Dominica had to get up and go to work this morning. With as little as we get to see each other her working on Saturdays is a killer. It is half of the time that we get together.
I watched Rocketboom this morning (it was Friday’s show but I am a day behind.) They did a show on webcams and showed a cool website called Opentopia. So I decided to check it out for myself. It is pretty cool. Funny enough, I first tried out webcams in Canada and the very first web cam that I tried was a live feed of North Bay, Ontario! Andy and Miranda will get a kick out of that. Now we can see exactly what is going on in North Bay. Well, we can see how much snow has accumulated on those rooftops that we can see. The view isn’t really all that interesting. Actually, it is downright boring. But whatever. It is hilarious that the little town of North Bay was the very first web cam that I found. I did some more seaching and found a better live view of North Bay.
Here is a mistake on Google Maps. This is two small islands off of the coast of Newfoundland. These islands belong to France. On the satellite view you can plainly see them. But switch to the map view and you will notice that they disappear completely. Oops. The names show up but just floating out in the ocean.
Oreo spent the entire day right by my side. He was determined not to let me out of his sight for a minute. He has really missed me while I have been in New Jersey. This whole transition is going to be really tough on him. He has had such a hard time since we got him from the Bay Area SPCA between living in Houston with Francesca, then the transition to New York during which he was at several houses for only a few days each. Then he lived with dad for a while. Then with us with Andy. Now without Andy. Then I am gone so much that he spends half of his time with dad. Poor little boy. We are really hoping that we know soon how things are going in New Jersey so that we can make the decision for Dominica and Oreo to move down there too. Part of that will be dependant upon Dominica’s finding work down there but currently it looks like that isn’t likely to be very much of an issue. There is so much of an IT worker shortage down there that there is work for anyone and everyone. It is the perfect time for her to be looking to go down because moving up can happen extremely quickly these days. We are into another boom period. Not like the big dot com boom but definitely a large upsurge in the IT field.
An Amazon shipment came in today for Dominica. She bought herself The Gilmore Girls Season Four as a reward for having passed her first A+ exam. She is taking a week off before studying for the second exam. I don’t like multiple exam certifications because you have to put in so much work to get through a test and then it is meaningless if you don’t make it through the rest of them. I like single, longer, harder tests myself as compared to many, smaller, easier tests for the same material. I had a book that I had ordered two weeks ago arrived as well – my study guide for the Red Hat Certified Technician exam. I figure as long as I am at this job I really should focus on these exams. I will never have an opportunity like this to focus on just one thing for so long.
At 1:00 I drove up to the city to take Dominica out to lunch. I have been home for almost a day now and we have only seen each other for maybe thirty minutes. This weekend thing is tough. With the way that our schedules are we don’t get a single full day together. She works on Saturdays and I have to return to New Jersey on Sunday. We get almost twenty four hours starting from Saturday evening at 10:00 when she gets in from work until Sunday evening at 7:00 when I have to drive back to South Bound Brook. Twenty one hours including the night that she needs to use to catch up on her sleep. So we have to do what we can to see each other as much as possible. So I took her to lunch at the Olympia Diner on Lyle Ave. across the street from Wegmans. The food there is okay. It isn’t the Omega but that is way too far to drive.
I took Min back to work and she gave me a quick tour. Saturdays are really slow there and there are only about five people working – mostly in her department. I had seen the building before when I was interviewing there but had never seen the Customer Service department so I didn’t have a good idea of what her office looked like.
After lunch I stopped at Dunn Tire in Henrietta and ordered the new tires for my Mazda 6. If I am really lucky they will arrive by next weekend so that I can stop driving on my winter wheels and I can get my summer wheels back on. My summer wheels get better gas mileage, handle better and don’t wear as quickly. I don’t want to burn out my expensive snow tires on these warm roads. That set me back $750. That is no fun.
I came home and Oreo and I spent the afternoon down in the basement working. I popped in That Funny Feeling with Sandra Dee and Bobby Darrin. Yeah, that is good stuff. I love those old movies. They are just easy and enjoyable to watch. By the way, for those of you who have tried to use the SGL Movie Database recently and discovered that it wasn’t reachable through the site – thanks for not telling me. I only just discovered the problem this morning. It is working fine now. It isn’t exactly up to date as I have fallen pretty far behind on things like that over the last several weeks but I will be getting caught up on it soon. I promise.
Dad came over and we went to the Omega Grill for dinner. This is one of my only chances to eat there for the week. I have to take what I can get so that I don’t go into withdrawl. I expect that we will eat there tomorrow as well. Vickie, the owner, bought us our dinner as a congratulations on my new job.
I got home from dinner just fifteen minutes or so before Dominica got home from work. We spent the evening hanging out and watching two episodes of Remington Steele Season Two. While we watched the show I continued working on the server that I have been working on all day. It is giving me problems but nothing like the problems that I was having a few weeks ago. Building a new server from scratch is always a challenge. There are so many variables. I didn’t end up getting anywhere but decided that I needed to call it a night. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day and I can’t be exhausted. It was just after midnight when we managed to get to bed.
Don’t forget that tonight is when we set our clocks forward. Wouldn’t it just figure that THIS would be the short weekend?