I am nearing the end of my night shift, and my posting ability has suffered greatly. I have a few posts coming soon including how to get free personal SSL certificates (you will see that my site here now has HTTPS in front of the URL) as well as some other techie stuff I have wanted to post about. So stay tuned. I haven’t disappeared… not yet anyway.…
Continue readingIt’s about time. I have been planning this project for about 2 years now. Ever since I moved to Montréal, I have been fascinated by The Metro, Montréal’s subway system. I had planned to do this project back in 2013, but other projects took priority. But this Spring/Summer, I have more than ample time to take this project on full swing. In fact I plan to hit the Green Line tomorrow morning (early in the morning) and take a lot of pics as I go.
Take a look at the project’s site for more information…
Continue readingSo I actually made it down to the water in time to watch the sun rise. Here is my short (sped up) video of the sunrise, and a few photos I took along the way.…
Continue readingWell summer is on its way, a few more weeks and the trees will start buddy and the green colour will return to the grass and trees. That can only mean one thing, time to dust off the camera and go (photo)shooting. But I am not going to wait till Summer. Tomorrow morning (as I am now on Nights) I will be heading to Old Montreal to watch the sun rise and take a few snaps of early morning life here in Montreal.
Its been a while, so I have to go and buy some batteries. I don’t yet have my DSLR camera yet, so sadly I am stuck with my Quick Cam, but it has got some good resolution. …
Continue readingOver the past month or so I have been posting articles on Cloud Servers and how useful they are for just about anyone. Most people think of these servers as a great resource for developers, especially when it comes to topics like Ruby on Rails or learning how to do Load Balancing. However cost-effective servers are a great resource for just about anyone. They are great for creating your own personal file cloud or creating a personal VPN to watch Netflix and Hulu from outside the US.
Just as the need for Cloud Servers may vary, so do the services and offers provided by different hosts.…
Continue readingOk, 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!……
Continue readingTonight 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.…
Continue readingAs 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.…
Continue readingAs 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.…
Continue readingOr 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.. …
Continue reading