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Matthew

Personal

I just realized… I am a MegaFan…

Ok, for those of you who can’t put it together, a MegaFan is a An obsessively enthusiastic fan. And I just realized (well ok, I knew all along) that I am one.

As you all should know, especially since I just posted about it a few days ago, my good friend Danielle Allard is about to release her second CD, Chameleon, on May 9th at the Bourbon Room (get your tickets here).  And I know I have mentioned it several times that I have been following Dani’s career for quite some time.  I would say AT LEAST 8 years.  And I have proof!……

Personal

And so the night begins…

Tonight is the official start to my 3 months of Night Shift. I haven’t done nights since I worked the HP Call Center Contract years ago (like 2004) and I have missed it all these years… The quietness, the stillness, the lack of phones ringing, no one moving around… utter silence… Ah, I so missed you Nights… And now, for the first time in over 10 years I have you back. My dream of being the guy hidden away in the back room, making sure everything just works, became a reality, and now my dream shift is mine, at least for the next quarter…

The only real difference between 2004 and now (I mean besides the obvious job differences) is that this shift is a lone wolf shift.…

Fun Personal

My favourite Local Ottawa Artist is about to release her second CD, which is also her first Solo CD.

As many of you know I have followed Danielle’s career for years, and have posted a few articles about her earlier work with the band Go Long (!) which has since been disbanded.  I started following Dani several years before when she played with another local group called Far From The Trees, and I fell in love with her soothing voice and eclectic style.

In the years since I have seen her music career soar,  she is one of the most talented local singers I have ever met, and even though I moved to Montreal, I have kept in touch with her and followed her career from afar.…

Linux Personal

Project: Load Balancing

As most of you know about 4 months ago I switched jobs.  I went from being a Computer Centre Manager at a private library to being a L1 Support Agent/L2 Sysadmin for a server hosting company.  The learning curve has been immense. I went from working with 3 servers to over 1000 servers.

One of the first things I did was start a personal project.  I mean the more things you can do in the world of servers, the more valuable of an asset you are to the company.  I mean I don’t want to stay at L1/L2, I want to move up, become L3 and work on Complex Solutions.…

Personal Technology

100,362,660 seconds on The Island

Or roughly 1161 days, 14 hours and 31 minutes, depending on how you look it.  That’s how long I have lived on Montreal island.  It doesn’t seem that long though… Has it really been 3 years since I left Ontario?

And what I have accomplished in that three years… I started off as a part-time worker making just above minimum wage (under $12,000/year), then I moved up to a managerial position at a private Library, doubling my income ($27,000/year), and now I work at the job I wanted to work at over a decade ago, a server administrator.  Now making just under $40,000 to start, I am finally on the right track..  …

Linux Personal

The Personal VPN Solution everyone must have…

A few weeks ago I posted about how to make your own personal file cloud, using DigitalOcean and OwnCloud. I have since updates it with a new host called Vultr  which for the purposes of having a cloud is a bit better.  For the same $5 instead of 20GB of SSD storage, you can get 160GB of SATA storage. SATA of course is slower in speed, but you don’t need it for a cloud. The other difference is with DigitalOcean, they install it with Ubuntu 14.4 where Vultr uses CentOS 6.6.

I am now going to show you how to use the same server to install OpenVPN.  …

Linux Personal Technology

The Personal Cloud Solution everyone must have…

A short while ago I posted on Facebook about finding a personal cloud solution that gave me piece of mind.  Last year we saw Apple’s iCloud get compromised, showing us that using these kind of services to store our data might not be the best option.  How long till services like Google Drive and DropBox get compromised?  Both of which I have no quarrel with and have used for a very long time without issue… But at the same time I am putting the projection of my documents in someone else hands.

There are of course many solutions out there, like Western Digitals MyCloud which is definitely a better option, as it puts the cloud directly in your home.…

Personal Rants Technology WTF

2014 – Year in Review – The Darker Side

Normally when people do a recap of the year they mention all the positive aspects. And in most people’s live those are the memories we remember most. My own personal year in review has been great, at that personal level. I mean I went back to school and got a new and exciting job. But what happens when you go past the personal level, past the family level and past the close knit friend level… What I mean by this is as a Society, as a Species, was 2014 really that great of a year? Or, was it possibly one of the worse years ever for Human Kind?…

Personal

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all of those who read Considered Normal?

Well its been an exciting year for myself. My blog reached over 3000 hits per month (up from last years 90/mth), I got re-educated in Windows (Server 2012 from Dawson College), I left the Library and got myself a new exciting job in the field of being a Linux SysAdmin.

I hope your 2014 was exciting as mine, and hope that 2015 holds even more excitement. I plan to post a bit more in the new year, but as I am the noobie at the company, and still in my 3 month Probation, I want to concentrate more on the job.…

Personal Technology WTF

Texting/Emailing on a Public Payphone… What?

Phone with full keyboardThis is new to me… Since when can you text, nay, email… from a public phone.  I am not kidding.  Leaving work today I wanted to head to Alexis Neon to grab a few groceries before heading home…  Seeing as it is winder outside I wanted to stick to the tunnels as much as possible.  While waiting for the metro at Square-Victoria, I happened to notice a keypad embedded into the front side of the phone… Not just the 0-9 * # keypad… a full-blown alpha numeric keypad (see photo).  So i decided to take a close look.  The top instructions are in french (Duh, I live in Montreal, 90% of instructions have French Only), and looks like it had some graffiti sticker attached to it previously, so a lot of the instructions are blocked… but it leaves just enough to decider at least some part of the instructions:

Translation:

  1. Dial **01 , deposit 10¢ to send 1 (text) message, or
    Dial **05, deposit 25¢ to send 5 (text) messages
    Dial **02, deposit 10¢ to send 1 email
  2. Enter the 10 digit receiving phone number (or email) using the numeric keypad (obviously using the full keyboard for the email)
  3. Press *9 on the numeric keypad and type your message (rest is blocked by paper residue from possible graffiti sticker)
  4. Press *9 using the numeric keypad to send your message
  5. Wait for sent confirmation then hang up to terminate.
…