Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Nate joins the ranks of all of us thirty-somethings today. One by one they fall.

The sun is out today and all of the snow is disappearing pretty quickly. I had to get up this morning to a call from Eric because one of our routers was down and lots of services were off line. Good thing that this happened and not a week from today. That would put us into a real panic. I sure hope we are stable at least through next week. Next week will be the worst week for a long time because I am going to be so busy just learning my way around and how to deal with things down in New Jersey. And we don’t know how good my Internet connection is going to be. So that could increase our panic level significantly.

My main project today is preparing my presentation for FLCC tomorrow. I am doing my Operating System Architecture lecture tomorrow morning at 9:00. Dad is picking me up here in Geneseo at 7:45 and we are driving over there together. He is going to video tape the presentation for me. The school is going to try to record it as well but they were not sure whether or not they would be able to do that tomorrow. So today I am putting together the PowerPoint presentation to use tomorrow. I am assuming that I will have projector again that I can use.

When dad and I get back to Geneseo tomorrow Dad is going to take Oreo home with him for the day and Dominica will pick him up on her way home from work. Andy and I fly out at 5:00 so our day is pretty short in general. I shouldn’t be in too much of a rush but I pretty much will just get home from Canandaigua and then head straight out to pick up Andy and drive to the airport. We really should be at the airport by 3:30. So I need to leave Geneseo at 2:45. I expect that dad and I will get back to Geneseo around noon or 1:00, do lunch and then it will be time for me to leave.

Min and I went out for lunch. It must seem like we never eat at home. Oh wait, we don’t. On the way home we went to Walmart and got some supplies including new binkies for Oreo and a new ball for him to play with, some groceries and two movies: Capote and Chicken Little. I got a cute video of Oreo Playing with His New Rubber Ball that I posted to the Internet Archive this evening.

So I have discovered that the PocketPC PDA that I have that used to be able to last for a month on a single battery charge is now only able to last for three days or so. It is very discouraging. My cell phone is having the same issue. Even with the ultra-mega-super-massively extended life battery it is lucky if it survives a single night at my bedside. I don’t understand why suddenly every battery driven device that I own is unable to hold any type of charge at all.

I finally managed to get Fedora Core 5 downloaded and installed today. So far I am pretty impressed. Overall it looks like a more polished product than the previous version and the installation process is even easier than the last go-round. Installing Fedora Core is a total breeze. I am quite impressed.

Late this afternoon Dominica and I decided that we needed to take a break and relax. So we headed down to the theatre and watched Chicken Little and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. HP4 is definitely showing the series mature. They seem to be getting better and better. I am really looking forward to the upcoming installments.

After the movies it was more studying for us. Dominica tried a number of practice tests and has determined that she is not ready to take her A+ exam quite yet and we are going to have to put it off. We are going to try to take it on Monday on my way to New Jersey.

Lots to do today. This job in New Jersey is running us ragged as we try to get everything ready so that I can go. On Friday I had to run to Rochester to deal with fingerprinting. This morning Dominica and I got up and drove up to a medical center right across the street from her office and I did my drug test. That ended up taking a lot longer than it should have. Maybe an hour or so. At least it gave Min a chance to just sit in the car and study for her A+ test. She had brought study materials along with her so that she could be productive. Oreo was just happy to get to be in the car.

After the drug test we drove around looking for “Dogs At Play” – a doggie day care facility that we are considering for Oreo when there is no one to watch him. Once again, hardships of me moving. I have been his stay at home doggie dad ever since we got him. I really enjoy getting to spend the day with Oreo. This is going to be tough on both of us. We had a heck of a time finding “Dogs At Play”. They are located on a one way street in a really awkward and hard to get to area of the city. We probably drove around for more than twenty minutes just trying to find the street and being within a block or two of it almost the entire time.

The day care place looked nice. They have alternating big dog / little dog days. Today was a big dog day but there were two Boston terriers there too. Both of the women who run the place have Bostons and they are there everyday. Apparently Bostons are really good at holding their own with larger dogs. They really don’t realize how small they are. The two Bostons that live there are both girls and much smaller than Oreo. Oreo is about 25 pounds and on the large side for a Boston. He is all muscle and in very good shape, not pudgy (like his daddy.) He is also quite tall. So he really seems like a much larger dog than most of the Bostons that we meet. Oreo didn’t get to go in and visit today. They think that it is usually too much for a dog to be suddenly introduced into the world of doggie day care. They prefer to bring them in with just a few dogs and let them get acquainted before letting them in with the larger numbers during the day. So Dominica made an appointment for next Monday to bring Oreo in and let him play with the two Bostons for a little while to see how they get along.

We were hungry and drove down to Jay’s Diner for some lunch. We called Andy on the way down but weren’t able to find him to see if he wanted to get some lunch too. We went right past his apartment on the way and even pulled into the parking lot to see if he was there but there weren’t any signs of life so we went on to lunch by ourselves. At Jay’s we tried their new stuffed French Toast which is basically regular French toast sliced in half and covered in cream cheese. Yummy! But boy is that ever a filling meal.

Oreo and I got out of bed before nine this morning. A bit of snow fell overnight and Upstate New York is white once again. We managed to go all winter without hardly having any snow at all and half of the time not even needing to wear coats and now that we are just a week away from spring we are bitter cold and covered in snow! What a place this is.

Dominica slept in and I put in some serious work on the email server that was having problems the other night and got caught up on the SGL dailies. I know that while I am in New Jersey the dailies are going to be just about everyone’s sole means of communicating with me so I have been trying to be really diligent about keeping them up to date and full of actual information.

I got Andy and my reservations all set for our trip to South Carolina this week. We are flying out of Rochester on Wednesday afternoon at 5:00 and arriving in Atlanta, Georgia just after 7:00. We will rent a car and drive east out to Anderson, South Carolina and be checked in to the Comfort Suites out on US85 by 10:00 at the latest. That will give us plenty of time to get some rest in before spending all of Thursday at the hospitals. Then we are returning to Atlanta on Friday at 9:00 and flying back to Rochester and should arrive just after 11:00. I should be able to get home just an hour or an hour and a half after Dominica.

Dominica’s Saturday schedule has changed and she is now working an hour earlier than she used to. That is going to make her Saturdays that much more exhausting. She barely has enough time to get home, sleep and get back to work. In theory her weekend will start an hour earlier but she will be even more tired going into it. I am not sure that it is worth it.

Dominica got out of bed just in time to shower and be ready when dad came over after church so that we could go get some lunch at the Omega. I am all ready starting to miss the Omega Grill and I have not even moved away yet. How sad is that?

After lunch we spent the afternoon studying, me for the Security+ exam and Dominica for the A+. I think that I am ready to take the Security+ after all of this time. I can’t believe how long I have put this test off. I will be very happy to have this out of the way. While I am working in New Jersey my plan is to focus on the Red Hat certifications since they will directly apply to exactly what I am doing down there. I shouldn’t waste the opportunity. And I am certain that my manager will be happy to let me flex my hours in order to take tests directly related to my work. They will probably let me take any tests I want regardless of its relevance but I am not so sure about that. We will have to see. It would be really nice if I was able to test all of the time down there because I could get a lot of stuff out of the way while I am stuck down there all by myself. Studying at night is a good way to pass the time. That is how I did most of my early certifications – I would study in a hotel room by myself when there was nothing else to do. It made me be really productive.

Dominica went to Walmart and did some shopping. She found some new clothes for me. I need new clothes since I am starting the new job in New Jersey and don’t have enough “office” clothes to be anyplace full time unless they want me in jeans and polos all of the time. On her way home she went to Pizza Paul’s and got us some dinner. A cheese pizza and one of their giant brownies. Min really likes their pizza and I really like their brownies. I still prefer my pizza from Mia’s but these are the sacrifices that one must make for one’s marriage. 🙂

On her way back to the house Dominica got pulled over by a village cop in training because her headlight was out. We are planning on taking the car in tomorrow to deal with that. Dominica only discovered that the light was out yesterday and told me while she was at work. I called but the shop was closed for the weekend so tomorrow is the first chance that we will have to get it fixed. She didn’t get a ticket but she was pretty annoyed.

We spent the evening watching a few episodes of Remington Steele Season One. Only one episode left to go after tonight. Min picked up Season Two while she was at Walmart and Season Three is due out in just a few weeks. We did some additional studying and then it was time for bed.

While she was at work today Dominica posted a MySpace like site up on Dogster just for Oreo. What a cute idea that site is. A great way for people to show off their best friends. And Oreo is such a cutie. Everyone needs to check out his page and “Leave Him a Bone”.

In the mail today I finally got a letter from Empire State College telling me that I actually completed a class that I had actually finished taking in December of 2004! Now if you think that I have been procrastinating about getting my degree sent to me you need to realize that I have been waiting for a year and a half for four of my classes to have their paperwork go through saying that I actually completed them. I have been done with all of my graduation paperwork for over a month now and not all of the school’s paperwork for my classes has come through yet. Heaven only knows how they expect people to be able to take classes one semester after another if it takes this long for the last class to complete. You could make it all of the way through your degree program before you found out that you failed out your first semester. Apparently I am still a long way away from actually graduating. There hasn’t been any word from the college about my degree in well over a month. Maybe two!

Dad and I went to lunch today. On the way back we stopped off at Walmart and looked for the treadmill that he has been trying to get there for months. They still don’t have it. He has been trying to get it one way or another for a long time now and Walmart is doing a really bad job with this. They keep their display treadmill on display but it would appear that they no longer carry the item. None of their locations stock it and the web site dropped it since dad started looking to find a way to get it. And since they won’t deliver it to your house he didn’t want to order it and have to deal with it arriving in Geneseo at the store. So he is probably going to just get a different treadmill from Sears or Dick’s or someplace like that.

Oreo and I drove over to the Millen’s in Livonia at 7:00. Dominica is going to go straight to their house when she gets off of work. We have hardly had any time to see them in the past several months and now we will have no time at all to see anyone for the forseeable future so we wanted to try to get together at least once before I left town. Sorry to everyone that we haven’t been able to get together with at all – move closer and be available last minute on a Saturday night is about all that I can suggest. Our schedules are just crappy for getting together with people. It is very sad. We have gone for so long without seeing almost anyone.

Dominica came down from work and got lost on her way to Livonia. She got pretty close but ended up on Dutch Hollow Road instead of on Bronson Hill. Luckily she was able to get down to the Millen’s before the snow started really coming down. Just after she arrived we got quite a bit of snow and the ground was completely covered when we left. The roads were really slippery and we had to drive really slowly to get back to Geneseo.

I started studying again for the CompTIA Security+ exam. Yes I know that it has been forever. I can’t put this off anymore. Dominica is planning on taking the first test of her A+ exam on Tuesday and I am going to go along with her so I figured that it would only make sense for me to take my test at the same time. I am not actually ready for it but I will see what I can do between now and then. This is one test that has been hanging over my head for far too long and I really need to just get it out of the way. It has never been a priority for me and I really should have chosen a different certification to have worked on but I didn’t and now I just need to face the music and have done with it.