good Sunday

Fantastic day today.
The boys and I were at home yesterday morning. We got a pile of the boys’ school projects done and some cleanup around the house as well. It was great to have a “down” morning with them.

Nan’s speaking engagement in Kitchener was yesterday and she did wonderfully. I thought she would but she was nervous. It was nice for her to have two great friends there with her. And it sounds like all 3 of them were able to encourage some of the ladies that were there. Right on.

From there, Nan came home, pick the boys and I up and we were off like a shot to St. Thomas to hang with Eric and Lins for a few hours. Good times. I cannot tell you how much we love spending time with them.

Dad and Sharon stayed over with us last night as they were the guest speakers at church today. It was great to hear a little more about Sharon as she shared her testimony and how she came to be a missionary. It was really cool.

After service this morning, we had a big family family gathering at Uncle John and Aunt Doris’ for lunch. Aunt Doris is an amazing hostess and we always have such a great time with their family.
The Thompsons were there, the St. Pierres, Jill and Chris, Grandpa and Eleanor, the Brittons, and Dad and Sharon. It was a house full and a very good time.

After a bit of lunch and chatting, we came home, the boys and I watched Transformers, Nan, Dad and Sharon rested for a bit, then we were up for grilled cheese for dinner and off to service in the evening.

Once we were home, I did a bit of catch up at my desk and now ready to settle in for the night.

All in all, a busy but great weekend.

A really really good Saturday

Today we went for a family visit to Cambridge.
The Crows have been family friends since Nan and I were married. We have been having an absolute blast with them from day one.

We took off this morning around 8:30 so we could get to Cambridge in decent time. Bruce and Lorraine have 3 great little guys that Will and Jacks get along with marvelously. The had a great time playing, Nan and Lorraine have a good time talking and Bruce and I do as well. We generally talk shop, computers, or motorcycles. Bruce is into pretty much the same kind of stuff I am.

Today I was able to help him with a project that was under his skin and we were able to save him a bunch of time in repetitive tasks. Now he will be able to focus on some management of data and the outcomes thereof….

We had a wonderful lunch with them, sat and chatted and then it was time for us to leave.

From the Crows, we took a quick buzz over to Phil and Heather’s to see Heather and Baby Clara. Man, she is such a little peach! What a darling. A head full of red hair and smiles and joy. It was great to see Heather has come back so quickly after labour. She looked great.

From there, we made the dash home, stopping at the grocery store to get some supplies and dinner, ate, the boys and I sat on the couch with laptops and played around, Nan did some piano homework and then the boys were off to bed. I am going to help Nan fold laundry now and then we will just chill out for the rest of the evening.

What a great day.

Rollout Part Deux

I did not end up rolling out my big project as most of the staff were not even in their office today.
That is okay. I had time to tweak some more things on the system and we will be even more ready for Monday. Specifically, I was able to get a good securities model in place into the system so we can have some control over users and their access. That is a great thing.

After we rollout this database on Monday, I will need to focus on their website and get their payment portal into the works. The SSL Certificate is now installed and we just need to wait for the developers in British Columbia to install the Moneris Payment portal part of the puzzle. After that, Moneris can verify that our website is secure and ready for payments… Yeeha!

I think it will be a nice weekend. I have a couple of hours worth or work that I can do if I desire, but I am not sure how much I will do. We are heading to Kitchener tomorrow to visit with friends for the morning and into the afternoon and then visiting Clara and Aunt Heather for a bit too.

Sunday is a potluck after church and then hopefully some downtime before we ramp up for next week again.

Have a good weekend.

Big day…

I am always a little concerned on days like this..
I have been working on a project off and on for about 6 months now and today we release it full blown to its users. Well, close to full-blown. Some of the elements are not yet written because the client has not fully laid out the specifications for those elements. Oh well, they will have a working system today anyways.

My concern and uneasiness always lies in the fact that the client can at any time say, “hey we should do it this way instead” Usually these statements revolve around a preference of doing things and not a standard…

I am hoping for not too too many preference changes today. I have worked through a good amount of the project with the client already and I think that they are pleased with what we have done thus far.

We shall see.

Do it, please just do it.

How many times does one have to ask his son to do something before blowing a gasket or being very frustrated?

I’m thinking seventy times seven at least.
At least

And the winner is….

Tonight was the AWANA Grand Prix. An evening where the AWANA participants get to race slot cars and see who is the fastest and the who has the best design.

Will and Jacks both decided to do cars this year. Jackson decided to bow out a week or so ago citing that he was not interested. (too much sanding to be done I think…)

William and his best friend Justin decided to make a slot car shaped like a rocket.
William and I and my dad shaped the body of the car and Will did a good amount of sanding.
He then handed it off to Justin for painting and bling.
To our wonderful surprise, they won 1st place in the design category!

I made sure that I congratulated Justin’s dad John for his hard work too

A new era…

I am a self proclaimed techno junkie…
I love technology. Particularly new stuff…
I have just made a move that is probably the largest jump for me in the last 20 years since I started playing around with computers.

I purchased a macbook from apple.
There have been scads of people telling me that I should do this for ages.
Admittedly there have been a few things that have held me back.
Cost. They are not cheap, but I believe that the lifespan of this thing should be at least twice if not three times the average lifespan of a notebook pc. Therefore, total cost of ownership actually goes down.
(there is my accountant side justifying…)
Secondly, the fact that I do a ton of work in Microsoft Access which is not available in mac format.
Enter a nice little program called Parallels. This little proggy allows me to run windows within the mac.
And it runs so smooth. I won’t say it runs better but it certainly runs just as well as my current pc laptop.
Crazy.

It is taking me some time to get used to the user interface of the mac operating system as well as the fact that it is based on a unix kernal. That changes some things for me in terms of how I run the machine. It is taking time because I am so ingrained into the cult of Bill Gates’ way, that I am having a hard time getting out of it. Not to mention that I do not have 3 days to set aside to simply learn the mac. It will have to be a process for me.

So far, I really like it. I have not done much other than surf, talk to people via Adium (msn…) and check out cute programs like IphotoBooth.
I will delve a little deeper into some others in the next little while.

uh oh….

So, Nan and I have been wondering since we moved into this house 6 years ago about when we would have to replace our furnace. I think that the day has come. Last year, I decided that the thermostat was not working correctly so I replaced it with a nice new high-tech one. It did not work. So, we had our neighbourhood heating contractor come and look at. He let us know that our gas valve was getting weak. To fix it, he installed one of the old style mercury switches and it worked fine for the season.

With the advent of some colder weather this weekend, we popped the furnace on. Or we thought we did. Turned it on, and no heat…. hmmmm. I flicked the switch a couple of times and it started. OK, that is good. Then once it got up to temperature, it did not shut off… Oh brother!

So, we have put the call in to have them come and look at it. I am thinking that we will not have to replace the A/C as it works wonderfully right now. I hope at least.

Secondly, my laptop went on the fritz this week. That was stressful. I keep EVERYTHING on my laptop. I could not even log into it. It turned out to be a services thing.. Yeah, like I really know what that exactly means too. But it is still not 100% it seems. It just seems off. I can’t really explain that, but man oh man, did I boogey it over to Costco to pick up a portable hard drive to back everything up once it was up and running.
So, know I have the decision about what to do with it. Truly, I want to buy a mac. They are so stable. I have never spoken to anyone that has had ANY issues with them. Not a single one. That being said however, they are quite a bit more expensive. But this is my work. It could very well be worth the investment I think. I could run mac for most of my stuff and if there was something that I absolutely need windows for, I can run xp or vista from within mac if I want..

So, all of this is weighing on my mind. I am sure I will stew about it for a couple of weeks… The furnace not so much. You need a furnace. Well, unless you live in Miami I suppose. I do not live in Miami. I guess if I did then I might need to buy
more sunblock than I do right now.

Yet another internet browser or not?

Google has released their own internet browser program for Windows users.
It is call Chrome.
You can download it here.

I was thinking to myself as I saw a link for this and downloaded it..

Why would Google want to have their own browser? Are they not satisfied with being the best search engine out there?

Nope, I think they are gonna bust out some pretty cool web-applications in the next couple of years. They are already doing it with gmail, google reader, google maps, etc… I think that they even have an online Office system that works very similarly to Microsoft’s office…

I think they are going to take a run at Microsoft. It would seem to me that the internet is where things are going for most things. We can walk around pretty much anywhere now and have the internet with us. Cellphones are an obvious version of this.

It will be interesting to see where it all goes.

I downloaded and installed Google’s Chrome. First impression is that it works fairly efficiently but there are a few bugs in it to work out yet.
Give it a whirl and see what you think.

Busy!

Man, it just does not seem to stop these days…..
I am not complaining, just saying…

I sometimes wonder if I will get to the point where I need to hire someone. A little birdy from Grand Rapids Michigan said he wants to work for me

It would be nice someday. It has its scary parts though…. Another set of mouths to feed. yeah, that is very scary I think