Being quiet for a month, what's up dude?

It's been almost a month since my last post.. What happening to me?

Changing job!
Well for starters I changed job from a system admin north of Montréal at Infosilem to a System specialist in the engineering department at Bell Mobility in Dorval.  Leaving a post after 10 years of service always stirs up emotions inside.  I started at Infosilem when they where a small group of 12 in a small office in Ste-Adèle with only 2 small servers and a couple of PC's to take care of.  After 10 years, now located in Blainville, they grew to a strong team of +30 people, with a dozen or more servers, and more than a hundred Virtual Machines for testing and development.  Lots of energy went into this growth and I will feel attached for quite a while.

The funny thing is that I am coming back to Bell actually. Before moving up north in Ste-Adèle for Infosilem, I left the same engineering group I am back to.  I worked for around 1 year at Bell Mobility before Infosilem in the engineering group and around 5 years in the operations group in l'Acadie.  So going back to my "old" job is fun and I find myself rediscovering lots of people I knew back then.

When I left Bell 10 years ago, I recommended a friend of mine to join the team and now this friend is the one who brought me back in. Wow how much can change in 10 years! The group I am back in grew a  lot, probably doubled in size, two managers now, one of which I participated in hiring 10 years ago!  I am quite busy learning all the new stuff and taking care of a platform that interfaces the "users/vendors" of mobility services and all internal services inside Bell Mobility.  Things like SMS - Short message services, MMS - MultiMedia services, LBS - Location base services... This thing is called Parlay-X and we are now implementing the new OneAPI (Flash demos and video) platform for Aepona.

Training!
While all this is going on, I kept training, even if I am in a "break" from my intense triathlon season.  Need to keep a fit body to be able to have a fit mind!  What's the saying again... A Fit Body Means a Fit Mind? Well to be honest, I think I am now addicted to the endorphins that keep me sane and stress free... Well almost ;-)

Last weekend I was in Magog, Québec, doing my second half-Ironman. Actually they called it half long distance.  The swim was 2350M, 90K bike and 21k run.  So 450M more on the swim side.  The Magog triathlon is a hard one for the long distance course. We had some waves, long and small in the lake, lots of up-hills on the bike and run.  I started my triathlon with a bad left shoulder that I manage to control on the swim, but got stiffer on the bike, being on my tri-bars for 90km (3 hours). So when came time to run, my shoulder cramped between 5km and 15km and forced my to walk and stretched more than I wanted to.  But overall, I manage to do a similar time compared to my first half-Ironman.

This is me (second left) with some of my Tribal friends a few minutes before the start.

Electrical storm killed my machines!
Yep, We had an lighting strike near the house 10 days ago, that fried the network cards of the xbox 360, a PC, a port on my router and my Ubuntu server.  In addition, I have a couple of electronic thermostats that fried and the charger for my electric mower.  So I am now working hard to recover my server, I found some old parts on Ebay for my old Dell 600SC server.  So hopefully I can recover my Raid5 drive with all my stuff on it.  I now need to setup a lighting rod and better surge protection around my equipments.  The only thing that was not on UPS was the xbox. I think that was the weak link that started the mess.

Vacation!
It's always good to have some vacation, time to cool down, relax, change of pace.  This year my two weeks started with my half-Iroman in Magog, followed with a week in Québec city where my son went skying... Right skying in the summer, actually this is what he did...



While this was going on, the rest of the family went visit and have fun at those places.Québec Aquarium, Village Valcartier, Canyon Ste-Anne for some Ferratas, aerial bridges and Zip Lines.  Then some relaxing time in the old Québec, studying the history of my ancestors.

Next week will be in Gatineau, near Ottawa for the Jeux du Québec (Québec Games). Where my daughter will be participating in the triathlon games for the first time.

Movies and books!
Vacation also means reading and going to the movies with friends.  In the last month I finished the quadrilogy "Ender's games" by Orson Scott Card, started earlier in the year, this is one of the best and deep science-fiction series I read.  Now I am almost done with the Navigator by Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos. This is more light reading compared to Ender's game, but the historical references are quite interesting.

On the movie side, I was not disappointed by Salt with Angelina Jolie.  The plot about the kids trained by some Russian to become sleeping agents in the USA to start a war was quite interesting.  Yes, lots of violence and shooting, but good actions. The other movie I saw was the true story of Robert Piché, the pilot who safely landed a plane with no fuel and saved 300 people. Very touching movie about the complicated life of the man and what gave him the nerves of steel that saved the plan and everyone in it.