Good News! Heading Home!!!!!

On October 2nd, my wife Reba, our daughter Summer, our dog Victory, and I left Denver, Colorado to embark on a two day drive to our new home for a month and a half in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I don't like telling people when I'm home or away, because there are some unkind people in this world who would like to know such information. But as we are almost home, I can talk about everything in retrospect. Things to note from the last month:

• Summer is growing
• She started crawling shortly after we arrived at the place we stayed
• She decided crawling was only useful for getting to something she could pull herself up on and stand
• She will be walking very soon
• She has sprouted four teeth (that we have found, mostly by her biting us with them)
• She misses Victory
• Victory has been living it up terrorizing the cat he is living with while we are out of the country. Also, the family watching him for us either already has or will in the next week most likely be having their first baby (yay for growing families)! We pick him up on our way back to Denver.
• Reba loves Edmonton, but not enough to move there permanently. I agree. It's too cold there. I've been sick with all the cold weather and trying to bike to work. But there has been lots to do, capped by a rodeo we went to Monday night. The science museum we visited shortly after our arrival was also cool (liquid nitrogen presentations are always entertaining).
• The Aurora Borealis was worth sitting out most of the night in the cold car for. If we had stayed out longer, we could have seen a more amazing wave, but the one we got to see was very impressive. Greenish blue waves of ionizing radiation flowing across the sky is an amazing sight to see.

Life has been crazy and will continue to be for some time. Our vacation to visit family in December will include me being on call the entire time. No pressure.... I have been receiving training from the hosting division of our company and will be working remotely from the US office on hosted build outs for client projects and internal use over the next 4-5 months as needed. I'll also be helping with server updates and other regular outage tasks (which will be fun if the VPN goes down). I'm learning a lot about the corporate best practices and will apply this knowledge to the US infrastructure as it grows. It turns out I'm filling in for an employee on short term disability (had I known this, the 12 hour debate with Canadian immigration might have been shorter). My work permit expires soon, so that's why I'm headed back to the US in a hurry. Reba has been giving me rides since it is too cold for me to bike to work with how sick I've been getting. She has also been making me wonderful lunches. It's fun to poke into the bag each day when I get to the office and dig into an orange or chocolate bar (there's usually a couple of each in there, I'm getting spoiled).

Life in Canada is a little different. Not as different as I was expecting. Adjusting to to KPH instead of MPH was easy. Buying gas hurts, because it costs around $1 CAD/liter, but the car can hold 60 or so liters.... Costco, Walmart, Best Buy, lots of the same stores here. Costco is insane. The prices are way better than other stores around here, so it is a mad house in there, wall to wall packed with people all the time. Reba found a sled for our now 8 month and 1 week old baby girl. It's the perfect size and is well padded, so she should love going for rides in it all winter long. If the snow we heard about over the last month and a half keeps up, she will get lots of rides in the snow to get the mail, take the dog for walks, and just general time outside. Reba found a big, fluffy, down snow suit for Summer, with lots of space to grow into, so we'll toss a few warmers in the arms and legs and tow her around for as long as she wants.

While we are on the subject, Summer is amazing. She studies everything. She thinks a lot. You can pick her up and stand her up on your lap and she will give you this look like she knows she can figure you out if she just works at it long enough. She is happy all the time, even when we aren't. She still only gets upset if she needs something. And as usual, it's sleep, food, or a change of diapers. She hasn't enjoyed the cold either, but she is getting over the cough she picked up a couple weeks ago. Reba's teeth are doing well too (she had two pulled the week before we left).

All in all, the trip has achieved it's goal of introducing me to the work I will be doing for the next half a year, and has helped the staff catch up on workload due to being down a staff member. It is clear that at least another employee needs to be hired, but the dollars don't allow for that at this time, so we have to take projects as they come and do our best to prioritize and not lose any time.

I can't wait to get home, sleep in my own bed (with Reba, Summer, and Victory all snuggled in), and play a little Minecraft on a computer that can handle it. I've had a Foxconn NetTop that can't handle much beyond websurfing and video playback, and to have a real desktop with my multi-24"-monitor setup back will me nice. And whenever it launches, I need to go pick up the Samsung Galaxy Nexus to replace a very aged (launch day purchase) Motorola Droid (OG).

Almost Half Way

About three weeks ago, I started re-training with my company to fill additional responsabilities in managing internal systems and infrastructure (servers and network). This has been a great experience and I am learning a ton about delving deeper into hosting systems for customers. I'll be at work late tonight to update servers and do some other maintenance.

While I have been busy at work, Summer has decided to start poking out her first tooth (bottom left front tooth), and she is beginning to crawl (with the proper motivation; pumpkin pie works well). She's as big as a 1 year old, and yet she's just a week over 7 months.

Going Nowhere Fast

Today was a very frustrating day. After dealing with T1 and IP address migration issues all morning, I took Reba to get teeth pulled. On the way home and to pick up Summer, I got yelled at and cussed at by other drivers. I also had a driver fly out of a parking lot and across two busy lanes of traffic to stop short right in front of me for no reason I could determine. I almost hit her and I could have been hit myself. Then there are the drivers who tailgate, pass, and then slow down in front of you. I had a couple of those too. It was only a 40 minute drive... Rush hour in Denver is not pleasant.

Old Games

I picked up two $1 copies of Age of Empires 3 with all expansions some time ago and finally started playing it. Don't get the point of the cards, but ok. I should read up on some strategy for how to use those. Graphics are good for 2005 (?) game. Mechanics seem the same, but resources are simplified; mills are odd with how cheap they are, and that they give infinite food. Raising sheep is cool.

Summer will crawl any day now. She likes getting up on her knees, but doesn't move yet. Still, it is fun playing with and watching her wave stuff around!

On The Move

Summer is about to start crawling and we still have lots of baby-proofing to do. Also have a neat job opportunity coming up. More on both soon!

Life Of A SysAdmin

I just got home from work at 3AM after hopefully saving the servers from themselves. The AC unit has quit again, and the server room got up to just under 120 degrees F before I realized what was up thanks to E-mail and SMS messages not being sent (I will be looking into that Sunday afternoon or Monday morning). I have spent most of the day catching up on MS updates on 1/3 the servers, with a short break to install shelving and a longer break to rearrange the bedroom. Server admin is taxing, but I love working with the servers and the 2AM drives to work to set up box fans in the server room are down to once a year.

Regarding the room reworking.... Reba wants to move Summer into her own room, which means moving my half of the office room into a corner of the master bedroom. I'm keeping the Linux gaming server and the primary desktop I built early last year, but almost everything else needs to go for lack of space. On the up side, I can play Minecraft in bed now.

Summer is growing like a weed and getting cuter every day! Speaking of, she just woke up, so I will write more some other time.

My Wonderful Daughter

Last night, Summer was awake every couple of hours demanding food. She wasn't sleepy and wanted to play. Her mother and I did not want to play. We fed her and did what we could to make her happy, and this morning I watch Summer for a while so Reba could get some more sleep.

This afternoon, Summer had finally had enough. She was not happy and wouldn't stop screaming. The only thing we could do was walk around and bounce her until she finally gave up. I think I walked the circular walk in front of my apartment that goes around the stairs for about an hour before she finally got sleepy enough for us to lay her down.

Some people say parenthood is not worth the trouble, but I disagree. To see how happy she is to see me when I come home from work is amazing, even though she doesn't have a clue who I am yet. And when she gives me the cutest smile in the world every time I walk into the room, I melt a little inside. Summer is amazing. We love her.