April 2, 2006: Time to Return to New Jersey

It was freezing in our bedroom and I had to work hard to keep Oreo warm. He isn’t very good at getting under the covers and taking care of himself. We assume that this is some sort of problem that developed from having lived in Texas and never having been cold enough to have figured out the theory of blankets.

I was awake around 7:30 this morning and finally got out of bed at 8:00. That is only six hours of sleep since the clocks got moved forward last night. I hate daylight saving time. What a stupid idea. This is one thing that really makes me think Banjamin Franklin was a loon. No one has ever managed to explain to me how changing the clocks makes there be more or less sunlight. As if all humans are tied to some strange atomic internal clock that makes them get up at a particular time as dictated by congress and not by having enough sleep, the way the sunlight is, etc. I think that everyone should run on UTC (aka Greenwich Mean Time) and just refer to everything in that way. Life would be so much easier. Sure noon wouldn’t be the time that the sun was highest in the sky but it isn’t now either. Okay, maybe it is now and not during the winter, I can’t tell which is normal and which is adjusted. But you understand. Under our current system it means that half of the time and the other half is total random. So once we have lost our connection to what the time means why do we use such a pointless, arbitrary system at all? Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell someone anywhere that you want to talk to them at 3:00 and it meant 3:00 and you didn’t have to adjust for each other’s time zones and daylight savings issues? In today’s global economy it makes no sense at all to have twenty four separate time zones with multiple countries in each deciding independantly whether or not they will honor daylight savings. And to make things more complicated, now America is considering changing WHEN they use daylight savings. Imagine the issues that that will cause. Now there will be multiple daylight savings systems. Computers will use one. Canada will us probably the same one as the existing computers. Atomic clocks will use the new ones and people in Singapore that have to work with us won’t be able to figure it out at all. As it is they laugh at us for changing our clocks twice a year on a set schedule. Come on people… we should be downright embarassed that our country does this. It is totally ridiculous.

So SGL topped three quarters of a million words this week! Whoo-hoo.

I spent the morning while Dominica was sleeping working on that server that was giving me problems last night. It continued giving me problems this morning but I managed to show it who was boss around 11:00 or so. It is a server that I am working on to be my new VoIP PBX system. I want to have all of the telephone calls come through that single point and have voicemail, extensions, a receptionist, hold music, etc. It is not a small project and I have been working on it for a while. I hope that I now know enough to actually be able to do something useful with it. With me being back and forth between New York and New Jersey all of the time it seems like now is a really good time to have a really powerful and robust telephone system. As it is we can see how the Lord was really watching over us to make sure that dad, Dominica and I all had brand new cell phones with unlimited calling between us. We didn’t have that before and now it really makes a difference. And having Vonage as our main telephone service is a blessing as well as I can make it send the voicemail to multiple people so that I know that at least someone is getting a copy of the messages while I am away.

Dominica didn’t get up until after 11:00 today. It is a beautiful, sunny day today. It reminds me of, well, New Jersey. Tee hee. I have managed to have been in New Jersey for almost every nice day this Spring and I am starting to get the feeling that Jersey is just a lot nicer, weather wise, than New York is.

Dad came over after church to get lunch with us at the Omega. This is my last Omega meal for another week 🙁 I have gotten used to this routine.

After lunch Dominica and I came home and spent the afternoon at the house. There was a lot to be done before I left like packing and preparing the server that I had been working on so that it would be running all week so that I can work on it remotely from the hotel room. This ended up not turning out so well because the server has turned out to be unstable and I can’t get it to keep running. So all of that time was wasted. I am guessing that the server has bad memory in it but it will take time to be able to determine that for sure and time is one thing that I just don’t have any of at this point. So I guess that the big plans I had for being really productive this week are mostly shot. Oh well.

Just before I left Dominica and I went to Pizza Paul’s in downtown Geneseo and got some slices and a big chocolate brownie. Those are the best brownies! Then it was time to say goodbye and to start my drive.

My drive to New Jersey was uneventful. I was on the road out of Geneseo at 7:30 in the evening. I stopped in Dansville to get some gas and was on my way. My stomach was bothering me a little and I ended up having to make a stop in Campbell for a few minutes and I stopped again just south of Kirkwood to pick up a diet soda to get some caffeine into my system. After those three stops I still managed to arrive at the hotel in just four hours and fifty minutes. Not bad at all. The route through Easton really does appear to be the fastest way through even though Google Maps says otherwise. If I was to be going straight to work instead of to the hotel it might shave another fifteen minutes or so from my time as long as the traffic was the same. Sunday night traffic is really great along that entire route.

I was checked into the hotel a little after 12:30 and was in bed a little after 1:00. I got my hotel room set up before going to bed. I set up the laptop and hopped online and didn’t even have to sign into the Internet access again as it was still on from Friday. I am in the same room as well. It feels just like I never left. Ho hum.

Leave a comment