Gabe_Log

Dee and Spencer home now

Your DisplayName here! — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:19:41 GMT

Our finally named 2nd boy, Spencer Eli Smith came home from hospital on Saturday afternoon. Spencer is doing great, he is a keen feeder and dosen't seem to complain too much so far. I have been enjoying spending more time with Zavie down at the local beach, parks and playgrounds in Eastbourne. Zavie has been very good with Spence so far and even gives him the occasional kiss which we think is very cute. Dee is doing great and even got out for a walk yesterday with the whole family. I am back at work this week while Dee's mum is helping Dee out and then I will take next week off to take over. Thanks to all for your kind words and gifts.

Gabe

Baby Boy No. 2 arrives 21/2/2008 12:30 ish pm weighing 3.36kg (7lbs 6.5 oz)

Your DisplayName here! — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:38:18 GMT

Our baby Boy No.2 arrived today after a recommended C-section birth at Wellington hospital. Dee and baby are both doing well now but Dee took a wee while to stabilise after the surgery. We have yet to name him but are working on a short list we hope to have sorted in the next few days (watch this space). He has good head of hair on him just like his brother did. Zavier come in to visit his little brother today which went ok but Zavier was more interested in seeing how fast he out run me around the maternity ward!! We have Dee's mum staying with us helping out looking after Zavier.

One extremely proud dad again, Gabe

Daylight but not much saving going on

Your DisplayName here! — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:32:45 GMT

New Zealand has just recently transitioned into a new Daylight Savings scheme where the start and end rules of the daylight savings period in New Zealand have been extended. The details of this change are here . While this should save us lots daylight so we can now BBQ in the evenings without burning our sausages in the dark like we do in winter. Instead it seems to have cost New Zealand companies by having this change relatively rushed through with little thought or planning to the true implications it has had.

Looking back it seems Mauricio had some really good insight into the potential impacts this change would have in NZ.

I have found the New Zealand DST changes have been particularly well managed and supported by Microsoft with comprehensive notification, information and guidance for customers and partners.

I have found that Java world has faired rather poorly as most people have either assumed that the OS will deal with the change or have not understood that Java manages its own time zone and daylight savings information internally to the JVM. This is made all the harder with soo many different vintages of Java JVMs being used out there. I am sure these items have no doubt caused some surprises this last Sunday and Monday for companies.

Apple Macs seem to have forgotten about this change.

My Tivo managed the DST change well with an updated New Zealand Time Zone file loaded into it.

My new (and otherwise great) Nokia E65 Phone did not manage this change well. My phone still thinks the New Zealand time zone is GMT+12:00 which caused my phone calendar synchronisation with Exchange to push my meetings to be one hour earlier!! Both Nokia and Vodafone New Zealand seem pretty clueless on understanding or correcting this issue. From my point of view either Vodafone need to implement Network Operator time synchronisation or Nokia need to release a time zone patch for the E65. The only work around I have found is to put the phone in the Tonga time zone which is GMT+13:00 during this transition week. Nokia seem to have tried to address this issue for other phones and other country time zone changes but not little NZ. So Vodafone NZ or Nokia if you are reading this - DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!

After all this time zone change fun here are my recommendations:

To the New Zealand government, more time and publicity should have given to this change. This has definitely had a large impact on New Zealand businesses and some have been unfortunately caught surprised by this.
Make time zone rule information human editable in all systems to avoid the extreme hassle it causes when it changes in the future. Hey why not even use a standard xml file that has an agreed and standardised schema.
To the big international companies that have not understood and acted on this New Zealand DST change like Apple and Nokia shame on you I really expected more oh and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

- Gabe

Zavier turns 1 and we have more baby news!

Your DisplayName here! — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:57:02 GMT

Zavier recently turned one year old. The young fella is growing up fast! He has spent the last few months ripping around our house with a trolley he has become very attached to. But recently he has given the trolley up and taken up walking instead! He is having a great time, laughs a lot and keeps mum and dad very busy with the mischief he always getting into.

Dee and I are very proud to announce that we have baby number two under way due sometime mid Feb 2008 at this stage.

- Gabe

Five things you didn't know about me

Your DisplayName here! — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:56:19 GMT

Well um yeah its been a while. JD has tagged me into a blogging game whereby you let people know five new things people didn't know about you via a blog entry. So here you go, five things about Gabe you probably didn't know:

I meet Monica Lewinsky at a book signing in London and got a photo with her.
My mum tells me I was baby sat with Courtney Love as a child when living in Nelson. I can't recall this and its probably better that way.
I didn't get my car drivers licence until I was 29 years old after making do with a motor cycle licence from age 15 until then.
I use an Infrared Network Camera to keep an eye on my baby boy Zavier when at home and work.
I used to race P-Class sailing dinghies and even raced against Dean Barker and he was bloody good back then.

It seems like most people I know have already been tagged but here goes some more: Jerms, Nick, Piers, Stu, and Olmec

Cheers, Gabe

Zavier in video at 7 weeks old

Your DisplayName here! — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 20:08:11 GMT

My home NAS solution

Your DisplayName here! — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:10:57 GMT

I recently had two sub three year old 120GB hard drives fail at home. This was a real pain for me so I researched some solutions that give me large network attached storage (NAS) with some redundancy and management features like backup etc. My solution was the Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS NV. This unit features:

4 lockable hot-swappable SATA disk trays
RAID 0/1/5
Programmable backup button
One USB 2.0 port in front, two in back
Server-rated power supply
Low power consumption and silent operation
Gigabit Ethernet with Jumbo frame support
print server

So far I have found this unit great. I am currently running it with 2x SAMSUNG 300GB drives which are currently good value for money. I will eventually, as I can afford it and need the storage, increase the number of drives to 4. I am running the NAS using a system called X-RAID which dynamically expands the volume and data onto new disks and migrates from RAID 0 to 1 to 5. You can even sequentially replace each disk with larger ones and the NAS will migrate over to the larger disks.

I looked into some DIY options but these all involved having old pc's lying around and no doubt a fair amount of my time I now don't have. A DIY NAS solution is cheaper in terms of hardware cost, but this appliance solution is really small (think toaster size) and requires little setup time and gives you the confidence that comes with a well designed and tested product like this.

As broadband, home media servers, video editing/storage and hard drive failures become more common, I see the home NAS market picking up in the next year.

- Gabe

Zavier and Dee are home now

Your DisplayName here! — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 03:27:02 GMT

I bought Dee and Zavier home from hospital yesterday. Dee has been recovering well and was keen to get Zavier used to life at home. We gave Zavier his first bath today which he didnt seem to mind too much. Zavier is keeping rock'n'roll hours where he seems to be more awake at night than day, but that said he sleeps up to six hours between feeds so far which is good. We have Dee's mum Angela staying with us helping out which has been really good easing us into parenthood.

-Gabe

Zavier Laird Smith arrives 17/7/2006 12:05pm weighing 8lbs (3.64 kg)

Your DisplayName here! — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 11:13:07 GMT

What a huge night and day it has been for us. Zavier Laird Smith was finally born by c-section at 12:05pm today after Dee spent a long night in labour the night before. Zavier weighed in at 8lbs which is a healthy size and I am still amazed how little Dee was able to carry him around for soo long during the pregnancy. Zavier came included with a good 3-4cm of bonus blond/brown hair and he has blue/brown eyes currently. Zavier seems to be very chilled out so far crying very little yet feeding well with mum and oh yeah doing a LOT of sleeping. I have been absolutely blown away by the whole process and the strong emotions it has brought out for me. Dee has been a real trooper and I have nothing but complete respect and admiration for what she has been through. Dee is recovering from surgery and resting up in Wellington hospital for good few days with with our little Zavier. I am going to catch up on a nights missing sleep. Sorry to all who I haven't contacted in person yet. Please check out some photos of Zavier here in the mean time and please tell everyone who you think would like to know.

One very extremely proud dad - Gabe

Baby news update - getting close now

Your DisplayName here! — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 09:31:12 GMT

Hi all, here is a baby update. Zavier is currently five days overdue so we will be going into hospital tomorrow night (Sunday 16th July) to start an induced labour process. So all going well, we should have Zavier born some time Mon or Tues next week. We are super excited about his arrival. Expect a blog update in the next few days with more news. I am taking a couple of weeks off work to get used to the whole family of 3 thing and supporting Dee. Anyway time for my last decent nights sleep for a while.....

- Gabe