So Movember is over, here is how it left me after 30 days of growing the Mo. So I can say we did well as our team at work managed to raise $1570 for the cause. which is pretty good considering we were only 5 people in our team. So till next year movember…. Share [...]
So this is a new thing for me, I had never heard of or participated in Movember till last year, I started at a new company and found that most of my colleagues in the department all had these large moustaches, was interesting to see and then I heard the story behind it. This year [...]
My Friend Tony is participating in the ride for the cure. you can see from the video below. take a moment and make a small donation if you can. Make a Donation! Share and Enjoy:
so to start things off let me first acknowledge the fact that it has been a long time since my last post. And a lot has happened. So first things first I have changed position, and as part of that changed city again. I am now living and working in the (GTA) for those who [...]
I just received the notice last night in my e-mail announcing that ING Canada is going to be offering a brand new FREE Chequing account. This is similar to what they already offer in the US. This could be huge as they offer all the services which we now pay for as free and included [...]
While watching the Olympics these last couple of weeks I have had to watch commercials as opposed to my usual commercial free experience with Boxee on the appleTV.
As a result I found a few that caught my attention as being unique and had a Canadian theme to them.
Here are a few of them. Let me know what your thoughts are? The first one you have to open in you tube they don’t allow embedding it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aQkrV3ppAw
So one of the many things that come with being the family IT person is that whenever something goes wrong with any digital device family members turn to me to try and fix it. I usually will take a look within reason and see what I can do or suggest a solution if it involves too much time or may be costly to repair.
Well today we had such a request. My sister in law and her boyfriend just came back from their first vacation down south together. And as is the case there were a lot of pictures taken with their digital camera. Only problem was on the last day they got an error on their camera and it was only showing their last 30 pictures from that day, the other 270 or so pictures had vanished.
Well after doing some research I found the highly recommended Zero Assumption Recovery Tool . The have a free utility for recovering digital images and a paid solution for other recovery options.
They even have a very easy to follow tutorial on how the product works. you can find it here.
The Tool works well, takes a bit of time as any recovery tool might, and end result managed to recover 306 pictures for them after it ran for a couple of hours. there were some pictures that did not recover completely but in the grand scheme of things a few pictures missing is better than all of them. They were happy with the results which is what always counts.
Well I have been kind of lazy of late with vacation and just life in general taking it’s tole on me. Maybe it is being back in the winter after so many years I am suffering from SAD. I don’t know but I am working on getting out of it right now.
And a couple of the goals I have set for myself are to write my next exam for the MCSE and get in the habit of writing a post at least once a day. Nothing fancy or too deep. But something interesting and of value.
Well that is my little post for today. I have scheduled my test already. And I am working on a couple of post that should be ready in the next few days.
Well the Olympics have started. And I am proud to say they are in Canada and more specifically Vancouver. Both Karen and I liked Vancouver a lot when we were there. Just happened that the situation at the time was not great which is why we left.
I really enjoyed watching the opening ceremonies on Friday. One of the things l liked the most was the poet. His poem really hit home and really captured a lot of what makes Canada Canada.
Looking forward to seeing the men’s hockey. As for the women’s hockey don’t think there will be much competition except maybe from the USA but after the first game that they had an 18-0 win and set an Olympic record for most goals in a game, I think it is a safe bet they will get a medal.
Here is The medal Standings (This should update as it changes):
And to keep up on the Ice Hockey action here is the Schedule and the results:
Just wanted to wish happy holidays to everyone who reads this. All the best for those who celebrate Christmas today and tomorrow. Looking forward to the new year and all the opportunity it will bring.
Well as I had stated before, I have been working on getting certified. With several different ones in mind. But given my new position, I figured the Microsoft route would be most beneficial right now and would apply most to my current environment. That and the fact my exposure to network infrastructure in this position is minimal to non-existant the Cisco certs can be put on hold a little while longer. But with everything that has happened in the last 6 months that was kind of hard.
But I took a big step towards my goal about 2 weeks ago. I wrote the 70-290 Microsoft exam, and I passed! It was funny after reviewing the transcript online I realized it has been almost 10 years exactly since I wrote my first certification exam for Microsoft back in the days of NT 4.0.
So with that feat done I have my goal of writing 1 to 2 exams a month does not seem so hard I took about 3 weeks of prep for this exam by reading the ms press book and preparing with simulation exams. That seemed to be what worked best for me as I wrote the exam in about 1 hour.
Now on to the next exam which is the 70-291. I have already booked it for December and am working on prepping for it now.
Will keep you all posted on the progress and outcome.
Well with the way the market is going. And after almost securing a position last week only to have it fall through at the last minute. After much deliberation my wife and I have decided if nothing comes up within the next month we will be planning on returning to Canada, Unless between now and the end of next month we get an offer to go somewhere else or stay in Phoenix. We may have some news next week as I have several phone interviews with companies in Canada and USA, but they are both back east so one way or another we will probably be moving in that direction.
Well with the job hunt in full swing. starting to get more calls coming in this week after my E-mail attack last week. I have gotten calls from all over the US and Canada. I have phone interviews set up for tomorrow afternoon with a company based in NY but the position is in Ottawa, as well as waiting on follow up for some other positions in Chicago, Boston, Arlington, Miami, Toronto and Baltimore. Had one in California but the Company did not seem too serious, so I did not move forward with them. Also still waiting on news about a couple of positions here in Phoenix, had the initial interviews and now waiting for the next step. Seems that companies are taking longer than usual to go through the whole process.
Ok with everything going on from the move back to the US and the job hunt I had to put the CCNA study on hold for a little while, just couldn’t put my head down and focus on it properly, I thought I could bang through a good chunk of it on the plane ride over from the UK as that was nine and half hours to kill, but no luck, I started but just couldn’t focus, not to mention I did not sleep a wink on that flight, which made for a very long day.
But now that we have been back for a little while, and I am in somewhat of a routine as far as the job search goes, I decided to start to tackle it again as it can only improve my prospects at getting a job.
So as of Sunday night I started to go through the material again, and I have gone through 2 videos of the 2nd disk from trainsignal so far, and plan to finish it off before the end of the week so I can start the practice exams and schedule the real thing in the next week or so. After I get through this I will probably start to tackle the MCSE.
Well in the process of my job search, I came across a job opening for a company called zipcar. which offers members the service of renting a car for a few hours or a day as needed. they have several locations all around the US, and international as well. I got lucky as we are in Tempe they target university Campuses predominantly in the US, so they have several location on Campus which is close by to us, and makes a lot more sense to rent a car to run an errand than to rent a car from a traditional rental car company. So I signed up for the service and I am now waiting to receive the access card, which is the key to the whole system from what I have been able to tell from the website.
What I like most about this, is for about $8/hr you get a car with insurance coverage and gas included. especially if you only need it for a few hours it makes a lot of sense. Once I receive the card and actually use the service I will give a follow up review.
