I’ve been around, working, playing and relaxing.

Last post mentioned the presentation in Ottawa on the 29th of May. That went okay and I have links to post as well to Webcasts covering the High Availability topic. From there, I went head into migrating some computers at work which is always an on-going project. We also had to close down one library temporarily but hopefully it will be back open at some point. I also took the time to write another Microsoft certification exam, this time 70-293 and I plan to write 70-294 on July 10th. I thought about pulling it ahead to last week, as after reviewing the material for it, I am thinking I may be better prepared for it. I did pass the Active Directory exam on Windows Server 2008 already, I work with AD 2003 daily, and been through material with the Ottawa study group. But I think I’ll keep it for Thursday as I haven’t done any of the review tests and it fits into the schedule. After that, its on to 297 and 646. 

On the home front, I’ve been busy with the patio garden, canning preserves and camping with Tracey. I have also been busy in the kitchen, the best recipe I have made so far has to be the steak salad. Basically its Boston lettuce, a steak seared and cut into fajita type pieces, a jalapeno pepper, cilantro, shredded carrots, red onion mixed together with a sauce consisting of two parts fish sauce, 1 part oriental hot sauce and juice of half a lime. The sauce is warmed a little on the stove, drizzle half of it over the meat after you cut it but before you put it in with the veggies, saving the rest of the sauce for the salad itself. I usually add some blue cheese to the salad to counter the heat. Its a pretty quick meal and damn tasty too.

I’ve been down to the farmer’s market, I bought a flat of strawberries which I have used to make 3 batches of Strawberry jam, the cook method, not freezer jam. I want to buy another flat or two and do a few more batches in pint sized jars as my family and Tracey’s family love the stuff. The garden on the patio is going well too, I have some cucumbers and zucchini to pick now and I have been eating lettuce from it for a few months. I am looking forward to making pickles and canning tomatoes, but I think I will need to buy the vegetables from the farmer’s market as well; there is no way I’ll get enough produce from the patio to make preserves in any amount of quantity.

Finally, I’ve been at the lake most weekends lately. Tracey’s folks have a trailer out on a lake north of Kingston, so we’ve been spending some time out there, which has been really enjoyable. We spent this past weekend out there and I managed to catch some fish and do some snorkelling. It was a really relaxing weekend and I imagine we’ll have a few more weekends out there this summer. I’ll post some pictures and the such as I have more things to post.