Another day, another update.

I am leaving NWTel as of July 10th to begin a new life as a consultant/contractor. I have decided that I like constant challenges and new environments to learn and grow from. I think this is representative in my career that I have not stayed at any one position for a prolonged period and that each job had a very minimal connection to previous.

This is a big leap and full of new challenges and new experiences. It's a lot bit scary in some ways but it has huge potential in many more ways.

Let's see what happens now...

as you can see by the "Default Theme" configuration.

Funny thing: I can't log into this domain with Safari or Firefox (PC version). But I can with IE 6 & IE 7 and Firefox 2 (Mac)!!

Weird.

This past Friday was the good ol' corporate company xmas party.

The food was pretty standard fare from the Westmark (Dessert was awesome!) and the music provided by "3 Guys and Mirrorball" (who strangely consisted of 4 guys, one woman and a mirrorball) spun the tunes.

The final piece of the triumph was Rach winning the finale door prize: a trip for two on Air North to Vancouver, Calgary or Edmonton!

Sweet!

I have just pressed the "Happy Dreamhost One-Click Upgrader" for Gallery 2.1 and hopefully the end result will be a more responsive photo gallery and the return of the RSS feeds.

Addtionally, on a photos note I am taking on the Herculean task of organizing all my photos in iPhoto on the iMac. Essentially, I have never had a computer fast enough to handle the 3000+ pictures (and now the 5mp resolution) I have. I decided to also put "the best" up on Flickr cuz that is where all the cool kids hang out, I have an empty account, and I feel bad about that.

The die was cast, the credit card loaded, the computer ordered.

I expect a 20" iMac (Intel) to be rolling into the house sometime in February. I hope you are all as excited about this as I am. Expect all sorts of glowing reviews and total lack of communication while I drool over how fast Exposé runs (screen goes big, screen goes small, screen goes big ...) and all those other 10.4 features that I have been missing out on since the lil' iBook would not be able to keep pace with the system requirements (it only has 8MB of video ram..)

I think the first thing I will do is re-install the OS; yeah, definitely, definitely ...

So, I am going to be replacing my work horse iBook (2001 600MHz G3) come tax return time this year. This computer has lasted almost 5 years of daily usage but it is simply too slow for my patience these days. Some have said this affects my productivity but that is assuming I do actual "work" on this 'book.

With the newly announced/released Macs I will be buying either:
the high end 20" iMac with graphics card RAM upgrade and 1GB RAM
or
the high end MacBook Pro

The final tally puts the prices about 1K$ apart. The systems are fairly similar and really, the only difference is the portability angle. Thing is, I have only had a laptop for the past 5 years and grown to really enjoy being able to surf on the couch, move into the kitchen, and in general be as mobile as someone that doesn't code in a coffee shop needs to be.
I figure this is going to come down to a coin toss in the end as the defining difference is portability; is that worth 1000$? Guess time will tell...