Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is my work from home day this week. Because I have been so busy at work I am not sure that working from home makes very much sense, though. My connection to work is really slow and for some reason the remote access client has started saying that I have a cache issue on my Linux box so I am using my Windows laptop to access work which means that I am dropping from a 1600×1200 screen down to a 1024×768 which really affects my ability to get things done. (For those not wanting to do the math themselves, that means that I was getting only 41% of the screen real estate that I am used to!)

Like the past few days today was slammin’ busy. But at least I didn’t have to commute in to the office. I still had to spend several hours on the phone. I worked all day including through lunch. I didn’t take any breaks at all until 7:00 in the evening!

Dominica went out and did some shopping during the day. She bought a second laptop desk for herself. We were so happy with our first one that we figured having two of them would be a good idea. She ended up buying the very last one that Office Depot had. They are a unit custom built for Office Depot and they have been discontinued which is really sad as it was a great product.

I did manage, here and there, to get in a little work on the asset tracking system that I have been working on. So far the MySQL database has reached 32 tables (an impressive number for those in the know) and I expect it to be much, much higher very soon. I am quite happy with how my little project is coming along. I am getting a lot of the basic functionality out of the way and getting the code pretty tight so that it is really easy for me to work on and expand down the road. This is a pretty large programming project for me. I seldom do any programming and almost never on a scale like this. It is still really small but it has been a lot of fun.

I wanted to get out of the house this evening so Dominica and I went over to the Omega Diner. I just needed a break from sitting in the house all day.

We got home and Dominica worked on knitting and reading her assigned reading for class. She has discovered that she can knit and read at the same time using the new laptop desk so she is much more happy and much more productive. She managed to get a lot of reading done tonight. She was quite productive.

For the past few months, since the weather had been hot and the humidity has been out of control, I have heard a dripping sound coming from the center of the house. From time to time I have looked into the furnace “room” and have found standing water on the floor but was never able to actually located the source of the water. Tonight it got so bad that I decided to be a bit more intrusive in looking for the source of the water.

I had also looked previously for the air filter for the furnace knowing that it would have to be changed (which shouldn’t be something that I have to do in an apartment but no one ever does what they are supposed to do) but there was clearly no filter on the furnace nor was there any place to put one. Dad had mentioned that I needed to change the filter for the air conditioning to work better but I looked several times and there was most assuredly none to be foune. I even made Dominica look tonight and she verified that there was none nor was there a spot for one.

I had always felt that the dripping sound came from the wall with the cold air return that was not quite adjacent to the furnace. I looked at the air intake a little more carefully and discovered that I was able to toolessly pull the panel off. I looked in and saw nothing. It is in an area of the house with very poor lighting so there wasn’t much opportunity to see anything in there but it looked just like an empty duct so I put the cover back on.

We did more searching and found nothing so we decided to get a lamp and to try to intake ductwork again. This time I lay on the floor so that I could get a clear view into the duct and with the help of the lamp was able to identify the air filter slot that was empty and a little but behind it was the remains of the old air filter that was so clogged with dirt and limp from water that it had collapsed and been sucked into the furnace fan. It took a while to identify everything as things were not where they were supposed to be and the fan spindle was sticking through the middle of the filter. The filter wasn’t blue but was the color of dirt so it blended into everything in the darkness. We had to shut down the furnace and use a mop handle to pull the filter out. It was several feet inside of the wall. I have never seen or heard of anything so bizarre before. How anyone could possibly be expected to find this I have no idea.

The furnace fan area was the source of the dripping water. Water was pouring in from somewhere above the fan that I could no identify since they built it into the wall but there was a lot of water coming down and some of it was getting sucked straight into the fan. Hopefully without the filter in place maybe the water will stop collecting and will start to dry up. Dominica will attempt to find a filter tomorrow.

We turned the air conditioning back on and could instantly feel the increased air flow in the house. What a difference this is going to make. During the night the air conditioning only ran occassionally and managed to keep the house quite cool. I can’t believe that we didn’t manage to find this until after the massive heat wave that we had last week.

I had to get to bed early tonight. I am doing the early morning coverage tomorrow at the office which means that I have to be up just after 4:30!

Today turned out to be another really busy day at work. I spent almost the entire day completely swamped. It is good to be needed but it would be nice to have a break as well. I had almost no time to do anything.

By the end of the day the only thing that I had really managed to do for myself was make it through one issue of Baseline and I wrote a letter to one of their senior writers but that was about it. Not much for a ten hour day. Tomorrow I am working from home. I need the break.

Take a look at the new pictures that I posted of the view from our house in Lebanon. They are awesome. We have to work to not get too excited. It is still early and there is a lot yet to go wrong before we actually get the house. The biggest thing being that we need to sell our house in Geneseo yet. Ugh.

I have been so busy at work that this is the entire update. Nothing to write about. Just busy.

After yesterday I was worried that work was going to be completely nuts again today.

Some time ago Dominica sent me this link to the Queens County Farm Museum from GoCityKids that she thought looked interesting. The Queens County Farm Museum is the only working historical farm in the city and it 47 acres which is a huge tract of land for New York City. I would like to go to the museum sometime. It would probably be quite interesting. Dominica had pointed it out because my family had the oldest European farm on Long Island and this is the oldest one existing in the vicinity. She thought that maybe this was my family farm but this one is in Queens County and my family’s farm was in Kings County just to the south.

Need a good reason not to buy Apple products? Read about Apple’s likely cover-up of a major security hole in its system that is widely known about but Apple, like Cisco, is able to keep the actual announcement of it under wraps through probably legal pressure. Isn’t it funny that the US legal system will happily fight against the truth as long as it hurts consumers. It is unethical behaviour like this that keeps me from buying Apple and, coincidentally, Cisco equipment. Cisco lost my vote in any buying decision with its clear anti-secure tactics from last year’s Black Hat conference. If Cisco, and apparently Apple, care so little about the safety of their customers then why would their customers care to give them their money?

Today ended up being busy but not quite as busy as yesterday. Enough work to keep me hopping though. Yesterday was a little too busy for my taste but it doesn’t seem to happen too often.

I got home from work in good time. It was about 6:30 which isn’t bad at all. Dominica cooked dinner and we just ate at home. It was a fairly uneventful and relaxing evening. Dominica worked on her homework on data mining and I worked to build a quick and dirty new web site for my high school class. You can check out my progress at York94.

My high school class reunion picnic (which is at twelve years instead of ten – go figure) is coming up soon but I can’t make it to it which is very sad. At least I get to be involved with the web site.

I talked to dad tonight. He is planning on coming down to New Jersey the weekend after next (August 18th – 22nd.) He hasn’t been down to see where we live or where I work yet. He has never been to this area so I am sure that it will be neat to see what New Jersey is actually like.

Is it just me or do Monday morning elicit memories of the Bangles and the Mamas and the Papas?

Today started off with me jumping out of bed and working in the living room trying to catch up on work that had piled up throughout the night. I ended up getting to be so busy that I had to stay at home to work until lunchtime! It was quite the busy morning.

Since I was home, Dominica and I went over to the Omega Diner to get lunch before I headed up to the office. It was a nice change of pace for the day. Dominica took the laundry with her so that she could head straight to the laundromat to do that since we were out of the house. There was a lot of laundry to do. It has been over two weeks, I think, since it has been done. She took her database textbook along with her so that she could read about data mining. Oh the excitement.

My afternoon at the office ended up being super crazy just like my morning was. I barely got a breather all day. I ended up working quite a bit later than I had anticipated and didn’t manage to leave the office until after 6:30. Then, even after I had left, I got stuck in the parking garage on the phone until after 7:00. I got a chance to talk to just about everyone though. I talked to Joe in South Carolina, Eric in Rochester, my cubicle neighbour who left the company that I am at now last week and even Jonathan Stagno in Los Angeles. I haven’t talked to Stagno since last fall – just before my cell phone was smashed in Florida with his numbers in it. He was married on December 18th of last year!

Dominica and I had planned on just eating at home tonight but I was so burnt out on my way home that I decided that we needed to go somewhere for dinner so that I could get a break and relax so she met me out at Tanjore. It works out well to go there on Monday nights since they are closed on Tuesdays.

I managed to talk to Nate tonight and make plans for this upcoming weekend. Dominica and I are staying in New Jersey on Friday night which is a nice change from having to pack up and take off straight after work on Friday night. Then on Saturday morning we are driving up to Ithaca and meeting the Parkers for lunch. From Ithaca Nate and I are going to drive together up to Syracuse for golfing with Bob’s bachelour party. Dominica will catch a ride out to Geneseo with Tammy who is going to Perry. Then, after the party, Nate and I will drive from Syracuse out to Geneseo. Complicated but it works out. Then, on Sunday, Dominica and I are working in Pittsford for a few hours before heading back down to New Jersey. It is going to be a really busy weekend.

Bob Crissman taught a blogging and podcasting class today in Binghamton.

It was very late by the time that we got back from dinner so we just did some light work and relaxing around the house. I spent the biggest part of the evening entertaining the dog who had been left home alone for a large portion of the day. He really missed his daddy and wanted to play a lot.

We stayed up working last night until close to four in the morning. We probably should not have done that as we didn’t get out of bed until after noon. Oops. That will make going to work tomorrow that much harder.

I did the SGL updates for Friday and Saturday and then worked to get some of the pictures that we took yesterday in Lebanon ready to post to Flickr so that you could all share in our new little town. I posted the first three pictures today as only three are visible at a time on the main page here. Click on the pictures to go to the Flickr page so that you can see all of the pictures. I will try to get more up tomorrow as I have almost a dozen that I want to post. But at least people can get the first glimpses of our house being built. It is scheduled for completion in mid-November although I doubt that they will actually finish on time. We are planning on it being closer to December.

Dominica had a big homework day today and managed to get a ton done with her database class project that was due by midnight tonight. This class is producing a lot of work for her but she is learning a lot from it. It is really quite a valuable class.

I spent the day working on my asset tracking system project that I have been doing for the last several days. I ended up working on it until after midnight but I managed to finally get it into a working state that I am pretty happy with. It is far from finished but I did a bunch of redesign and refactoring of it and I am pretty happy with here it is at after just a few days. It is ready to be used lightly this week and, with any luck, I will have enough time to work on it some more this week.

We went over to the Omega Diner for dinner tonight. We just were not in the mood to sit home after having worked all day. We needed the break. After dinner we went over to Barnes & Nobles and did some book shopping. I ended up getting a new PHP book: PHP in Practice. I also picked up a few other miscellaneous titles. It has been a good book week.