Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is my one day off for the weekend. I am spending the day just relaxing around the apartment. In fact, I don’t intend to leave the apartment at all, all day.

My first job for the day was to test the latest server, the HP DL360 G2 that arrived on Friday. I got that hooked up and tested it to make sure that it would work. Checked out just fine. I also unloaded some of the older computers that have been swimming around in the trunk of my car. I need to get them ready to go to Castile in the fall.

For lunch I just ordered Papa John’s again. I just didn’t feel like going anywhere and that sounded the best of my delivery options.

I did have to do a little work for the office today. Nothing much, just an hour. Since I am home alone it is actually nice to have some paying work to do instead of just doing work for myself.

I watched a lot of the fourth season of Magnum P.I. today. I didn’t finish the series but I did put a significant dent in it. I also started work on a new, small software project making a simple asset tracking system. I enjoy getting to do some programming from time to time. Programming has a certain sense of satisfaction that you don’t really get from other endeavours.

I put in some serious time working on the email server today. Anyone who noticed that the email and instant messaging were up and down all day can rest assurred that I was actively working on the box and the outages were not sporatic. I did some regular maintenance and a full system backup during the afternoon but after the backup which wrapped up around midnight the server did not come back online. I ended up getting stuck working on the server until around two in the morning but after that it was back up and running. Just what I wanted to do on a Sunday night.

Dominica is supposed to be coming down to New Jersey tomorrow. She is going to get the car inspected for the insurance company in the morning and then drive out to Syracuse to meet her parents and drop off Dexter and then she and Oreo will come down to New Jersey.

Today is quite busy for what is supposed to be a relaxing Saturday in New Jersey. Dominica is still in Geneseo for the weekend so I am all alone. I was up kind of late last night after going out with the guys so I slept in this morning and relaxed. I did a little work this morning and then got ready and drove out to Lebanon.

I got lunch at the luncheonette in town and then went up to do some additional paperwork for the condo at the Heights of Lebanon. Spending tons more money today. I don’t like having to do that.

From Lebanon I drove straight out to the Bronx to spend the afternoon hanging out with Phil Kriebel whom I have not seen in at least two years since he left Washington, D.C. The drive should have only taken just over an hour but it ended up taking closer to three! Traffic going across the George Washington Bridge in Upper Manhattan was backed up for miles and we just sat for an hour or so. It was unbelievably hot as well with the ambient temperatures around the car climbing to over 107 degrees in the shade!

It was well after five in the afternoon when I finally arrived at Phil’s apartment in the Bronx. This is actually my first time ever coming to the Bronx. One time in the late 90’s Andy and I drove from Rochester to Rye Harbor, New Hampshire to get fried shrimp at Ray’s and on the way we passed through the Bronx on US95 but we never got off of the highway and it was in the middle of the night so that really doesn’t count. New York City was not even remotely on the way from Rochester to New Hampshire but Andy had never been to the city so we had run down just to park the car in Weehawken, take the ferry to Manhattan, eat dinner at Mars 2112 on Times Square, take the ferry back to New Jersey and head back on to the road. That was the night that we went to Providence, Rhode Island for the first time and discovered that Providence is the deadest town in the world. It felt like we were in one of those zombie movies where the city was still standing but all of the people were gone. It was crazy. There were no hotels or restaurants or anything open and no people anywhere. Very creepy. We had such a hard time finding anything open that we drove over the border in Massachusetts to find a hotel room and ended up getting stuck at the Shangri-La Motel for the night. What a pit that place was!

Once I found Phil’s apartment he, Moses and I went over to a little Italian place near there and got some dinner and then drove out to the waterfront on Eastchester Bay with a view of Throgg’s Neck Bridge and had drinks out on the outside deck. That is a really gorgeous area of the Bronx that I think few people outside of the city really know exists. People forget about the fact that the west end of Long Island Sound comes right into the city and that there is a huge amount of waterfront on the east and south side of the Bronx and on the north side of Queens. It was a little warm still but not nearly as bad as it had been on my drive up. We hung out for a few hours and I drove back home a little after nine.

I went to bed at a very reasonable time last night, about 11:00. I was very proud of myself being an adult and getting to bed at a good time even though I didn’t have to be up all that early this morning. But then I got an email just before I fell asleep needing me to do some work for the office. That took only about fifteen minutes itself but was still a disruption to my slumber. But then I discovered that the telephone wasn’t working which meant that there was a problem in Geneseo. So I ended up being up until after midnight diagnosing that problem and getting it fixed. Luckily Dominica was in Geneseo and awake and was able to restart the downed router for me. So much for getting to bed early.

I woke up quite early this morning but decided to just stay in bed for a while. I wasn’t exactly tired but my body felt like it needed to nap. I am working late tonight doing a disaster recovery test so I am planning on going in a little later than usual.

Last year the Seattle monorail had a minor collision and ABC News reported on it calling the monorail a “mile high elevated line”. A mile high? A passenger who was in the accident said that the scariest part of the entire thing was going down the ladder. Well of course it was scary! A mile long ladder! I would be terrified and I am not even afraid of heights. It must have taken an hour to go down. People must get faint from the lack of oxygen.

At lunch today a bunch of us were planning to go out for Italian to celebrate one of my coworkers final Friday with the firm but once we were on our way someone mentioned (maybe it was me) going to Moghul in Morristown and everyone got excited so we went out there. It was only my second time going out there but the food was really amazing again. Eight of us went out there. It is a lot of fun. We all ate too much and had a hard time returning to work.

My “new” HP DL 360 G2 arrived today and was dropped off for me at the office. So I am bringing that home with me this weekend to work on. I am interested to see how it varies from the G1’s that I have been working on recently. I like the look of the G2’s a lot better. They share the colouring and styling of the current HP servers.

I managed to get into contact with Phil Kriebel today who is now living in the Bronx and we are planning on getting together tomorrow afternoon to hang out. I haven’t seen him in a couple of years since we were both working in DC. I have never been to the Bronx either. Technically I drove through it once years ago but it was night and all I did was zip through on the expressway so it wasn’t the same. So I am interested to see what it is like up there.

After work I had to hang around late for a disaster recovery test for one of my clients. That kept me a bit later than I had wanted to be. With one of my coworkers leaving the group that he is in and I (I sit with them instead of with my group by the fate of real estate) are going out to Chutney Manor on Route 1 tonight.

While I was stuck at the office tonight I managed to get reservations made for Bob and Lisa’s wedding in September. Dominica and I are staying at the Statler in Ithaca which is really handy since the reception is in the hotel. Dominica and I haven’t stayed at the Statler in several years and we are looking forward to returning. We are going to be there for two nights so we are hoping to be able to get dinner there on Friday night as well. That will be really handy. We used to go eat there every so often.

There were about ten of us that went out to Chutney Manor in Princeton for drinks and dinner. We had a really good time and hung out for several hours.

It is a hot one today. Poor dad, his heat pump (which includes his air conditioner) gave up the ghost yesterday or the day before and he is living in a very warm house right now. He ordered his new one today but it will be at least a couple of days before he has any air conditioning again.

I worked from home until 11:45 this morning. That gave me a chance to sleep in a little. It is a nice day to be home – it is too hot to go outside. Not that far shy of one hundred degrees.

For people who are familiar with the band Fall Out Boy you probably wonder, as I do, what a “loaded God complex” is. According to Quizilla it is “kind of a cross between a rabbit and a dog. but alittle bit less fierce and a little bit more hoppy.” Um, okay. I don’t think that that cleared things up for me in the least. Now I don’t understand the phrase OR the song. Emo sucks. 😉

I got to work at half past noon intending to go right to lunch but everyone was so disorganized that we didn’t even leave the office until an hour later. We went out to the sushi place and had a nice lunch. It ended up being just three of us.

I came home and got some pizza. I watched some Magnum P.I. including the episode “A Sense of Debt” in which I recognized a very young Shannon Dougherty from the previews along with Donald Gibbs from Bloodsport and Revenge of the Nerds. He was awesome in Bloodsport.

Even with going to bed so late last night I was still awake, without an alarm, around seven this morning. Today at work is the first day in a long time when I am not backlogged with tons of SGL maintenance that needs to be done. What a good feeling.

Normal day at the office. Actually it was quite busy. I was hopping all day long. I was tired by the end of the day and left work a little after 5:30.

Tonight is leftovers. I had left over Papa John’s pizza from the fridge for dinner. Not very exciting. I watched some Magnum P.I. and did some work online.

Today I got emails from two friends that I haven’t talked to in many, many years. The first was from Seth Webster whom I attended MCC with back around 1996-1998. We started the program together in the fall of 1996 and had most of our classes together. He is originally from Cohocton a bit south of where I grew up. Seth is actually the person who bought my first car, my 1981 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with the eight cylinder 267ci small block. Seth dated Mary back around 1997 for a little while! He is still living in Rochester. I haven’t seen him since I ran into him working at a guitar shop somewhere around 1999 or 2000.

The second email was from Belinda Holstein (a.k.a. Toast) whom I probably haven’t spoken to since 1993! Belinda went to high school with me at York from around 1991 – 1993. After high school she went into the US Navy and served in Iraq. It is awesome getting a chance to catch up with people.

One of the greatest things about having the Internet be so pervasive now is that it has really served as a platform for remaining connected with or reconnecting with people from long ago. Now that everyone has, more or less, permanent email addresses, personal websites (like this one), blogs, directories, instant messaging, cell phones, text messaging, etc. we are finding that people stay in contact with each other in ways that has never happened before. When I was younger if you mailed or telephoned someone and didn’t talk to them for a year or two often contact information would change, they would move, or whatever and you might never be able to find them again. But today, casual acquaintences that you swap email addresses with might stay in contact for the rest of their lives even if just casually. The human dynamic is changing. The idea of not having spoken to someone that you know for twenty years doesn’t really exist.

This effect is very noticeable in situations like the one that I am in where I am moving on a regular basis. My friends and family are able to continue communicating with me just as easily and transparently as if I was right next door no matter how often I move or where I am. I really notice when we have some friends who do not have good Internet access or mobile phones and are not on the computer all of the time like Mary or Phil and Kate that they are really hard to keep up with.

I was in bed nice and early tonight. After staying up late last night I needed to catch up a little. I am working from home tomorrow morning and going into the office part way throught he day to meet some friends for lunch. The cubicle neighbour is leaving the company (he is a consultant so we move around quickly) on Monday to return to midtown instead of working out here in the country so we are doing lunch just about every day.