Job descriptions

So what do we do during the day?

Well, my official title is Senior IT Consultant. That means I get to sit in the big chair in the office, have two 19inch LCD panels, and a blackberry.
Well, really I have to be responsible for managing the 4 projects we've got 'on-the-go' cos the rest of the team are running around like 'blue-assed flies' trying to keep up.
And by the rest of the team, I mean the other guy. Naveed, a great guy who moved to the US from Pakistan with his wife and child, came to Canada 3 years ago to finish off a training course and hasn't left.

So things are pretty busy in our office, the company not only deals with SMB's (small to medium businesses) but also has residential clients who need their modem reset from time to time.
Most customers are about the same size as LANsmart's clients, however they all have multiple servers due to having to be ISO certified and all that jazz. 1 domain controller, 1 for antivirus, 1 for mail, 1 for files etc. You get the picture.
This means a lot of management and a lot of time and work for the engineers like me for when the clients decide things are running a bit slow, we just throw another server into the mix.

It's certainly interesting stuff and will hopefully really develop my project management and customer management skills.


Aimee on the other hand has settled well into her application developer/DBA role. She's working closely with a couple of people in her team, solidifying the database and adding new functionality.

For those of you who aren't in the US or Canada, you won't be able to look at her company website.
The idea is Puretracks are a sub company of the large telco - Bell Canada. Bell decided they wanted to provide music downloads to their customers, so supported puretracks when it was only developing to do their in-house web solutions. Now for $0.99 you can buy a track of music just like the iTunes store. But only if you're in the US or Canada. Somehow this will stop piracy =)

So if you would like to buy some music and you're not in the US or Canada, just post your credit card details in the comment field and we'll be sure to buy something on your behalf.

JOKES!

Disclaimer: Aimee and Chris advise you to never put your credit card into a website you don't trust and that doesn't disply the little padlock symbol.

getting to work

Work work work.
We're a part of the working world, and part of the morning rush to get into town.
Our morning starts at 6am with a shower, and then the bus at 6:55. The 1 hour bus ride leaves us at the railway station a bit before 8, and we wait for the next train to come along. These arrive every 5 minutes or so, and we are smoothly whisked into the city.

By 8:25 we're seeing the sun as we come out of the subway station onto King street. Aimee then takes the streetcar (small electric train/bus) east, while I get mine west.

10 minutes later we're both at our desks and ready for the day's work.

The evenings are the opposite, catch the streetcar to the subway station, get on a train as soon as possible and hope we get home before 8.

We have both found apartments to live in. We're in the same apartment building, on Jackes st, which is just off Yonge st, 5 minutes north of the city by train. You can tell we're looking forward to moving in there in October.

My room is on the 14th floor. It's a single bedroom apartment, which constitutes a kitchen, bathroom, living room and 1 bedroom.
Aimee's is on the 15th floor, almost directly above me. Her's is a bachelor, which means kitchen, bathroom and large living area which will also be the bedroom. Also her balcony is bigger than mine.
It also has a fitness area, so we can work off all the hotdogs we've been eating.

Working...

Well, we're part of the working world. Well, Aimee is anyway.
I don't start until tomorrow (Wednesday).

She seems to be enjoying it. It's a nice office, very open plan (no cubicles!) with about 20 people.
It's a good team environment, so I'm sure in a few months she'll be a proper part of the family, involved in animated discussions about who dropped that table from the database or whatever it is those DBA's get up to.

She's already been assigned some work to do, so is busily tap-tapping away on her keyboard fixing some corruptions or something.

Currently I'm sitting in the Starbucks on King and Yonge (pronounced 'Young'). I'm not here for the coffee but for the wireless internet. I've been using these last 2 days of my holiday to search for a place for us to live, and let me tell you it's hard going.
Not knowing what Toronto's good and bad areas are; it's easy to see a cheap place and not know that it's in the middle of a really bad area or to see a really nice apartment that's in a good area, only to find out that it's $1800 a month for 1 room.

At this stage, we're still living in Woodbridge, which is 1.5 hours out of town. So we start each day at 5:30, catch the 6:55am bus and are in town just in time for an 8:30 start.
At the end of the day, we should get home about 7 or 8pm
So if anybody out there has a penthouse apartment in downtown Toronto going for less than $1000 a month, email me!

I saw NZ in the news again today. This time it was a newspaper article that back in 2005-6 NZ declined to receive some prisoners from Guantanamo bay.
Article here.
Not very exciting I know, but still, it made a column in the Metro, a free paper that everyone reads while on the subway.

Thanks and hello to all the people that have commented, Carmel, Andrey, my Sister, Abe, Aunty Penny, Paul, Gil, The Superfriends (you know who you are), Dad, the other dad (Nap), Anthony, Aiyaz, Kim and Rickard.
We know your time is valuable and thanks for holding, we'll be with you shortly...

You start monday!

That's what Aimee and I have both heard this week.

Aimee will be working for Puretracks who are an online music store, supported by telecommunications giant Bell Canada.

I'll be working for Eastbay Consulting Corp as previously mentioned.

Interviews - Part deux

Well, my interview went well last week with Eastbay, if things go well, I'll get an email from them next week to come in for a technical interview to make sure I can 'walk the walk'.

Aimee also has an interview monday and tuesday. The monday one sounds pretty full on, with an hour of technical testing!

We will keep all our readers up-to-date as things progress.
So please leave comments, it's very encouraging to know you're all out there (hi mum!) following what we're up to.
Special mentions go to:

Gil from LANsmart, 3 updates in 3 days, how's that?
Craig (soon not to be) from LANsmart - enjoy the new job
Andrey - Enjoy your new bike. Hopefully you'll still be alive to show us your Hyosung GT250R when we get back.

I heard my Lowrider song playing in the Sony store in a mall the other day. It's a sign...

Interviews

Well, the job hunt is beginning to heat up. Both Aimee and I have been receiving some interest in our CV's. The recruitment company CNC Global submitted my CV to two companies 2 weeks ago tomorrow, but it's a slow time of year so they are taking their time. I'm still in the running I'm told, so hopefully interviews next week.

I also submitted my CV to a company very similar to LANsmart, servicing SMB's in the GTA (Small to medium sized businesses in the Greater Toronto Area) and they want to speak to me next week too so fingers crossed on that one. It also means I'll have to buy a car as there's travelling involved.

I'm also applying at the local electronics store, Futureshop. They give a good employee discount; Can you say 50 inch TV =)

If nothing else, I could join the Geeksquad. It must be where the geeks on wheels idea came from, but it's backed up by the electronics chain, BestBuy.

Anyway, the opportunities are plentiful, it's all just taking a long time as it's summer here and too many people are either on holiday, or just slowed down by the extreme heat.

Cars

Well my birthday was fun, we got the car, it was a VW Golf city, 2.0.
It drove pretty well, but everything apart from the gearbox was manual. A brand new car with manual windows, manual side mirrors, no central locking and the back doors had to be opened from the inside.

The highways here are a bit confusing too. In general the even numbers run north south, and the odds are east west.
The 400 runs north-south and takes us home.
The 401 is east west, and north of the city.
The 403 splits south from the 401, then heads west to re-join the 401 in about 100km.
The 407 is the toll road, which is much faster to use to traverse the city cos it costs money.
The Gardener runs east west along the lakefront and turns into the 427

To get into town, we take the 400 south from Woodbridge. It's mostly 4 lanes each way, but can be 5 or 6 lanes at on-ramps.
Then the 400 ends after about 20km, and you have to choose whether to take the 401 east toward the city, or west to Mississauga. The 401 is kind of famous in Canada, as it's the biggest, longest highway going from Detriot, Michigan through Toronto and up to Montreal. It is 8 or 9 lanes wide each way in the city, the middle 5 lanes on each side are called the express. Then there's a concrete barrier and 3 more lanes called the collecter. That is the slower bit where you get on and off the highway.
So the idea is you get on at an on-ramp, you're in the collector. Then you jump across a few lanes, wait for a transition point, and move into the express section. If there's normal traffic you then put your foot down and level off at about 140. If there's traffic you'll be going very slowly.

So anyway, on Wednesday we left Aimee's job interview in Cambridge to the west of Toronto, and took the car on the 401 east, then I decided to take a shortcut by going south, heading in the direction of Niagara falls. Bad move, I turned right instead of left when we hit the 403 and we ended up going the wrong way and were about 100km off target. We ended up in Hamilton Airport, got some directions and got back on track. Took the 403 back east, through Hamilton, got on the QEW, through St Catherines and finally ended up in Niagara. pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/aimee.carbonell/Niagara
Map of our adventure: