Sheep Guarding Llama

We both slept in way too much this morning. It was after nine thirty when I finally pulled myself out of bed and Dominica was probably half an hour after me. We were up for about an hour when Andy and I got on the phone to do some work and Dominica decided to go to sleep on the futon in the living room with Oreo and the two of them slept for another two hours while Andy and I talked on the phone. So Dominica got plenty of sleep today.

When Andy and I got off of the phone it was after one in the afternoon and Dominica was still asleep. I woke her up and we got ready to face the day and around two we went out to the Omega for some breakfast, lunch or whatever. Our plan had been to work on her homework while we were there as she has a major assignment due tonight but instead we spent the whole time talking about the condo that we are interested in. We are really upset about the whole situation and really love the condo but are really scared of the direputable builders and the potentially poor community that is developing there. There are too many unknowns around the whole Canal Crossings development with the potential for a really bad commercial space to be put in right in the middle of the condos, it is all ready not in the best of neighbourhoods and apparently the people living there are not very afluent which could mean that the complex is headed for rapid deterioration. It is such a huge decision that it is really taking up a lot of mental energy.

After lunch we decided to take the 330 out and drive up to the Somerset and South Bound Brook areas and drive around to get a feel for the region to find out what we think of the surroundings. We tried calling both of our parents to see if any of them would be able to come down to take a look at the condo to get an outside opinion on the whole thing. It is really tough only having a first person perspective and being as isolated as we are down here makes it really tough to get any outside perspective. Dominica thought of calling Bob so she called him and he, miraculously, is able to come down tomorrow to look at the place with Dominica while I am at work. He is just in the process of closing on his own house in Ithaca in about a week and is getting married in about seven weeks so he is really busy this summer but is taking the time out of his schedule to come down and give us an opinion on the condo.

We spent a couple of hours driving around getting to know the area around South Bound Brook. Overall it isn’t had but the area right around the condos is not the best. It gets pretty poor right there and Bound Brook itself is exceptionally poor and run down. That is not encouraging. So really the excursion was a break even, I think.

We came home and Dominica spent the rest of the afternoon and all of the evening working on her major assignment for her data and network communications class. She is really frustrated and disappointed in this class as they are covering almost nothing about data and networking which is why she is paying for the class but instead is using some generic networking topics as the basis for some really random business stuff but not in depth like you would expect from a business class nor is any of the business stuff being taught – they are just assuming that she will know how to do a bunch of this stuff that she has never even heard of before which is making this extrememly tough. I know how hard of a time I always have whenever I have to do really abstract assignments for classes. But the worst part is that this class is taking a huge amount of her mental energies when she is getting very little value out of it. It isn’t meeting her need to understand computer networking and she will have to do a ton of work on her own now because she is not prepared for what she will have to do in the workplace nor is she prepared for future classes. This is a perfect example of where the collegiate system so easily completely fails. Worthless. At least her database class is really good and she is learning a lot and being encouraged to learn more and is getting interested in the topic. The upside to the bad class is that the stuff that they are making Dominica do, even tough it is completely outside of the scope of the class, is material that Dominica really does need to learn and it is good that she has to do it. But considering that she has me as a resource it is amazing that other students who are on their own are able to do this stuff with no one to turn to for guidance.

Dominica got her project completed just before midnight, when it was due, and turned it in. Once she had turned it in it automatically unlocks the area so that she can see what other students have turned in so that she can compare her work. The good news is that she was the only students who was able to complete the project. I guess we were right wondering how anyone is supposed to do this who doesn’t have me as a resource (or some other IT business professional – not and IT technical professional but someone with business experience.) The only people who can get through this class are people with outside assistance or enough knowledge to make the class useless anyway. We are pretty sure that they got a professor for cheap from a different discipline and he is not aware of the subject matter and is skirting the issue trying to get the class to resemble a networking class as much as possible. This has become a really common occurrance in academia these days.

While Dominica was wrapping up her homework I managed to squeak out a new SGL Podcast. Check it out.

I originally wrote all of today’s post and just before I saved it my web browser, which was using Adobe Flash, crashed on a Flash page and took all of the day’s update with it with no way to recover it. I could ever get a shot of the page because it died that much. It was very sad as it takes a long time to write the updates and especially today when there was so much going on that I had “all ready told you about” and now I have to recreate it again. I am sad. (Insert imaginary pouty face here.)

This morning I was up at 7:30. Nice and early. I got mostly ready to leave the house before Dominica even got out of bed. At 9:30 I had to do some work for the office before we could leave but it didn’t take very much time and we were out the door before 10:00 to head down to Princeton BMW in Princeton, New Jersey to get our new to us BMW 300cic convertible.

It took us one or two hours to go through the entire car buying process but it was a surprisingly pleasurable process and I am very impressed by the entire BMW experience so far. It turns out that because we are buying a certified BMW that is still under the original warranty that we not only get the remainder of the original warranty but we also get it extended out to 100,000 miles as well as, far a small fee, getting all of the maintenance for the car covered out to 100,000 miles. Let that sink in – all of the maintenance on the car included the oil changes is covered for another 84,000 miles! That is amazing. That makes it so easy to budget the automotive expenses for the next several years. I have never had anything like that before. We were also very pleased that we ended up getting a really good rate on the financing as well. Half a percent better than we had been expecting. The dealer even installed an auxillery jack connected to the stereo for us for free that allows us to plug our MP3 players into the car’s stereo without having to have any weird car adapter or going through the radio or something like that. And the MP3 player can be safely stowed away and not just sitting out in the car. We also found out that the car has a six disc CD changer in the trunk. We had no idea.

Before we left the showroom the salesman who sold us the car went out to the car with us and walked us through how to do everything with the car from the blinkers, windshield wipers and radio controllers to washing, fuel and maintenance instructions. I have never had a car dealer do anything like this before. It was awesome.

Dominica is still afraid to drive the 330cic so I drove it back to North Brunswick where we dropped off the PR5 and Oreo at the apartment and then drove up to South Bound Brook to look at the condo that we are really interested in up there. We ended up spending an hour or two at the condos looking and talking to the salespeople. They had two models open for us to look at. One was a “Delaware” two bedroom unit and one was the “Raritan” three bedroom unit. We really liked both of them but really fell that the two bedroom units are just not big enough for us in the near future and are not a good investment since we would probably have to sell it and move to a bigger place in not too long. The Raritan not only has an extra bedroom but also has a space where we could put in a small home theatre (not like Geneseo but enough to get by for the time being whereas most places that we have looked into wouldn’t have any capability to have anything like that at all.) It has a living room, dining room, eat in kitchen and a loft/den so there is a lot of living space. It is a three bedroom, two and a half bath. Just huge. Almost 2100 square feet. Plus it has an attic where we could actually store some stuff. That is really, really handy for people like us. Dad will appreciate that. The complex is dog friendly, affordable and has easy access to an area to walk Oreo which he will really appreciate. We were really excited about the whole place. Unfortunately they are almost all built and almost everything has been sold so if we are going to get a place there we are going to have to move very quickly on it which is very stressful.

Unfortnately our good feelings about the place evaporated quickly once we started asking about option details and needing to find out what they were supplying as data ports in the condos. It turns out that we opened a can of worms and discovered that the builder was not the high end home builder that they were pretending to be. They had been going on and on about the awesome high end data options that they offered and how most of the people who were buying the houses were IT professions who demanded the very latest in technology. But it turns out that they had never heard of the concept of having a house wired for data and all they were doing is putting in a cable (and by cable I mean the kind you use to watch television) running from the garage to the living room so that you could plug in your television and/or modem. Oh, the technology! It is bad enough not to do data ports standard but to not even offer them, know what they are or believe that any person would ever use them is a bit ridiculous. Now I am aware that I am from rural New York where there tends to be a bit more sophistication in the average home buyer or renter than in heavily popularted New Jersey but I would have though that since in rural Upstate New York having data ports standard in mid range rentals built almost ten years ago was standard that having them as at least an option that could be discussed and having sales people that could, at the very least, say that they weren’t offered when buying almost half million dollar homes in New Jersey today would be expected. This opened our eyes to a lot of things that were going on like the misleading descriptions of the services that they were offering (since they were claiming that these homes were “wired for fibre” but have no data ports suddenly being wired for fibre takes on a whole new meaning since my car is just as “wired for fibre” as those homes are), misleading descriptions of the resident population who, evidently, do not even have a modicum of data networking in their homes and have to have everything wireless to have anything at all (attention would be war drivers: huge, non-serious and completely wireless population to exploit with wireless networks extending to commercial, residential and state park land heavily wooded and protected!!!), and once called on it, description of the high integrity of the builders themselves. This last move by the salesperson caused me to do some Internet research into the reputation of Matzel & Mumford, a local operating division of the huge Fortune 100 builder K. Hovnanian. What I found was very discouraging. No one anywhere had anything positive to say about the company but there was an awful lot of really awful stuff. Matzel and Mumford is involved in a major legal tangle on the New Jersey coast where they are caught in a conflict of interest with a city council where the city council, for reasons that you can only imagine, gave complete control over an area to Matzel and Mumford and the company decided to enact New Jersey’s emminent domain law and stole the homes of a number of senior citizens so that they could be developed into condominiums. Not the kind of integrity that I was hoping for. More along the lines of big, evil corporation with no soul.

So we are really depressed. We love the condo and we don’t know of anything that is going to compete with it both from a cost and from a location standpoint but we really are concerned about doing business with a massively unethical builder – not to mention obviously not very competent from a wiring or sales perspective. (One of the salespeople even decided to try to trick me by telling me that all of the data and phone cables were wired directly into the circuit breakers!! – Um, can you say lawsuit?) We don’t know what we are going to do at this point. We are really upset and torn.

We went to the Omega and got a really late lunch. It wasn’t a happy lunch as we looked over the materials that we had picked up from the builder. We discovered some of the stuff that they were doing to confuse their own salespeople so that they would be more likely to mislead us through their own lack of knowledge of what they were selling. That made me feel worse about having been so mad with the salespeople but even more mad at the builder as it really showed how much forethought they had put into the whole thing. I would have said that the salespeople could not be blamed for the misdirection but they are the company’s representatives and they didn’t get a hold of anyone with more definitive knowledge for us (remember that this is a high pressure sales situation because these units are selling fast and there were only two left that we were really interested in and one of those two sold today as it was!!) but only offered to get a hold of someone in a few days when there might not be any units left to even discuss! They couldn’t even tell us what was installed in the model or in the unit that they had walked us through. And, in addition to being the company’s representatives, they didn’t take enough interest in their own jobs in know the basics of what they were selling and, and this is the clincher, the salesperson decided to stake her own credibility on the integrity of the parent company. Oops. Now no one has anything to stand on. Would that be the same parent company that told you that the data wiring was carrying 110 volts? Or the parent company that sent the elderly packing so new condos could go in with ocean views for those who could afford them? The one that made an illegal deal with the city council?

After lunch we went for a long drive in the new car. It had been raining while we were looking at the house so the top had been up. We packed Oreo into the car and headed east with no clear idea of where we were going to go. We started by driving out to Perth Amboy since neither of us had ever been out there before. Not the best area. Pretty much a slum, I would say. We drove down to the waterfront where there was a little public park and tons of people enjoying the warm weather (the sun was now out.) We drove down to the “scenic waterfront drive” and took the top down on the car. Oreo thought that that was the coolest thing ever. He got up and hung off the side of the car and looked at and smelled everything. He absolutely loved it. We drove down the water front all through the city and then on down to South Amboy across the bridge. With the car up to speed the dog was a little concerned about everything for about fifteen minutes but he calmed down and ended up having a great time.

From South Amboy we hopped onto NJ35 and headed south along the coast. Dominica couldn’t decide where she wanted to go so I decided that it was high time that went and saw Port Monmouth where my dad’s parents had lived during World War II. My grandfather had been a “consciencous objector” during the war and worked as an orderly, or something like that, in a military hospital there. My grandmother had lived there with him working as a receptionist or something along those lines in the same hospital. A year or two ago my grandmother managed to find some photographs of herself working at the hospital and we had talked about her time there. So I was the only person who knew where they had been. It must have only been a year ago, just before she died, because I think that we were talking about it because I had been doing some work in New Jersey for Wegmans and so she was talking about when they used to live in New Jersey.

So we drove down the coast and saw all of the little towns along there. It was a cool town. We took NJ36 out to the water and drove right along the beaches for a really long way. We met back up with NJ35 and drove that all of the way down through the intercoastal to Seaside Heights. It was a great drive and we discovered lots of really cool portions of the New Jersey coast. It is just wonderful to drive in a convertible by the ocean. I love that we live so close to the coast now. We can go to the ocean anytime that we want now.

While we were in Seaside Heights we decided to eat dinner at Rockafellas by the Seaside (which is technically in Ortley Beach.) (Funny that in Travel and Leaisure they mention this restaurant in “Driving Topless“.) It took over half an hour to get a seat in the completely back restaurant which we had expected, even though it was after nine in the evening, since the entire Jersey Show is packed for tourist season. The vegaquarian selection was incredibly weak considering the theme and location. The food was only so-so for the most part but the shrimp cakes were totally worth the wait and the bill. Delicious shrimp cakes done in a Maryland crab cake style (FYI: New Jersey crab cakes beat Marlyand crab cakes hands down anyday) with a hot Dijon-honey sauce. After that I was really happy that we had stopped even if the meal itself was even worth eating and Dominica ended up feeding her salmon to Oreo and I just threw mine out mostly.

The drive back didn’t take too long considering how many hours we put into the drive down but it was after midnight when we finally pulled back into the apartment. We are really happy with the car and are really excited to get to drive it everyday. It is too bad that what should have been such a happy day ended up being pretty upsetting in the grand scheme of things and instead of a great, relaxing drive it a was a necessary diversion and a chance to cool down.

On all of our minds today is the new Lebonese-Israeli war that started yesterday.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports on the humiliation being faced by the United States as we are stuck in a position of having no idea what to do about the middle east conflict. In reality we are very much stuck in a bad position much like Germany was at the beginning of World War I – a major world super-power with a poorly chosen, weak and power hungry war mongering state that decides to pick a fight and draw an entire region into the conflict through allegiances. This isn’t an American war anymore than World War I was a German war but we will get involved if Bush stays president. No president except for Wilson ever liked killing people so much. Israel is bringing a fragile democracy to its knees and Bush, “Mr. Go in and kill everyone until they decide to accept a democracy” isn’t going to even suggest to Israel that maybe they are creating the terrorist problem? Once it is a US ally causing the issue, suddenly the rules change. Suddenly it isn’t about stopping terrorism or promoting democracy. Now we see just how much it is about local, American interests. We aren’t in these wars for anyone’s good but our own and clearly Bush has no clue what is or isn’t good for our country.

Today is a long day at the office. I had to work late until around 7:00. Friday nights are often tough. On the way home Dominica called Tanjore and had them get dinner ready for us and I swung by and picked it up. We watched The Producers while we ate. The Producers is a 2005 remake of the 1968 Mel Brooks’ classic that became a major Broadway hit in the 00’s with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. The movie is absolutely hilarious. Really well done. Totally worth watching. Definitely a classic even if it is a remake – of a classic. Mel Brooks has definitely still got it.

After that it was time to go to bed. Not much too report. Just a long day and I am tired.

Google Labs has a product called Web Accelerator which acts as a general web proxy, cache and compressor to speed access to many web pages. It currently integrates with Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer but can be configured manually to work with other web browsers such as Opera. Google’s Web Accelerator is designed for high speed web users such as those on cable or DSL connections. It is not really designed for dial-up users if there are still any of you out there. I am trying it out at work and will try it at home at some point. It is currently only available for Windows users so I don’t have much use for it at home. Maybe Dominica will give it a try.

While I was checking out new stuff at Google today I also took a quick test spin of Google web based Spreadsheet application. My first impression is that Google Spreadsheet is incredibly basic but it is very nicely done and, in fact, might be better than some of the heavy hitting spreadsheet apps like Excel and OpenOffice Calc for the average and lighter than average spreadsheet user. It is far less intimidating, requires no install and is very clean and easy to get started with. Very impressive. I doubt that I will find much use for it myself but maybe I will. I tend to use spreadsheets a bit more intensely than the average computer user.

Today was another slow day at the office. All week everything has been super slow. Kind of nice for a change. I managed to get a bit of work done on transferring old SGL Dailies over to the new system. I can’t wait until that work is all completed. All of 2001 – 2003 is done and most of 2005 is complete. I hope to wrap up 2005 yet this week. 2006 was all originally written to the WordPress system so it is there. 2004 is the only complete year that hasn’t been touched yet.

I got home and Dominica made dinner at home again tonight. Veggie chik patties and squash. We watched the second episode of Tru Calling. It is about the same as the first episode. I am not much into the contrived “new adventure each week” plot device thing but this isn’t bad for the genre. Right along the lines of Early Edition and Quantum Leap and five thousand other shows that I didn’t watch because they are all the same thing over and over again.

After dinner Dominica worked on her class work which she is really upset about because she is paying to take a networking class at SUNY Empire but instead they are just using a generic project management curriculum and using “networking” as the loose subject matter that they are managing. The professor is totally blowing off the class and all of the core material is included in “recommended reading” and is not even being discussed in the class discussions or addressed in the assignments so she is getting absolutely zero value from the class and it is so much work because it is not what the class was supposed to be that it is detracting from her other classes which are really good. I am not very happy with SUNY Empire right now either. They are just sitting on my degree and won’t process the paperwork. I have been calling for a month and they are no longer returning my calls. They just ignore me. For a MONTH!

I worked a little on my Motorola Q this evening before going to bed. I got IM+ installed onto it which is letting me chat over Jabber although I haven’t figured out how to turn on the encryption and I am concerned that it does not have any. But it is the only Jabber client that I found for the Q. I also got PocketPutty installed and working. Sort of. PocketPutty is one of the major applications that I am really concerned about getting working on the Q and it definitely runs and mostly does its job but it crashes really easily and there is no backspace or delete keys or any other type of function keys like cursor keys or the control key. So it “works” but isn’t useful until someone figures out those items. But once they do it looks like it is going to be a killer app for the Q. The Q is perfectly designed for that type of use.