Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is moving day! I can’t believe that we are actually to this point and nothing has gone wrong yet. At least nothing major, serious and/or show stopping.

Dominica and I stayed up kind of late studying last night. We didn’t go to bed until well after midnight. She made it to bed before I did but only by fifteen minutes or so.

Oreo decided that I didn’t need sleep on my last morning at home and got me out of bed at 4:00 am to take him outside. Of course, at that point I was pretty much unable to go back to sleep. Too much to do and to think about. So I ended up only managing to get three and a half hours of sleep all night. Great way to start the week. Actually it could be a lot worse. This will help me to shift my schedule for the rest of the week. I have to be up early tomorrow morning to go to work like normal people again!

Andy called just minutes after 6:00. He has the same abdominal pain that he had two days ago. We had thought that it must be something related to the food that we had eaten at the airport in Georgia but that isn’t very likely now. He decided that the pain was so great and the risk high enough that he really needed to go to the hospital. We are almost forty minutes away from him down here and I was not even dressed yet so he decided that he needed to go in the ambulance since he was in too much pain to drive safely. I would assume that he was in the hospital around 6:30.

Andy called at 7:10 from the hospital to let us know that he had arrived in the hospital and that he was doing okay. It will obviously be a while before they have any additional information and he will be really lucky if they manage to have any diagnosis today anyway. They had him on an IV to make sure that he was not dehydrated and that was probably making him feel a little better, that and not panicing from being home alone with the pain, and he definitely sounded a bit better on the phone. He had called his parents and had let them know what was going on. They are planning on getting him from the hospital later today whenever he is done up there. It is anyone’s guess how long that will take or if they will even let him come home today – but that seems pretty likely. He had me call Miranda so that she would know what was happening.

This morning I had to do the last minute packing of things like my CPAP. I really hate that I can’t pack that ahead of time. Of all of the things to not be able to guarantee that you have ready! Beyond that there really wasn’t much to get ready. I set my laptop up last night so that that would be ready to go. I had to install some software on there just in case since I have the new laptop and have never taken the time to get it loaded up with all of the software that I use on a regular basis. So that took some time. I packed my USB headphones so don’t be surprised if just maybe I manage to squeeze out a podcast from my hotel room in New Jersey. I am staying at the Clarion near the beltway. It isn’t too far from work and it should be a nice hotel. And I can keep racking up my reward points this way. I am really glad that I am a gold club member now because I get an extra 10% reward points for every night that I stay so Dominica and I will be able to get some free hotel stays pretty soon. I have over twenty thousands points (whatever that means) so far.

Dominica and I went to a late breakfast with dad at 10:00 at the Omega Grill. This is my last meal at home in Geneseo before venturing off to New Jersey. We ate and then Dominica and I left directly from there to go to Canandaigua to take our certification tests. Dad went over to our house to spend some time with Oreo while we were out.

Dominica and I took our tests at FLCC at 12:30. Mine took only fifteen or twenty minutes to complete. I took the CompTIA Security+ and passed. It was a much easier test than I had anticipated although they did have some completely off of the wall questions that were related to nothing I have ever seen. Really random stuff. Dominica took a bit longer but she also passed her hardware portion of the A+ exam. The A+ is a two part exam so she has one more test to take before she gets her certification. Let me tell you, she is really relived. This is her first IT test and she was really stressing out about it. She gets test anxiety and that makes these types of tests really hard since everything comes down to a single one hour session sitting at a computer taking one single test. She is very happy.

I left from Canandaigua and drove down to Ithaca to do a couple of minutes of quick work and to check my email to make sure that everything was set for New Jersey. I had told everyone that they needed to contact me by 11:00 this morning or it would be too late to catch me before I left in case anything went wrong. But I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t any bad news hiding in my email before I invested too much driving time. So I made sure that at 2:00 everything was kosher and that I could keep driving east. I was a little worried since they hadn’t responded as to when I was meeting with whom yet.

At 5:00 I spoke with my consulting manager in New Jersey and everything was fine but they had to find out exactly what time I should be showing up to work tomorrow morning. At 6:00 he called me back to tell me that I was not starting tomorrow because there was some problem with my fingerprints. With my fingerprints?!? How could it possibly be that there was a fingerprinting issue and that they didn’t do anything about it until AFTER BUSINESS HOURS the day before I was supposed to be arriving for work? It is passed the point of cancelling my hotel reservation at this point plus I am close to the New Jersey border and it is too late for me to be driving back to New York at this point. I am tired and looking forward to getting out of the car. I only got 3.5 hours of sleep last night and had a very busy day prior to doing all of this driving. So I decided to continue on to New Jersey and my hotel even though there isn’t any work for me to do tomorrow.

I got to the hotel at 7:30 – pretty much right on schedule since I left at 2:00 and spent a little time in Ithaca and went through Ithaca which isn’t on the way exactly. I unpacked and set up my laptop and made some calls and sent some emails trying to get something happening. Of course, they can cancel work after hours but you can’t reach anyone to find out what is going on. So much for a restful evening. That is the last thing that is going to happen at this point. 🙁

I did some reading and tried to relax. Once I was so agitated I started getting a little sleepy. I am ready an Exam Cram book that I grabbed at Borders on Saturday on the Linux Professional Institute exams. Now that the Security+ is finally out of the way I can actually focus on getting some more certs. I have put certification onto the back burner for the last few years and kind of let the Security+ get in my way of getting a lot of certs since I had started working on it but it had a lot of material that I had to learn and I just never got around to actually taking the test. So my goal is to get through as much of the LPI material as possible now while I really have nothing else to do. Being in the hotel is a perfect opportunity to get a lot done. I ordered a bunch of certification materials from Amazon but they have not arrived yet so I wanted something to get started on. Once the stuff from Amazon comes I plan to start work on my Red Hat certifications.

I finally got to bed around midnight or so. Maybe a little after. It took a while before I fell asleep but it wasn’t too late.

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.