Sheep Guarding Llama

Today I managed to post the two parts of the Operating System Architecture lecture that I gave at Finger Lakes Community College on Wednesday morning. You can check out Lecture Part One and Lecture Part Two hosted at OurMedia. Sorry but I didn’t have time to do anything but turn the files in Windows Media videos so what if you can’t use those there isn’t anything that I can do right now. I have been way too busy to worry about getting these into a better format. I am hoping that whatever the college makes will be better than these but it could easily not be. These are pretty decently large videos since they are 640×480. I think that they turned out really well, though, and look good and you can hear them decently well.

Dominica and I both slept in this morning. We needed it. Min is always exhausted after having been working all week and needs her Sunday mornings to catch up. I haven’t had much sleep and this was my first full night in my own bed so I was appreciating the time.

Dad came over after church and picked us up and we went over to the Omega Grill for lunch. We have to get in all of the Omega time that we can because I am going to be deprived of it starting tomorrow. We got back from lunch and discovered that Oreo had had an accident again. We figured that this would happen. He didn’t get enough time to go outside three times before we left and he really needs that to happen each and every day. At least we have learned that that is what it takes.

Dominica and I spent the afternoon studying and packing. I have a plastic bin in the living room that I am placing books, magazines, electronics and everything else non-clothing related into so that I can just carry it out to the car tomorrow. Dominica packed all of my clothes and stuff so that I wouldn’t forget anything. I always end up forgetting stuff that I need or panicing and thinking that I forgot something that I need.

Dominica did a lot of studying too. Tomorrow is her first ever certification exam and she is pretty nervous. She doesn’t have a really good idea of what to expect and she is a nervous test taker anyway. I needed to spend more time studying for my exam than I did but I have so many other things to do that I couldn’t focus on it as much as I wanted to. I am feeling confident enough that I am not really worried. And given everything else that is going on it isn’t the biggest deal in the world if I don’t pass it. At some point you just have to take these tests and learn what they are like whether you pass them or not. I am at that point so at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon I am taking the Security+ test ready or not.

At 5:30 Dominica and I went over to the Omega, again, and met dad and the Richardsons for dinner. This is my last chance to see everyone before I go to New Jersey. We ended up hanging out at the restaurant for two hours. Min and I were both planning on going to bed early but that did not end up happening. We were both still studying at 12:30 in the morning. So much for being well rested.

Today definitely feels like an odd “in-between” day. There is nothing in particular to do today but there is a ton of stuff that needs to be taken care of. I made sure to have nothing scheduled for either today or tomorrow. That would just be too dangerous. I really need today so that I can get caught up mentally a little bit.

Dominica had to work extra early today. There was some schedule change at work. So she was up super early and I could barely remember her even getting up. On her way to work she went to Tim Horton’s to get some donuts for the crew at the office. While she was there she noticed that her driver’s side headlamp was out again. It has only been a few days since we had it fixed. So she got her donuts and ran over to the shop that we use right around the corner to see if they were open and if they could take a look at it since she had been stopped by the police for it once all ready. She was lucky enough that they were open and were able to squeeze her right in. Actually the town clerk was there in front of her getting an oil change but she understand that Dominica was on her way to work so she let them work on Min’s car first. They ended up replacing the headlamp because they just weren’t able to make the connection actually stay connected on the old one. So it only took fifteen or twenty minutes and Min was barely late for work.

Andy called early this morning and got me out of bed. I was awake before he called but I hadn’t gotten up yet. I only get so much time with Oreo so I take advantage of the snuggles when I can. Oreo was super snuggle boy all night long. He has been missing me the last few weeks and he likes to be really close whenever he can. So he slept most of the night on my arm. Andy had a little emergency this morning. He was feeling pretty sick and almost passed out. He was feeling so sick that he decided that he needed an ambulance since he lives alone and if he passed out there would be no one to check on him. Especially since we just got back from a business trip I wasn’t very likely to call him for maybe a week (since I am going to be pretty caught up in my own stuff) and everyone else would be expecting him to be tired and would leave him alone. Miranda would be the only person to notice him not answering the phone and she wouldn’t have any easy means to check on him. So the ambulance came to his house but by the time that they got there he was feeling enough better that he didn’t think that it would be a good idea to go with them (things start getting pretty pricey once you start using the Rural/Metro limo service.) That is when he called his parents and me to let us know what was going on to make sure that there was someone to check on him. By this point he wasn’t too worried, especially once he remembered how badly my stomach had been last night, and figured that we had both gotten something from that ice cream that we had eaten. We weren’t thinking that it was food poisoning or anything so serious – most likely just bad ice cream or cookies.

So we decided that it would be smart if I went up to Brighton and picked him up so that he wouldn’t have to be alone and have to keep everyone worrying in case something happened. So around 9:00 I went up to his apartment with Oreo and we picked him up and brought him down to Geneseo. He was still feeling sick but not all that bad. He ended up sleeping for a while on the couch in the living room. He hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night and was pretty tired.

Around 1:30 Andy and I drove up and picked Dominica up from work and went out for lunch. Andy wasn’t feeling great but he was improving and thought that he would be okay being home after getting some lunch. He hadn’t eaten all day and was getting a little bit peevish. I was kind of hungry too and Dominica really appreciated the company. We went to the Olympia Diner on Lyle Avenue across from the Wegmans. The food was good, but it just wasn’t the Omega. 😉 We didn’t have a lot of time because we were just on Dominica’s lunch break. She just gets an hour although that is a little flexible. But she did come in a little late this morning so best not to push it. This is actually the first chance that Dominica and I got to talk to each other in person since Tuesday! We tend to cross paths when one or the other of us is sleeping so it seems like we see each other far more often than we really do.

We took Dominica back to work then I drove Andy back to his apartment. On the way home I swung into Borders really quickly and grabbed the latest issue of Linux Magazine and I got a book on the Linux Professional Institutes LPIC certification exam since my Red Hat certification books have not arrived yet and I want to be doing nothing but Linux reading while I am in New Jersey. This is a prime opportunity for me to really focus on this stuff and I don’t want to spend my time doing anything outside of the job that I am there to do. So Linux certifications it is. That will be my focus for at least the next six months.

I got home and managed to relax for a little while but not too long. Dad came over at 7:00 to pick me up and we went over to the Omega for dinner. We had been planning on doing it earlier but lunch was awfully late. We have been trying to do lunch or dinner when possible since my schedule is going to be so crazy that who knows when I will be able to do anything again. Probably I will be able to do lunch next Saturday but who knows at this point.

Dominica got home at 8:30 and we decided that we needed to take the night off and relax so we went down to the basement and watched several episodes of the second season of Remington Steele. The second season is even better than the first one. We are really enjoying that show and we get a ton of mileage out of it too. It has to be one of the best values that we have gotten from any DVD purchase in a long time. And we are timing it perfectly to be ready for the third season when it releases.

That pretty much sums up the day. Nothing really happened and that was just the way that it needed to be. I really couldn’t handle thinking about anything today. Tomorrow is packing day. I have to have my laptop, magazines, books, hotel, clothes, etc. all ready to go so that we aren’t worrying about that on Monday morning. Monday at 1:00 both Dominica and I are taking our certification exams. This is her first one and she is really nervous about it. So we have to do some studying tomorrow as well. There is just no end to all that needs to be done.

Today is our last day in South Carolina. Once again I was up at 7:15 this morning. I got up and got ready to face the day. I showered and dressed and woke Andy up at 8:16 so that he could get ready. We managed to keep on exactly the same schedule as yesterday without even trying or setting an alarm or anything. We have an 11:00 meeting scheduled this morning so we can be pretty leisurely.

It was around 9:00 when we got out of the hotel and drove over to the Waffle House to get some breakfast. As always, the Waffle House breakfast was awesome. I love eating there. I really wish that we had a Waffle House somewhere in New York that we could go to. That would be cool. As it is the nearest one to us is in Clark’s Summit, Pennsylvania which I will be going through all of the time as I go back and forth to New Jersey starting next week.

After breakfast we drove out to the health campus so that we could do some work. Andy put in a lot of time last night learning how to program the scales that they use in Anderson so that we could get them set up and working for them. Their local scale company wasn’t able to program them so we had to do it. We arrived at the hospital at 9:45 and Andy got right to work. It took him almost no time at all to have the scale working properly. It was really obvious that the scale company hadn’t tried to work on the scale at all if Andy was able to just read the programming book and set up the scale on the first try. The scale company tech is supposed to do this stuff for a living.

We had our meeting at 11:00. That went well. There wasn’t really all that much for us to talk about in the meeting since the real reason that we were there was to give everyone a chance to meet Andy now that we are going to be transitioning him in to take care of the account. It was all very informal.

After the meeting we went out to lunch with Joe at Carson’s (Claim Your Steak) Steak House. I was able to get a catfish sandwich there. We were able to kill time until around 1:30 but at that point Joe had stuff that he had to do so Andy and I were left with an empty afternoon. We decided “better safe than sorry” and took the opportunity to drive to Atlanta early. We didn’t have to leave Anderson until 4:00 and that should still have left us with more than enough time to get to the airport and to get through security but it seemed dumb to just hang around Anderson just in case anything went wrong with our travels. So we were on the road west before 2:00.

We got down to the airport so early that we really had to find some way to kill some time. It was only about 4:30 when we got to the airport and our flight was not until 9:00. Yeah, that is some serious time to kill. This is one of the things that I really hate about flying. Even a short flight can end up being so much of a hassle that it ends up killing your entire day. So to kill time we decided just to drive around Atlanta. Neither of us has ever spent any time in Atlanta so we figured that it wouldn’t be a total waste of time. We drove up route 29 from the airport through College Park to downtown. It was handy to get a little bit of a feel for the city. That really is quite a large city. You really don’t realize it until you are driving through it but it is truly huge.

So that was a long drive and we managed to kill quite a bit of time. We never once stopped and got out of the car. We just drove around. That wasn’t the best thing for keeping me well rested as I was tired of driving even before we started driving about aimlessly. But I am glad that I got to see the city a little bit. I hope that at some point that I will have a good chance to come down and enjoy the city for a few days. I really think that I would like Atlanta.

We got to the airport and dropped off our rental car around 6:00. Nothing like having tons and tons of time to spare. And better yet having tons of time to kill in an airport while lugging around a very large amount of luggage since we weren’t checking anything. I dare not check any luggage with my pending trip to New Jersey just three days away. It is better to have a bit of inconvenience now than to have any problems to deal with on Monday. I can’t believe that we are all ready up to the point where I have to worry about things for Monday.

We took our time getting checked in and getting through security. No reason to be in a hurry today. We fought to get a table to sit at in front of a Ben and Jerry’s and decided to get some ice cream as the airport was way too warm and we really just needed anything to help pass the time. It took about half an hour, or so it seemed, to get through the line and to actually get the ice cream. It wasn’t very good. Actually, it wasn’t good at all. Oh well. At least it helped to kill some time. We both got B&J’s Cookie Cookie Sunday but the cookies that were in them were rock hard and tasteless. Andy didn’t even end up eating his.

We decided to give up the table so that others could sit down and be disgusted by the ice cream selection, wait and prices. We moved down to the gate and set up shop there. It was just barely 7:00 when we sat down at the gate and our flight wasn’t due to board until a few minutes before 9:00. We had to fight to find anyplace to sit since the flight leaving from the gate previous to our flight hadn’t boarded yet and all of those people were at the gate sitting around. What a boring afternoon this was. I was feeling totally exhausted from a combination of stress, an over busy schedule, long hours of doing nothing and lots of driving.

We ended up sitting next to a technologist from Rochester, Brian Moyer the COO of StormFrog from Bushnell’s Basin. We talked with him for almost two full hours and it really helped to pass the time. I really hate waiting in airports. The airport in Atlanta doesn’t even have free Internet access. How silly is that. Even Rochester’s airport has free Internet access. Time for Atlanta to get with the times. It IS the world’s busiest airport.

The flight back to Rochester was uneventful except for the fact that I had terrible stomach cramps the whole way. I am blaming the bad ice cream. We got into Rochester just after 11:00. Dominica had been out of work for a while and had gone down to dad’s and picked up Oreo so she and Oreo were at home waiting for me. We had thought about having her pick Andy and I up from the airport but it ended up being more hassle than it was worth. So Andy and I walked way out into the airport parking lot to find my car. We were stuck parking so far out it probably took us close to twenty minutes just to get to the car. And it was a little bit cold out after having been enjoying the South Carolina and Georgia weather for the past two days.

I drove Andy to his apartment in Brighton and then drove down to Geneseo. My stomach was still killing me by the time I got to the house. Oreo barked as I came in. He and Dominica had gone to bed some time before and were sleeping. I didn’t actually manage to get into bed until significantly after 1:00 in the morning and probably didn’t fall asleep until close to 2:00. But boy was I tired. These past two weeks have been just totally crazy and things aren’t slowing down. Three days until New Jersey.

After going through a New York winter, even an exceptionally mild one like we just did, it is always just awesome to be able to wake up to a sunny, Southern morning in beautiful Anderson, South Carolina. I was up and out of bed at 7:15. We don’t actually have anything scheduled today so we are in no particular hurry. That is a great feeling. Joe, whom we work with down here, is expecting us sometime today but no particular time. This is definitely the way to do business meetings. I love working in South Carolina.

Andy got up at 8:15 and we were out of the hotel by 9:30 or so. Our first stop here in Anderson was at Stewart’s Fast Food near the hospital. I miss eating there when I have been away so I wasn’t about to skip the opportunity. We got our breakfast and Andy got his first real taste of life here in the south. The guys sitting on either side of our booth wanted to talk to us about computers and technology. I guess that they could just sense that we were geeks. We were also significantly overdressed for the venue in our sport coats. I called Joe from the restaurant and got him set to meet us up at the health campus north of town.

Andy and I drove our rental Kia Spectra up past the hospital that he has never seen. I think that it is always a bit impressive to have flown a significant distance across the country and to get to drive into a city and see a large medical facility and realize that it is one of your customers and that, in Andy’s case, they run software that you built and have for many years. Since Andy has never been down to South Carolina before (except for one quick zip through on 85 a few years back) this is all new to him.

We spent most of the day working at the Health Campus on the north side of town. That is the really new and amazingly beautiful facility. Andy couldn’t believe what a gorgeous hospital it was when we pulled into it and what a gigantic facility it was. We were there all morning. Then we went to lunch with Joe over at the Red Lobster on Main Street.

We hopped between facilities in the afternoon and ended up working at the hospitals until the end of the day. We actually put in a full, regular working day today. Before quitting for the day Andy and I made a run over to the only local bookstore, Books-A-Million, to see if they had any decent computer books. They didn’t. They had a really sad computer section. Very non-technical. We joked about how it was just the “For Dummies” section and they only had sections of books that could be covered with material from the “For Dummies” series. Every single computer category that they had had at least one “For Dummies” book in it and almost nothing actually technical. I guess Clemson isn’t much of a technical school. Then it was back to the hotel for a little while. We had about three hours at the hotel to relax. Andy worked on some scale programming that needs to be done tomorrow. I did some SGL updating and got caught up on the email and voicemail from throughout the day. It is amazing how easy it is to get behind on that stuff when you are gone during the middle of the day! What a problem that is going to be starting next week. Eeek! One more thing to deal with. There is way too much to deal with by then.

STUNT COPTER!!

At 7:00 Andy and I drove out to exit 27 on US85 and met Joe and his girlfriend Stephanie at Charlie T’s for some drinks, dinner and karaoke. I didn’t do any singing tonight but I have sang there in the past several years ago. It was really loud there tonight and the good karaoke singing has been mostly replaced by some really wussie rapping karaoke little boys from Clemson. It was really creepy. So we left around 9:00.

Andy and I got back to the hotel and had way too much time to kill with nothing to do. We were too tired to do any real work but not tired enough to go to bed yet. We don’t want to go to bed really early because we have to travel tomorrow night and I have to be driving at midnight. So we walked over to Hooters for a drink before going to bed. We weren’t there very long. But going to bed at 9:00 was way too early. We were back just after 10:00.

Only three more days before I leave for New Jersey. Whoa! I am totally not ready for that.

Tomorrow we have a meeting at the hospital north of town at 11:00. We have some specific work that needs to be done before we leave. We have to be on the road back to Atlanta by 4:30. We drop off the car at 7:00, if possible, and then get checked in for our flight. It takes half an hour just to walk out to the correct concourse. What a pain that is. Then we fly out at 9:00. Land at 11:00 in Rochester and drive home. Home around midnight. No baggage to check so it speeds things up a little. Then it will be time for sleep. Dominica is working early tomorrow. She is going in at 9:30 but gets to go home early which is good since she can pick up Oreo earlier.

Now today is a really busy day for me. I had to get up at 6:30 this morning so that I could get ready to tackle the day. I didn’t manage to get to bed last night until a bit after midnight. I really need to get more sleep. I am not so young anymore.

Dad picked me up at 7:45. He had stopped by McDonalds in Geneseo on his way to the house and got us breakfast to take with us in the car. I had the car mostly loaded both with what I needed for the lecture this morning as well as everything that I need for Andy and my trip to South Carolina this afternoon.

I drove dad and myself out to FLCC in Canandaigua. We ate our breakfast in the car. We arrived in plenty of time and got to just relax for a little bit before the class started. They had a projector for me and someone to opperate two video cameras so we got some pretty serious coverage of the class. They are going to try to get me a copy of the video once it is edited. I brought my new Canon camcorder as well and dad recorded the class too so we have our own copy although they were using some pretty serious equipment like a wireless microphone that we didn’t get to use. I really want to get a nice mic and some related equipment for recording this type of thing.

I think that the lecture went okay. It is always really hard to tell with these things. Dad said that it went well but I feel like I did a better job last time. At least this time I had a PowerPoint presentation to work off of so that I can go back and add to it and make it better as opposed to starting from scratch again and trying to figure out what I had talked about last time six months later.

After the lecture we came back to Geneseo and got some lunch at the Omega. Sure, we COULD have eaten in Canandaigua but it just isn’t the same. Besides I will be out of town for the next few days and everyone at the Omega is going to miss me enough as it is.

I had about two hours at home to get the last few items together for the trip (most everything was packed by Dominica last night before we went to bed) and to wrap up any loose ends that I had. I managed to get Dominica and I scheduled to take our tests on Monday. She is taking her A+ Hardware exam and I am taking the Security+ exam. We are taking them at 1:00 in Canandaigua at FLCC. We will have to drive out there separately because I will leave straight from there to go to New Jersey. I don’t have any hotel or plans yet for Monday night so I need to deal with that over the weekend.

I had to panic at the last minute and get paperwork sent out for my job in New Jersey and take care of some tax stuff. There is so much to be done when you are going to be away for so long. I finally managed to get out of the house at 3:00 and had to rush to the post office and then up to Rochester to pick up Andy. Boy am I glad that he lives so near to the airport.

We got to the airport and FINALLY found some parking after driving around forever. There was just no available parking anywhere. We rushed into the airport and they rushed us through the check-in line because we were a little short on time. We got through security without any hassle and were to the terminal with about ten minutes or so to just stand around waiting for them to start boarding calls. So that worked out just about perfectly.

Our flight went well. Rochester to Atlanta really isn’t that far and it is pretty comfortable to fly for that distance. We left Rochester at 5:00 and were in Atlanta around 7:15. It was so awesome to leave the freezing cold to a nice comfortable cool evening. We walked the long way from Concourse C to the main airport area and picked up our rental car from Hertz. We were lucky enough to get a Kia Spectra EX which is a pretty nice car for a rental.

The drive from Atlanta to Anderson is over two hours so that took us a little while but we had been flying all day and driving some really wasn’t too big of a deal. Besides the Kia gets pretty good gas mileage and we have unlimited mileage from Hertz so we can afford to put on a few miles. We arrived in Anderson just before 10:00 and got checked into the Comfort Suites that John and I used to use out on exit 19B of US85. It must have been at least two years since the last time that I was down here. It is weird and comforting to be back. I think that the last time that I was here might have been the time that Dominica and I drove down to South Carolina to meet Francesca and the girls as they were driving to New York.

We were just late enough that everything was beginning to close. The only place open where we could still get some food and tasty beverages and that we could walk to easily was Hooters right in the parking lot of the hotel so we walked over there and got some dinner. It wasn’t too late but we have work to do tomorrow so we walked back to the hotel after dinner and pretty much went straight to bed. It was close to midnight by the time we actually were going to bed.