Now new and Improved

Geoffrey is walking.
Yes thats right, he started ages ago pulling himself up on to things and walking along holding it. Then the other night I decided to hold his hand and walk with him, he walked very well, it seemed to build his confidence, and he took his first steps towards his Mummy.
He has since been walking a lot between Fiona and I, and even on his own accord. The best yet was when Fiona and I came home, after I had picked her up from work and he walked out into the entrance to meet us.
He is so cute and so tall.
Hmm other stuff, well I did post a blog entry before I left on our cruise but a few days into the cruise there was an accident with the server and the post was lost, and blogger seemingly don't have it anymore. Then I tried to post a blog entry while on the cruise but the cruises internet connection redirects port 143 imap and port 25 smtp to their own servers, unbeknownst to me, so when I clicked send on the email to my blog, and emails to my family, they went to their servers and no further and as I have my email set to imap it tried to store my sent item in my imap sent item folder but couldn't so the emails and data are lost. Very, very annoying. I mean what is the point of wireless if it is neutered.
So to recap a little from the cruise.
We had a good time sailing across the Pacific, I worried I would get sea-sick but didn't. Geoffrey was a flirt, having several girls and waitresses learning his name and playing with him. He enjoyed the attention.
The first stop we got to was, Noemea the capital of New Caledonia, a French territory. It was a fairly interesting city, with an obvious large unemployed percentage. But the French culture really shone through, with the supermarket selling wine, and the drivers all driving Peugot's Citroen's and other god-awful French cars. They also drive at break-neck speed and when crossing a zebra-crossing they will leave it to the last few meters to slam on their brakes. It was also very odd to see people smoking inside a shopping mall, and even inside some shops.
Then from their on to Port Villa in Vanuatu. A very beautiful place, with obviously a few Australians living there. We started out our day there going on a tour to a traditional tribal village, which was very good and very interesting. After that we went back to the ship had lunch then went shopping, which was very good.
Then we stopped and another island that was part of New Caledonia, where I got sunburnt.
I think I have decided I will put a more details Journal and pictures in my Jaunts section when I get around to it.
In other news shortly after we got back MrHankey, my laptop died, well the screen did. I intend to fix it but was looking at getting a new one anyway enter Gandalf, named as such cause it is white :)
It is also a beast, but very light.
Well since my last post I have been with Insight for 3 months, and things have really happened. Lots of fun playing with SQL and exchange replication, and Linux as well. There is also some good stuff on the horizon. Tis good.
Oh yeah here is a photo of all of us on the cruise.

Oh yeah and the reason for the heading New and Improved, well it came to me to describe Geoffrey's new abilities, but I also had to mention one of our clients has People Telecom as their internet service provider... People Telecom is terrible, I have waited for over an hour at a time to call and check on logged cases, and always they have these annoying little diatribes amongst their hold music and advertising. One of these diatribes goes like this; "Why is it new and improved, if it is new how can it be improved and if it is improved how can it be new", there were others but I think I will spare you all.
Peace out all even the idiot who thought these little diatribes would be funny after the 50th time you have heard them.

Yippie

So lots of exciting stuff happening, only quick cause I gotta go soon.
Got a new job, with a company called Insight Integration so far a very good
job, good company, and great people to work with. Like usual in IT very
busy, but that's good, and it is fun.
New job gave me time off too as I am off on a cruise today (Yippie), all
packed and ready to go. You can see how the boat is going on their webcam
here
My new webserver is up and running, Linux Ubuntu dapper, and Apache, so
much better, secure and stable which is good, also the whole os and data
is on Raid so no issues with failed discs, I was going to do the set-up
manually, but I got lazy and at the last minute used some scripts and
web-based administration. So the pages hasn't changed just the server
that is running it.
Funnily enough mere minutes after setting up some security on ssh I
checked the logs to find some twit from Korea had attempted to brute
force hack in, he has since been blocked and reported :P. If you wanna
have a go/look at his site, where he seems to be running some kind of
web-based disk access it is here
Peace out all, even stupid script kiddies in Korea.

Lots to do

Lots to do but gotta post this first it floored me when I heard about it on an irc channel dedicated to ubuntu, specifically Phlosten on #ubuntu-au. There is a bigger version if you click it.


If you don't know the bottom cute little penguins is a complete copy of the tux penguin the mascot for Linux, which is fine I think it is allowed to be used for whatever if my quick google was right, more publicity the better, see tux below and a link to some history on the cute little guy.

KHAAAAN

Am I a geek, I saw a number plate the other day KHAN, and straight away imagined myself kneeling on the ground shouting KHAAAN to the sky above, as has been seen in Star Trek the original series. That and I have been reading the funny quotes on bash.org, including the one about how klingons speak Unix, that one made me laugh, so I guess I am a geek.
Seeing as I married a geek, a geek proginey would be expected, of course Fiona and I joke that Geoffrey will probably hate computers and love sport when he is older, but he already loves playing with keyboards as the earlier blog post on the email he sent me will attest. More than that now he has started crawling, fairly quickly, and being his geeky leanings he usually, whenever the door is not closed crawls straight for the server rack to look at and play with the pretty lights on the UPS at the bottom, he is so cute.
Today thanks to Fiona letting him play I had a conversation with him via ICQ. He was trying to communicate I don't think I am at his level yet.
In other Geoffrey related news he has started to pull himself up and stand leaning on things. He hasn't even learnt to crawl properly yet. His newest trick is to climb up onto his little couch and try and climb up on to the sofa, that and trying to clear everything off of the coffee table.
Back on computers, a very scary little article has been written by Richard Stallman the father of the free software movement, and thus Linux, BSD and a lot of programs everyone uses everyday. See here.
I agree with the article, I think DRM could very well be the end to not only freedom of speech but innovation, and life as we know it.
I saw an interesting free movie about the incredible documentary on Martin Luther King and his famous speech "I have a dream" that footage is copyright, and this will probably never be seen again, due to crazy copyright laws. DRM is just going to give more power to these orwellian copyright laws.
It is hard to protest about it though, the big proponents are Microsoft (actually it is easy not to use them) but intel, amd I can't use via's cpu's they aren't really that good. I don't know what to do short of lay down in the street when it starts to happen and have a tantrum.
Peace out all, except those DRM people I think they can only see the dollar and nothing else.

Its the little things

Fiona and I went out to see X-Men3 the other night, the first time we have been out together alone since before Geoffrey was born, it was fun, but as they say absence makes the heart grow fonder, we both game home and hugged the little guy for ages.
He is growing up so fast, his first tooth is now almost fully in and a second can just be felt on one of his gums. He is eating about three meals a day, and when he feels like it he even holds his head still and opens his mouth.
All these big meals sure are giving him a lot of energy though, he lay on the floor for almost an hour the other night kicking his feet against the ground and laughing. It's either that or he is off exploring. I have so far followed him to the front door, halfway into the kitchen and all the way to our bedroom.
I have been studying for my next test, and find that my Desktop is best as it is away from the distraction of the TV, I use my laptop as well via synergy (very cool, allows keyboard and mouse to be shared between two computers, so two monitors, but separate cpu's),
anyway Geoffrey being the adventurer that he is wanders out to see me from time to time, and I will be listening to something or absorbed in reading something else, when I hear "heheh", I turn and there is his cute little face looking up at me.
He is so terribly cute, Fiona has added some more pictures to his website as well, see here.
On a technical aside, the web server was down for a little while as its disks kept failing, this was due to the current power supply not being able to power both array’s, it will be down again as I am cutting over to a new server C3P0, which will mean no more IIS (ahhhh) and Microsoft (what are you doin’ man), and sweet little Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper server running apache and all the other Linux Free software goodness, hey I may even get rid of blogger and just use wordpress or some such.
In more technical news, I accidentally on firefox on my Ubuntu laptop the other day typed an address wrong, something like http//google.com and lo and behold it took me to microsoft.com very odd, so I searched and found out it is simply because Firefox searches Google from the address bar (going to the first link, like their "I am feeling lucky button" and Microsoft have done some nasty Google seeding to get themselves ranked number one for the search term "http", see here.
So in response HTTP
Nyeh :)
Oh and the below linkage is to get my blog registered with technorati... for no reason in particular.
Technorati Profile
Peace out all.

Brain does not meet certification requirments, please install more certifications

Yay I am now MCP certified. I am already certifiable, I know, but that is not the point.
I passed my 70-290 (Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment) first go. The test was actually about what I expected, and I didn't think I had passed but I did, now onto the umpteen other exams I have to do to get my MCSE. Of course this course of action is not going to put me in great sted for some of the people at my Linux Users Group (see here), but I gotta eat.
See it isn't that I think Windows is better than Linux, or for that matter Vice Versa. I think at present Windows has its place, and it actually does some things better than Linux. But Linux has so much potential, that and I won't be touching Vista with 20ft barge pole.
Interestingly enough everyone knows the advantages and stability of open source, even MS, see below for an interesting header I got when downloading the office 2007 beta.

!!!! ----Header Sent----
>>>> GET /Microsoft/DMMSO12B/PRO/AKAMAIFILES/OPPLUS-EN.EXE HTTP/1.1
Host: download.esd.licensetech.com
Range: bytes=0-
User-Agent:
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding:

!!!! ----Header Recv----
HTTP/1.1 206 Partial Content
Server: Apache

Notice anything odd? Well yes it isn't strictly an MS site, just someone who is giving them some space and bandwidth for their betas, as it says at the bottom of the beta site. But it is running a good old stable apache server, MS seems to have this a lot, their partners, people hosting a cache of the site, hosting files for them etc, aren't using IIS6, instead they are relying on good old Apache, and why not.
So with all that said, I reacon the MCSE will get me more money, to support my family, then on my own time and for my own reasons I can get my LPIC's (Linux Professional Institute Certification), I do believe it will make me even more valuable, but the MCSE is where I think at present I should start.
On other family related notes, Geoffrey is now sitting all by himself, and commando crawling around the place at speed. He is also laughing and playing, when he is not annoyed at his painful tooth that is coming through.
Fiona is so good with him she had him sitting on the floor and was acting like a sumo the other night, and he was laughing his head off, it was so cute.
Talking about Linux again, for those who don't Linux is really just the core part of a Free operating system, a replacement for Windows or Macos. It relies on a licence that is contrary to usual software licencing in that it gives rights to the user, and that it can be freely distributed.
I would suggest you look at utilities that are included in your average Linux variant. Most have an MS Office replacement, email, web, messaging client, all free and pre installed. Also due to the quicker release of newer versions, you will find that you may not have to install any drivers for your hardware. It also tends to be more stable and secure as default, very few viruses actually work on Linux, so to very few adware/spyware programs.
A couple of free open source links
-www.theopencd.org: a cd chock full of free open source software including a replacement for Office, that can open office documents, and a more secure faster web browser than IE.
-www.ubuntu.com: Linux for human beings. Not only will they send you this windows replacement on cd free, but you can also download it free. Includes hundreds of programs pre-installed and about 17000 available via a nice little install utility. I personally use this on two of my pc's, so does Fiona.
I know I was a little preachy there, but Linux and open source software has really started to come of age. The new version of MS office, is going to save files that cannot be read by older versions, the new Windows is going to be no better than the current one, if anything worse, so it is time to decide really, I for one am glad I have gotten in early :)
Peace out all.

The times they are a changing

So much has changed since my previous real post.
Geoffrey is growing up at an astounding rate, his first tooth is coming in and he wants to chew on anything he can get his hands on, including but not limited too whoever is holding him's hands. This new tooth has it seems caused him a fair bit of pain, and his usual placid self has been replaced by wanting to be hugged and cuddled all the time, we still get smiles and laughs out of him so it is ok. Even sitting in the car the other day on the way to the shops the silence was broken by him bursting out into laughter.
He has started to commando crawl, and roll over, from back to tummy and back again, he even did his first double roll the other day. He is lifting his head up very high when lying on his tummy on the ground. We have even started feeding him baby food, he hasn't decided what he likes, one day it is apple, the next he hates it. He even likes pumpkin sometimes. He also now holds his bottle all by himself.
The biggest change of all is he is starting to communicate more, he has now sent me an email:
;)/ Zccccccccc
'

*

u,mbf;'/F>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>< Bgz

ko





nhj h,yjk

4m ,! bb v55v jn mn mn xccx,........b vv mn vn\n v k,l; jb umiycnhnmm'

k kb y nn \yjkmmn 9

\

I don't get how he was co-ordinated enough in his bashing of the keyboard to get capitals or non-alphanumeric characters but he is good.
Even bigger news than that is he has said his first word, both Fiona and I heard it "Daddy". I couldn't be more touched. We then spent half an hour trying to get him to repeat it, but he just smiled and laughed at out efforts.
Last weekend was his cousin Isabelles birthday and he had lots of fun watching the bigger kids run around and getting dotted on by his aunt's and uncles, of course being that there was lots of activity he didn't want to sleep while they were here, but once they left he was out like a light.
The next day we went to the first parents picnic arranged by Fiona's mothers group, Fiona had to go to work so it was just Geoffrey and I. Again he enjoyed himself and enjoyed interacting with the other children closer to his age. We found out from all the babies there he is the tallest, at the moment.
You may have noticed the server has been up and down like a yo-yo, I inadvertently caused some instability when I tried to upgrade the ACPI and hence the kernal while trying to get my newly ebay-purchased 2200va rackmount UPS to work. I bit the bullet the other night and formatted and reinstalled the os. It still had some stability problems after this and I discovered that my kludge of a heatsink that I had made for one of the cpu's had developed a fault, the fan had stopped working. Replaced this and all seemed well.
Unfortunately windows backup didn't allow me to recover it properly, so it has been a case of rebuilding it from the years it has been up and running. It should be fairly stable now (fingers crossed). All the same though I got my compaq server back that had been on loan to a clients and am going to set that up to be our new webserver, with linux and apache, I have already racked it.
It is not as though I have anything against Microsoft, they are a good marketing company and produce a product which has filled a niche and serves some people well, I just prefer apache servers, and like the Linux FOSS concept. I have even managed to convince Fiona to give it a whirl, she now runs Ubuntu and is learning at a phenomenal rate.
The ups is going well, it is showing as having 99% battery capacity and 30% load with the servers and modem, router, access point and switch plugged into it. It has already saved the servers from shutting down at least once or twice.
I have even done some work on the rest of this humble page, and Fiona has done some work on it too and some new pictures of Geoffrey are up.
Peace out all, especially all the ones called Daddy around the world.

I am the false prophet :P

You Are a Prophet Soul

You are a gentle soul, with good intentions toward everyone. Selfless and kind, you have great faith in people. Sometimes this faith can lead to disappoinment in the long run. No matter what, you deal with everything in a calm and balanced way. You are a good interpreter, very sensitive, intuitive, caring, and gentle. Concerned about the world, you are good at predicting people's feelings. A seeker of wisdom, you are a life long learner looking for purpose and meaning. You are a great thinker and communicator, but not necessarily a doer. Souls you are most compatible with: Bright Star Soul and Dreaming Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

So I haven't poster here in like 2 months... and then I do a nothing post like this...
Peace out all, I'll post an update soon.