Clustered Redundancy Offspring

Blame Vlad for the title

Just a baby update!

Last week we went for a “4-d” scan

This is different from the usual sonograms in that you get to see a lot more detail

From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyparkes/2935907828/

I think some of them are a little weird looking but others are amazing detailed. You’ll have to decide which one ours is!

From: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyparkes/2935907714/

The people who did this for us really looked after us as baby didn’t want to play at all and we ended up getting scanned four times!

For our money we got a DVD of the scan, a CD with about 60 still images, six regular size prints and a large print

There are various companies that provide the service but we used a family run company called “Window to the womb” (they also sell packages on eBay!)

The packages aren’t exactly cheap and I initially wasn’t keen but the experience was great and I’m pleased we went in the end

The other reason for going was that when we went for our 20 week scan at the hospital they were unable to determine the gender

I didn’t want to know – it’s like opening your presents before Christmas – but my good wife got her way this time around as I could understand her reasons for wanting to know

I’m keeping the information to myself for the moment though

Some News

I know this has already been done but after the day i’ve had i don’t care!

A few weeks ago i briefly mentioned i’d had some big news

This is it

Baby number two on the way!

Picture is from the 12 week scan and we got to see the little one kicking it’s legs around which was fantastic!

Currently expected January 2009 so still a long way to go

Better make some more deals to pay for all the mouths i have to feed!

So what could have ruined my day after such a happy afternoon?

I arrived home to a letter from the bank telling me i’m overdrawn

I thought this a bit odd as i’ve not had any major purchases recently

I logged onto the online banking and i found a transaction from Brighthouse that i certainly didn’t make

I spent fifteen minutes on hold to an 0845 number (further to my post a couple of days ago about not having a landline, i was calling on a mobile and this isn’t included in my free minutes!)

I then had to jump through a series of hoops (including being asked if i wanted to buy identity theft insurance!) until i was put through to the “fraud team”

I was told that the purchase had taken place over the phone from the Bransholme branch (in Hull…hundreds of miles from where i live)

The result is i’ve had my card cancelled and i’ve got some paperwork to fill out and i’ve also got to ring my branch tomorrow to let them know about the situation and stop me getting charged any further

I’m still puzzled as to how this happened. Also surely the fact the card billing address is nowhere near the store would raise some eyebrows?

Technology Addiction or just a bit of a geek?

Today is my first day back in the office after a week’s holiday

We spent a quiet week in Norfolk just outside Hunstanton, me, my wife and my little girl (who is still in a plaster cast….it was heart breaking watching her run around on her first trip to the beach with a plastic bag wrapped around her arm to keep sand and water away) had a great time on our first proper family holiday

However, the mobile phone signal was dreadful and making phone calls or sending text messages was impossible, let alone trying to browse any web pages

I’d planned on finally giving Twitter a go while I was away but this was a no go.

While “switching off” from work is one thing, when your a “lifestyle geek” getting totally disconnected is something else altogether

Some people see these as the same thing where to take a break from work while on holiday you have to turn off your phone/laptop/etc off whereas I don’t. I see them as separate things (and let’s be honest if your running a business do you really ever completely switch off?)

But what do I mean by lifestyle geek?

I remember on family holidays as a child my dad would usually be first up in the mornings and disappear to the closest shop to pick up a newspaper to read while he was getting his day started

Fast forward to my first proper family holiday and one of my first instincts was to go to the mobile version of the BBC News site to check out the latest headlines followed by a trip to the mobile version of Google reader

I do these sort of things automatically without thinking.

My wife reports I was fidgety and grouchy for the first couple of days and that when we needed to resort to my laptop to watch a DVD after putting the little one to bed my eyes I was like a different person

Bit like an addict going cold turkey?

It reminded of reports you see all the time of people who are addicted to technology

Luckily to help get me back into the swing of things I’m doing a new SBS installation this week with plenty of other techie stuff to get buried in

The holiday was good and helped recharge my batteries so I’m looking forward to getting stuck in again!

Not really sure about point of this post now but it’s got me back on the “blogging horse”

Technology & Families

We always talk about how technology can help improve our businesses.

I also love it when technology can help people in their day to day lives

Today it helped me.

My poor little two year old had a bit of a tumble yesterday. She didn’t really make a big deal of if but it was obvious she’d hurt her wrist. We decided to let her sleep on it (not the wrist!) and if she was no better by the morning she’d take a trip to the hospital

Her grandparents took her to the hospital and she has her broken wrist. The hospital actually weren’t going to x-ray her as she didn’t complain when they “manipulated” her arm but luckily her grandmother was quite insistent and the break was confirmed

So how am I shoehorning technology into this?

Well first off I was able to get a call from the grandparents straightaway to let me know what was going on. I was on the other line at the time so they were able to leave a voice message for me which I picked up as soon as I’d finished. They then sent a picture message so that I could see she was quite chuffed with her plaster cast

I was then able to e-mail my wife with an update and we then made the decision she’d go home from work (she can’t use the phone) and in turn I was then able to speak to the other set of grandparents on a mobile phone as they were away from the house

Now while I do work with some very cool technology on a day to day basis it was the humble telephone, mobile phone and e-mail that kept everyone in communication and ensure my little girl gets all the love and attention she needs

Here’s the pic I got

Alice in a sling eating a banana

Unifying My Communications

When I first started this blog it wasn’t my intention for it to have any bearing on my company

When I started I asked myself the question, “Why am I doing this?”

I came up with two answers

First it was somewhere for me to spill the tech/geek stuff that swirls around my head. Lots of my friends are not all that bothered about IT so when I start with the “guess what happened at work today” conversation their eyes started to glaze over and I realised I’d get boring quick.

Second it was somewhere I could store solutions to problems I’d had so that if I ran into anything similar I could refer back to it. With the bonus that if it helped anyone else then great. I work in IT, I want to help people!

So I had no real need for my blog to be anything other than anonymous. I didn’t even have an email address on here! I figured if someone wanted to get in touch they could leave a comment.

It was only as I started to focus my blog on SBSC that I realised this needed to change. How could I get involved with the community if couldn’t communicate with anyone?

It was a post from Vijay that changed that, after that I sorted out an email address and after some email nudging from Vijay and various other inspirations I attended my first AMITPRO meeting

When I met all these new people I couldn’t really just introduce myself as “Andy from Andy’s Techie Blog” and I had no reason to hide anything about my business as the blog had now crossed over from just being my personal shouting space to part of a business focussed community.

That said, I attended my first user group meeting months ago and I’ve kept my blog as it is. The reason for this is i’m only anonymous there.

There are lots of people who I meet and I don’t even mention the blog so thats not an issue. I’ve also met people who know about the blog but once you’ve met them annonymity goes away so I planned at some point to quietly update some of the details on the blog so it linked back to the company site and update my “about me” page as i also agreed with a post from Karl

I also didn’t want to write a great big “who i am post” as my ego isn’t that important….too late for that now!

So where am I going with this?

I’ve been “outed”

I read a post by Paul from Accendo (who I also got to meet at the Reading event in November) where he blogged about the great response he’d had from the community for a nationwide installation he was carrying out and very kindly credited everyone involved…including me

So instead of “Andy from Andy’s Techie Blog” I’m Andy Parkes from IBIT Solutions

This isn’t an advert for the company though so I’ll leave that there!

So why am I “unifying my communications”?

One of the other reasons for this post is so I can change my e-mail address. I’m tired of having one email address for people who know me through the blog and my company email address for people I’ve met in the flesh

So if you have my andy@andyparkes.co.uk address you can get me at andy@ibitsolutions.co.uk   (drop me an email…say hi!)

As per Karl’s post I’ll update my profile page soon as well.

I’ve been planning on moving the blog onto the company domain name but haven’t quite decided how i want to that just yet

That is all!

Online Presence

Not entirely sure when i haven’t done this before but today i got myself a domain name

www.andyparkes.co.uk

at the moment it just redirects to here but it’ll make things easier in the long run

this also means i have an email address to go with it!

andy@andyparkes.co.uk

I’m off for a week

I got married on Saturday so posts are going to be limited until next week..

We had an amazing day and my new wife did some amazing things to make it extra special which just reminded me of why i was marrying her!