Sheep Guarding Llama

Tuesday. Today, after many years of using iPhones, Paul and I went to the T-Mobile store and got me a Samsung Galaxy S9 Android phone. I was not super happy with my iPhone 7+, the audio was terrible and never worked properly, and the camera quality was quite bad with a big smudge in the middle of every picture. It was too large, but you had to get the big size to get the features that I had wanted. It wasn’t a bad phone per se but it was super expensive and failed to live up to expectations. So rather than spending a small fortune to just throw money at the Apple ecosystem, I am trying the alternative after many years away.

In my first day, I have to say that I am very happy with the Galaxy S9. The size is really great. I’d still like it just a tiny bit smaller, but it is a world better than the iPhone. The screen quality feels slightly better to me, but I can’t be sure there. The camera quality is way better. Apple is clearly way behind there. I am not sure how much I like the rounded edges, though. That will have to be seen how that appeals to me over time.

We have been talking about moving devices over to Android because we have been saddled with iOS devices for so long and while they are well built and last forever, they are super costly and limiting. If it was just me and Dominica, it would be one thing. But we need devices for the girls as well and with Android we have way more flexibility for that. Their iPhones are not too much of a problem, but their iPads are and their phones and tablets need to be able to share applications. So making the move over to Android while painful at this time will, over time, greatly lower our costs and provide, we hope, for a stable source of applications for all of the devices that the girls use rather than having them split between different platforms like they are today. We are planning on the kids getting Kindle Fire devices for Christmas, most likely. Their iPads are getting old and we cannot afford to be buying them new iPads. Overall, the iPads were not expensive given how long they held up. But cheaper devices that can be replaced more often make way more sense for kids so that we don’t have to be so incredibly concerned about them getting broken.

The exterminator came by today. We are using the same service that we were using when we used to live here.

Today was another really long day. We are spending all of our time trying to figure out what has happened over the last several years and put everything back together. It is very difficult, and very stressful.

Tonight everyone had insomnia. I have a feeling that there is going to be a lot of that.

Liesl caught whatever Luciana had the other night, she is sick tonight.

Monday. Back to work, facing the situation again. Now that we are back at it, we had to spend the entire day working on account and billing issues to recover from the issue of last week. I also did a helpdesk migration today, from Spiceworks On Premises to Spiceworks Hosted for a client. That went, less than smoothly. They did not make that migration path as smooth as it should have been. But there was no choice as the on premises product had been abandoned some years ago and is no longer able to be installed on current systems and has some bugs that were crippling to the customer.

We made a soft announcement for MangoCon 2019 today. No official dates yet, but we are working on it. It will be in Dallas in the spring, though.

I ran out to get dinner tonight.

Sunday. Tonight we got back to our Harry Potter marathon with Paul and watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This is when the movies really start to get good.

For dinner tonight, Paul made tuna steaks. They were amazing.

Tonight, late at night, Ciana suddenly got suck and threw up while in bed. She was not feeling sick at all, it came out of nowhere. We had no warning, she didn’t feel a thing.

She made it an hour or two, but got sick again. A rough night for her. She is nothing like her mother, though. Getting sick like that doesn’t phase Luciana at all. If it didn’t catch her so much by surprise, I doubt that she would even tell us that anything happened. She is so casual about handling it, she just runs into the bathroom and doesn’t complain at all. She’s been like this for years. So amazingly mature about that. Never known or heard of any kids like that, barely any adults.

So pretty much no sleep for me, either. But obviously I did much better than Ciana.

Saturday. We really needed some diversions today. Yesterday’s events were wearing very heavy upon us. And they will for a long time to come.

Started the day with some coffee. It has been a very nice week, warm and sunny. Today it turned chilly and rainy.

This afternoon, Dominica, Paul and I took Liesl and Luciana to Going Bonkers, an indoor play gym thing for kids. It was a good chance to get out of the house and get the kids away from all of the drama going on.

Going Bonkers was way too loud for me to handle. I had to hide in the high, sealed observation room where it was still loud, but not so bad. I had my Chromebook with me and talked to Maggie for a few hours. Had to get her up to speed on all that was going on, and let her know that finally after years of trying, we are now able to hire her. So Maggie is now no longer just on the fringe of the team, but a core team member now. We are starting quickly to reinvent the company. We have several positions to fill now, quite suddenly.

The girls had a good time and it wore them out a bit. It was a good idea to go out today. We all needed to get out of the house. We might have just gone to a playground today, but it was raining.

I did some DuoLingo with the kids this evening. They are enjoying doing it on a regular basis.

Friday. Today was a really bad day. Today we had to finally take decisive action based on what we had determined on Wednesday evening. Today is certainly a day that I cannot imagine ever forgetting. One of the singularly most traumatic in my life.

I was not able to really be online at all today. When Paul and Dominica had “the call” to deal with the situation this week, I was there for the first few minutes, enough to know what action we took, and enough to know that it was clear all around that everyone knew this was coming and no one was surprised, but it was all so horrible and emotionally devastating that I had to leave the room while the completed the call. This is going to stick with me for a really long time.

This pretty much consumed us for the day. And this is really the cause of why this was the “year without regular SGL updates”. So much that needed to be said, and so little ability to say it.