Kevin's Ramblings…

I really don’t go on exotic vacations.  I don’t particularly care for the heat and humidity of a tropical island and I am not a huge fan of sand so laying on a beach is not my idea of a good time.  My sister has tried, unsuccessfully, for years, to get me to go to Cuba with her and her husband.  No interest.  At all.

I suppose if I did go I would just sit under an umbrella drinking all day and all night.  I suppose that wouldn’t be too bad.

Speaking of drinking all day and all night, I have not had a day where I have not had a drink in the last week.  I guess it takes quantities of alcohol to keep me going on my return trips to Ontario.  Amaretto is my drink of choice.  My buddies back in the day tried to get me to drink beer but they were not successful in their attempts.  I do not like it.  At all.  I will drink pretty much anything else that is offered.  I can go for a bottle or two of wine, red, white, doesn’t matter.  I don’t really care for hard stuff, scotch, vodka, etc., but when mixed, they aren’t too bad.

I don’t drink all that much.  I did enough of that when I was a teen and in my early 20’s to last a lifetime.  I had a fairly good job when I was in high school and spent a lot of that money down at the Port Mansion in Port Dalhousie.  Oh well, a friend worked there so I guess I helped put him through school.

Anyway, back to vacations – I seem to have gotten side-tracked there.

I am now on vacation.  I don’t go back into the office for another week still and it seems that I have already been off for a week because of the conference. My vacation for this year is spending a weekend back in St. Catharines for Thanksgiving.  I have visited some of my favourite restaurants, The Mandarin, Duff’s Pizzeria, today we are heading to what we call “The Greasy Spoon” which is actually Golden Grill. I caught a Brock Badgers baseball game and they came back for the win.  All in all, it is pretty relaxing actually.

Today, I am making my nearly world famous Crock-Pot roast for dinner – it is Crock-Potting away as I type this.  Thanksgiving dinner will be tomorrow – turkey and all the fixings.  I think we might actually catch a movie which is a rare event for me to be sure.

Zeus and Blondie are in their new Pet Resort back in Calgary.  I will pick them up on Wednesday morning.

Not a bad week off at all.

Well, the conference up in Collingwood was a good one.  Excellent rooms, awesome food and really good presentations, with the odd exception of course.

We did some fun activities as well.  Our team building event on Tuesday afternoon was some sort of scavenger hunt – my team came in second place.  Not bad, out of 10 teams as well and we only lost by 1 point.

On Tuesday night I joined a bunch of co-workers for some drinks in one of the local bars in the Blue Mountain Village.  Good times around for sure.  While we were bar hopping, I received a notification that the Calgary office was down.  I didn’t take much note because this will happen from time to time and typically, it will be back up within minutes.

Well, not this time apparently.  About an hour later, I received a second alert.  So, I did a check to ensure that the power was still on and it was – so that is a good sign.  Nothing else that I can really physically check, I am over 3000km away.  So, it is about 11:30pm Eastern so I decided to call one of the office admin people to see if she’d be able to go into the office early the next day, presuming that the issue wasn’t resolved over night.  No problem there, she’d be in by 5:30am or so.

I started work at 6:30am and the first thing I checked was the Calgary office status – still down.  Not good.  Telus had not informed us that it was a Telus issue, so something else was going on.

RD got in and I had her do some testing.  Looks like the main switch in our server room has failed.  The switch essentially connects all of the computers in the office to the servers and the internet.  So, we place a service call with Avaya and they will ship us a new switch – it will arrive sometime later that evening.  I contact the IT guy up in Edmonton, he didn’t attend the conference and let him know that he needs to get to Calgary as soon as he can.

Well, long story a bit shorter (perhaps), he’s able to get everyone in the office back up and running – he temporarily moves connections on the 6th floor to the two other switches and then moves the now empty switch back to 5.  The office admin person meets the courier at 11:30pm to receive the new switch.

My co-worker in the office was in today – I am on vacation.  The replacement switch can’t be connected, the port that we need to connect to is damaged.  They will be shipping yet another switch.  The office is still good, so that isn’t too bad.

The replacement switch will now be delivered on Tuesday morning.  I won’t be back in the office until the following week, not even back in Alberta until Tuesday evening so I won’t be doing anything further on it.

The rest of the conference was good.  The presentations, for the most part, were very informative and we learned a thing or two.  The team building activity was great.  Did I mention the zip-line or the roller coaster?

We wrapped things up on Thursday afternoon and made a mostly uneventful trip back to the airport in Toronto.  I figured that I was going to  be taking a taxi from the airport to my Aunt’s place and then we were going out for a family dinner.  Well, the driver offered to take me pretty well to my Aunt’s place, it was on his way back to his garage.  Thank you – saved me about $60 in a taxi fare.

Dinner was good – Red Lobster.  Had a good time sort of visiting with the family and we returned to Niagara.  I have a few days to get in touch with friends and do some hanging out.  Should be a good couple of days.

I called the Pet Resort where Zeus and Blondie are staying – I am told that both dogs are enjoying themselves.  I am looking forward to picking them up on Wednesday morning.  Their stay will last 10 days which is the longest, by far, that I have left them – I will be happy to see them and I am sure they will be happy to see me.

A few days after I get them, I am taking them back as I have to provide support for a conference in Banff and am staying over night.  What can ya do, that is the price of working I guess.

Anyway, I plan on enjoying myself for the rest of my stay in Ontario but am looking forward to getting back into the routine in Alberta.

Have fun, I am sure I will.

I work for a large National (actually, International) accounting firm and our head office is in Toronto, Ontario.  I am in the IT group with people in various offices all over the country.  There are two of us in the Calgary office and another 4 IT staff located in other cities in Alberta.

We don’t get together for meetings, etc., time and distance make that pretty well impossible.  We do have conference calls and video conferences and have “chat” tools at our disposal which make communications much easier.  Most of the offices are also on an internal phone system allowing us to contact one another via a 4 digit extension.  A great system all in all.

Anyway, once a year, we have an IT Conference where all of the IT staff from across the country get together for 3-4 days, somewhere in Ontario and we attend seminars, etc.  The conferences have always been, and I would think, always will be in Ontario.  To fly everyone to say, Banff, would cost the company a LOT of money in comparison to flying a relative few to Ontario.  We all stay in hotel rooms and there is the cost of the transportation for the people driving in, so I would guess that the conference is not cheap to put on.  The planners of the conference do a great job.  Last years conference was a good time, it was in Mississauga.  This year we are heading to the Blue Mountain resort in Collingwood.  I am sure that the local IT guy in the Collingwood office could care less, but, what can ya do – can’t please everyone.

Well, since BDO is paying for my flight to Ontario, it is a perfect opportunity for me to visit friends and family for a few days after the conference ends.  As long as the costs for the return flight aren’t much higher than they would be normally (if I returned right after the conference), it doesn’t cost me anyway.

I have saved a week of vacation time and am using that combined with Thanksgiving to spend an extra 5 days in Niagara.

It will be a whirlwind 5 days I am sure.  I have activities planned with family and friends and likely won’t have a lot of down time.  I will see some extended family (aunt, cousin) on my first night – we are all heading out for dinner.  Friday, we are planning on hitting the Mandarin for lunch – one of the things that I do miss about being in Ontario.  Weather permitting, I hope to catch some or all of the Brock Badgers baseball game on Friday evening.  I used to attend a fair number of games.  I always know people in the stands and some of my former ball players play for the Badgers.  I am hoping for clear skies and nice temps – should be possible even in early October.

Saturday, I will be hitting the Balls Falls craft show with a former co-worker that I keep in touch with.  We will likely start the day with breakfast at The Lancer in St. Catharines.  Great food, but, for one reason or another, my sister doesn’t care for it.  Oh well, she’s always had bad taste…  🙂

Saturday evening will be a poker night apparently, with a few friends.  I will almost feel bad to take their money, presuming that we are playing for money that is.  I think we will either head out for pizza and wings at Duff’s or order in.  I’d prefer to go there, otherwise the wings get sort of soggy in the container.  Picky, I know.

We will either have Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday or Monday.  I have missed not having turkey since moving to Calgary, I mean, I could cook a turkey myself, but really.  I also want to go out to another of my favourite breakfast spots, we call it the “Greasy Spoon”, it is actually called the Golden Griddle, corner of Geneva/Welland.

It would appear that a lot of my plans resolve around food.  Hmmm…  Well, I guess they do.  We all develop our favourite restaurants over time so I want to visit them again.  Hopefully, I won’t be disappointed.

No firm plans for the other days but I am sure something will come up.  I head back to Calgary after dinner on Tuesday so Sunday and Monday still need to be filled in.  I might have made tentative plans, but who knows.  I would like to go for lunch with some former co-workers from the Region, hopefully Tuesday will work for that.  Guess I will play the rest by ear – otherwise, relaxing isn’t a bad idea either.

At any rate, the trip should be a good one.  The dogs are staying at a new Pet Resort south-east of Calgary and I am hoping that they will like it there.  I will have 5 days to myself when I get back from Ontario so that will be nice.  I will likely need some downtime.