Google goodness and Birthday

Sometimes Google is just too cool... I saw my phone had backed up a few of my photos and it had detected these photos seemed to go together and auto stitched them together. This from Geoffrey's recent birthday. Thank you Google.

Peace out all, especially those awesome software devs and support peeps at google.

Yikes it has been a while since I posted. Well to recap the long amount of time since then. We moved back from Brisbane in 2011 after things didn't work out with schools the way we had planned. I miss Brisbane to some extent and made friends up there after going to a board game group for twelve months. I am still with the same company, and despite being fairly busy still loving it. I guess one of the main reasons I hadn't updated this blog was that google decided to drop support for publishing from blogger to other platforms. I have moved my blog wholly over to google now, so I can ditch my cheap hosting altogether. This should also result in the site being a bit quicker than the cheap hosting I have, or the old days when I had this all hosted on my own server on the end of a slow DSL link. Geoffrey has started school, Anne has started pre-school and they are both growing into beautiful little people. You may notice a fair few of the links on the sidebar don't work, I am still working out some of the content heck it hadn't had an update since 2004 prior to Geoffrey being born, but they should be fixed eventually. You may also notice a new blog on the left there, if the subject's don't interest you then don't read it. Well that's it for this quick update. Peace out all.

Another post in only a few days very surprising, well I have a bit to say and forgot to say it the other day.
I had a wonderful Christmas, and lots of fun with the kids. I thought I posted about it but obviously not.
Fiona got me a Doctor Who sonic screw driver and an incredible present of a portrait of Geoffrey, painted by our favourite painter (Fred Marsh), it was a picture of possibly my favourite picture of Geoffrey to date.
We ate lots of seafood over Christmas but managed to put on little weight which was good.
We also managed to get a really good Family Photo with Santa Claus, and I think Geoffrey gets Santa and Christmas are good things now, especially with the inundation of presents he received, don’t worry Anne got her fair share as well.
Then after the initial Christmas orgy of presents, Fiona got me another present, I don't know why I deserved it but she got it anyway, a Flickr Pro account, so go to morganstorey.com and click on MobileBlog to be redirected there. I upload photos from my phone all the time so it is sure to be updated, more often than my blog has been :P
In other news and on to the topic of this post, public humiliation. I read an interesting blog post the other day here.
To surmise though it quotes Paul Graham, programmer, entrepreneur and venture capitalist who says:
One of the most interesting things we’ve discovered… is that [people] are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating.
So on that note, I am going to let the world know of my intentions in a plan to humiliate myself into succeeding.
By the end of next year I hope to have my CISSP; an extremely high certification in IT Security. Not only that but before then I hope to have the following certifications; CCNA, CCNA:Security, CCSA, CCSE, LPIC 1, LPIC2 and LPIC 3:Security, OSPC, Security+, CEH, and finally Upgrade My MCSE to MCITP:Enterprise.
I have told people this off hand, but never written it in public, and let the world know. I am doing these only really for self satisfaction, and to get my knowledge recognized. It does however take time to fill in the gaps. So after 6 months of being to tired, busy, or interested in what my rack is doing or what is on TV, I started back on my boring CCNA the other night.
Wish me luck.
Peace out all.

Hot, damn hot...

So damn hot at the moment. My Google weather toolbar says it is only 30 degrees, but I think that is taken from the city so it isn't comparable to anywhere that isn't directly on the water, least that's my excuse for my whinging and I am sticking to it.
We have made some radical changes to Geoffrey and Annes diet's, and seen dramatic changes. It all started because my new boss while I was down in Melbourne told me that his son is Gluten intolerant, and most of the symptoms bar the height matched Geoffrey.
So Fiona looked into it. Glue ear is one of the big symptoms, so we are rather annoyed that no one in the process of him getting his grommets in his ears suggested maybe changing his diet or even getting him checked? We can get him checked but it requires putting him back on the gluten, with the radical change in his personality, his rash clearing up and him seeming happier than he ever has since cutting it out, I think we will wait to do the test.
Geoffrey has gone back to a kindy that we found and is really enjoying it, his teachers are wonderful, and he really enjoys it there I think, so much so is that he gets upset on days when he isn't going, of course he doesn't want us to leave when we drop him off either.
Anne is also really coming along, yesterday on the way home for work she said Geoffrey, I turned to Fiona and said did she just say Geoffrey, she replied that she did, and then she said it again, confirmation. Geoffrey wasn't as impressed as he will be in years to come when he realises he is her first two-syllable word, with Mummy and Daddy being close firsts.
Anne has also started to assert herself and really show off her personality. She is very tough and not afraid to stand up for herself if Geoffrey is in her way. That being said Geoffrey has showed his softer side a lot. If she cries he hugs her, or cries to, if Geoffrey and Fiona are going to play he will hold the gate/door open and hold his hand out to Anne.
I had an interesting moment the other night, while trying to get to sleep in 30+ degree heat, I was thinking about the age old riddle. If you where in a boat with your young child, it capsized and you where the only one of your family not incapacitated, who would you save?
Pre children to the above quandary I would have answered; my Partner. I think even when Fiona and I were considering children I would have answered the same thing. Well my answer the other night was opposite, a very interesting change I would think. It comes back to that saying only a parent knows.
I am going to start posting this on livejournal as well as here, as people are too lazy to get a blogger account to comment here.
Peace out all.

Geoffrey talking, and going loopy

So Geoffrey gave me a heart attack today (not literally) Fiona came in to have lunch with me and we went to the park. It was a lot of fun and really shows how he will talk if he wants something, "up again" kept coming when he wanted me to pick him up to the flying fox.
But the scary bit was when we were having fun, I was pushing him on the swing, when he decided to flip forward just after I had pushed back, he flipped over fortunately caught by the chain as he was in the little kids swing. I lunged forward and caught him... phewww.
Other than that is was a lovely lunch, Marion brought beautiful ham sandwiches and soft-drink, and Geoffrey and I ran around the play equipment like madmen.

The times they are a changing.

I have decided to remove the old standard picture up the top to make the blog more central. It has been there since I had my website on geocities in 97, so it is over 10 years now.
Other changes have happened. I got a new job and have started: Internal to a company as a Security specialist. I started Wednesday. So far it has been a very good experience, almost everything I have seen has been setup in a way that I would do, which is a good sign. Even have a table tennis table and I am not the worse player in the IT team.
In other news Marion bought us a yearly Zoo pass so Geoffrey, Anne, Fiona and myself have gone to the Zoo a couple of times now, check my flickr for some of the photos. Another photo you will spot there is our care hitting 666km.. heheh. It has gone well beyond that ominous number now, and even had it's first service.
Today we had a nice morning tea with Anthea and Michael, and Geoffrey was sad to see them go. Geoffrey has started drawing and painting, he has chalk and loves chalking the coffee table, so I am looking over at our chalked table... He is cute, he has started playing mummy and daddy against each other too, when one of us says no, he looks at the other for input.
Well I guess that is enough of my inane ramblings.
Peace out all.

The trials of Man and Machine.

The site and other sites hosted here as you may have noticed, has been down for an extended period.
Christmas was great, Geoffrey had lots of fun playing with his cousin Jack, Isabelle and Holly, running around as best he could. He has started to vocalise himself, but not in any way that we can yet understand. He seems very annoyed and repeats himself often. He has even started to shrug in his own cute little way.
There was a problem with the powersupply on my server which temporarily took two of the discs in my raid 5 array offline, taking down the array, rather than recover the minimal backups to it, in hope of recovering some of the data from the array I had to build a new hard drive storage case for r2d2, thus the time gap.
All back and good though. Lessons learnt and server better than it was before.
I recently attended the open day of the Linux Australia conference and helped out on the Ubuntu-AU stand. It was lots of fun, got to play around with some immersive computer technology, and got to play with the One Laptop per Child laptop... very cool.
Got to meet some people I have only heard about. Like Theodore Ts'o;one of the main designers of the ext3 file system, used fairly heavily in linux and I met Jono Bacon; One of the incredibly funny stars of LugRadio possibly the funniest audio shows I have heard since the GoonShow. He is also an avid free-software advocate, author and employed member of Canonical: Ubuntu's parent company. It was a great day and has pushed me to get some more stuff done here and in the community. A lot of my projects I had on hold have been started up this week, Stu and MrTeeny are being built, and I intend to try and run an Ubuntu stand at a local computer fair to get the word out.
So all in all it has been a busy while since I last posted. Peace out all.