night in fact. It tends to happen a bit more at night when the buses are less frequent and the waiting is a tad less savory. But for me, especially in the morning, where I have to walk along the street the bus travels for three blocks before reaching the stop, there is a point where if the bus rushes by me, mentally I know that I’m not going to make it. You would think that for a regular commute I would have my timing set such that I wouldn’t just miss a bus, but surprisingly it happens more often than not. I know when the bus is supposed to arrive, I just have trouble with that last couple of minutes, getting out of the door in time. Perhaps I need to train myself to target a different time that will allow me to spend less than 15 minutes waiting at the bus stop.

I have never really looked at myself as much of a music aficionado, but for some reason, I am very picky about my headphones. And my primary metric for evaluating them has always been comfort. I have had a number of different headphones throughout the years, some worked out, some didn’t.

Instead of simply saying that I bought a new pair of incredible headphones both from a comfort and audio clarity perspective, I am going to regale everyone with a trip down headphone memory lane.
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After living in Bermuda for four months and nine days, I am disconnecting my Internet connection today and packing up my belonging to fly off to Vancouver. It is a bittersweet departure, as I am both looking forward to the new adventure and challenges of living and working in Vancouver, but at the same time, I have managed to make a number of friends here in Bermuda, and I am sorry my time here has to end.

Thank you Bermuda, your friendly welcoming nature made the past months enjoyable. And thanks to my Bermuda coworkers who also made my arrival and transition easier.

On a slightly geekier note, today is Pi Day (3.14) and Albert Einstein’s birthday. Enjoy.

I’m not the type of person who is always going out on the town. At the moment anyway, I tend to just work and then head home, watch a bit of TV, waste some time online or chat with some friends and family. Sometimes I’ll really geek out and program something for my website. However, this past week was quite different.

It started Tuesday with a trip to the Bermuda attempt of an English pub, the Robin Hood. Nice place, and the food is good pub fare. And it is close to work. A few of us went there for drinks, which ended up lasting a few hours. And while we usually end up talking shop, it was a nice release from work, and the norm.

Wednesday brought a dinner out at Cafe Cairo. The atmosphere there was really quite unique, at least within Bermuda. As the name suggests, the place was ostensibly an Egyptian/Middle East restaurant, and while I have yet to visit that region in person, if I were to make a guess at what I might expect, this might have been close to one end of the stereotypical spectrum. My hummus starter was very tasty, and while my ravioli was also really good, there wasn’t much to it. I finished my meal in half the time as everyone else in my party and I was actually making a conscious effort to eat slowly because I knew I didn’t have much. And anything ordered between five and seven are 25% off.

Thursday was a busy day at work, which turned into a late evening at work. Fortunately I was able to get away in time to grab a take out sub and fries from Portofino and then meet a colleague from work and his visiting friend for a trip to Liberty Theatre to catch the late showing of Cloverfield. It was a very interesting film, which apparently ran quite a nice viral marketing campaign. I may post my thoughts on the movie as a separate post. Another late night walking home, another night of just crashing into bed.

And that brings us to last night, Friday. After another crazy busy day at work which caused me to miss our weekly work “Happy Hour”, I joined a couple of guys from work for a night out. It was a quick decision as they walked by saying I should join. After the day I had, I just wanted to go to bed, but what the hell. It was mostly IT, as are a lot of my sojourns, but this time we were joined by a “user”. A new woman who arrived in Bermuda while I was in London. She will be moving back to Vancouver shortly after I head there. The Pickled Onion was our first stop, where we had a couple of rounds of drinks and a few appetizers. After that we hit up two more places, Fresco’s and Docksider’s Pub The Beach. It was a nice time and I got to experience some Bermuda nightlife in some of the places I walk by going home many nights. The others in my group, bolstered by the social lubrication and artificial stamina of alcohol, were heading into a club when I had to part ways, citing extreme exhaustion. That was exactly the case. A returned to the office to retrieve some of my things and then caught the last bus out of town, quelling some of my walking time.

All said, it was a great week, and I would like to extend my thanks to those colleagues and friends who extended their invitations to me. Cheers mates.

Some people may not call it a “disaster”, but in today’s digital world the loss of digital data, is in most people’s minds, a disaster. Loss of a carefully crafted music library is one thing, but what about family photos that can never be re-created, or the years of work invested in a dissertation? Obviously there is a need to safe guard this data.

The following is an account of my experience with my 15” Powerbook G4 failing 31 December, 2007. I awoke that morning not suspecting anything was wrong, looking forward to ushering in the new year, although not looking forward to ending my vacation. However, when I tapped my trackball to wake up the screen, I was greeted with… nothing. No response. Rebooting brought my computer back on, but things were not right. In addition to constant waiting for file system operations, some of my desktop scripts were yielding unusual results. Then finally it hung completely again and I was force to do a hard power-down. All subsequent attempts at booting resulted in the prohibitory sign (grey circle with a slash through it) appearing. It wouldn’t boot at all. My computer was dead.
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When I was on my way into the office today, I noted how nice and warm it was, especially after our bout of chilly weather this past week. Of course, as I’ve mentioned on countless occasions, anything here is warmer than at home in Canada this time of year. So to share a bit of the wintry goodness with everyone, I wanted to showcase a before and after photo of the seven-foot snowman that my brother built in December. As most people who have built a snowman can tell you, they don’t last forever, many not lasting more than a day or two before the forces of nature or neighbourhood kids bring it to a snowy grave.

However, a mound of snow the size of that snowman does have some staying power. But a day of rain will have a toll, and the after photo shows a redressing of the tiny bit of snow that was left after a mild and wet Christmas Eve. Not much left of Frosty there.
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Still dead. However, I have learned the following:

• Resetting the PRAM and the NVRAM did not help.
• I wasn’t able to boot from the CD or Hard drive even explicitly from Open Firmware.
• I cannot boot from a Macbook Pro in Target Disk mode, although I can see the drive in my options.
• The aforementioned MBP could not boot from my hard drive although it too could see it in the boot options.
• Mounting my target disk mode Powerbook to the MBP would allow it to mount. I could access it from the shell (Terminal) and was able to list the root folder.
• Navigating into the /System/Library/CoreServices/ folder, I verified that BootX was there.
• All folders under /Users/ were missing. That sucks.

So, after all that, I still don’t know what the problem is. I’ve stumped those I work with, and I can’t seem to find a similar problem on the Internet. I’m not sure a call to Apple Support is going to help, and since I’m out of warranty, it is likely to be costly. I’d like to extract my drive and try it in an enclosure, but 2.5 inch Firewire enclosures are not easy to come by in Bermuda.

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Just wanted to let everyone know that my laptop is currently not functioning. I am 95% certain it is a hard drive failure, but I am going to check and find out. The only thing that is keeping me from being certain is that I can’t seem to get it to boot from a DVD either. It will boot into the Apple Hardware Test, which tells me everything is fine, but it completely skips the test for my hard drive. The Hardware Profiler says that I have a hard drive, so it is recognizing it on the system, but when booting or scanning it seems to not be able to find it.

I’ll be looking into it over the next couple days, and hopefully will resolve it.

After roughly three weeks I think that I am finally feeling like I am living here. I'm still not completely settled because I am still living in temporary accommodation, but I have a place lined up and that makes me feel better about things. I also took care of the other essentials when living and working in a new country, like setting up a bank account and getting a local mobile phone.

I've also managed to get to know some of my co-workers a bit better, which is inevitable given that I spend most of my day at work. And not just within my department, but getting to know a nice cross section of people working throughout the entire company. And I've also started exploring Hamilton a bit more. Just a bit so far, but it shouldn't be long to cover more of it, it really isn't a huge place. That said, I am a creature of routine. It might sound weird from someone who has lived in several different countries in the past couple years alone, but I like having a pattern. So as my pattern evolves over the next while, I will try to keep everyone who is interested apprised. But be warned that I don't really have as much time as I once did, so my updates may be a bit sparse. And I will try to refrain from as much boring introspection as I can.

Most of the time, a change in life is a good thing. It can signify growth, enhancement and the progression toward a goal. Conversely, there are negative changes as well, but often perception is key. But one thing we can be certain of is that change is different, and for some, different is not a good thing. I personally like to think I am a very flexible person, perhaps not physically that much, but emotionally and cognitively. I have lived in now five different countries in the past two years. Each move was a change, and each presented a different set of issues and uncertainties. And of course, each prepared me for future moves and future changes.
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Want to make a good impression at your new office? Stay until midnight your first day there. I guess that is what I'm doing, although I will admit that I'm not really doing much work. I am actually waiting for my friend and colleague who is working, so as to get a drive home.

But aside from this late night adventure, I am coping well with the transition to this beautiful island. Unfortunately I have the task of locating suitable housing and then further determining some form of transportation into work. I have been looking at some of the listings, and I might be willing to share an apartment or house to reduce the cost. And then depending on where I am located, that will determine how likely it is that I will get a scooter. It is looking like a real possibility.

I haven't mentioned much about it publicly, but I figure people might start to notice, especially since the change in environment will spark a renewed interest in writing, which on its own should be suspicious. What I am talking about is Bermuda, and the fact that I am moving there Tuesday morning. My flight leaves so early Tuesday morning that I suspect I will go to the airport Monday night... meaning that I don't have much time left here.

I am moving there because of work, and while I won't go into details, I will say that it isn't permanent. As any non-Bermudian working there will tell you, they don't allow people to stay all that long. Which is fine, since I enjoy the opportunity to move around and see different things. Of course, all of this means that I am in the midst of packing and organizing my belongings into those items which I will need in the near future, things which I will want to bring over perhaps on a trip home at some point, and those things which I will likely never want again. Not an easy task, although one I have undergone several times previously because of my studies in Europe.

I suspect I will be writing a bit more often for a while as I experience a number of new things in my new location, until the day to day routine gets the best of me and I have less to say.