01 November 2009
An Eventful Week That Got Better As IT Went Along
01/11/09 12:55
As we mentioned last weekend we went to Courtenay. The trip was very pleasant, lots of fall foliage, The salmon were spawning in the Idontknowthebloodynameofthe River, which was cool to see. We got lots of pictures and it was very relaxing. Sunday morning I got a call from my boss. Something at the Nanaimo office had failed. Either he could drive up (2 1/2 hours) or I could drive back from Courtney (about an hour). So we packed up a little early and headed back to Nanaimo. As it turned out one of the networking devices had just frozen. I rebooted it and all was well.
At 4:30 I went back to the office. BCHydro had to do electrical work on the area and had cut power for a couple of hours. I went in and turned everything off, servers, printers, workstations, phone systems and such and left when the power died. At 9:30 I went back and once the power came back started everything on again. At least that was the plan. 5 of the 6 systems came up. The last one started, it was lit up AS IF it was working fine but would not answer network calls. It wouldn't have been too bad but it was the one system that had a critical process that was used across the whole Aviawest network. It served a critical database engine that supported our web sites, our sales applications, our customer scheduling system, and part of the accounting systems. I fought with it until 3:00am then I went home, crashed for a couple hours, and went back to the office at 7:30. At 9:30 I had done all I could. My boss was on the road with a new unit. He swapped it out and got everything running again. I was oblivious to all of this as I slept into the afternoon.
Tuesday I started to get caught up at work. In other news it was another day, another beach in BC, another shoe with another foot in it. Still no answer to who or what or why though. Personally I suspect the strangest Nike promotion ever. Later in the week things were running smoother. Last week I fixed the CEO's home computer running Vista (Windows Vista: We hates it forever). He was so impressed that this week he gave me his personal laptop to fix. It also is a Vista (Windows Vista: We hates it forever) system. It's being very obstinate.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/10/28/bc-foot-found-running-shoe-richmond.html
On Friday the Olympic Flame arrived in Victoria. It started on the Olympic Torch Run. Saturday we went downtown to do some shopping and had lunch with Barbara. It was a beautiful sunny, if brisk, day and we enjoyed walking around the waterfront looking at this and that. Afterwords we had lunch at our favourite Vietnamese place. Over lunch we talked about this and that. Barbara mentioned something we had never heard before.
I've talked about my cousin Mike several times. He teaches Special Ed and plays the guitar. Well if you go way back, though he grew up in the US he went to college in Canada at Brandon University in Winnipeg on a basketball scholarship. He was actually a very good player. After he graduated there was some talk of his playing for pro teams in Europe, but he decided to teach. Anyway Barbara told us that in 1972 while he was still in college they wanted him to play on the Canadian Olympic Basketball Team. He was ready to join the team but they discovered that he had not resided in Canada long enough to be eligible. The team ended up not qualifying to go to the games but if Mike had played, who knows what might of happened.
Sunday the Olympic Torch Run passed through Nanaimo and Lantzville. We went over to Barbara's to watch it go by which was a lot of fun. What wasn't so much fun was getting up. The torch was scheduled to go through around 8:00 a.m. To avoid any security or access restrictions we decided to head over to Barbara's at 6:00. This meant we would have to get up at 5:00. We were just about ready to head out the door when we realized the clocks had changed. We had actually gotten up at 4:00 on a Sunday. Arghhh!! So we checked a few websites and emails and headed to Barbara's at 6:00. Barbara had made pancakes and we had a good laugh about our mixup. Just before 8:00 we went out to the road. It was rather frosty. There was a procession of vehicles; RCMP motorcycles and cars, CocaCola trucks (obviously a major sponsor of the run. One of the trucks even had Georgia plates), and assorted chase vehicles. Finally the runner passed to much cheering, and picture taking, After going through Lantzville the torch relay will continue to Port Hardy on the northern end of the island. Then it rides the ferry to the mainland and then off through northern BC, the Yukon, and the rest of the country. The flame is going to go through hundreds of towns in all of the Canadian Territories and Province's. Unfortunately it looks like it will be going through Nunavut, Baffin Island and the northern bit of Hudson's Bay in January. That won't be pleasant.
Lastly we hope all of you did not forget about daylight savings time like we did. Remember when you reset your clocks it's Spring Up and Fall Down.
The river behind Agnes' B&B.
Once the salmon spawn the salmon die and provide food for the local birdlife.
One of the spawning salmon
Bridge in the park where we were watching the salmon
Doug and Aunt Barbara waiting for the Olympic Torch
The Olympic Torch being run just down the road from Barbara's, outside of Lanztville, BC
Torch Bearer
At 4:30 I went back to the office. BCHydro had to do electrical work on the area and had cut power for a couple of hours. I went in and turned everything off, servers, printers, workstations, phone systems and such and left when the power died. At 9:30 I went back and once the power came back started everything on again. At least that was the plan. 5 of the 6 systems came up. The last one started, it was lit up AS IF it was working fine but would not answer network calls. It wouldn't have been too bad but it was the one system that had a critical process that was used across the whole Aviawest network. It served a critical database engine that supported our web sites, our sales applications, our customer scheduling system, and part of the accounting systems. I fought with it until 3:00am then I went home, crashed for a couple hours, and went back to the office at 7:30. At 9:30 I had done all I could. My boss was on the road with a new unit. He swapped it out and got everything running again. I was oblivious to all of this as I slept into the afternoon.
Tuesday I started to get caught up at work. In other news it was another day, another beach in BC, another shoe with another foot in it. Still no answer to who or what or why though. Personally I suspect the strangest Nike promotion ever. Later in the week things were running smoother. Last week I fixed the CEO's home computer running Vista (Windows Vista: We hates it forever). He was so impressed that this week he gave me his personal laptop to fix. It also is a Vista (Windows Vista: We hates it forever) system. It's being very obstinate.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/10/28/bc-foot-found-running-shoe-richmond.html
On Friday the Olympic Flame arrived in Victoria. It started on the Olympic Torch Run. Saturday we went downtown to do some shopping and had lunch with Barbara. It was a beautiful sunny, if brisk, day and we enjoyed walking around the waterfront looking at this and that. Afterwords we had lunch at our favourite Vietnamese place. Over lunch we talked about this and that. Barbara mentioned something we had never heard before.
I've talked about my cousin Mike several times. He teaches Special Ed and plays the guitar. Well if you go way back, though he grew up in the US he went to college in Canada at Brandon University in Winnipeg on a basketball scholarship. He was actually a very good player. After he graduated there was some talk of his playing for pro teams in Europe, but he decided to teach. Anyway Barbara told us that in 1972 while he was still in college they wanted him to play on the Canadian Olympic Basketball Team. He was ready to join the team but they discovered that he had not resided in Canada long enough to be eligible. The team ended up not qualifying to go to the games but if Mike had played, who knows what might of happened.
Sunday the Olympic Torch Run passed through Nanaimo and Lantzville. We went over to Barbara's to watch it go by which was a lot of fun. What wasn't so much fun was getting up. The torch was scheduled to go through around 8:00 a.m. To avoid any security or access restrictions we decided to head over to Barbara's at 6:00. This meant we would have to get up at 5:00. We were just about ready to head out the door when we realized the clocks had changed. We had actually gotten up at 4:00 on a Sunday. Arghhh!! So we checked a few websites and emails and headed to Barbara's at 6:00. Barbara had made pancakes and we had a good laugh about our mixup. Just before 8:00 we went out to the road. It was rather frosty. There was a procession of vehicles; RCMP motorcycles and cars, CocaCola trucks (obviously a major sponsor of the run. One of the trucks even had Georgia plates), and assorted chase vehicles. Finally the runner passed to much cheering, and picture taking, After going through Lantzville the torch relay will continue to Port Hardy on the northern end of the island. Then it rides the ferry to the mainland and then off through northern BC, the Yukon, and the rest of the country. The flame is going to go through hundreds of towns in all of the Canadian Territories and Province's. Unfortunately it looks like it will be going through Nunavut, Baffin Island and the northern bit of Hudson's Bay in January. That won't be pleasant.
Lastly we hope all of you did not forget about daylight savings time like we did. Remember when you reset your clocks it's Spring Up and Fall Down.
The river behind Agnes' B&B.
Once the salmon spawn the salmon die and provide food for the local birdlife.
One of the spawning salmon
Bridge in the park where we were watching the salmon
Doug and Aunt Barbara waiting for the Olympic Torch
The Olympic Torch being run just down the road from Barbara's, outside of Lanztville, BC
Torch Bearer