January 30, 2006

Before I went to bed last night I discovered that the server down in Castile had lost power during the day. That prevented me from being able to do some of the work that I had wanted to do last night in preparation for this morning.

The alarm went off this morning but I didn’t hear it and Dominica fell back asleep so we were not awake as early as we had hoped to have been. The original plan was for the two of us to be to Castile Christian Academy by 8:30 or so but that didn’t work out. I got out of bed as early as I could and got ready to go. Dominica had decided that she would drive down to Castile separately when she woke up. But she ended up waking up just as I was getting ready to leave so we ended up driving down together and arrived closer to 9:30. Dad had gotten there around 8:30. The plan is that he is going to be teaching down there today and Dominica will be teaching tomorrow.

Today was a really busy but productive day. Dad taught three computer classes today. It was a good thing that Dominica was there because we needed a lot of extra help getting things taken care of like hands on help and inputting tons and tons of students who did not have or who had forgotten their passwords. I had my hands full today. I had one new computer that needed to be installed, an unbelievable number of problems that “cropped up” throughout the day and one major printer installation that needed to be taken care of as soon as possible.

The big breakthrough today was finally getting every single computer in the entire school updated to SUSE Linux 10.0. Now we are finally standardized on a single platform. That is going to make things a lot easier very quickly. The second really big item today was finally installing a massive centralized printer for the school – an HP LaserJet 5si MX. That thing is BIG. It took a while to get it installed but I managed to get it onto the network and every computer in the school got configured to print to it. That is going to make a real difference there. Previously the school only had a single, old HP DeskJet colour printer in the principal’s office that the entire school had to share. And only one computer was configured to print to it! What a pain that was. But now every computer in the school can print to the big black and white laser. Now every student can print anytime that they want.

Dad, Dominica and I did lunch at Lorraine’s in Castile when the school had the water line going to the school cut by some road construction crew. We figured that that was as good a time as any to take a lunch break. Today was dad’s first day teaching at the school so he had quite a full day. All three of us were totally exhausted by the end of the day.

Dominica and I got home and she immediately went out to do some shopping at Walmart. I had to sit down and sift through all of the messages that had piled up during the day while I was out. There is little Internet access right now at the school just because I spend such a huge amount of my time taking care of network issues that I never have a chance to have a machine on the Internet for me to use. And my cell phone does not work down there very well so it is extra hard to get in touch with me. I had a lot of messages and a lot of things that needed my immediate attention including a lot of planning with a lot of different people to get ready for the work that I am doing tomorrow in Buffalo. But by the end of the day we got everything worked out and we are going ahead with the work in Buffalo first thing in the morning and hopefully we will be done by 2:00 and will be able to come back home. I also had to deal with a really angry neighbour who was upset about Oreo’s “deposits” in the yard. We had been unaware that any of his “land mines” had gone over into the common property to the side of our house (there is empty yard on the side of our house between us and our neighbour’s on the other side but instead of each of us owning up to the middle we each only own up to the side of our houses and there is common property in between which is really annoying.) We knew that he had lots of surprises in our own yard but when I went out to clean up after him the stuff in the common area was only inches off of our property and so incredibly far from anyone else’s property and on the far side of our property from the property of the person who was complaining. But oh well, what are you going to do. Technically we were wrong and he shouldn’t have been going over there. Their description of “having to dodge” his droppings was quite the exaggeration as I was barely able to find them and only a person meandering along the side of my house spying on me would ever walk near them. So I went out and did a bunch of cleaning up just to make sure that everyone is happy tomorrow. Sometimes I really dislike living in a townhouse. The worst part is owning some of the yard but not all of it so that a lot of people think that they have free reign to your property which is what the real issue is here. The pissed neighbour literally uses my back yard just feet off of my deck far more than I do because she doesn’t walk through her own house but uses my yard to access hers. Apparently the home owner’s association rules say that Oreo always has to be on a leash. I am not totally convinced of that but it is most likely true. One more thing making life far less convenient.

So I took Oreo on a long walk today all the way down to North Street in town. He was really happy to have a chance to go on a real walk. He was so excited, tugging on his collar the entire way. Boy was he tired by the time that we got back to the house.

Dominica made BBQ’d fake chicken for dinner that was really good and we watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, the fourth season, before going to bed. I also spent a lot of time working on Dominica’s former 401k turned IRA account. What an unbelievable hassle that turned out to be. She didn’t do anything about it when they contacted her and it ended up rolling over to a safe haven account with eTrades (whom I hate) and I spent several hours trying to figure out eTrade’s confusing system enough to have the money at least in some actual type of investment situation. That took a huge piece of my evening away from me and really made me frustrated.

I have to be up early tomorrow. My electrician Tim is picking me up at 8:45 so that we can head to Buffalo to finish a project for T-Mobile. I will be glad to have that over and out of the way. The work is good but I hate dangling projects. I like things to be wrapped up so I don’t have to keep thinking about them.

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