Busy Busy Busy!

Scott thought he'd remind me that i hadn't updated in a while. Gee i hadn't noticed! :-)

Since January, work has been more busy than ever. I've been putting in constant 10-12 hour days and working most weekends. This Systems Architects role, to which i was meant to allocate half my time, became much bigger than expected. Even my "mentor" doesn't have a moment spare, so there's not much mentoring going on. There's a lot of work which would be providing a lot of job satisfaction if i had a moment to reflect :-)

Big news lately has been my sister Sandra, who gave birth to Jack Nicholas! Congratulations to you and your new family. When are you starting up that blog?

Did manage some time out a few weeks back for the Corporate Games weekend. Kerri has a rather grainy shot of me on my way to a sensational team goal. Sam's side healed flick opened it up, with Keith putting me down the line, where i outpaced the defense to slide the ball between the keepers legs. You can see where the movement started with Sam and Keith in the background. Unfortunately the day ended rather badly when we gave up a 2-nil lead in our final qualifying match whilst dominating. Kerri also competed in the triathlon on the Sunday morning out at Penrith Lakes - boy it was cold!

Haven't done any exercise in almost 2 weeks - will be rectifying that with a game of touch tonight. We're going to be short handed with the guys, so i'm really going to be tested!

Hope everyone is well!

Hawks Nest

Tomorrow Kerri and I are heading up to Hawks Nest (Port Stephens) for a week of fun on the beach. Hope you all have a wonderful week leading in to Australia Day!

Harbour Cruise

As mentioned by Kerri, we were lucky to be invited for a Harbour Cruise back in November. Although an overcast evening, it was absolutely lovely to be out on the water! HD and SD Video is available from my Media Studio :-)

Merry Christmas!

How good is it to be on a break! A lot's been happening lately - it's nice to finally sit back and relax. Work has been especially busy. I've taken on a new role as a System Architect, so i get to have some influence on the design of a network, although i still get to keep my hands dirty performing research and investigations in the lab. It's the perfect job for me right now - i'm loving it, even though i've been thrown in the deep end :-) As a side project i spent some time developing a knowledge and process database for our department. I chose MediaWiki for this purpose, with Serendipity providing the front-end news page. Both of these are sitting on top of XAMPP (Apache web server, MySql database and PHP) installed on an XP machine, although eventually it will may move to linux or solaris. Hopefully my work colleagues will embrace the new system when i officially unleash it in the new year. Our company has merged with Lucent Technolgies - a significant player in america, which incorporates Bell-Labs. Not much change for us in Sydney, apart from a new name (Alcatel-Lucent) and new brand and colours (Purple!). That reminds me, i had a whirlwind trip to Texas for a Microsoft IPTV course a couple of months back. All i can say is it's great to live in Sydney :-)

Outside of work i've been keeping myself busy with touch footy on Wednesday nights, on top of my usually lunchtime soccer games during the week. My right knee is preventing me from keeping fully fit, so i only get out for a run every second weekend, or so. Some time ago i set up a web server at home for my video productions: VirtualWebby Media Studio. There's not much on there at the moment - i was more proud of the fact that i set up a linux system.

A couple of months back we saw a couple of good shows. The Boy from Oz was sensational. Hugh Jackman's performance was really impressive. We also made it out for The Living End at Luna Park's Big-Top, with End of Fashion supporting. End of Fashion were great live, and after this performance i really became addicted to their album! Most recently i can't get enough of the Red Hot Chili Peppers latest double CD.

Kerri has begun her Ocean Swims season, with swims at Balmain and Bilgola. She's thinking of doing the Hawks Nest Ocean Swim early January, and we'll be up there again during the Australia Day week for some fun in the sun!

Hope you are all well and enjoy your Christmas!

Google Calendar

Since i'm so slack at updating this thing, i've added my public calendar to my blog below. Of course, it will only be an improvement if i happen to keep the calendar up to date :-)