Sheep Guarding Llama

I slept for over ten hours last night. Boy was that a lot of sleep but I feel much better today. I had been getting really tired over the past few days and I think that being run down like that had a lot to do with me catching that cold. I needed to get some serious sleep in in order to beat it back. Unfortunately Dominica has the cold now and is on her second day of it.

I got to work today having forgotten that I have an HP hardware class for the majority of the day. That is a nice change of pace. I was only in the office for about an hour before it started. Thank goodness for Microsoft Exchange calendaring event reminders. Overall I think that the class was a waste of time, though. I did get free pizza out of it and that is always nice but mostly the covered technologies that I don’t really work with nor am I planning on working with. My class ran until 3:00 so that killed a lot of the day.

Dominica decided that she did not feel like cooking tonight and we killed off all of our leftovers yesterday so she wanted to try Chilli’s which she has never been to before. I have not been to a Chilli’s in years. I never found them to be exciting enough to go back to. There are a few of them in Rochester, notably one up in Greece near Westgate Plaza that I went to a few times a number of years ago but it was never anything special. But we will see now that I am a vegetarian maybe I will be more impressed with their lineup.

My frostbite appears to be a little worse today. It isn’t like black or anything scary so I am not really worried about it but it would be nice if it started healing. I guess that it often takes one to two weeks for it to really start healing though. I have first degree or superficial frostbite which isn’t all that bad.

Dell had a bad day today. First it got caught doing a bait and switch with Chinese customers advertising to them laptops with Intel’s awesome new VT technology (the ultimate – except for AMD’s version – x86 virtualization hardware extension which is really important for people who want to run multiple operating systems simultaneously on the same machine) but shipping units with the feature removed. The Chinese people feel that Dell is trying to cheat them just because they are Chinese and not Americans and I can’t say that I wouldn’t agree with them. So Dell is now facing a class action discrimination suit in China which has been approved by the courts. Then, secondly, today Dell has announced that they are recalling 4.1 million laptop batteries! That is a lot of batteries to replace. Dell wasn’t going to do the recall even after they knew about the problem but a couple of recent fires have left them in a position of liability that they can’t try to deny anymore so they have to do the right thing now that they are backed into the corner. No wonder their market is slipping. Of course, the batteries that are defective are from Sony so are you really surprised?

I was thinking that I might make it away from the office on the early side tonight but just as I was starting to think about it I got caught in a big support issue in Texas and got stuck for quite some time. I should have known better. I am thinking that I will probably work from home tomorrow. Not sure yet but that sounds like a good idea. That will give me a little more opportunity to rest and maybe a little time to get caught up on some of this backlogged work from today. But maybe I will take off my regular Thursday. I think I will decide in the morning.

I ended up getting stuck at work until quite a bit after seven! Much later than I had anticipated being in the office.

It was late by the time that I got home and I didn’t feel like doing any additional work so Dominica and I went out to Chili’s down near the Barnes and Nobles not too far from the house. The food was okay but nothing special. I could handle going back but not very often. There was only one menu item that Dominica was interested in there and there was only one that interested me so if we go there again we both have to be in the mood for those particular items or we will be out of luck.

Dinner killed most of what was left of the evening. After that we came home and watched a few episodes of Ballykissangel before going to bed.

I was up at 9:08 this morning. A little late for going into the office but any less sleep and I would have been useless all day. My sinuses are still killing me so it isn’t very likely that this is an allergic reaction. I got ready quickly and got up to the office.

It was really hard to work today. My sinuses are better than yesterday but not good. It is really hard to get much of anything done when you are congested and have a headache and are occassionally crying (my eyes will be dry all day and then suddenly tear out of control.)

While I was at lunch I discovered that my lips were in really bad shape and were starting to peel. It is mild frostbite from Saturday night’s run in with the ice cream. This is going to suck.

Dominica found Ok Go on the Treadmills on YouTube today. This is one of the funniest dance videos that I have ever seen. Everyone will enjoy this little treasure. Ok Go is a British band that I don’t really know but boy are they ever funny. Here is what is apparently their more famous dance routine that they have done a number of places. And if you think that is weird then you can watch the same routine done by two girls with way too much time on their hands.

I came home a little early because I was pretty useless in the office with my horrible cold. I ate leftovers and Dominica made herself a South Beach diet casserole. We watched two episodes of Ballykissangel and decided to call it a night at 9:30. We both have colds now and figured that it would be smart to get some extra sleep in the hopes of fighting them back.

I woke up this morning with the runniest nose that I have ever had in my life. It was awful and it lasted all day. It woke me up long before I should have been getting up. I was awake by 7:45 which was brutal after the long day yesterday and getting to bed after 4:00 this morning. My sinuses were going nuts so I took a shower right away hoping that that might help. It didn’t.

Dominica got up an hour or so later and then dad came over to get breakfast with us at 10:15. We were able to just relax and hang out at breakfast for about two hours. We were, of course, at the Omega Grill.

After breakfast, which was almost lunch, Dominica and I had to head up to Pittsford (on the east side of Rochester) to do some work for TMobile. We are still wrapping up a project that was started in December and this one location is lingering on. It took a few hours but not nearly as long as it might have and we were happy, overall, with how it went today.

We drove down to dad’s house to pick up Oreo and to see the changes on the farm since we have been gone. Dad and Oreo were in the back yard playing frisbee when we pulled in. Oreo just loves getting to go out to the farm. He can just run and run forever. He has such a good time and gets really worn out.

The farm has really changed since the last time I was home. The pool is gone, the whole pool “deck” area is gone, the basketball court if gone, the parking lot is gone, the foundation of the cabana is gone. There isn’t any grass growing in yet so you can still see these different areas almost as if there were still there but you can start to picture the place as nothing but a single, uninterrupted sea of grass.

We all drove over to Denny’s in Geneseo and got some dinner. We were all quite hungry. We ate and then it was time to return to New Jersey. My allergies or cold or whatever it was was acting up all day and I needed to have Dominica drive the first length of the journey for me. She drove until around Corning and then I drove until a little east of Phillipsburg, NJ when she took back over and finished off the drive. By the end I was so tired that I couldn’t stay awake at all.

It was pretty late by the time we rolled into North Brunswick. I was so tired that I can’t really remember getting in very well but it was between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning. We unpacked the car and Dominica did some work in the kitchen getting things put away. I went right to bed and Oreo came and snuggled. I didn’t even get the light turned off or anything. I was out in no time.

Today is Bob Winans’ bachelour party in Syracuse. Lots of driving for us today. Dominica and I were up at 6:30 this morning to get ready to go. After getting very little sleep last night that wasn’t the best way to go.

We were doing well for time and were going to be able to leave North Brunswick before 8:00 but as we were getting ready to leave I was leaning on the side of the BMW getting Oreo buckled in when a plastic piece that is a part of the top that goes up and down snapped off and fell into the car. With that piece out of place we were unable to move the roof which could be important should it rain or we need to lock the car or anything. So we spent about fourty-five minutes getting that fixed. Finally we got it back in place and everything was better. Or so we thought.

About halfway from North Brunswick to Ithaca we stopped at a rest stop and when we went to get back into the car discovered that the passenger’s door handle from the outside had broken and there was no way to open the door without getting in from the driver’s side and opening the door from the inside. Later in the day we would discover that there was a part loose from this breakage that was in the door and blocking the window from going down safely. What a day.

We ran into a big accident just south of Binghamton and that cost us a bit of time too. It was a tough journey. All of the way from Owego to Danby we were stuck in the slowest, most obnoxious “weekend driver” traffic that we could never get past. Argh.

It was 1:15ish when Dominica and I arrived at Nate and Tammy Parker’s place in T-Burg. We ate some veggie burgers really quickly and then Nate and I drove north with the BMW while Dominica and Tammy went out to Geneseo in the Parker minivan. Nate and I were running a little late but not too bad. We thought that golf tee time was going to be 3:00 and we were indending to meet everyone there. But it turned out that Bob was pretty sick so everyone was just hanging out at his parents’ house in Minoa (get it, Minoa… Syracuse… Ithaca… it’s modeled after Greece – which is a suburb of Rochester) until he started to feel better.

There were seven of us for golf and dinner – Nate, Zach, Tim, Pete (Bob’s brother), Pete (Bob’s father), Me and, of course, Bob. We just played nine holes then it was time to go get dinner. But on the way we were going to go to Bob’s parents’ house to change the cars around. On the way there was an ice cream truck coming past so I offered to jump out and get Bob some ice cream for his party (he was driving the BMW and I was riding – everyone else was in the van.) I grabbed us some popsicles. I took one lick of the bubblegum flavoured popsicle and before I could react, I had frozen to it. And I am not kidding here, this is serious freezing. I was stuck. It bumped my bottom lip and that froze too. I looked to Bob in a panic and in trying to get him to understand what had happened my top lip bumped the popsicles and my mouth sealed shut! Now I was unable to blow warm air across it in the hopes of melting it and I could feel my lips and tongue getting really cold quite quickly. This is, by the, the coldest food item I have ever encountered.

Bob drove us quickly back to his parents’ house and we ran inside and got the hot water running and poured about eight glasses of quite hot water over my lips to get them open again. After all of that time in the August heat, in the sunlight – probably as much as five minutes – it still took eight glasses of hot water to get it cool enough for me to open my mouth! After that Bob tested his popsicle and determined that it was still so cold that he could not safely eat it either. Now this makes for an awesome bachelour party story!

We had dinner at Zebb’s and then it was off to play some Lazer Tag for Nate, Bob, Zach and I. Everyone else headed for home at that point. I have never played real Lazer Tag before although I have really wanted to every since I was a little kid. It was a lot like playing the video game Quake II but with real people. It was awesome. I had a really good time. It was pretty late and we only managed to play two games before the end of the night. In the first game I had a lot of problems figuring out what to do and what the objective was (it is actually a capture the flag style game but we didn’t know that at first.) So I ended up coming in dead last. But then again, I was the old, fat guy so what do you expect. I am the oldest (I believe) of the four of us and all of us were twice the age of the twenty kids that we were playing against. But by the second game I had figured out the layout of the arena, how the equipment worked, how the scoring worked and what the objective was and then it was game time. That’s right, the old guy won. First place, baby! Those teenagers didn’t stand a chance (I learned from Joel Spolsky’s blog that when firing on people you should run at them because you keep getting an easier and easier target and they are forced to take cover so they can’t take the time to shoot at you.) Our team won as well, I believe. We managed to own (or pwn as they say these days) both of the other teams’ flags and protected our own quite well. I made more points defending our base then I earned taking the others. We had a blast. I have to convince Dominica to try this out for some serious excercise. I thought that I was going to keel over from a heart attack after playing two rounds.

We were all old and decide that we couldn’t really stay out late. We stopped at Tully’s and grabbed some soda and then headed for home. Nate drove the BMW back to Perry and then I drove it to Geneseo. It was about four in the morning by the time that I rolled in and went to bed. Boy was I tired.

I had to get up by 4:45 this morning and be on the road by 5:40. My work day started at 6:30 which is a little on the early side for me. Especially since I have been doing the later shift now for the past two months. Almost everyday has been starting with me getting in to the office between 9:00 and 10:00 and staying until quite late. Shifting my day forward by three hours is a bit drastic for only a half day warning but I feel pretty good.

For lunch a bunch of us drove up to Moghul in Morristown to meet with my ex-cubicle neighbour for lunch. He is working near there this week and was able to meet us easily. There was a lot of construction blocking US 287 southbound so we decided to take the local roads instead to get back. This was probably a big mistake as it ended up taking forever to get back going that way.

I was able to leave work on the early side since I was in to work so early and got home ahead of rush hour which was awesome as I was able to spend the evening relaxing at home. For dinner we ran out to the Omega since they have the Crab Cakes on Mac and Cheese that I like so much on Friday nights as the special.

I was totally quoted by Baseline Magazine tonight. Paragraphs three and four are from me. It isn’t much of a quote and it isn’t credited but it is in my favourite rag so that is really awesome. I am quite excited about it.

We had to get to bed on the early side tonight as tomorrow is an early travel day.