Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is a relatively busy day with no time to really sleep in. I was up at half past nine and started the day. First thing I did was finish reading “Behind Closed Doors: The Secrets of Great Management”. My reading bonanza continues.

Dominica and I ordered in breakfast this morning. We figured that we are blowing so much on the hotel that we might as well go all of the way and just enjoy the place for the weekend. It isn’t every weekend that we get to get room service in a top notch hotel.

Breakfast was awesome. Crabcakes and eggs over spinach with hollandaise sauce, potatoes and a bakery basket for us to share with some of the best danishes ever.

It is a beautiful day for a wedding – at least in my book. Almost exactly the same weather as Dominica and my wedding except that they rain was coming down more steadily. The view from the eighth floor of the Statler was just breathtaking. (We are in room 812 which faces the city.) At night the lights of the city lay spread out below you but the view is actually better during the day. Today was the absolute perfect “view” weather with enough rain and fog to be just perfect without so much that you couldn’t see the top of the facing hill. The weather was very similar to several of the days that Dominica and I spent in Halifax, Nova Scotia a few years ago.

We didn’t leave the room at all. We just hung out and relaxed for a while until Andy and Miranda got into town around half past one. They were not able to get into their room yet so they came up and got ready to go to the wedding in our room. It is handy having a hotel room so close to the wedding.

We took Andy’s car down to the church downtown, the four of us riding together. We made it just in time for the service as we had been running late. We actually arrived at just the perfect time as we had plenty of “buffer” before the service started but didn’t have to sit any longer than necessary waiting for things to start. It was a really beautiful service at First Presbyterian in Ithaca. Dominica spent most of the service trying to figure out why the minister looked so familiar when she realized that she had had him as a guest in one of the hotels that she worked at in the Geneseo area and said that he was possibly the meanest, rudest guest that she had every had in her years working in hotels! Doesn’t say much for Ithaca’s Presbyterian church. He was a bit rude during the service as well and a lot of people were pretty annoyed by him. The music during the service was amazing. Bob had a choir do a surprise performance of the piece that he and Lisa met whist performing several years ago.

After the wedding the four of us who had ridden together returned to the hotel to relax for a little while between the service and the reception. We got Andy and Miranda checked into their own room which was now ready. The hotel had managed to have gotten them the room directly next to ours, 814, which was really handy. Andy was quite excited to have gotten the same awesome view as we had.

We went down to the reception around twenty past five. That was about perfect timing as well. Pretty much everyone had arrived and things were just getting going.

We all had a really good time at the reception. I love weddings because it gives everyone a chance to hang out and visit with all of the friends and family that we never get a chance to see. The food was awesome. We did hardly any dancing tonight but spent the whole time visiting with people. There just isn’t enough time to hang out with everyone that you want to hang out with.

The wedding went until ten and then people milled until half past or so. Then all of the stragglers still looking to party headed down to the Regal Lounge and drank until a bit past midnight. Mostly it was the thirty and twenty somethings (Bob’s friends have almost all passed the line into the thirty plus category) and Lisa’s family that stayed up late. Once the lounge closed most of our friends went down to The Haunt to do some more dancing. Bob and Lisa called it a night after the lounge. Dominica and I stayed until the last remnant were leaving the lounge before going out of the hotel. Andy and Miranda called it a night there too.

Min and I tried to get a cab to go to The Haunt but there is only one cab company left in Ithaca and apparently they are acting like they have no competition and never will according to the hotel staff. The taxi dispatch said that the car would be there in fifteen minutes. After thirty minutes we called back and they said that they would be there in three. After fifteen minutes we just drove the BMW and managed to pull out just as the taxi pulled in behind us. We told the hotel staff to let the taxi driver know what we thought of their service. Forty five minutes we waited for a taxi!

We got to The Haunt just as everyone was walking out. We didn’t even get to hear a single song although everyone said that the music was crap anyway. People were hungry and luckily we didn’t have to wait an hour for a cab and just had our car with us so we all drove down to The Commons and got some pizza at Sammy’s. Sammy’s has some of if not they best pizza in Ithaca. At least for thin crust. The Nines has the best deep dish Sicilian style pizza of any place that I know.

Dominica and I didn’t end up getting to bed until four in the morning! Overall we felt that the whole day was very reminiscent of our own wedding. The weather, time of year, style of the wedding (Presbyterian for mixed protestant/Catholic families), a lot of overlapping guests, lounge after the reception and pizza for the latest stragglers. The similarities will continue tomorrow as we go to brunch in the morning.

September is here. We are on the home stretch to Christmas now. Is today the day that you are officially allowed to start playing Sleigh Bells and Jingle Bell Rock? Isn’t it weird that Christmas songs seem like they are reserved for a very small part of the year but in actuality you hear there during fifteen to twenty percent of the entire year and songs that become popular as Christmas songs get played on the air dramatically more than “pop” songs ever do? I mean “Hit Me Baby, One More Time” was hot for like five minutes but “White Christmas” was a classic for my parents and will be for my great grand kids! People will know “Let It Snow” long after they have no idea who Michael Jackson is. Why am I talking about Christmas? I have no idea. It’s just that season, I guess.

I did a database dump of the SGL database last night for backup purposes. It took a while. If you reduce the database to SQL statements, in text, defining the data it comes to 5.5MB. That is a lot of text.

I went to bed around one last night. Dominica had a lot of work left to do and worked late into the night. But she was able to complete her class work and is now done with the semester. The next semester starts very soon but at least she has all of that out of the way before going into the weekend.

The really awesome news today is that Dominica got a job offer from a pharmaceutical company in Nutley, New Jersey which is closer to Newark. It is a help desk position and she starts in less than a week on next Wednesday morning. It is a mid-length contract and should run until the end of the year. It could be extended past that point but we are only really counting on it until then. We will see what happens in January. But it is very exciting that she has a position to round out the year. Now, I am sure, she is glad that she is only taking a single class this semester as she will have a lot to do. She is taking her introductory class for Java and Object Oriented Programming starting very soon and she needs to completely her A+ certification before the end of the year when the current exams are retired.

We were really happy that Dominica managed to get final confirmation on her acceptance at the new company before she had to leave to travel for the weekend. It is awful having to spend a holiday weekend wondering what is going on with a position. It is a really rude thing to do to someone. Weekends are tough enough to have to sit around wondering what is going on, especially when it is a big life changing thing like a job or something, but a long holiday weekend is even worse. So that is really cool. Now we will be able to enjoy this weekend a lot more.

My own personal excitement for the day was discovering that I had been majorly quoted in Baseline again in Kim Nash’s article “Four Steps to Better IT Hiring“. This was my second timing being quoted in one month. It has been a good month.

I managed to get out of work around half past six and was pleasantly surprised to discover that all of the weekend holiday traffic had gone through ahead of me and the roads were moving just fine. Even at the Delaware Water Gap toll booths where Dominica had been stuck in a mile of bumper to bumper traffic several hours earlier I was able to zip right through.

I made good time the whole way to Ithaca and got to the Statler Hotel in Cornell around ten. Dominica had checked in quite some time earlier and I was able to go right up to the room. We ordered dinner from Banfi’s as soon as I got in. This is going to be an expensive weekend of valet parking and room service!

We stayed up late watching television. I got to see Bridget Jones’ Diary which Dominica used to own on DVD but someone has and we don’t now who. But, after having seen the movie, I couldn’t care less about owning it. What a horribly dumb and boring movie. I was totally unimpressed.

After that we watched a Kathy Griffin comedy special on Bravo. Kathy is really funny. Then it was off to bed.

How do you throw away a garbage can?

The dog days of August have come to a close and it is time to move on to the Racoon Evenings of September. I am back, more or less, to my regular schedule at the office.

I will understand that no matter the child, the punishment will fit the crime. No student will be left behind.

When the cavemen were around they probably didn’t stress good hygine, but they did likely emphasize beauty. Cavemen and women used bones from animals as hair rollers or ornaments and used animal fat for gel in their hair.

It is just one of those days.

Today was an absolutely crazy day at work. I was going nuts all day. I managed to get away for a little bit to get some Afghan for lunch. Yummy. I didn’t have to work nearly as late as I was concerned that I would but I didn’t manage to leave until about seven.

Dominica had a second interview with the company that she met with last week. She is very positive about it and hopes to have a really solid answer by tomorrow. Having an interview today was tough, though, because today is Dominica last opportunity to finish up her work for her college classes. She had banked on being able to work on them all day today but instead was woken up by the headhunter trying to get her into the interview as quickly as possible as she had not been told that she was getting a second interview until he called this morning. And then a second job wanted her to do some resume work and get that into them today as well. Instead of having the entire day to work on her final projects she ended up not even getting a chance to start until around five! That is pretty late for an all day homework fest.

I came home and picked Min and Oreo up and we went to Tanjore for dinner. We haven’t been there since dad was here. I think that it might be the longest stretch that we have gone through without eating there since we first discovered it several months ago. We came in and they presented us with my favourite dessert, on the house, just because they love us. It was delicious. You know that you eat at a place a lot and are good customers when they regularly give us free food and specials and stuff. Our waitress even knows what my favourite food there is and exactly how I like it prepared (Rava Dosai with cheese, roasted cashews and potato masala!)

Dad called during dinner. His uncle, my great uncle Bill, passed away this evening. Uncle Bill was my dad’s mother’s last full sibling. His twin sister died several years ago. Uncle Bill has been very sick the last few years. We were very glad that Dominica had the opportunity to meet him before he wasn’t able to spend time with us anymore when we were last in Ohio. He fell a week or two ago and broke his hip and had to have some pretty serious surgery. We really knew that the end was close after that. Uncle Bill and I were pretty close. When I was attending school in Michigan in 1994 or 1995 I went down to Cleveland to spend the weekend with Uncle Bill.

After dinner I spent the evening doing some light reading on Subversion (the software program) I helped Dominica wrap up her homework that she has to complete tonight. She still had a lot of it to do and a lot of it is pretty ambiguous. She had enough left to do that it ate up the whole night and kept us up very late.

Tomorrow we are traveling to Ithaca. Dominica is leaving in the morning and I am leaving after work. I am really looking forward to the break and change of pace.

Boy is this summer just flying by. We have been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to slow down and relax since June. This week is no except. I wasn’t able to leave the office last night until after seven. Ugh.

Good news for hard core classic Sierra graphical adventure fans – Infamous Adventures has finally completed their remake of King’s Quest III and you can download a copy, for free, from their website. The first two KQ games were recently remade by the Anonymous Game Developers so now the entire original trilogy has been completely remade. I am very anxious to get a copy of KQ III and see how it looks and plays with this new treatment. KQ III was my least favourite of Sierra’s original games but I have high hopes for the remake. I am extremely hopeful now that someone will take the time to do a complete remake of KQ IV which is a much bigger undertaking than any of these three that have happened so far. KQ IV is so large that it might be as much work to remake it as to have remade the entire first three games.

I have played and completed all three of the original trilogy and own all eight games of the entire series from Sierra but have never spent more than five minutes playing KQ IV and really want to play a remade version. The remakes have been totally rocking all over the originals with massively updated graphics, sound, narration and, in some cases, game play.

I was up at half past seven this morning. A whole five hours of sleep where I had to keep my legs on the floor all night because Oreo decided not to let me have any room on the actual bed. He really must be the world’s most spoiled dog.

I worked from home for a little bit this morning before finding out that there is no way for me to work from home for the rest of the week so I decided that I should just stay home and work here all day today.

Dominica and I went to the Omega for lunch. It is quick and simple although I don’t like their menu as much as the Omega (no relation) in Geneseo and I am getting quite tired of it.

I finished reading Beck and Fowler’s “Planning eXtreme Programming” today. That is the third book that I have managed to finish so far this week. I am on a roll. I am trying to get as many non-reference books completed before Friday so that we can take some of them back to New York. Anything we can get away with not keeping down here the better.

Dominica spent almost the entire day pounding on her Access database project for school She is hoping to finish it today so that she can spend the rest of the week focusing on her pointless networking class. Both of her classes end this weekend but with the wedding they might as well be ending tomorrow for her.

I got a chance to do some more work on the asset tracking system that I had started a few weeks ago and I also got some serious reading in. I finally finished “The ClueTrain Manifesto: The End of Business As Usual” which, for those who don’t know it, is considered to be one of the most fundamentally important business/IT books of our time. I have been putting off reading it but I finally forced myself through it this evening.

Today began with another busy morning that didn’t allow me the chance to get into the office. What a week this is going to be. I ended up having to work at home until just after noon. Then Dominica and I went to the Omega to grab a quick lunch before I drove into the office and she went to the laundromat to take care of the piles of laundry that we have.

Just like yesterday the morning was so busy that I could barely make it out the door and then, by the time I finally get to the office, nothing is happening and I have lots of spare time. Argh. I finished reading “Embracing Insanity: Open Source Software Development” which is one of those books that I have been in the middle of for two years or maybe more. I am trying to eliminate as many of those situations as possible. I have been on a reading kick recently and I hope that it sticks for a while as I have a lot of stuff to get through.

Today and yesterday have been very dark and drizzly. Almost no sunlight at all. Good thing or the little sleep that I have been getting would be a lot worse than it has been.

Only two more days before another crazy weekend begins. Boy am I glad that I have next Monday “off” or I would never get a chance to get caught up on anything. On Friday morning Dominica is driving to Big Flats just west of Elmira and meeting dad there in the afternoon to transfer Oreo to him to watch until Sunday. Then she is returning to Ithaca to check into our room at the Statler Hotel at Cornell. I am driving up to Ithaca after work in what is bound to be terrible rush hour traffic since it is holiday traffic exiting New York City. Ugh. Our plan is to just relax on Friday night. We probably won’t have a chance to see anyone as most everyone is busy with the wedding. So we are just going to relax. (Well, Dominica will relax. I am driving in bad traffic so it might take me all night to get there.)

Then Saturday morning will, hopefully, be a chance to just relax and enjoy Ithaca. Dominica and I haven’t had a chance to just relax and do nothing in particular in Ithaca in years. That will be nice. The wedding is in the afternoon so we have the morning to enjoy town.

Miranda is coming down to visit this weekend and is able to make it to the wedding. So she and Andy have a room at the Statler on Saturday night as well. I think that we are all planning on doing brunch at the hotel on Sunday before we have to head up to Rochester. Dominica and I are working for TMobile on Sunday in Rochester before going to pick up Oreo and probably meet dad for dinner.

Monday has been reserved for a day of mostly work. I am not sure what work that that will be yet but there is so much that needs to be done that I am not concerned about being able to keep myself busy. I would be really happy if we were able to go down to the school in Castile and get some work done down there as school is starting and there is so much that needs to be done. If we don’t work there this weekend I am not sure when we will get anything done. I also need to do additional packing in Geneseo whenever possible so that will continue as well.

Since we have been unable to sell the Mazda PR5 and since it is really tough to sell since it has two brand new sets of really good tires (that obviously we don’t want to just give away) we have decided that we are going to drop off my Mazda 6 and drive the PR5 through the winter and then try to sell it in the spring next year after we get some miles on those tires. That will save the 6 from a lot of extra miles running back and forth to Geneseo and then once winter hits we will garage the BMW and Dominica will drive the PR5 while I drive the 6. It is a big pain and not as good as if we managed to actually sell the PR5 but at least it will make it so that we don’t feel that we need to get as much money for it and it will be easier to sell in the spring and it will preserve the other two cars a bit.

Andy had an interview yesterday and got the job the same day. He is now back working for a large company that he and I worked for many years ago but he is staying in Rochester. It is a long term contract so this should, in theory, add some stability to his life – although we had long term contracts at the same place many years ago and that didn’t pan out so well. But in a major change of pace he managed to get two consecutive contracts through the same consultancy! This is completely unheard of outside of Manhattan. Consulting companies so frequently think of themselves as nothing but staffing firms that they often don’t view their current consultants to be any more a part of their family than professionals that they are currently interviewing for the first time. So that was very encouraging to hear. He starts work a week from today!

We did receive back our uncashed checks from the attempt to get the condominium in Lebanon. That is a relief that it was so easy to back out of the whole project. The ease with which we were able to cancel will make me much more likely to work with them again in the future if we are ever in a situation where we don’t need to sell a house ahead of time. For now, though, renting seems to be a good option for the next year or so. We don’t know the area well enough to make really good decisions about where to buy and the market seems to be in a state of flux and we need to wait for it to settle down. The housing market can only go up so much before no one can afford to own a home anymore. People always say that housing just goes up and up but at some point there has to be a collapse as eventually there just aren’t any people left to buy houses. And with prices being the way that they are down here it is hard to believe that there is anyone able to buy a home here.

I discovered an awesome website today that helps system administrators do custom Linux builds. I am very excited to give this site a try: InstaLinux.

This week has been crazy so far and is likely to continue. I was stuck in the office until late again this evening. It was almost seven before I had a chance to leave. I decided to post early so that I could stay up and work late tonight without worrying about posting the daily. I will catch up with everyone tomorrow.

Beaming myself out…