Laurence Andrews

Right, that’s my two weeks. Best get back to work.. 💼 Wish me luck!!

👀 She’s here!

I love anything and everything pineapple. 🍍Somehow never made Pineapple Jam though. Until today! Fingers crossed it comes out edible.

Broke the seal yesterday, first beer as a Dad. Absolutely worth the wait. So lovely!

It’s been the most amazing day.

We’re Mum and Dad to the most gorgeous little baby girl. 👼 Couldn’t stop crying with happiness when she joined us. Best day of my life.

So proud of Mrs A for everything, she did so, so well. She’s going to be the best mum.

💕

Baby Update: On it’s way, but taking it’s time.

We’re currently at home but everything ’started’ 48-ish hrs ago. Hopefully baby will be with us this weekend. We’ve spent a little time at the hospital checking things, all is fine, just happening slowly. Mrs A is doing well. 😌

Well, we had hoped that by now baby would be with us! Seems it’s not time just yet…. Baby is still doing very well though, getting itself ready for the big day which is getting closer every minute that passes. Victoria is doing fine too and is coping very well, despite baby being really quite big!

Weekend before last we went and did another ultrasound at the hospital, just to check that everything was progressing fine and also did some sessions on the monitor to check heart rate and movement. All very good, baby was very active and kept kicking the monitor! Doing these on a weekend is a much more pleasant experience. We had thought that the monitor and scan were showing signs that things were starting, but seems not.

All being well, baby should arrive with us anytime now, we’re both very ready and excited. As are all of our family and friends! Victoria of course continues to be on maternity leave and I am waiting for the day that I can join her on paternity leave. Work have been very accommodating with everything but not knowing when I’ll be off and when I’ll be back is making things a little tricky. Lots going on and working on building some momentum for some exciting identity access management and enterprise application integration projects in 2022.

In home news, there’s been quite a lot going on… The house is move is progressing well, our solicitor has been busy managing the sale and purchase and so far everyone is playing ball. We have reviewed the documentation from the seller of the High Halstow house and are waiting on the land registry searches - hopefully a simple process since the house is only 20 years old. Our mortgage application has been approved following three lengthy appointments with the provider, we’re now just waiting for the desk-based valuation to come through before we receive our offer. We have been to view the house again with Victoria’s Dad and spent a bit more time checking things out and looking at the garden and garage which we weren’t able to last time. All very good, can’t wait to get moved in!

Back in Upnor we’ve been getting things packed up ready for the move. We had a literal pallet of packing materials delivered a few weeks ago and since then we’ve been working on getting all the boxes built and filled. So far, so good. The rower which has been sitting in the garage for the last few months is now carefully packed back into it’s box ready to move too! Next job is to try and arrange for a removal company to come quote for the move, because we have far too much stuff to move ourselves in a van.

If we need more boxes than this, we’re going to be in trouble! Great service from Schott Packaging, all arrived next day. Let’s get movin’! 📦🚚🏡 pic.twitter.com/7y5owAOxLH

— Laurence Andrews (@14zz4) October 19, 2021

Other big news is the arrival of my MacBook Pro. Very big day! I have started a blog post to share more about it, but essentially it’s the most amazing computer I’ve ever used. It cost a lot of money, but it is everything I had hoped it would be. Very pleased indeed. This is the first blog on the new machine!

Over the weekend we went out and enjoyed the fireworks at Medway Yacht Club with family. It was cold but really good fun. Especially fitting as this was one of the first things we did after we moved back to Upnor. Ready for our next milestone now.

Hurry up, bean!

Really enjoyed the Medway Yacht Club fireworks and bonfire last night 🎇 🔥

The busiest event on the club calendar! Luckily we managed to get a spot to sit and enjoy the show.

Beginning to wonder if Starlink dish is going to arrive before we move house. Really don’t want to have to change to deliver location and cause a delay ☹️

Mortgage Application - Approved!

Just need to wait for the Valuation now. So far, everything is moving along nicely. 😁

Hit another milestone today. Almost forgot! Two months alcohol-free. 🍺🥳 Enjoying it so far. Over half way to Christmas.

Also, two years 🌱 . Which I’m immensely proud of. 🥳

Hello, friend.

So the MacBook Pro is still due for delivery tomorrow, tracking hasn’t updated at all over the weekend except to indicate it’s left Tamworth. Not having it arrive this weekend is probably a good thing because it’s allowed me to do some housework on file storage… (which I’ve been putting off for ages).

Since it’s been so long, I’m going to aim for a complete fresh start on the new Mac. Which I know is going to irritate me for a while, but hopefully it won’t take too long to get back to how I like things.

Right now, I’ve got everything organised as follows…

Where Things Live

Trying to keep this as simple as possible, my current MacBook Pro has 500GB of SSD which at the moment isn’t too much of a problem. It will be at some point soon, because my Photo library consumes 50% of that, baby photos will cause that to climb rapidly! New MacBook Pro has 1TB onboard, which should hopefully, just about cover growth for the next three years. I would have loved to have gone for the 2TB option, but it was an extra £400 😱!!

Local Machine

• Almost everything now lives in iCloud Drive. That’s Desktop, Documents, Screenshots, Scans, Projects, etc. ‘Optimise Storage’ is off.
• Apple Photo library is stored locally, and enabled for iCloud.
• Photos/Images not in the library live in iCloud Drive as files (commonly files I’ve exported from Photo Library anyway)
• Downloads are stored locally, I don’t back these up and consider them expendable.
• Don’t really have any Music, the music I do have lives in iCloud as files.
• Email is stored locally (and with FastMail)
• Don’t have any movies.

External SSD

I have a 500Gb Samsung T7 SSD, which was a really good investment earlier this year to help migrate from Google Photos. It’s encrypted and now takes care of two things:

• Large video media, typically videos from my DJI Osmo, Drone, GoPro, etc. Ordered in directories by month so I can try and avoid duplicates. Essentially, everything I don’t want in Photo Library.
• Old documents/data which I don’t need in my life any more or don’t want to sort out.

GitHub

Of course, Blog (posts, site and images) lives in GitHub, copies of the repo are also on my iPhone (via Working Copy) and Mac. Same for other miscellaneous projects.

Backups

My goal is to follow Backblaze’s 3–2–1 Backup Strategy and have two local copies of everything, one on my machine, another on a separate drive plus another stored off site. Important to remember that iCloud provides synchronisation convenience but is not a backup method. I want to be able to know that if I lose my Mac, I don’t lose anything. And if I were to lose my Mac and my local storage, I don’t lose anything. Same for if the cloud provider looses my stuff.

BackBlaze

Surprise! I use Backblaze. I don’t love it, but actually it works fine for essentially everything I need it to do. With the amount of data I have, I feel that it’s pretty expensive, but it’s worth it for the convenience. I have it setup to back up everything on my Mac, including iCloud Drive data (which needs to be kept local). It excludes certain things, but nothing I consider of value.

With the new Mac, I’ll set the External SSD to backup too, so that’s all that data is off site. I’ve been putting off seeding that drive until I’ve had a tidy-up because it is going to take absolutely ages to upload. I will need to make sure to keep the drive connected as much as possible when at home too, perhaps an iOS shortcut can help remind me. I also plan to subscribe to Extended Version History, hopefully this will help cover me should I forget to connect it one month, although I don’t quite know for sure…

Time Machine

Of course, can’t go wrong with Apple TimeMachine. I have a crappy, slow 1TB disk that I use for backing up. I have a long USB-C cable that goes under my desk because it’s incessant spinning and clicking drives me crazy. This serves as my local backup of everything on my Mac.

What’s missing?

I need to have a secondary local copy of the External SSD. I think the answer to this is to have a slave device that I periodically synchronise from the master. I’ve been holding off because the 500Gb drive is almost full and if I upgrade I want to upgrade as a pair, ideally to 2TB rather than 1TB. I have debated buying the SanDisk Extreme Pro, which has a Read-Write speed of 2000MB Per Second, which is twice as fast as the Samsung T7. The 1TB version is £150, which actually isn’t too bad, the 2TB is obviously more. However, if I do buy a pair, the slave device could be slower since I’d run the sync overnight.. I think I’m going to collect a LOT of video over the next few years once the baby is here.

Alternative and probably a more sensible option is a Synology NAS, but with the spec I want, it’s just shy of £1,000 which is a fair wedge of cash. I would probably go with the DS720+. I expect the The Read-Write speed of a NAS even if it’s tricked out is going to be WAAAY slower than the external drives and that I suspect would really annoy me. Maybe something for when I get sick of external SSDs. It would also need its own Backblaze B2, which adds further cost. Advantage is that it could work with CCTV should we want it for the new house. Another pet-project is to combine the (4!) separate raspberry Pi devices to a set of NUC (or similar) devices and run VMs on a proper hypervisor. The NAS would be ideal for providing shared storage. This is a project for another day…

The local TimeMachine drive needs replacing too. I want to go SSD so I don’t have to listen to the clicking. Perhaps it’ll be faster too, because right now, it’s crazy slow.

I am debating re-signing up to Backblaze with a new account so that I can set my storage location to EU, rather than US. This is only possible at sign up by changing the tiniest most non-obvious option at sign-up. Seriously Backblaze, buy some DCI bandwidth!

Also, I need to do better with random SD-Cards. I have a terrible habit of leaving stuff on them and not knowing if I’ve transferred it off already. Then I end up just dumping everything on my Mac when I need an empty SD-Card.

Also, Happy Halloween 🎃

Let’s do this! #McPlant

What a difference a few weeks can make…! The HUGE news this month is that we’re moving house!! 😁 It’s all happened very quickly but we’re both very excited and confident we’re making the right decision. We absolutely love living here in Upnor, it’s a very special place for both of us, but we are gradually growing out of our home and need some more room. We’d love to stay but it doesn’t make too much sense to invest much further in our house and for the past few years have longed for somewhere a little bigger. We’ve spent a lot of time and money doing the house up since we moved in, we’ve done all the decorating, fitted new carpet (literally a couple of months ago 🤦‍♂️) made some changes to the garden, etc and with those changes have really made it somewhere that we’re happy to be. Unfortunately doing more work, either extending or rearranging things internally is going to be quite expensive and unlikely to give us the space that we’re going to need in the future. So with that, we committed and listed it! We are very lucky that there was lots of interest and our house sold within a week with several offers, in the end we sold to a lovely couple who are really excited to move to Upnor.

Looking at where to move to, there’s not too many that come on the market in Upnor and there’s even fewer that are the size and type that we’re looking for. We did try and view one in Upnor that was listed recently, but it didn’t work out. Before the pandemic we were planning to move to a new build but have since gone off the idea in favour of somewhere that’s more established, the whole new build thing was REALLY complicated and exhausting. It would however have been great to move somewhere with gigabit fibre.

So we broadened our horizons beyond Upnor and found an amazing place that is exactly what we’re looking for. It’s in High Halstow, a similarly sized village further into the Hoo peninsular. One of the things we’re really spoilt with in Upnor is the quiet; the geography of Upnor’s riverside location means that even though it’s close to Chatham, Strood and their arterial roads, it’s incredibly quiet and peaceful. High Halstow has that same peace and quiet, possibly even more since it’s much more remote. The village has it’s own pre-school and primary school both within a short walk which will fantastic for when baby is a little older. There’s also a small shop (which Upnor lacks!) pub, playing fields, children’s park, church and a nature reserve that’s great for dog walking. Compared to Upnor, the village has a very active community and even it’s own relief charity for those in need.

There’s been a lot of news recently surrounding Medway Council’s Local Plan and the impact that will have for development on the Peninsular and the wider towns. The most recent proposal was withdrawn, although it indicated that most housing development will be focused in Hoo, where it’s designation will be changed to make it a town. There will be development in High Halstow, there already has been some, in fact the Village is expected to almost double in size, but it should for remain a village. The very big news is that the nearby Grain branch line railway, presently only used for commercial transport will re-open for passenger traffic with a new train station constructed for London commuter traffic (which of course, isn’t without controversy). This would in the future help avoid the need to have to drive all the way into Strood to get the train to London.

The house we found in High Halstow is just around the corner from Dad and was built around 2000, it’s detached and a fair size bigger with an additional bedroom upstairs, a small downstairs study, bigger kitchen and separate dining room. The garden is a little bigger, but not too large and isn’t overlooked at all. I’m particularly excited that it has side access, plenty of drive way, a garage and a nice-sized front garden too, all things we don’t have today. The back garden is south facing and the roof is suitable for solar-panels if we were to install them in the future (next door already have). The house isn’t in perfect condition, in fact, it’s probably in worse condition than this house when we bought it..! But what it does have is all the right components and potential to be the house Victoria and I want for our family in the years to come.

Many neighbours with the same style of house have extended both upstairs and downstairs so it should be possible to make the house bigger in the future if we needed. I’m really excited about fully renovating the house, putting in an energy efficient heating system (maybe with a government grant?) opening the back up downstairs and creating a big master bedroom. All possible in time and with the right money.

We’re really pleased that our offer on the house has been accepted, so now we just need to wait, and hope that everything works out as expected. The chain is relatively short, with the same agent acting on all properties. Provided all goes well we’ll be looking at a move date sometime in January, so baby will officially have lived in Upnor (as did yours truly) for a short time. Today we have our mortgage application meeting with Natwest, we’re not stretching our needs too much so it should (fingers crossed) be absolutely fine, although always a bit of a worry! Yesterday we ordered many, many boxes, bubble wrap and cardboard packing material (seriously, how are boxes so expensive?) which are going to arrive today on a pallet. We used a company called Schott Packaging who seemed to be quite reasonable, there are MANY snakes online selling removal boxes for £3/4 per box. We debated going ‘eco’ and using a crate hire service like this, but we’d need to pack and unpack quickly because the crates are rented by the week. We’re going to try and get as much stuff packed away as we can before the move date, even if it ends up sitting in the garage.

In actual baby news, there’s not too much to report, we finished Dad Classes the other week and following that both feel much more comfortable about what’s going to happen. We went to the final scan which was a little different now baby is a bit bigger, they are very healthy and were at the time of the scan were 6lbs and 3oz (2.8Kgs). Victoria and her mum washed all of the baby clothes and get them all ready for when he/she arrives. We spent some more time talking about names and have whittled it down to a respectable short list that I think we’re both happy with. We’re going to wait until baby is here with us before we agree on the perfect name, although both have our favourites.

We have packed the baby bags and they’re in the car ready to go. Victoria has done a good job of inventorying them so we know exactly what we have and where it is. We’ve packed light, but with enough stuff to get us through a day or so quite comfortably. The car seat is safety installed and we’re quite familiar with how it all works. To help manage the baby and the dog being in the car at the same time, we bought Dexter a car crate, basically it’s a boot-liner that goes on one of the back seats. Turns out he absolutely loves it and chooses to sit in it when be bring it into the house. We’ve not yet taken him on a longer journey, but I think it’s probably more comfortable for him and certainly safer too. The sides are high enough that he shouldn’t be able to get to baby when they’re in their car seat which is what we were after (Dexter gets very excited around babies).

Victoria is doing really well, although she reports that the final weeks are gradually becoming more difficult. Baby has been kicking and creating a fuss a lot more recently which we think is probably because he/she is running out of space. Learnt this at Dad School, apparently babies are delivered with their head sideways, so their ears are towards mum’s front and back. In Victoria’s tummy baby is mostly sitting upside down with their spine towards Victoria’s right side. This means that the right side of her tummy is very hard and the left is much more squidgy. We’re both very excited for the big day now, with just two and a bit weeks to go.

I’m still going in to the office a few days a week but from the end of this week am going to try and cut back and work just from home. There’s a lot going on while I try and leave work in a place where I can disconnect for two or three weeks. No more scuba, sailing or being too far apart from now onwards either. There’s no situation where I’m going to miss baby arriving!

Hopefully there will be time for one more DadBlog before the big day. If not, wish us luck!!

If we need more boxes than this, we’re going to be in trouble! Great service from Schott Packaging, all arrived next day. Let’s get movin’! 📦🚚🏡

Very pleasant morning pumpkin picking at Beluncle Farm today. 🎃 Lots of different varieties and some whoppers too! Great fun ☺️

Went to view the new house again this evening. Still absolutely love it, so that’s good. 😁🏡

Concerned as to whether my heart will still be in the same place on Monday after the #AppleEvent 😬💔💻

Let’s hope the mortgage will cover both. 🤞

Today has been an exciting day in moving home news. I’ll share more once things are firmed up, but everything is looking really good. ☺️🤞

Beginning to feel very real now but trying to not get too excited! 🚚🏡

This weekend was the last class of Dad Classes (aka Antenatal Classes) which is both very exciting and very nerve wracking at the same time! We had four lessons, three Saturdays of 4 hours and a 2 hour midweek session. The classes were really, really helpful and in hindsight I don’t quite know how we were contemplating not doing them.

Victoria learnt a few tips and tricks but had spent a lot of time understanding things in advance. For me, I learnt a ton of stuff at every single lesson. I found it very helpful to be in an environment with an experienced tutor but also around other dads and partners who were going through the same thing as us. Everything in pregnancy is very mum-first with the scans having been the only exposure for me of what to expect. The scans are good, but when they’re happening The dad is told to sit quietly in the corner with the nurse only really talking to mum. Midwife appointments are mum-only and at very awkward times.

The classes have allowed me as a future dad, to get to grips on what to expect, what to do and how to help from a professional and others in the same situation. They’re also helped prompt conversations between Victoria and I about topics that may not have come up while we’re focusing on our day to day lives. Such as how we feel about certain things and what’s important to us and what isn’t. It’s definitely brought us closer on our journey and I feel I have a much better understanding of what Victoria is going through beyond just the size of her bump!

The things that have been most helpful are - Everything about c-sections (if I didn’t know about how this works and it was needed, I’d be freaking out)

• How I can help Victoria during labour
• What to look for during different Labour stages
• Things to look out for after baby is born
• How to manage decisions during labour and what we are entitled to have a decision over
• Everything to do with the placenta/cord 😳
• Different places when we can have the baby (home vs ward vs ‘birth centre’)

Our tutor, Vicky has been really, really good. She’s been able to present the materials in an easy to consume way whilst keeping us all engaged and collaborating together. I particularly liked the part where the dads had to show the mums how to correctly bath baby!

The sessions have also allowed all of the couples to meet and (hopefully) stay in touch with each other. While we’re all different in our own ways, we’re all in exactly the same place right now. I am really looking forward to our reunion in January once all the babies are born!

If you’re reading this thinking about doing a NCT course, just book it. You won’t regret it.

Next step, baby.

It’s been five weeks since my last drink (Belgian GP) 🍺

Update:

I feel normal. I sleep a bit better. I enjoy always being able to drive. I spend less money. I focus a LOT better at work. I generally care more. I do more things. 🙂

I miss the pub, cask ale and red wine. ☹️

New Bond movie: 10/10 Absolutely loved every second of it!! #NoTimeToDie

Yes, yes, I know it’s been a really long time since the last Dadblog post - sorry about that, it’s been pretty busy. The good news is that I think, we think, we’re almost there with the baby preps - which is a pretty big deal. We’re for sure on the final furlong, the list of jobs is all but ticked, the nursery looks amazing, I have an empty bank account and Victoria has a very large bump (it’s pineapple week)! It’s getting very exciting now and we both can’t wait for baby to be here with us in our home.

The nursery room has seen lots of change, the most significant thing is that the carpet has been replaced, this made a HUGE difference. We had a weird stripy brown coloured carpet in the room before which was just a bit old fashioned and made the room feel very busy. The new carpet is a simple pale cream colour looks great and is really fluffy, neutral and fresh - it smells amazing. I feel like we probably should have swapped the carpet a long time ago as it didn’t really cost all that much and aside from the wait, it didn’t really take very long to install either. We also had the hallway, stairs and landing (HSL if you’re a carpet pro), my office and the lounge done. We’re really happy with all of it, particularly the HSL, which has made it feel like a new home when you walk in the front door. Walking around in the lounge barefoot is really very lovely.

Also in the nursery we have installed the new baby monitor and some shelves. The monitor is a Eufy SpaceView, which seemed to be the highest-rated camera of any and so far, it seems really good. We debated getting the Nanit, but it was very expensive (£300) and you have to pay for a subscription (between £5 and £30), which is a bit crazy. This camera is a closed loop, so it doesn’t have an app, just a simple monitor and camera; apparently an app is also quite inconvenient for a monitor because you want to always keep an eye on it, which is inconvenient when it on your phone. The camera is PTZ with a wide angle lens and a small shelf for wall mounting. The monitor is a simple large LCD display with a few buttons and a kick stand. For some reason, most systems tend to have awful cameras and then a tiny little display screen. This one works really well and we’re properly pleased with it. The only tricky part was that it has been out of stock in the UK since the beginning of the year (well, probably before then) so we haven’t been able to buy it. Fortunately, it was in stock at Amazon in Germany, so we ordered from there and it turned up just fine. We paid about £150 which is quite a lot, but a lot less than a Nanit.

Few other changes in the nursery to finish it off, we installed some shelves above the changing station for books and bits and bobs. The shelves were an absolute ‘mare to install but look good now they’re up. We also put a floor lamp in next to the nursing chair which looks very smart and Dad has made a small oak shelf for next to the chair so that Victoria has somewhere to put her phone, a drink or the bottle. All that’s left is to get the wireless lights to work properly, I need to find a way to define some preset options and to have switches next to the chair and door. We may also get another camera that covers the whole room in addition to just the cot.

The other major investment was the push-chair/buggy/stroller/travel-system/car-seat. Honestly, I didn’t realise this would be as complicated as it was, there are SO MANY options is a little bit crazy. Victoria did all of the heavy lifting in figuring out what is the best one for us and we eventually landed on the Mamas & Papas Ocarro in Onyx which comes with a Cybex Cloud Z lie-flat car seat. I think I’ve talked about this in a previous post, but it all turned up the other week in five (!) enormous boxes. It’s one thing seeing it in the shop and it’s another having it in your house, it seems bigger than I remember, but just about fits in our under-stairs cupboard without being completely collapsed which is good. While we made sure the buggy fitted in the boot of the car, we didn’t check that the car seat would fit properly on the back seat. It does, but even in our relatively roomy Audi A4 the passenger seat needs to be quite far forward. The base for the car seat is pretty snazzy though, it spins around so that it’s easy to clip and seat in and out of the car. I’m sure our mileage with this will vary over time, but all seems good so far.

This weekend is the first lesson of Parent School with NCT. We’re now both members of a special WhatsApp group with all the other future mums and dads which is quite nice. Our tutor is a lady called Vicki Sigston who runs private sessions at thisparentingthing.co.uk. Little apprehensive about it, but sure it’ll be absolutely fine, I’m certain it’ll be helpful to listen and learn. It still seems a bit odd that you’re just expected to know what to do when baby arrives. I feel like there should be some kind of test or certification before you are allowed to be trusted with an actual human child! We’re going full-on and are turning up with cupcakes for everyone.

In other news, Covid restrictions are being relaxed and we’re now both fully vaccinated. Most people are continuing to wear masks indoors or in crowded spaces which seems sensible. The case numbers for Covid are still quite high, but apparently that’s fine so long as people aren’t dying with quite such high frequency. We are both still doing lateral flow tests from time to time and touch-wood neither of us believe we’ve had Covid. It’s now possible to sit at the bar in a pub which was my personal metric for when things are back to normal, this is very pleasing although as I type it’s been four weeks since my last beer. A commitment I made with myself to make sure that I make the most of this special part of our lives - plus I have already drunk enough for both of us this year!

In general news, aside from Covid. The war in Afghanistan is now over, well, the ISAF ground forces have officially left which is quite a monumental piece of history. That exit marked the 20th anniversary since 9/11 which is now a frighteningly long time ago. International travel is beginning to resume, which has been all but halted since the start of the pandemic. Travel to most of the EU has been possible for a couple of months provided people are double jabbed, report their location and complete mandatory travel testing. Travel to the US is expected to resume from November, despite the UK permitting travel for US citizens for many months already. Oh and I suppose this is news, England lost to Italy in the Euro 2020 final at Wembley. Tragic. In the past few days there has been a massive surge in liquid gas prices, which is causing all sorts of chaos, that sits alongside people panic-buying forecourt fuel and an increasing acceptance that we’ll be living with food shortages in supermarkets because of a shortage of lorry drivers (because, surprise! it turns out most of them were from the EU). Perhaps this is the perfect storm for Winter 2021. We’re truly living the Brexit dream.

This may well be the last big post before baby arrives, but I’ll do my best to continue with the Micro Blog in the mean time, perhaps with some running update on Baby Classes.

Travelling to Leeds today to visit the Colliers office. Haven’t been to Leeds since December 2016, which was quite a while back. First time I’ve taken an LNER Azuma train which is exciting and continuing to absolutely exploit my Pret subscription. 😁☕️🚝