Ma Fibre Wire Done Come Unhitched!

And we're off!

2008-10-01T13:13:00.001-07:00

So, I've said goodbye to the regular pay cheques and started my own business as of today... So, check out Magpies Consulting and tell all your friends and foe! (I'll work for just about anyone as long as they pay the bills...)

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I think we'll be spending $3000

2008-09-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=2086

What a spectacularly eventful day!

2008-09-17T14:28:00.001-07:00

Day started pretty normal, and by that I mean the dogs were asleep on the bed and some ferociously perky morning radio host was wittering away. Then it was off to the bank - I'd been in there last Saturday and had set up an appointment for this morning to set up the new business bank account (oh, wait, here's a side note, I've started my own business - more on that in some other post!), so 9:30, bank opens it's door and I announce my presence to the receptionist who looks at me blankly and says "Who were you looking to see, I don't see any appointment here for you?" - Ah, great... so a bit of back and forth and they finally find someone who can help me, but not until 10:30. It was the perfect excuse to go in search of an iced latte - it's a bit warm for September! Bank account was all set up, no major hiccups, great, one check-mark for the list. Back home working, and I hear the door open and some guy yelling up "Hello!" - I shout back "Hello!" - thinking it's the guy we've got in redoing our floors trying to get our attention, male voice shouts "Hello!" once more, and I yell back "Hang on, I'm coming down!", and then I hear a conversation starting - indeed one of the voices is my floor guy, but the other isn't... huh? Long story short, some older guy had just walked into my house, and was proceeding to take pictures because apparently in the 1940s he had grown up in my house - I guess this gives him some right to come barging in at any point in the future - must remember this trick for when I'm old and senile I guess! Finally managed to usher elderly intruder out of the house (why do old people like to talk so much to people they don't even know!?), and then it was off to see the accountant (like I can manage books efficiently for my own business - I did mention I was opening my own, right? No? Ok, some other post... soon... promise!) Have a nice long conversation with my accountant (yeah, the cool part here is my accountant is the brother of Eugene Levy...) and head back to where I'd parked my car - nice day in the city, lots of people and cyclists about, see a guy coming down the road on his bike, keep walking, hear a crashing sound, look over and see the same guy now performing aerial acrobatics over the top of a car door before making a thudding noise onto the ground in front of the car. Ok, so other people come running, someone who seems like he knows first aid (and whose skills must be more recent than mine - uh, my last life guard certification was in the UK!) so I get the 911 caller privilege - uh, wait, what street am I on? Quickly look like a bit of a dumbass, ask someone close by the name of the street and talk with the EMS about what's going on... then proceed to direct traffic around the fallen cyclist. Ten minutes pass... 2 ambulances have passed by on the major road... still nothing for our cyclist... call back to 911, uh, guys, are you lost? Oh, no, just turns out the ambulance was coming from the other side of town! Obviously... in the meantime a police car shows up to take particulars from the car door opener - but leaves me directing traffic - suppose I'm good for something - I'm so going to ask for the fancy gloves and bright orange vest next time! So, now I'm home again, unable to walk on any floor in the main level of my house due to the recent staining, and it's time to get out of the house now due to the fumes from the recent staining! Can't say my day's been boring... nope, not one little bit!

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I fit, You fit, Wii fit!

2008-06-04T10:57:00.001-07:00

So, we've had the Wii Fit in the house for just over a couple weeks now... granted 4 days of that I was down in Chicago for work. However, I've got to say, it appears to be doing it's job. Not only does it lock you in by opening up new parts of the game after you've accumulated enough credits, but because it's so interactive it's actually *gasp* fun! So, after 2 weeks I'm 6 pounds down.... course I still have the inflated Mii that it created for me the first time it weighed me, but with any luck my Mii will start to shrink soon!

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Wow, it's going to be crowded...

2008-05-14T13:48:00.001-07:00

Apple's WWDC is sold out....

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If you're wondering what to do as a career

2008-05-13T07:15:00.001-07:00

I'm going to suggest you look into being a Mac Server Administrator. Looking around at what's out there in the market and where the jobs are currently coming up, it's starting to look like an abundance of Mac-centric positions and nowhere near enough skilled people to fill these positions. Now, to be clear, I'm not talking about needing people to troubleshoot iPhoto and be able to diagnose a dead battery in an LCII - I mean hardcore full on server administrators. People who understand corporate and enterprise IT best practices, who comprehend server infrastructure, doesn't shy away from terms like DNS, LDAP, IMAP, SMTP, AD, HTTP, SSL, AFP, SMB, FTP etc etc etc... If you're just starting out, go take a look into training, and find yourself a copy of OS X Server - really the only way to learn this stuff is to use it. Get yourself a home server, try running your own directory system, run your own mail server, host your own website... once you've rebuilt it a few times (after you broke it) and you're on your way to ACTC you're ready to put your foot into the pond of jobs that are coming up. You may only start out as front-line support - dealing mostly with end-users, but it'll get you in front of the guys & gals that are doing the heavy lifting and if you show your worth on the front line you'll get called up to help out with the server stuff when you're ready. So yes, you need to be technically minded, but if you're determined enough to learn, people can learn all sorts of things. Look at me - I'm a heavy-lifting server gal, and where was my education? Oh yeah - I'm the one with a degree in Music...

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Reserving this for an "I told you so..."

2008-05-12T11:50:00.001-07:00

Right, I love analysts.... especially analysts that don't actually know the technology they're analyzing... see this ITbusiness.ca article

Now, where they're getting their numbers for what the contract is going to cost, well, that's anyone's guess... but I'm going to disagree about corporate canada not picking up the iPhone. It won't be an immediate influx, but if what's going on in the US is anything to go by, the higher execs go and buy a shiny new toy and force IT into making it work for them because it's what they WANT to use! Not to mention all those corporations that haven't invested in a Blackberry Enterprise Server... having fought with many a blackberry in my day I know a thing or two about it's "security" and I've got to say plain passwords with no encryption doesn't really pass for security in my book...

Anyhow, reserve this space for an "I told you so" in about 6-8 months after the iPhone hits the streets in Canada.

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Well, glad we cleared that up then...

2008-05-12T08:08:00.001-07:00

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WiiFit

2008-04-30T12:39:00.001-07:00

After getting a Wii a couple month ago and dealing with a serious Wii Tennis and Guitar Hero addiction I can see my next addiction coming a mile away... least this one's going to make me look good while being addicted!

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'Aboot' bloody time...

2008-04-29T06:34:00.001-07:00

Ted Rogers confirms the iPhone is coming to Canada before the end of 2008.

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Yes, I suck...

2008-04-25T06:41:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time... like, February. I've got all the usual excuses - been busy, stuff going on, real life got in the way... whatever... Things are up, stuff is going on, the times - they are a'changin'.... more later...

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Queen West...

2008-02-21T07:19:00.001-08:00

See http://torontoist.com/2008/02/phototo_queen_s.php for more images

Queen west is one of my favourite parts of town - I used to live around the corner, and have friends that own businesses in this part of town. more importantly though, I know two households that were affected by yesterday's fire. I'd encourage anyone reading to think about any stuff they have lying around that would help out those who now have nothing. I have yet to find anyone making an organized central donation area, but friends of those affected are arranging individual fundraisers - here's a couple links from Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=8326598679 & http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21759217928

UPDATE: There is now a centralized support fund at Scotiabank branches more info here - http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_19841.aspx

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Magical Value-less Copper!

2008-02-14T13:09:00.001-08:00

One of those things that if it weren't Hydro One I probably wouldn't believe it...

As seen at http://torontoist.com/2008/02/nothing_to_stea.php

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If you didn't make the trip to SF in January...

2008-02-12T10:02:00.001-08:00

Sure you watched the Steve-note, but how about all the other sessions that go on during Macworld? Usually you have to drop down over $1000 to attend the conference sessions, but this year, thanks to IDG and SOMA all the Macworld sessions (i.e the Users conference, and the IT conference) are available for free to view online here - http://www.macworldencore.com

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1998 Called - They want their website back...

2008-02-06T12:04:00.001-08:00

http://www.tortillaflats.ca/

I'm a fairly frequent visitor of this restaurant (moreso when we actually lived in the area) but they do a decent bit of texmex at a decent price - but OMG, what is that website all about....

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incroyable!!

2008-02-01T11:54:00.001-08:00

http://www.mensup.fr/usbwine/

(Thanks Jenn)

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SSL you taunt me so....

2008-01-30T14:04:00.001-08:00

So, with the bright idea of, "Isn't it easier just to get a wildcard certificate?" in hand, time to fight the server... once you get your head around what's actually required and work your way around a kindly added Apple "gotcha" wildcard SSL is actually possible.

So, wildcard SSLs are available from several people, but the one I was working with came from mactechdomains.com

When you get your certificate, you'll get a .crt and a intermediate key from the issuing CA. This is great for the machine that you started the request from (i.e., you went to Server Admin, filled in the details, and clicked the "Request certificate from a CA" and you had a handy csr to send them. You drop the test from your crt into the already self-signed certificate in server admin and you're away to the races.)

The fun begins when you want to use your wildcard certificate on other machines. First, make sure that the intermediary certificate (this may be called something like yourCA_intermediate_bundle.crt) is in the System keychain and the X.509 Anchors.

Now you don't have to make another request, but how to get that info in there. The key (pardon the pun) lives in /etc/certificates on the machine that your SSL cert is already up and running on. Copy over the *.youdomain.com files to your next server and put them into /etc/certificates. In Server Admin, chose import rather than a new certificate and you're going to use the *.yourdomain.com.crt in the certificate field, and the *.yourdomain.com.key in the key field. If you used a passphrase when you first generated your private key you'll have to enter it in the passphrase field. Leave the 3rd field blank, click import, and Bob should be your uncle.

Ah, now, you've restarted your web services after implementing your new certificate and Server Admin is now telling you that web cannot start... If this isn't your first certificate on this machine you may be running into a... uh, feature! There's a gotcha in the way that OS X Server is reading the keys of your certificates and it's causing an issue if you have two private keys both with pass phrases. The key (pardon the pub again!) here is to strip that passphrase out of your private key:

server:/etc/certificates root# cp \*.yourdomain.com.key \*.yourdomain.com.key.passphrase
server:/etc/certificates root# openssl rsa -in \*.yourdomain.com.key.passphrase -out \*.yourdomain.com.key
Enter pass phrase for *.yourdomain.com.key.passphrase:
writing RSA key

So with this, you'll be deleting the newly added cert from Server Admin, stripping the passphrase, re-importing the cert with it's newly naked passphrase, and then you can go back in and apply this certificate to your web services and be able to restart web services without it complaining at you.

And that my friends, is what comes out of a day of banging your head against a very solid brick wall with determination to break it down....

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Distractions be gone!

2008-01-21T13:49:00.001-08:00

Perhaps a bit over the top, and really only good for the firefox breed of browsers, but still amused me at it's simplicity and ingenuity - No Links Please! is implemented as a Greasemonkey script - course, if you've already installed it you can't see that I just linked to it... ;-)

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Procrastination...

2008-01-08T12:42:00.001-08:00

I've been listening to this recently, and have been quite enlightened with the points he covers off - I'd advise it to anyone... http://theownerscircle.com/seminar-download.html

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Sometimes I'm dumb...

2007-12-11T11:30:00.001-08:00

The exact quote would be "You can blog directly from Flock!?!"

As it turns out, yes, indeed you can... I've been looking for a nice simple piece of blogging software.. I started out the whole blogging thing when I'd been playing with Journler which I'd had introduced to me at this past year's WWDC, but it didn't post to blogger, so that was problem #1. Next I tried out MarsEdit which I do really like, but as I'm such a infrequent blogger it seemed a bit overkill, that and I'm superbly cheap, so after my free 30 days, I went looking for something lean mean and well, free... I came across Ecto which while not free, is *cheaper*, but still a bit overkill for me, I mean honestly, I only blog maybe 2-3 times a month? So that's where Flock comes along, bonus #1 is it's free, #2, it's already on my system as my alternative browser, and #3, uh, well, I'm writing this in it, which means it works and it's simple. So, 3 cheers for Flock!

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2007-12-03T15:38:00.000-08:00

So, Macworld is getting even more community-fied this year, and have created a Ning network for all the attendees. (Ning being the next brain-child of ex-Netscape founder Marc Andreessen) So, as IronGate have a booth at Macworld this year, and I'm speaking in the IT Conference again, oh, and I believe the Mac Communities are also hosting a booth, of which the MacEnterprise.org group is a member, all in all I'm going to be a busy girl! So, with all that, a bit of promotion - and a new badge over on the right hand side. Oh, I can hardly contain the excitement!

Well, there's the Chinese sorted...

2007-12-03T14:58:00.001-08:00

There are two things that I tend to search for when moving to a new city - one is a fabulous Indian take-out - this gets qualified with a range of dishes, but usually on the quality of their Chicken Korma, and a good chinese delivery - and this one is measured on the quality of their General Tao/Tso/T** Chicken.

Now, a bit of background, as for these qualifications... it's not so much of a "you make the best" it's more of a "I've had the best elsewhere, now try and live up to that" mentality. So, for the Indian, the standard comes from when I was living in the UK, I lived in the East end of London in an area called Ilford. It was a significantly large Indian immigrant community, and as a result had a wde range of Indian take-out to choose from. So, the place I found there managed to make a korma that was crave-worthy - to the extent that people used to come and visit me solely so that we could order from my local Indian! Sadly, the last time I looked for this particular Indian they appeared to no longer exist, and so my constant has vanished - not that ordering from the UK is the most practical thing from Toronto!

Moving on, the Chinese qualification... I was introduced to "Hot N' Spicy'" (I can't believe they don't have a website, but here's a link to the location) in Montreal in my 2nd year of university there - they have a few restaurants, but the one that I know best is the one in the Faubourg on Ste. Catherine at Bay. It's a small take-out and delivery that I used to live almost across the street from, and as such was quite a regular treat to get their general Tao chicken. I moved a bit further across town, closer to McGill, the year after that and would step up to pay their delivery fee, even as a student, simply for their chicken! In more recent times, I've taken my husband to Montreal to show him my student haunts, and of course had to visit Hot N' Spicy', well, wouldn't you know it, he's no addicted also! To the extent that the last time we were in Montreal we ended up bringing home about 4 ordered of General Tao Chicken to put in the fridge... no, we're not obsessed...

So, back to where I started this, finding local take-out. We moved to Toronto about 5 years ago now, and have lived in 3 parts of town, so have had a wide range of places to order from across the city. Indian is a tricky one to find, there is an Indian area of Toronto, but it's significantly further East than we have ever lived, so we haven't really managed to fully qualify all of those places, but generally, we've settled on a place that was close to our previous house called Siddhartha (http://www.thesiddhartha.com). We tend to work around that area sometimes, so still manage to pick up take-out on occasion - they're still not quite up to par on my take-out from the UK, but I'm beginning to accept that I won't be able to make the trans-atlantic comparison there.

The Chinese you'd think would be easy, it's only a few hours down the road afterall... but we've found there's a huge variation (almost as much as the spelling) on the old General and his chicken... but as of last night, the search is over. While they don't have their own website, the Wok Terminal (http://www.restaurantica.com/restaurants/7099/) has won us over. Not only was our dinner less than $20 delivered, but the General Tao could have been mistaken for Hot N' Spicy's version any day - oh, and they sent free mini-spring rolls, as well as fortune cookies - no more searching for us!

For the record...

2007-11-19T12:43:00.001-08:00

<rant>

It's pronounced "An-dree-nah"....

Nothing fancier than that... oh, and when you reply to an e-mail I sent you, it would be nice if you spelt my name the way it's written in that e-mail... it's only visible 5 times... here's your 6th - it's A-N-D-R-I-N-A

</rant>

Where did they find them all!

2007-11-08T13:51:00.001-08:00

I knew there had to be a use for the classic Mac - I'd always thought it was as a fishtank, but aparently, no, it's a fashion accessory... (take a look through the catalogues to get the full effect)

rpm.co.zk

Now, more to the point - where did they manage to find all of these machines in New Zealand...

My What a Big Rock you Have...

2007-11-04T22:41:00.001-08:00

So it's been a while since I've gone further north than the Muskokas being the good lil' Torontonian I am. So a smidge of culture shock this week as I get to hang out in Sudbury all week. Even better than that I'm spending the week at College... working, not student-ing, but still, the atmosphere is there!

Anyhow, back to the point, things I never noticed as a kid when we did the required Sudbury/Sault Ste Marie/Thunder Bay run:

1. Peeps in Sudbury aren't anywhere as serious about their coffee as folks down in Toronto - i.e. there is a grand total of one Starbucks here (frankly, I was surprised to find that one, but fair play to it, it's in the local Chapters...)

2. When you drive off the edge of the Canadian Shield you know it - there's rocks cropping up everywhere! More amusing, is that it seems that every outcropping of rock along the highway has inukshuks propped up on top of them. Now who would have wandered into the middle of the highway, climbed the rocks and found the rocks to build these things? Of some note is that when you're driving up this way when it's just starting to get dark, inukshuks begin to resemble *things* standing on top of rocks peering down at you... slightly un-nerving!

3. Eating out on a Sunday evening doesn't happen. Seriously - room service finished at 2PM.

4. Boutique hotels don't exist outside of metropolitan areas - it's the Raddisson, Days Inn, Knights Inn or bust up here.

I'm sure I'll find more points to add to the list as the week goes on... Oh, and coming soon will be pictures of the fake McD's - Same red lettering for the name, but only a single golden arch... I've seen 2 of these mystery burger joints up here - amusingly, both have had a real McD's across the street from them!

Now I'm going to have to get a new camera!

2007-10-31T11:32:00.001-07:00

Wireless 2GB SD card... set it up on your machine, pop it into your camera, now all the pictures you take get uploaded direct from your camera to your computer or your chosen photo sharing website over your home wireless network... no wires, no logins, no fuss... crazy!

Eye-Fi » Home
via - Daring Fireball

Getting a big cat to purr...

2007-10-30T14:44:00.001-07:00

So, I've taken the pill, and I'm trying to drink the koolaid to go along with it... i upgraded my primary workstation to Leopard. I've come across a couple things that are hampering my day to day work - i.e. Daylite isn't happy unless you want to go for a beta upgrade - which involved updating the server first to a beta system which then means I'm inflicting all of my fellow colleagues with a beta. Needless to say, that hasn't happened - using VPN to the office and ARD to control a server there gives me all the Daylite access I need. It is making me look real hard at the built-in calendaring in leopard server though - just a bit sooner than I'd expected to look at it, but knew it was coming none the less!

I've also had a bit of a headache mail day. Originally I thought people just didn't want to talk to me, but it turns out there's something a bit odd about when you upgrade an existing IMAP mail library. I had a lot of my mail sorted after delivery by mail rules, what I was seeing is that any mail that got sorted by a mail rule wasn't showing as a new message in the folder it got sorted into. It wasn't until I clicked on a mailbox that had had Mail.app move with the rules did I discover there was actually new mail in there! It looks like the solution is to rename ~/Library/Mail and let everything get downloaded from the IMAP server again... this little exercise of course killed all my rules, and signatures... so I have no real way of ensuring this really was the fix, but I'm going to try something out and see if ti drives me nuts - I'm going to actually use smart folders for my mail. I've always had a "Today" smart folder, which is great - essentially I have a mailbox that is anything I've received today, and isn't junk - a really nice way of just looking in one place for all new stuff. So now, instead of rules, here come more smart mailboxes. I'm wondering exactly what I'm going to do about the ginormous inbox I'm about to acquire... now what does that new "Archive mailbox..." function do...

Note to Bill - your login be broken!

2007-10-17T14:06:00.001-07:00

So there I was about to give Bill a hard time about his whole "Italian themed" movie selection... you know, "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" kind of Italian quote... when I wound up in the infinite loop of "you must login", so fine I login, and then promptly get told to login to post a comment... Anyhow, I give up, I'm commenting here instead - and it's nowhere near as funny... thanks for ruining it for me Bill!

A Mac Guys Perspective » Back in a bit.

Back in TO

2007-10-17T10:27:00.001-07:00

It's been a busy time, but I'm back in TO again. We've got friends coming up from Illinois to spend the weekend, and then back to Ottawa again... is there no peace for the wicked!

Of all the things I've seen on the road...

2007-10-09T20:41:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm impressed with the tie-downs at least... Although the transport truck to tow it may be slight overkill!

Officially a consultant now

2007-10-05T11:13:00.001-07:00

I'm now an official signed up Apple Consultant Network (ACN) member now. Lets see how that goes!

Pitfalls of Exchange...

2007-10-05T08:36:00.001-07:00

One of the more amusing blog posts to come out of M$....

Loading “You Had Me At EHLO... : Me Too!”

blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, part 1: Opportunity

2007-10-04T14:03:00.001-07:00

blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, part 1: Opportunity

I've been reading a lot of pmarca recently, but this, the first in a set of career planing is quite an interesting read - I'm reading through the rest, and looking forward to more...

Toast Masters...

2007-10-04T13:16:00.001-07:00

So, sure I can *talk* about technology, but can I talk about it in a way that other people actually want to listen to? In fact, can I talk about anything and actually sound engaging? I'm thinking about attending a few Toast Masters meetings and see what I think. I think just the practice of speaking, becoming more relaxed in front of a group of people, and simply being able to think on your feet is really what it's all about - having an environment to practice this in seems like a good idea - there is only so many times the cats and dog will listen to a public presentation after all!

And so it begins...

2007-10-04T12:58:00.001-07:00

I've had a few people give me shocked and astonished looks when I admitted that indeed, I did not have my own blog... and as I've had a few things recently that could very well have been blogged, well, here we go then - one blog.