Sheep Guarding Llama

Boy did Dominica ever get a lot of sleep last night. When I went to bed at midnight she had been in bed for four or five hours all ready. I got up this morning at 6:30 and she didn’t get up until I was headed out the door after 8:00! She might have gotten thirteen hours of sleep.

Today I took a poll of Linux desktop users and was delighted to see that openSUSE has, according to this small poll at this current time, passed Fedora in use as a Linux desktop and that SLES has passed Red Hat in use on the desktop. That is awesome. Red Hat must be leading significantly in the server arena but it is very encouraging to see my long time faith in SUSE on the desktop paying off. Ubuntu is still the desktop darling and is leading the poll by quite some margin but SUSE and Red Hat products are important pieces of the desktop puzzle as well. Additionally, KDE and GNOME are neck and neck with no clear winner.

Today’s big project for Dominica is apartment hunting. Now that we no longer have a house that we are planning on moving into we have to figure out where we are going to be living in just a few more weeks. We are hoping to be able to find something up towards Jersey City or something on that peninsula. Jersey City would be perfect for us since it has such easy access to lower Manhattan while still being right on Rt. 78 making it easy for me to get into and out of work on a daily basis.

I was out of work at a decent time today. I got home and we just had some leftovers for dinner. I did some light work this evening while Dominica worked on her database design homework. She is starting to not enjoy that class so much as the focus moves more and more away from actual database topics and more and more to just dealing with the poor interface of Microsoft Access 2003. And, of course, her professor is not able to see her database the same as Dominica sees it here so heaven only knows what is wrong with it. Most likely her professor doesn’t know enough about Access, have the current version or have it patched but you never know. It really points out why Access is a bad product. In the time that it has taken Dominica to get her database built she could have sat down and learned all of the components necessary to building a truly useful web application using more robust database and development tools that were free and then been able to have shared her database driven application with as many people as wanted to use it. With Access the very first person that she shared it with the system failed and the whole thing was a complete waste.

Happy Birthday to Jeremy Bragg!

The big news for us today is that the lawyers from the homebuilder were not willing to meet any of the changes that we had asked for for the house in Lebanon so we are backing out of the project. The biggest deal is that they won’t meet our need for a contingency upon selling the house in Geneseo. That is understandable as it is a big risk for them but it is so unlikely that we will be able to sell the house in the awful market that is going on up there that we just can’t take the chance. They were also unwilling to commit to finishing the house this year. They have all kinds of penalties if we can’t close by November 15th, far less than 90 days away but they were allowed to extend into the middle of next year giving themselves a cushion of way over 200%!! That is a ridiculous amount of buffer. It is one thing for a project to take half again as long as someone says but three times as long is way too much. And we aren’t at the beginning either. The houses are nearly completed. Their contract would let them just sit for eight months if they felt like it. We aren’t going to get caught playing that game.

So the current plan is to find a nice apartment somewhere quickly. Our current lease runs out in the middle of October so we don’t have very much time to find some place to live. But we aren’t worried. There are a lot of apartments around. We are back looking at Jersey City. Dominica has found an apartment there that she is interested in. It is roughly affordable, takes dogs and appears to have views of Manhattan which we would really like. We are both really looking forward to getting out of North Brunswick. (I killed yet another centipede tonight.)

Work was more relaxing today than it has been in a while. I managed to read two whole issues of Baseline Magazine and this month’s Java Developer’s Journal which got me caught up in my magazine reading which is nice for a change. I was able to leave work on the early side so that Dominica and I would have plenty of time to go out for her birthday dinner which we skipped last night.

It was just after six when I got home. Jeremy Bragg called just as I was pulling in the parking lot to talk to Min since their birthdays are just a day a part. While they were talking I walked out to the ice cream truck as it came by and got ice cream for Dominica and myself. The ice cream truck girl thinks that I am hilarious. Everyone else getting ice cream is kids or, on rare occassion, adults with kids. But I always go out there and get myself ice cream. I don’t care. I didn’t have an ice cream truck as a kid so I am getting the use of it now.

For dinner we went out to Bertucci’s. Dominica is back on the South Beach Diet and they have a meal there that she really likes. So we got dinner and then returned home.

It was quite early when we got home but we were both really tired so we decided to take a nap. Oreo was thrilled that we were going to bed at seven in the evening so he climbed right into bed and snuggled in for the night. I napped a little but spent most of the two hours in bed just reading in Joel Spolsky’s “The Best Software Writing I”. Dominica fell fast asleep and ended up being out for the night.

I spent the evening doing some work for the office. Nothing too heavy. I was pretty tired for some reason. I worked until ten thirty and was planning to go to bed around then but Andy called and we worked and/or chatted until close to midnight. So at that point I was very happy that I had taken a nap earlier. Then it was time for bed.

Dominica turns twenty-eight today!

I was up nice and early this morning, got ready for work, got Dominica out of bed, starting packing stuff into the car for dad to take home and then discovered that the SGL server was down. The plan had been to go for breakfast at eight this morning and I was pretty much ready to walk out the door at a quarter to eight but then with the server issue it took an additional forty-five minutes before we were actually able to leave the apartment. But at least the server was back up and running before we left. Otherwise it would have made for a much longer day.

I stopped into the hotel and transferred all of the stuff that I had over to dad’s car and then drove him over to the Omega to get some breakfast. Dominica was there waiting for us when we arrived. We had breakfast together and said our good-byes and then I was off to the office and Dominica returned dad to the hotel so that he could begin his drive back to Pavilion.

I got to the office just in time to park the car and wait in the lawn with everyone else. We had a small fire in our building this morning and they had to bring in the fire department and everything. That killed a huge chunk of the morning. We were standing outside waiting to be let in for at least half an hour and maybe quite a bit more. Not the most efficient way to spend the morning. But it did add some interest to the day and make the day go past a lot faster.

The rest of my day ended up being very busy. I barely got a chance to do anything today. Instead of getting lunch (after this weekends food fest I was in no mood to eat anyway) I drove down to Jiffy Lube on Route 22 and got an oil change for my car. I have been needing to do that and it keeps getting pushed off so I just forced myself to take care of it today. At least something productive happened.

Dominica had her interview in Nutley this afternoon. She thinks that it went well and is hopeful for a job offer. The position is perfect timing – she is finally out from under “the gun” and has been having actual free time, more or less, down here in New Jersey. She will have a lot more when two of her classes at Empire end in a week or two and in the fall semester she is just going to take a single class – Java Programming. So her fall will be more relaxed and the perfect time for her to start work. And the job is for six months which is a good time frame for this type of work for her. Hopefully after completely her stint there she will be in a really good position to begin to move up the ladder and look to some more interesting work. And with us attempting to buy a house in November we can really use every extra dollar that we can scrounge. It is going to be tight and the expected closing is just ninety days away which is much closer than it seems. Autumn is going to be very busy for us (as if the summer wasn’t.)

I got stuck at work very late tonight. I ended up working on a server that was down all day and that we couldn’t get fixed no matter what we tried. While I was waiting for it at least I managed to get through some reading that I was backed up on. I read a bit more in the Joel Spolsky book that I am working on, read an entire issue of eWeek and made it through most of an issue of Baseline.

It was about half past eight when I finally got back to North Brunswick. We were tired and didn’t want to take the time to go out to eat so we just ate some of the leftovers that we had around the house from this weekend. Then it was time for bed.

No sleeping in for us this morning. We had to be up nice and early this morning so that we could get up to Lebanon to go to church. Fortunately we went to bed at a pretty reasonable time last night so we weren’t too bad this morning. Our plan had been to pick up dad at 8:30 but we weren’t able to get over there until 8:40 but we had built in plenty of buffer time so it worked out fine.

We drove out to Lebanon and went back past the entrance to the condominium and took the scenic drive around Round Valley State Park so that dad could see the area where we hope to be living in a few months and went to the small, rural church via the local backroads where were very much “back roads” here in New Jersey. Dad was really impressed with how nice the area is. The drive from Lebanon to the church is really pretty and a lot of the drive is preserved historical farmland – sort of like an agricultural museum.

We were very early for church which is unusual for us. It was a very small church and we got a chance to meet just about everyone before the service actually started. We enjoyed the church although the service was very long which ended up being a problem with the dog out in the car. I had to leave the service early to go sit with him and turn on the air conditioning as the sun had come out while we were in the service. He was fine but it was going to be getting hot.

After church we went back to Lebanon so that dad could see the condominium development. I had to drop off another check for the house anyway so it was a good use of the trip. We went up to our unit and gave dad a tour so that he could get a feel for what it will be like. Then we went down to Main Street and got lunch at the Fox and Hound Tavern. It was a really good lunch but one thing that is going to be a problem living in Lebanon is that eating is very, very expensive. It is a very good thing that there is the luncheonette and a Stewart’s there too.

After lunch we drove back down to North Brunswick and decided that we all needed naps. So we took dad back to the hotel and Dominica, Oreo and I returned to the apartment and crashed. Dad only slept for thirty or fourty-five minutes but I slept for about three hours and Dominica for even longer. I really needed that and felt much better after I got up.

In the evening we took dad over to Tanjore so that he could see what we really eat out here in New Jersey. We got a lot of food. Dad tried the soup (mulligatawny) that we warned him about – it is very spicy. He doesn’t normally eat spicy but he tried to eat it but had to give up about halfway through. We got cashew pakoda and bel purhi as appetizers so dad had a sampling of food. Then he got the rava dosai with cheese, cashews and potato masala. He even got dessert. We think that he liked it although it was all very adventurous for him.

We came back to the apartment after dinner and just visited for a little while before having some cheesecake to celebrate Dominica’s birthday which is tomorrow.

I wrapped up last night’s post before I managed to leave the office. I got home to North Brunswick later, close to eight o’clock, and picked up Dominica (her car is still in the shop for the door handle – it was completed today but we couldn’t coordinate any way to get the car until tomorrow.) We swung in to the Ramada and picked up dad and the three of us went to the Omega Diner for some dinner. Dad got the amazing crab cakes over mac and cheese that I talk about on here all of the time. He was very impressed.

After dinner we took dad back to the hotel and we came home and everyone went to bed early. I worked a thirteen hour day at the office and was up for three and a half hours before going to the office so I was dead tired by the time that we got to bed. I really needed some serious sleep.

We got up this morning and picked up dad and returned to the Omega for some breakfast – this is a lot like what we do when we are in Geneseo for the weekend. After breakfast we all drove down to Princeton to pick up Dominica’s car from the dealer there. That killed a good piece of the morning. It really does take quite a while to drive all of the way down to Princeton, deal with picking up the car and then drive all of the way back.

We came back to North Brunswick and dad got to see our apartment for the first time. It was just after noon by the time we got back there and dad and Dominica wanted to go to see a movie that was showing at two thirty so we decided to just hang out at the apartment until it was time to go to the showing. Dad and I had some work that needed our attention so we managed to get a big chunk of that out of the way while we were there.

I am working on installing Microsoft’s Shared Computer Toolkit onto a new desktop that dad had brought down with him so that is keeping me busy today as well. It isn’t a hard product to learn to use but my window for getting it right is very small. Good thing that I enjoy learning new technologies.

We went to the movie theatre near Tanjore and watched Step Up which we all liked. It is one of the few movies that has come out recently that I even know about.

After the movie it was dinner time. We tried to take dad to Tanjore but they were not open. Their website said that they opened at five but the sign on the door said that they expected to be back at six fifteen and even that was taking a chance as they don’t always come back promptly. So we decided to just do Bertucci’s which is in the same little plaza. Dad had never been to a Bertucci’s before so that worked out well anyway. He was nervous about getting Indian so he was relieved, I think.

After dinner we got some ice cream at the ice cream place in the same plaza and then went back to the apartment. It was well into evening by this point. I spent the rest of the evening working on the workstation and we all watched the DVD of Robin Williams in RV that Dominica had seen with her family and had really liked. It was good. I had no idea what the movie was about and had never heard of it except for her going to see it a month or two ago so I didn’t know what to expect. But it was a good movie. Cute and contrived but entertaining and fun.

After the movie we took dad back to the hotel and then returned to the apartment. Dominica and I stayed up a little longer and watched Sideways on DVD with Paul Giamatti. Sideways is one of dad’s DVDs that we were borrowing and we figured that it would be the perfect time to watch it so that he could take it home with him on Monday. Giamatti is really good but the movie was pretty weak. It was okay and some parts were entertaining but for the most part it was blah.