Passport
I woke up this morning, it was around 3:30. I didn’t want to wake up that early but I did. So I put on my GSD1 hat.
I waited around until it was a reasonable time, and then I headed to the Passport Canada office in Scarborough2. After waiting way too long, they processed my paperwork, and OH YEAH! I’ll be getting a passport.
Apple Connect 2012
From there, I went up to Steeles and joined Apple Connect 2012 after the opening talk. I don’t really know what I missed, but oh well. What I do know I missed was breakfast, and after having lunch and dinner there… OH MY GOD! I was expecting shitty sandwiches and that kind of stuff like at other Apple events I’ve been to… but no, they’re pulling out all the bloody stops3!
The sessions I did go to were thus:
Apple Environmental Footprint
There was nothing else going on at that time, and my god was this a bloody boring speech. I really don’t care what Apple’s footprint is. It was long, boring, and *YAWN*.
Lion: Where is my server?
The title made me think of this. This was a discussion mostly of where to find pieces of Lion Server that aren’t preinstalled like it used to be. The vast majority of this was pointing us to the binary for MySQL or how to enable FTP on a server4. Those things weren’t that interesting, what was were the items that he had to take out of his presentation, because since the release of 10.7.0 and the release of 10.7.3, it is not easy, and builtin.
Lion Open Directory Update
Open Directory is an authentication protocol which Macs can use to authenticate to a server. It’s a decent system, has some advantages, though, honestly it would probably be more accessible to use Active Directory, but I do not. The presenter was a programmer for the OD services. Apparently the rewrote it from the ground up and she gave a very technical and detailed examination of the services. It was interesting, but barely useful.
Certificates and PKI: Concepts and Lab
This was my favourite of the talks, mostly because of Arek Dreyer. He is very animated and he seemed to be genuinely excited about the subject. It was an excellent two hours. We had a lot of information thrown at us, both technical and practical. We had a chance to actually play with the self-signed certificates that are default to Mac OS X Server.
I missed two sessions, as they conflicted with others, including one from Mobile Iron a third party company who make a Mobile Device Management solution. Apple just released one called Apple Configurator, which I’m looking forward to playing with along with a cart of iPads. I just worry about the fact that the app seems to be thinking the iOS apps should be volume licensed, when there is no volume licensing for Canada, yet.
The other session I missed was Intro to iOS Development. I’m a terrible developer, and honestly don’t care.
After a tasty tasty dinner, I went to downstairs to the main event room where I wrote a test for certification. OS X Support Essentials 10.7 Exam was the test, and I passed! WOOO! That makes me an Apple Certified Support Professional, whatever that means. It’s a certification that will last until Mountain Lion is released in the summer. These exams were built into the cost of the event, so I took it on a whim not expecting to pass, and without having studied, but WOO HOO I passed5!
There’s many more tests I can take tomorrow, but I’ll only be able to take one more. I can go with OS X Server Essentials 10.7 Exam which will make me an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator. That will be a much harder exam, which I could probably pass with study, but I haven’t studied whatsoever. I could at the least read the 30 page Exam Preparation Guide.
They also have exams for Final Cut Pro X and Aperture, which have very little actual worth in the real world, I use these apps nearly constantly. They have a Level One and Level Two for FCPX, and I know I wouldn’t get to level two with my knowledge, and wonder about Level One. As for Aperture, I’m sure I can pass it in my sleep. So I don’t know which I should opt for.
Bow ties are cool
In additional to all the fun I had with Passport and AC12, I also sent an email to Wickham House Brand who have a bow tie of the month club. I signed up for three months starting in February and have yet to receive my first tie. I was kinda worried, so I sent an email. I was told it should’ve arrived last week (but I didn’t say I was in Canada, and he answered from his iPhone, so he might not have looked my order up), he suggested I contact him again at the end of the week if it hasn’t arrived.
I got home from AC12 and checked my mailbox, which had been empty every day for the past two or three weeks. There was a notice from Canada Post in there. I checked the notice and saw that Shoppers was open for another 3o minutes. I headed down the street, and got a package, which was too big for a bow tie. sure it was flat, but it was about 12″ squared. I looked at the return address, and it wasn’t from the United States, it was from Halifax… WHO WOULD BE SENDING ME SOMETHING FROM HALIFAX?!?! Then I saw the name on the return address, “Mike O’Neill.”
It was Mike O’Neill’s new record! Hooray! I had figured it would come from Zunior.com owner Dave Ullrich, who lives a few blocks away from me in Toronto6.
Sad there were no bow ties, but WOO! MIKE O’NEILL.
Man I’m tired.