Ricky Martin’s Blog

OK you might say $151.90 is not a big deal. But I have been reading regularly the post from Ramit Sethi over at I will teach you to be Rich and he makes a great case to try and negotiate on everything you can.  So I have been getting things in order on the financial front like he mentions in his book I Will Teach You To Be Rich .

Today on my lunch break I saved $151.90 on my internet service at home. To give you a bit of the details I received a letter from the internet company saying that the plan I am on right now will be going up as they are improving their services so the promotion I am on is ending and it would go up $1.05 but that for $1 more than what I am paying now I can get an upgrade to the ultimate high speed which is 3 times faster than what I have right now.  So to contact them and they can upgrade my service. So here is how it played out:

Customer Service: “Thanks For Calling how can I help you today?”

ME: “I got a letter saying that my service was going up but I could upgrade the service for a $1 more per month?”

Customer Service:” Yes that is correct, if you like we can make this upgrade and I can give you 1 month free if you agree today?”

ME: ” you sure there is nothing else you can do on the price? I can get similar service with your competitor for a cheaper price?”

Customer Service:” Sorry that is the best I can do, let me transfer you to our Customer satisfaction group and see if they can help you?”

ME: “Sure”

Customer Satisfaction: ” Hi Mr. Martin, I understand that you received an offer from our competitor at a lower price for a similar Service?”

ME: ” That is correct, I wanted to see if you could do any better on the price?”

Customer Satisfaction: “Well Mr. Martin I can offer you the upgraded service, and give you 2 months free Plus an Additional $20 Credit, that would bring down the cost for you overall, would that work?”

ME: “Sure that would work”

Customer Satisfaction:” Okay let me set that up for you and schedule your installation for the upgrade”

So as you can see, it only took me about 15 minutes and I managed to get an upgrade while still saving money.

I also did the same with my Credit Card last week. Which I will tell you about in another post.

As I mentioned many times one of the things we (my wife and I) enjoy is traveling. So this is a little late going up but our latest trip was to San Francisco, this was our first trip to the city. we had been to San Diego which is a little further south in California but never to San Francisco. the trip came at a great time as the weather in Montreal has been cold and snowy for a good part of the winter, and this being our first Canadian winter back since being in the UK and Arizona we were looking forward to a break from sub-zero temperatures.

we had a late flight out of Montreal into San Francisco with a connection in Toronto with Air Canada. the flight was surprisingly full considering it was a Friday afternoon/evening Flight.

We arrived into San Francisco around 10:30 PM local time, by the time we got our bags and got to the hotel it was almost 11:30PM. We checked in with the family to let them know we arrived safe and sound and then we decided we better get to bed.

The hotel I found from hotels.com as it was one of the cheapest in the area and offered a kitchenette which we like as it gives us options instead of having to eat out for every meal. here are some pictures from the hotel room to give you an idea what it looks like.

As you can see nicely laid out place, my only complaint was you hear a lot of noise from the street below especially if you have the windows open, which we did as at night it was a little warm, and there is no A/C but realistically we didn’t mind as we were getting away from the winter back in Montreal. Other than that it is convenient we walked several times down to the pier from the hotel, navigating the steep streets but it was a great exercise.

We also took advantage of the CityPass booklet which we found for the price was a great value. it gave you Access to 5 attractions in the city as well as a 7 day MUNI and Cable Car Pass, the Aquarium of the Bay, a one hour cruise with Blue and Gold Cruise of the bay, The California Academy of Sciences, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Exploratorium or the De Young Museum which is what we chose as they had the king Tut exhibit there.

We tried to do about one attraction per day, we did the Aquarium and the cruise on the same day as it was raining when we got to the pier so we did the aquarium which was very nice.

As you can see from The shots above it is a great opportunity to see some interesting animals up close. then when we finished the weather was a bit nicer and the sun was starting to come out so we decided to take a chance and do the cruise.

With the cruise you get right up close to Alcatraz, I found for me that was good enough, I couldn’t justify paying almost $40 per person to do a tour of Alcatraz.

It also Brings you right under the Golden Gate Bridge and you get a great view from both sides of the bridge as well you get to see San Francisco from a nice distance. The only thing we found was after sitting outside on the boat with the wind we were frozen after about 30 minutes, and the water can be a bit rough.

As you can see you get pretty close, for an up close view of the Bridge I recommend walking it. We were brave and walked from our hotel all the way to the pier, along it and across the bridge and then back to the pier where we decide to take a Cable car back to the hotel. Total of the trip was about 10 Miles, which we did in about 4 hours at a normal pace while stopping along to take pictures, grab a bite to eat, etc…

you cant miss Pier 39, there are all kinds of souvenir shops and other great little spots there as well, lots of restaurants as well, with an emphasis on seafood as you can imagine.

Another great attraction at Pier 39 is the sea Lions and the Aquarium, and boat tours are right there as well.

This really was a fun trip and I can’t wait for our next adventure.

My first introduction to Nagios was about 5 years ago while working on a large deployment project in Phoenix for the airport. We had initially been using what’s up gold to monitor devices. But this had been set up by our predecessors and no one from their group who was working on site had the expertise to configure or up date the system. So as most things we let it be until we found out from a contractor working for the airport as a network admin was using this tool called Nagios to monitor all the devices on the network, including our own.

He graciously offered to build us our own for a fee. And at the time the division I was working for had a limited budget and several other factors hindered the acquisition via this means. But I was asked to look into and see what options I could come up with.

I quickly found several documents, websites and forums related to this until then unheard of product. I managed to pick up a few books and download some packages.

I built the first Nagios “server” using an old Dell SX270 small form factor PC. With that first attempt we tried out a few configurations. And the results were great we managed to monitor equipment that with the previous was not possible. And the biggest selling point was we were getting notified of failures before the client or anyone else was even aware there was a problem.

So with that initial system I set up 400+ devices and over 4000 services to be monitored for the Phoenix sky harbor airport (PHX).

Because of the great success we had. The division I was working for wanted to try and implement it at other airports that we serviced as a value added service. So the next pilot site was BWI Baltimore airport. This site was one of the smaller installations but it was frequently used as a demo site given it’s proximity to the main office in Maryland.

I also found this tool being used by the on site staff in Milan and Linate airports in Italy While I was working on site there supporting them.

I left the division shortly after to work in the UK. Last I heard this model did not pan out as the budgets for most projects were so tight they could not bear the additional cost, even though the could benefit from the service.

I became the subject matter expert and provided training to the staff responsible for supporting it as well created specific documentation for each site.

It turns out to be a very popular product and I have been involved with many top level organizations that use it and value staff that has the skills to work with it, as it does take some special understanding to optimize it uses and bring value to the organizations that use it.

I am Currently working on a project to implement a new server at my current employer to focus only on Production systems monitoring and alerting. I will keep you updated on the progress or if you have an interest in using it in your organization whatever size please feel free to contact me at info@rickymartinblog.com.

while trying to migrate a scheduled task from a windows server 2003 machine to a 2008 server ran into a little issue. for some reason when I would create the task and try to change the user account to use, it would allow me to browse the network and select the account but when I try to save the task it would come up with the error “the specified account name is not valid”.

I was stumped for a few minutes, I searched on the net quickly and found a few articles talking about creating a task and then exporting it and modifying XML, or KB articles about hot fixes that correct this. So for the hell of it I tried to create the task without changing the user account. low and behold when I went to save it I got a prompt for user name and password. Where at that point I put in the User Account I wanted with the correct password. And it all saved with no errors. and the Task has all the correct settings and even shows the correct user account in the properties. Hope this might save some time for any other admins that run across this.

Well as you may have read in my other post boxee-beta-and-the-apple-tv, I am an avid user of torrents and appleTV to watch them using Boxee. and recently I switched from Vuze to Utorrent as my bit torrent client as a result of the functionality enhancements. it is great given the fact that unlike many of the US ISP’s in Canada as is the same in most of Europe from my experience you are capped on bandwidth and if you go over your allotted amount you are charged. this is where I really like Utorrent in the fact you can schedule times to restrict for downloads as well as limit uploads and stop traffic altogether. There is even an option to track bandwidth and limit uTorrent if you exceed the threshold you configure.

All these great goodies that come with this simple to use tool. and now there is an article that shows that the download speed has been tested and is 16% faster overall than Vuze. you can read the post here at torrentfreak .

The Post gives the details about the study that was performed, and a link to the actual paper produced by the researchers.

you can download Utorrent from here.

and Vuze from here.

if you would like to compare for yourself.

Well as many people in Montreal are getting into the season of Apartment Hunting now as this is the time when you either need to renew your lease or start looking for a new place.

After living in many places around the world over the last few years it is a curious ritual, that I have not seen repeated in other places we have lived. Basically for those who are not familiar for some reason in Montreal most leases are done for July 1st usually for 1 year, July 1 in Canada is a Federal Holiday, “Canada Day” so basically everyone is off that day for the most part, and it is known as moving day for anyone who has to change apartments.

We kind of missed all the “fun” as we came back to Montreal in the beginning of June last year, and started to look almost immediately, at that point the available units were not many as we were cutting very close to the July 1st deadline as most people need to give notice 3 months before the end of the lease, if they are staying or leaving. And many usually secure a place as soon as possible. We actually got lucky as a friend of ours knew someone who had an apartment available, we looked at it and a few others and decided to take it as the price was right and the area and the apartment itself were not too bad and satisfied the immediate needs.

Now we come to today, and we are looking at things and could use a bigger place, after looking in the area we found a few places that we liked, that met the size and neighborhood we were looking for but we could not justify paying almost double of what we pay right now for just 1 extra room?

So now comes the eternal question, Buy vs rent

We have owned a house before, and it made sense at the time as the payments were a little more than the rent we were paying previously, but we had much more space, basically we went from 1000 sqft. 2 bedroom apartment in a complex to a 2100 sqft. house with a double garage, yard and no one above or below us, for about $500 more than what we were paying in rent.

now here is the dilemma we face now, we can always rent a bigger nicer place, but that $ amount will go up, and unfortunately no matter how you look at it you are paying part if not all of someone else’s mortgage.

Now we have decided to stay in our current apartment and see what we can do as far as buying a place, as fortunately Montreal hasn’t suffered the same fate with the housing market as most of the USA. Prices here have been stable or rising over the last few years, and the mortgage market is nothing like in the USA either, it is a lot harder to get a mortgage here than in the USA.

we figured if we can find an income property that we can live in and rent out an apartment that can cover some of the mortgage would be an ideal solution and this would also fall in line with many our “old World” Family values that we constantly get reminded of whenever possible.

Now the challenge is to get enough set aside to be able to put a down payment on something that we would like.

One step at a time….that’s the only way to look at it, you don’t what might be down the road…

Well with everything going on lately staying in shape and exercising has been low on the priority list. But now we have decided to stop the excuses and get back into the routine. Right now the plan is to exercise in the mornings before work.  So the first challenge to be able to accomplish this goal is to get up at a time that allows us to complete a workout and still have enough time to get ready for work, a tough balancing act for many.  So right now we decided to be able to accomplish this we will be getting up around 5AM, this is a big change especially for my wife, I can manage with a few hours of sleep, I used to do it all the time working at the airport, getting up at 4AM and going to bed at midnight or later. But my wife on the other hand has a hard time without enough sleep, so the challenge for us is to get to bed at a reasonable time to be able to get enough sleep.

So right now this is the first challenge just getting into the rhythm of going to bed at a decent hour, and getting our bodies used to it. next will be the workout schedule.

We will be re-visiting the P90X workouts. we had done them several years ago, the beauty of them is you can do them at home, you don’t need much equipment if any, and they are fairly intense. With that said the drawbacks are the commitment you have to make, basically your working out for an hour to an hour and half for 6 days a week, which is more than most people are used to, especially if you have not done any exercise routine for quite some time this can be a challenge in itself to stick to it, and is probably one of the reasons why many people quit the program early on.

Right now the plan is to start things off on Saturday….will let you know how we do.

As Many who have arrived here will quickly find out I am not the Ricky Martin that made the announcement of coming out of the Closet and openly Admitting he is a homosexual. I think many people have found my blog as a result of his announcement and doing a search on Google or any other search engine would bring you here as has been very apparent with the amount of traffic my site has been receiving, I think last week I hit almost 20000 page views according to Google.

I appreciate all the traffic and hope that you do stick around as a result of reading what I have to say. Last week was a stressful one, which I will try to elaborate on in other posts, but wanted to take a minute and write a short post, just to update everyone and clear up any confusion.

Best of luck to the other Ricky Martin as well you can find his site here WWW.Rickymartin.com

Anyone who knows me well enough, knows I am not one to blow my own horn. But I figured this was appropriate given the information.

Well according to the latest news Best Job in America I have been working in the best job in America. Well According to this research it states that the best job is a Systems Engineer. Which is roughly the job I have held for the last 8 or so years, with different naming conventions from Company to Company.

they don’t provide too much details about typical job description but if your looking for one this description job description here is pretty accurate.

I also found it funny how they color code the jobs by stress level as well, very interesting…

I was recently reading an article in mens health magazine which the reporter came to the epiphany while talking with celebrity Mathew McConaughey that many successful people have a way of looking at the world and not dwelling on the negative, or better put there are no successful cynics. Where as the opposite is true of cynics they focus on the negative and enjoy getting together with other to have a “bitch session” or as the reporter put it a “Bitch spiral”.

I find that there is a lot of cynics out there and it is easy to make excuses and blame others for things that happen in your life. It is very easy to get dragged into that frame of mind. You have to make a conscious decision to not engage in that type of thought.

But I agree with many of the comments in the article that reflect the best way to deal with problems is to always keep moving forward in life and growing and bettering yourself. If not you are not really living, as we are only on this earth for a finite amount of time and we need to make the most of that time, otherwise we are just going through the motions and not really living life to its fullest.

As the article stated if you look at many of the most successful people in entertainment, business,or politics you see a common theme, they all have a positive focus in life and what they do.

That is one thing I have embraced, with all the things that have happened so far in my life, I try as much as possible to not dwell on the negatives, and especially not on the past. The way I see it is it has already happened, nothing you do now can change that outcome, it has happened for whatever reason. Now you have to focus on the current situation at hand, and the future and how to best make the most of it and move forward and grow as a person.

those are my thoughts, I would love to hear your take on it?