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Introducing Declan Bede

Posted: February 21st, 2007, 12:40am CET by Fern

I’m a little late with this post, but I haven’t had a clue what I’m meant to say. I went into hospital on the 16th with five minutely contractions,was examined, told that there was no way I was in labour and sent home and told to come back when it hurt - a few hours later my waters broke all over our bed.

This is the point where you’d think it would all be fairly easy, but I’ve never been one for doing it the traditional way, and obviously my son isn’t either. I ended up sitting in hospital for three days having minor contractions and willing my body to start labour naturally, when the doctors determined that there was no way that was going to happen I was booked in for an induction at 8:30 on Monday morning.

At 8:28pm, after twelve hours of labour, gas, morphine, an epidural, limitless abuse thrown at my poor suffering husband, three separate second degree tears and countless demands for them to “just cut it out of me!!!!”, our son was born. He’s pink, chubby and is sucking and eating like a pro. He’s very mellow, loves to just be held or draped in some way, just so long as he’s got human contact he’s chuffed, he’s a little limpet. He’s also a fairly big boy considering he was born two weeks early.

After all of that whining over the last few months I was so happy that we didn’t find out the sex, there was something really magical about hearing Dan say “It’s a boy!” as he came out, despite me being in such a daze that I had to ask for confirmation about five times. Dan was an absolute trooper the entire day, he was so wonderful through out it all and didn’t turn green until it was time to stitch me back together, which I think would turn anyone’s stomach.

He’s feeding amazingly, he’s obviously a boob-man, I’m healing really well and everything is looking fabulous, we’re coming home tomorrow afternoon.

Declan Bede Treacy
8:28pm Monday 19th February
8lb 3oz 55cm
APGAR: 9/9 (an overachiever already!)

- As a side note, although I can get online I can’t actually access my email due to some problems we’re having with the server, so I’m not ignoring anyone who may have sent emails, I promise! I should hopefully get around to it this weekend assuming the little one lets me have a break.
Confirmation That It’s Not Just A Hell Of A Lot Of Doughnuts In There

Posted: October 12th, 2006, 10:13am CEST by Fern

It has it’s fathers nose, grandfather’s belly and very lanky legs. This was our first look at The Tiny Treacy and it was rather fascinating, he even sneezed and had a little tantrum about it whilst we were zapping him. We’re not finding out the sex, it’s driving me insane that I have to wait twenty more weeks until I discover whether we have a son or a daughter - we have so much yellow and green stuff now that our box of baby stuff is starting to look like a weird pastel acid trip. The only good thing I can think about this is that at least it will give me some kind of incentive during the birth, when I’ve had enough at least my sheer impatience will keep me going until I find out if it’s a boy or a girl.
The Most Important Game Played This Weekend

Posted: October 1st, 2006, 5:25am CEST by Fern

I’d like to make a note that the kid’s won the game easy after discovering that it was far easier to take down the guys if they all made a run for it and tackled the same leg, developing a limpet like determination to not let go until the ball was in their hands.

Still pregnant, getting fatter every day, it’s reached a stage where I now look longingly at my clothes from a few months back, I don’t believe I’ve still got another five months of growing left to go! I don’t think TheTinyTreacy (that’s triple T if you want to sound really cool) is going to be particularly tiny, between my mother’s comments of “Are you sure you haven’t got two in there??” and my MIL telling me just how ginormous Dan and his sister were at birth, I’m getting just a bit nervous about all of it.

I’ve made a baby wishlist, why did no one tell me how much fun this was before we got married, doing gift registries is almost as fun as actually shopping! I’ve gone a bit overboard on the nappies so far, as the ones I want are way above our budget, particularly as I reckon we need about twenty to start off with. I’m going to go for about a 50/50 split with terries and covers and then pockets and maybe a couple of AIOs. Now I just have to get this around the extended family subtley, I don’t think and email with a subject of “buy me stuff!” is going to go down all that well.
Hitched!

Posted: July 29th, 2006, 12:48am CEST by Fern

Dan and I tied the knot last Friday up in Port Macquarie, the weather was fine for the ceremony and only started to rain once we were done with the photos, the food was beautiful and the speeches weren’t too dull, all in all everything went wonderfully! More pictures to come as soon as we finally work out what we’re going to do with them

(Oh, and for anyone that hasn’t yet found out through various other means (ie. Dan’s wedding speech), I’m pregnant - due on the first week of March 2007!)
Is It Too Late To Cancel??

Posted: June 7th, 2006, 1:40pm CEST by Fern

In chatting to my manager this afternoon I discovered that Ben Elton is doing a stand up tour around Australia and New Zealand this winter, his first one in nine years. I come home, jump on the computer and have a hunt around for dates and where I can buy tickets from.

Dates.

That is where it all goes AOT.

Twenty first of July is the night he’s performing in Sydney.

Bah.
Pretentious Photos and Movie Musings

Posted: June 5th, 2006, 12:29pm CEST by Fern

Okay, I know, rain, low saturation, refelections, it just screams first year art student, but you have to give me some credit here, at least it isn’t food That glimpse of the blue tread is annoying the hell out of me, unfortunately I can’t crop it out without losing the feet, which I want to keep in, if I had more time and any kind of inclination, I could work some magic in photoshop, but that sounds like an awful lot of effort just for a snapshot photo.

We watched Pirates Of The Caribbean last night, I had only seen the last half hour when I was looking after a tribe of kids last December, so I’ve had a bit of a jones to watch the first part of it and actually work out what it was all about. It wasn’t as good as I expected it to be, and the interuptions of me saying “hey, how can he do that when he’s a…” before being cut off by Dan telling me that that bit hadn’t happened yet. As much as my niece will hate me for saying it, I didn’t think it was as good as everyone insisted, according to Dan that was because we were watching it on the computer screen with its crappy speakers, and it’s something you have to watch on a big screen… sooooo, if anyone wants to buy us a widescreen plasma telly with surround sound and built in DVD player as a wedding present, then I’ll watch the movie again and see if my opinion changes! I’m slowly making Dan sit through every single britcom I can think of (this is in exchange for making me watch Knightrider and A-Team reruns), so far we’ve got through all of Blackadder, Spaced, and the first two seasons of Black Books and Coupling, so it was nice to see Jack Davenport pop up in a big blockbuster like POTC, he also returns for the two following sequels!

Unfortunately all of the movies I wanted to see this year will be out and gone within the next few months, X3 is already out and was amazing. Clerks 2, if I can escape from my mother and mother in law on the morning of the wedding, then you’ll find me in the cinema watching the first showing of that. Then finally, we have the cinematic climax of the entire human race, there is no point in even trying to make a film after this one is released, because everything will pale in comparison. Snakes On A Plane. Who’s up for some midnight showings?!

Believe it or not this was meant to be a quickie before going to bed, I’m still sick and suffering and still surviving on a diet of Lemsip and Nurofen+, hopefully not for much longer though.
My Brain Is Slowly Leaking Out Of My Nostrils

Posted: June 2nd, 2006, 12:34am CEST by Fern

I have the bug from hell, I swear, it’s like some massive phlegm monster invaded my body and is slowly seeping out of everyone of my pores, I’ve had to take time off work which is pretty lame considering I’ve only been there a few weeks, I’m dosed up to my eyeballs on everything you could imagine and yet I’m still not even feeling marginally better. I think Dan is just enjoying the fact that me being barely able to croak, let alone talk, makes it very difficult to nag him about the invitations - but I promise, they are coming soon!

My mum will arrive in the country in a eight days. Fun and frolicks will ensue… or something like that
Mega, Giga, Tera

Posted: May 23rd, 2006, 10:43pm CEST by Dan

After reading Mark Pilgrim’s post on Backup Solutions and wandering through the various comments and suggested implementations I’m drawn to ask a question that I’ve been meaning to for quite a while.

What are the practical pros and cons of RAID, be it software (primarily) or hardware (possibly).

I’ve primarily played around with RAID a few years ago on NT4 boxes when Adaptec first released their low-end raid cards and I was tasked with seeing whether they would suit our needs at the place I was working at the time. These were hardware raid cards and we ended up using them for simple mirroring, as the sites they were going to be used at were remote from us and hopefully that would reduce downtime etc. As a side-effect, of sorts, we noticed an increase in throughput and faster boot times etc. Or at least it seemed that way. Either way, a decision was made and the cards started being deployed. I think a couple of them were sent out before I left there and moved onto other things so I didn’t get a chance to see how they performed over time in the real world.

Since then needless to say I’ve seen it referred to in various places and especially watched the linux software RAID implementation improve greatly but never had any real cause to use it. That’s not to say that I shouldn’t have used it here and there but it wasn’t something I was convinced of the benefits of.

As a point of reference I’m not talking about huge complicated RAID arrays with all the bells and whistles, just something simple, most likely mirroring.

Does it work out that the only situation where that type of setup is going to help you is physical hard drive failure? I’m assuming (and I’m more than happy to be corrected) that if any data is corrupted on the main drive for whatever reason that the corruption will be mirrored?

Is it useful on old systems for increasing throughput especially of older drives?

So basically my question is, your thoughts on RAID. Good? Bad? Root of all Evil?

Discuss
Working Nine To Five

Posted: May 9th, 2006, 10:30pm CEST by Fern

I’m just getting ready for my first day in this new job.

My brain still hasn’t kicked into gear.

Hopefully it will soon, but I really don’t see it making any promises.
She Wore Red Velvet

Posted: May 8th, 2006, 7:10am CEST by Fern

Woolworths Red Velvet Cake is probably the best shop bought* cake I have ever eaten in my entire life, it’s perfect. I can’t for the life of me work out what kind of icing it’s topped with though, Dan is insisting it’s buttercream, I’m saying otherwise, at first I thought it was a cream cheese based frosting but the taste just isn’t right for that, the flavour reminds me of the inside of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs, it’s almost fondanty. Cream cheese is listed in the ingredients so although it may be that, I just can’t work out what they’ve put in it to give it that flavour. I shall endevour to eat more simply in the name of science and research.

I think I need to find a new photo subject, I think it’s reached a point where I have more photos of food stored on my computer than I do of people. I was lying across the floor on my belly trying to get this shot in exactly the right light and it suddenly occured to me that this was an awful lot of hassle just for a picture of a piece of cake. On the other hand though, at least it doesn’t moan when I’m prodding and poking it trying to get it at just the right angle

*I have to add this bit in otherwise my father will become highly offended and I will find myself without a wedding cake in seventy four days time!