I did some site maintenance yesterday and to my amazement, when I went to look at the file size for the second quarter of updates this year, we managed to pull off the second or third busiest quarter ever even with all of the days that I missed updating. So I guess that I am not doing all that badly. And I am doing much better now.
Last night was terrible at work. For some reason, two other projects were scheduled to happen at the same time as my project in the same tiny space. So instead of just me in the server room, there were five people. And to make things even worse, all of the work that they were doing was totally dependant on my completing the work that I was doing. And just the fact that they were there in my way added an hour or more onto my process. But on top of that, we had technical issues that we weren’t able to solve so that ended up making the project take all night. So I was planning on being home around 1:30 but didn’t actually get home until 6:00. And, of course, the store was in a total panic because the other two projects had totally dismantled the store’s ability to operate come morning and had done it all on the guess that there would be no problems with my process. I left long before any of them did. I can only imagine what the rest of their mornings must have been like.
Min had to work the overnight last night at the Quality Inn so she went in at 11:00. Poor Oreo was alone all night. We had thought that he would only have been alone about two to three hours which wouldn’t have been bad but instead it was closer to eight hours. Under normal circumstances, he would not have to go out for twelve hours or so during the night but with both of us gone he gets nervous and his stomach gets upset so he had an accident. He was definitely nervous about it when I got home but also extremely glad to see me. I had a hard time convincing him that he wanted to go to bed.
Dominica got a call back about that job that we are very hopeful for. She interviewed there two weeks ago and they called looking for references last week. Now she has a second interview this Friday at 2:00. So we would appreciate if everyone could keep her in prayer. This is a really great job opportunity and could really make a difference for us and be a great career move for her.
Min didn’t get to go to bed this morning but had to stay up for a little while and then head to Canadaigua around 9:00 for class. She had to go early to make sure that she could deal with parking and so that she could hit the bookstore and pick up her textbooks for the class. Unfortunately, the textbook that they use is not one that we are able to get easily any other way so she had to buy it there and it isn’t cheap. At least it looks like it is a good book. Very big and from a good, well known auther and a publisher that I have been very impressed by in the past.
I slept until a little after 2:00. I had a really hard time getting consistent sleep last night (today, whatever) and had one of my “bad sleep” migraines when I got up. I wish I knew what was causing them. I know that I get them when I sleep poorly at weird times but there has to be more to them than just that. It seems to have gotten a lot worse now that I have the CPAP and I wonder if it is somehow related to me sleeping more deeply than I used to do.
It has been overcast here for two days. When I looked at the national weather map yesterday around noon, we could see an arm of the hurricane that was still over the gulf reaching up and covering this part of New York. I have never seen a tropical weather pattern so large before. It is so weird that we are being rained on by water coming from the gulf WHILE the Mississippi Basin is still be pounded directly by the storm! Last night it was raining in Rochester according to Min and it was definitely raining the entire time that I was in Syracuse. Quite a bit of rain. I couldn’t believe how much and it was raining the entire drive back to Geneseo with heavy fog in northern Livingston County. Min was at the hotel and said that when I came through that the fog was actually beginning to lift and that it had been much heavier during the night. Min said that CNN or the Weather Channel had mentioned specifically Rochester and Syracuse as being extrememly distant cities that were being pounded by the storm. So it was neat to get included in on the big hurricane news. We can feel a sort of connection to the soaked populace down there. I haven’t heard from Craig and Emily yet to see how things are there in central Alabama. They must be really wet.
There is still no world out of Louisianna as to how bad the destruction is. They think that there must be tons of people dead but they have no idea. The levees against the lake to the north of New Orleans have broken and the lake is flowing into the city. So even now with the storm more or less past, the water is still rising and things are just getting worse. It is a real disaster. There are ten thousand plus people in the Superdome which is in the middle of a lake so they can’t leave. They have no idea how many people are trapped inside attics but they can’t get rescue workers into lots of bad areas. Things are really bad. Mississippi has already reported at least 54 deaths. Biloxi and Mobile got blasted with the storm. Biloxi appears to have gotten hit the worst of it all. Mississippi officials said that there are lots of outlying villages and cities that can’t be contacted and they have no idea what the extent of damage is in those areas. It is evident that it is going to be several days before we have any idea of just how bad things are down there and it could be quite some time before New Orleans has any sort of way to stop the flooding. It has been almost a day and a half since their initial beating came from the storm and the water is still rising now so they are in extrememly bad shape.
We have been under flood warning here all morning. It is 4:45 now and the weather maps show the storm center is entering Ohio now with quite a bit of the heavier parts about to hit us here in Geneseo. Southwestern New York must already be getting some pretty serious rain and wind. We expect to have it here in less than two hours. Of course, we finally get a good rain here and I have to work in Syracuse again tonight and then go straight out to New Jersey tomorrow. My plan is to try to not have to get a hotel in Jersey but will try to make it back home right after work. If things go smoothly, that shouldn’t be all that bad. I have so much that I have to do this week that I feel that it is a bad idea for me to be away any more than is absolutely necessary.
One of my projects this week and last has been the design for a new website for a small manufacturing company up in East Rochester. I have their site up and running now as a demo so it is far from finished and there is a lot of fleshing out to be done, several pages that go nowhere at all and lots of tweaking needed to make it just right, but you can get a pretty good feel for how it is going by visiting Robinson Tools. I am pretty happy with how the page has turned out. I am always nervous doing web design because mixing technical and creative skills like that is very difficult and it is easy to get one or the other or both messed up pretty badly so I am glad to see the site coming together pretty nicely.
I talked to dad this afternoon and he is coming over to Geneseo to get some dinner before I go off to work. Min is still asleep so I don’t know what she is going to do. She had initially decided that she was just going to take a quick afternoon nap but it appears to be turning into a bit more as it often does. She has been awake for a very long time but she doesn’t have to work tonight so she had been hoping to sleep during the night tonight. But she could easily not make it to dinner tonight.
Since I have to leave to get to work shortly, I felt that it was better to wrap up the update again and get it posted so that everyone can keep up.