Sheep Guarding Llama

Another travel day. Wouldn’t it be nice to just spend a nice, relaxing weekend at home? I wouldn’t really know.

The plan is to leave this evening as soon as I am able to get out of the office and head for Geneseo (getting dinner at the Waffle House in Clarke’s Summit, of course.) Then tomorrow morning Dominica will leave to go to Texas with her sister and I will spend the weekend getting servers ready to move out of Geneseo and packing up whatever I can to get moved out during the week. Art and Danielle plan on coming over to help sometime on Saturday and maybe with their truck we can get the futon out of the house. That is going to my cousin Sara to take to college with her. Then Sunday I am having an early dinner with Josh after a morning of continued prep and packing and then it is time to return to New Jersey. On Monday night I have to get Dominica from the airport in Newark very, very late. Technicaly Tuesday morning. 🙁

It is a beautiful day today. The temperature has finally broken and it is a comfortable high seventies or low eighties out there instead of the mid to high nineties that we faced earlier in the week. It looks to be a good day for traveling, for a change.

Work was quite busy today. Now that I have access to just about everything that I need to do my job I found that I actually have a lot of work to do! It is quite a relief as I have been mostly idle for quite some time. I have been working but not nearly as much as it feels that I should have been. But lots of people told me that it would take at least two months before I had access to the stuff that I needed and that was mostly correct. I have been here for three and a half months at this point, if you can believe that? I started in late March, moved to the current apartment in mid-April and it is now the end of the first week of July! Boy how time flies.

While I was quite busy I did manage to get some more magazine reading done while I was in the office. eWeek, InfoWorld and Windows IT Pro are my magazines of the day. I try to get through eWeek and InfoWorld quickly so that I can pass them on to Dominica who is now attempting to read them on a regular basis for the classes that she is taking from Empire.

I forgot to mention yesterday that Andy has been layed off from his current contract after having been there just about a month or less there. He had been hired for a full year contract but they hadn’t planned any budget for the project and they are unable to keep him on. This is real common, unfortunately, and he had even mentioned to Dominica last Friday that he got the same feeling at this position that he had gotten when we were at IBM in 2001 and knew that the project that we were on was dying. Everyone told us, right up until the day before we were layed off, that everything was fine and that we were imagining things but we were the only ones prepared for the layoffs when they came. It wasn’t just us but about one hundred and fifty contractors at the site were all let go within fourty eight hours. So he is winding down his work there now. He is working yet today and for all of next week but he is done one week from today. He didn’t even get to work this past Tuesday because it was a “holiday” (a.k.a. a day when they don’t have enough work for hourly workers to do so they don’t let them come into work and don’t pay them) and they didn’t have enough money in the budget for him to come in that day. Of course, they could have let him work on Tuesday and only kept him until next Thursday instead of next Friday but that would be less advantageous to them – it is generally to an employer’s advantage to spread your worktime out as much as possible because they are able to be better prepared for you to be there. That is why so many companies with low paid hourly workers are so happy about the state mandated unpaid breaks during the day (in New York it is two fifteen minutes breaks and one thirty minute break each eight hour day.) They are so short that you can’t possibly leave or think about anything other than work but they don’t have to pay you. And not only do they get to keep you at work without paying you but the state enforces the process so that they can act like it is the employees fault for being overprotected by the state even though it lowers the employee’s wage potential.

Here is the math on that (I have thought about this a lot over the years): Wage = $7.00, Work Day = 8 hours, Breaks = 1 hour. Employee only gets paid $6.22 per hour! Now of course the company doesn’t get as much benefit out of the break time that they do out of normal paid time but they do get many benefits including spreading out the work day which is a major benefit to businesses open longer than just a single shift which includes restaurants, hotels, etc. Now if you are an employee who only works that one job, doesn’t have anything to do when they get home and really likes just relaxing at their job then this isn’t the worst thing for you. But I am sure not that person. If you are a normal person working a low wage job like I used to be (remember Pizza Hut, Burger King, the nursing facility, Station 42, Tops Unfriendly Markets, The Days Inn, The Wellesley Inn, etc.) then you will most likely have to work more than one job and have to cram all of your life’s interests into a very short span of time between those jobs. The same would go for a college student or high school student who works while they are in school. The last thing that you want to do is spend an hour a day (or for people working two full time jobs TWO hours a day!) just sitting around at work not getting paid but unable to do anything else productive, relaxing or fun because you don’t have time to change your clothes, leave or switch mental gears into thinking about something else.

I found out today, although apparently I am way behind the curve on this one, that Mr. T likes two graham crackers, covered in chocolate and espresso from Starbucks. Check out Paul Davidson’s awesome impromtu interview with the Hollywood star at his local coffee shop.

Unlike a usual day at the office, the morning was busy and the afternoon was slow. That is not always good even though it is nice to get the hard stuff out of the way early (like eating your vegetables first and saving the good stuff for last) because being busy towards the end of the day helps to pass the time.

I finally got around to calling Verizon Wireless this afternoon to find out options for getting myself one of the Motorola Q Windows Mobile PDAs. I have been looking into getting one for about a week but haven’t actually called yet to get any information. The new Motorola Q is really hot. It was formally known as the Razrberry. It is super thin but runs Windows Mobile 5.0 which is what I am looking for. It has the keyboard and dial on the side that I like from my Blackberry but it runs Windows which I prefer since I want to use it as a full featured PDA with web browsing, wireless Internet for my laptop, email, instant messaging, etc.

Verizon was able to give me a second line as a data line just for my new PDA so I decided to go ahead and get it. I ordered the new Motorola Q with the unlimited data plan from Verizon so that I can use it all of the time wherever I am. It is a little pricey but it should prove to be a really nice tool to have. I will have full time access to email, web, instant messaging, etc. I am not sure how well this device will work for my particular needs but Verizon lets me try it out for fifteen days and then determine if I want to keep that or go with a different device so I am going to give it a try. It has a limited feature set compared to some of the more complete PDAs but it might meet my needs. We will see. It is very small and easy to use which is the major draw for me. I am not looking for a device that will replace my laptop – just something that will keep me in contact and I think that it might fit the bill. I don’t want to get carried away trying to do tons of stuff from my handheld. I have a PDA now and I never do that stuff. It isn’t really practical most of the time. I really just need some basic features for normal day to day activities.

The afternoon went from slow to molasses. Of course, Friday afternoons are always slow as as many people as possible attempt to sneak out early to start their weekend. So there are hardly any people doing anything to generate work requests. At least it gives me plenty of time to do things like order a Q.

I easily managed to get through all four magazines that I had brought with me. I should remember to bring more reading material with me on Fridays. There is less tech news on Fridays as well because everyone working at the news sites want to get started on their weekends too.

My cube neighbour, who is also a tech gadget junkie, and I spent a lot of the afternoon searching for cool tools for the Q and other Windows Mobile 5.0 for Smartphone devices. We found tons of cool stuff like PocketPutty for SSH access, Opera for good web browsing instead of IE, a port of OpenVPN, and the iMov Jabber client. I should be in good shape if all of this stuff really works. This means that, in theory, I will be on the Jabber IM system now all of the time. Sweet.

Five o’clock rolled around and everything was still calm and serene so I took advantage of the moment and stole myself away from the office. There is a lot of driving to be done this evening so I wanted to get moving.

Knowing that I am going to be very tired when I finally arrive in Geneseo I am taking the time now, while I am still in the office, to go ahead and post the daily. I will update everyone as to anything that happens eventful this evening tomorrow.

Have a good night and enjoy your weekends. Scott out.

I was up nice and early this morning – because we had a router down in Geneseo. What a pain that router is. I have to find a good way around that if this is going to continue to be such a major problem. I was up around seven thirty to deal with that. It required dad to drive out to Geneseo to manually restart it again. At least it gives him an excuse to get breakfast at the Omega. Today is his usual breakfast day with his sister anyway so I am assuming that that worked out well.

Dominica had to get up with me this morning because she is catching a ride with me when I go into work to pick up her car at the Mazda dealer on route 22. Fortunately it is very close to where I work. Oreo rode along too since Dominica is doing some shopping after getting her car back.

It rained either last night or early this morning. Couldn’t have been much but everything is wet again. I can’t believe how much it rains here. We are in July and the rains just keep coming and coming.

It really sucks having to spend almost $650 on a car that we are planning on selling as quickly as possible. We put over $1,000 into new tires for that car so far this year all ready! After picking up her car, Dominica made it down to Edison where she was shopping for dog food and goggles for him when her hatchback broke! Can you believe that? One of the bolts that holds the hydraulics for the truck snapped and left her with a hatchback door that she can’t close. Now we can’t really lock the car and we have to spend a bit of money getting that fixed before we can sell it or even let it sit at the apartment. Just what we need. Hopefully we can get it right back into the shop this afternoon. She could drop it off when I leave work. Argh.

I managed to get two lessons completed on the class that I have left open with HP. There is one lesson left for each class that has not opened up yet. I should be done with those classes by next week.

Today turned out to be a really good day at work. It was a breakthrough day in which I actually managed to get access to just about everything that I could need to do my job and I am now, believe it or not, able to be productive and useful at work. That is a great feeling. After two months of being here and not being useful and really just being in peoples’ ways I am now a valuable team member able to do my own work without needing someone to help me all of the time. This is a major stress reliever for me.

I left work at six and picked Min up from the apartment and we went to the Omega for dinner. For some reason I was starving when I got home so I was really looking forward to eating. I haven’t been eating much fried food since coming down to New Jersey. I am not sure why but it has been good for me. Tonight I decided to diverge from that and I got the fried seafood dinner. Big mistake.

I spent the evening feeling really sick. I got nothing done other than reading through several magazines that I have gotten backed up on reading. It takes a lot of work to get through all of the reading that I try to do.

For those who were left wondering what day I would possibly consider to be America’s birthday if not the Fourth of July. My answer in September 3, 1783 – the day that the Treaty of Paris was signed and the world recognized a new nation. The American Revolutionary War ran officially from 1775 until 1783 but skirmishes began as early as 1770 with the Boston Massacre.

Another fairly legitamate birthday for our country could be October 19, 1781 when Cornwallis surrendered to Hamilton at Yorktown, Virginia bringing the actual core fighting of the war to an end.

However, my personal favourite American birthday is March 4, 1789 – the day of the formal creation of the Federal Government of the United States of America when nine states ratified the US Constitution. This was the beginning of a totally new and still functioning government and the formation of America in the form that we know it today. Residents of the United States up until 1783 would really have thought of themselves as being inside of England, from 1783 until 1789 they would have thought of themselves as citizens of their given state or commonwealth but in 1789 all of that changed and the concept of “American citizenship” took place and for the first time we were Americans, in this great venture together as a single, coherent nation and not simply an economic confederation of tax free trading states. The Confederation years were closer to the current “North America Free Trade Agreement” than to any form of centralized government and no one today thinks of the US, Canada and Mexico as a single country. Canada is officially a confederation but their unity is much more formal and is under the British Commonwealth so their are unified by a force outside of their own internal government structure which makes their nationhood quite a different style than the American style even though on a day to day basis they mostly function with the same overarching centralized government with regional sub-governments.

Last night the rain returned. It was a light rain but anything that adds water to the system right now is probably pretty bad. Bob Crissman just reported that Broome County and eleven other New York counties (I assume that Herkimer is most likely included in that list) have been declared a national disaster area and are going to be receiving federal assistance. From what I have seen of Broome and Tioga counties it is desperately needed. This morning when I went out to the car it was a steady light to moderate rain, much heavier than it was when I went to bed. As I drove up Jersey Avenue I discovered that it must have been raining all night because everything was flooding and Jersey Avenue itself was half underwater. As I continued to work the rain increased to heavy or maybe even to pouring status making it hard to drive and difficult to see. Just what we need right now. I hope that it isn’t raining in New York. New Jersey has more rivers and coastline to take the excess water than New York and Pennsylvania do.

For anyone needing federal flood assistance information you can go directly to FEMA’s information page about the Upstate New York Flood listed as July 1, 2006 – incident 6485.

In New Jersey news today the state began to shut down all none essential services due to the Democrat controlled legislature being unwilling to pass the governor’s budget. Unlike most states this includes a complete shutdown of the casinos in Atlantic City which is going to completely cripple one of the state’s largest cities and send a tremendous number of low wage earners onto the dole. Nothing like widespread unemployment to bolster your tax base in a time of budget crisis. According to the casinos there was no reason for the shutdown as the workers that the state is not allowing to work in Atlantic City are paid for by the casinos and not by the state even though they are state workers so any decision to not allow them to go to work was one of malice toward the city and the state and not one of financial necesity. For anyone considering taking a vacation to Atlantic City, this is the time. No casinos operating, hardly anyone in town and a whole city full of resorts looking to do anything to attract visitors.

Today was bill paying day. I hate paying bills. Especially when they are so big. Ugh.

For breakfast today I had a Balance bar courtesy of Hewlett-Packard. They sent out the Balance bars as a promotional item showcasing their AMD Opteron and Athlon based products stating that they were the perfect balance of power and price. It was really handy today because I didn’t have anything else that I could grab quickly as I headed out of the door. It was a good promotional item though because obviously I thought about it and now you are thinking about it too. Now you will remember AMD processors from HP! (Unfortunately for HP that is all that I buy anyway so they weren’t getting any additional purchases from me – my desktop, laptop and all new servers are HP AMD machines.)

I had some additional time available to me again today so I decided to enroll for HP’s “Wireless Security In Depth” class. I am getting as much out of HP’s classes as possible.

I had lunch at the office today. Finally there was a vegetarian special on: arepas with Mexican corn and fried plantains. The arepas were awesome. I hope that they have those more often. They almost never have real vegetarian selections so I am stuck getting just a sandwich most days and the selection of sandwiches isn’t very broad so things get boring quickly.

At 2:30 we discovered a problem that resulted in me becoming buried beneath a mountain of paperwork. This will take several days for me to complete, I am sure. Always something fun going on. At least it wasn’t my fault so it is just work, not stress. Paperwork is only so bad. It isn’t fun and it is annoying but I don’t find it to be stressful or anything like that. So that is fine.

I managed to complete the entire Wireless Security class long before the end of the day so I enrolled for HP’s “Security for IT Professionals” class – which I thought was available now but does not open until the next “section”. I am probably getting more out of HP’s classes than anyone! I am very glad that HP offers them. There is a lot of good stuff in there. Maybe if more people take them HP will offer a wide assortment in the future. I looked through their current classes carefully but there was nothing more that I thought would be useful to me left for me to take this “semester” except for an introduction to Microsoft Publisher 2003 but i don’t want to take that class unless I have time to do it when I am able to sit down with my copy of Publisher 2003 and try out the stuff that I am learning. I would like to get through that class if possible because there is a Publisher 2003 Advanced class available directly following it.

On July 3rd I forgot to include the very funny story of running out of gas while test driving the BMW 330 so everyone who has all ready read the daily from Monday will need to go back and read that entry. I can’t believe that I forgot to include such a memorable experience.

Towards the end of the day, as often happens, things slowed down and I managed to have a nice, relaxing but productive day. And there are only two days of work left this week. Hardly feels like the week has even gotten started. Things were going smoothly so I was able to get out of work at six and head for home.

I got home in good time and we went immediately out to Tanjore for some dinner. The weather wasn’t bad so Oreo got to ride along and stay in the car. He is so much happier when he doesn’t get left behind. I got the hottest item on the menu. They have learned that I can handle hot foot and they are finally letting me have it. This was HOT. Not as hot as hot Buffalo wings or the vindalu that Bob got that one time in Ithaca but it was hot nonetheless. After dinner we went next door for some ice cream which was very much needed.

I spent the evening at home working on the movie database system. Now when a “view” is entered it records the fact that a particular film was viewed, by whom, when and increments the total number of views for that particular film which, in turn, updates the statistics for the total number of views of the collection and the cost per view. This little update does a lot to make the system more usable for me on a day to day basis. I have to maintain a separate “times watched” total for each video separate from the “views” table because of legacy data coming from the spreadsheet that I have been using for years. I don’t like having it that way but the alternatives aren’t pretty. I might switch it at some point but I am not sure. The system will only ever get so big. It is a movie database system, after all. But then again, it would be nice if it was really cool and solid and good for other people to use if I make it open source software. That would be awfully neat.

I have been struggling to get enough sleep and with the changing schedule it has been extra tough. So we targetted going to bed at ten thirty. We didn’t quite make it but we were close. Dominica spent the evening working on her Linux 101 class from HP, reviewing her SUNY Empire classes and studying for her A+ exam.

Actually July 4, 1776 is a poor day to choose as the birthday of America. Sure it is the day when we decided that we wanted to be a country separate from the United Kingdom but it was simply a day in the middle of the war when a bunch of people got together and signed a declaration of the intent to separate. The war had been underway for years and the decision to separate had been made some time before but they hadn’t written it down and made it official yet and most colonists wouldn’t find out for weeks that the decision had been made or that the declaration had been signed and the king definitely didn’t find out for a long time and he is the one that the paper was sent to.

Today was super sleep-in day. All three of us really needed to do some catching up from the weekend. It was afternoon when Dominica finally got out of bed. We went right out to the Omega and got some lunch. We were really hungry by that point. We also ran out to Best Buy while we were out and did some DVD shopping. We were thinking of just getting a movie or two but ended up getting quite a haul. They had a really big sale on and we got some really good values: Transporter 2, Sense and Sensibility, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Edward Scissorhands, Scooby-Doo, To Catch A Thief, Donnie Darko, Snatch, The Girl Next Door, Office Space, Calamity Jane, The Pajama Game, Young Man with a Horn, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Lullaby of Broadway, Love Me or Leave Me, Jumbo and The Glass Bottom Boat. That will augment the collection just a little bit.

We got home and watched Hitch with Wil Smith. Overall it was a good movie – interesting and different. It did have a leading romantic interest that I felt was a mean person and didn’t want to have in the movie and that distracted a bit and didn’t make for the overwhelmingly happy ending that I would have hoped for but it wasn’t bad. We decided just to hang out at home today and relax. Oreo doesn’t get to see me all that much so that sounded good. After Hitch we watched Transporter 2 which, like Art had said, was not nearly as good as the first one but it was entertaining. The story was very cliche and full of hokie plot devices. Movie mania continued with Scooby Doo which was really ridiculous but okay for a kids’ movie. It is better than the original series but that doesn’t say a lot. The movie has, if you can believe it, even more drug references than the cartoon! Personally I don’t think that the series is really child friendly. Dominica has never seen Office Space so we wrapped up the evening watching that. I have never been a huge fan of Office Space but it is a classic and she definitely needed to see it.

While we watched the movies I put in some time getting the movie database up to date and, as far as I know, everything is in there now. That makes it much easier to look stuff up.

When I finally pulled myself out of bed at eight this morning I was still very soar from the weekend but I needed to get up and get to work. It took me a while to get myself out of the house and I didn’t get into the office until just after ten! But it is a slow day today being a day with almost everyone on vacation and coming off of weekend with tomorrow being a holiday. My first awesome surprise of the day was that today is a short day for the stock exchange and that the market closes at one o’clock this afternoon so most everyone will be going home early. I wish someone told me these things ahead of time but at least it makes for a really nice surprise. A short day today and nothing tomorrow. That is awesome.

I did some catching up on HP classes today. It was a very slow day with the market only being open for half of a day – much less chance for things to go wrong. I love days like this. Days when you are sure you don’t want to go to work and then you get there and everything goes great and you can leave early. I managed to complete my Network Attached Storage and Advanced Network Administration Best Practices classes today.

Dominica was super tired and ended up sleeping in to the afternoon today! I am sure that Oreo appreciated that after his busy day yesterday. He was equally exhausted.

I was able to leave the office at three in the afternoon. That was great. Of all days today was a day when I really needed the opportunity to get home and get some rest.

As soon as I got home I grabbed Dominica and we ran down to Princeton to do some BMW shopping. They had three 330ci convertibles available for us to look at. One in silver, one in a weird mint green and one in a medium dark blue. We bought the dark blue one. Yup, you heard me right. We test drove and then purchased a 2004 330ci Sport Convertible. It is awesome. Only 16,000 miles. We aren’t sure when we will be picking it up yet but we are excited. Check out a silver BMW 330ci to see what it looks like.

When we went to test drive the car the saleman discovered that one of the guys who works at the dealer had been driving the car and had dropped it off at the lot, leaving his personal satellite radio in the car, with absolutely no gas left in it on a day when they knew four whole days in advance that we were going to be coming in to test drive that particular car that day. He was not happy. We took the car around the block and let Dominica drive so that she could get a feel for the car. Then we switched so that I could drive it the last little bit back to the dealer since I had only driven the 325 and not the 330. I went less than an exit before the gas was out of gas – on an uphill ramp to an overpass with no room to pull over. Oops. The guy had left less gas in the car than it would have taken to get to the very closest gas station. We had only gone maybe two miles at the most! The fumes in the tank should have gotten us farther than that. Luckily we had switched drivers because neither Dominica nor our salesman had ever driven a car that was out of gas before! (Those who know me know that I am used to the challenge.) I was able to take the car between neutral and drive and keep the engine turning over and getting power now and then just enough to get the car across the highway overpass and moving down the ramp to get onto US 1 to get us back to the dealership. It was tough merging with no acceleration and doing only twenty or less miles per hour but I did it. I would have driven on the shoulder but some construction equipment was parked there and took up the entire space. They eventually moved and I was able to get out of the way of traffic and just barely get us back to the dealer.

After buying the car we went to the restaurant Big Fish in Princeton for a celebratory dinner. The food was really good. We were both in the mood for fish so it worked out really well.

After dinner I was just exhausted. We came home and just crashed. Min finished watching Red Dwarf and then wrapped up Elizabethtown that we had started a few days ago.