Sheep Guarding Llama

Domincia found this really cute Boston Terrier named Pepper in a shelter in Warren, PA. The animal shelters are in need of space to be able to help all of the animals that are displaced. So please consider adopting a dog or cat either from your area or find one in an area that is overloaded with animals. And if you are unable to adopt an animal at this time then consider donating to the SPCA. They really need our support. And don’t forget that older animals make really great pets too. Babies are a lot of fun but they are much more work. Mature animals are much easier to take care of and are more readily available at most shelters.

A nice relaxing day at home. That is the plan anyway. Oreo is exhausted today from being sick yesterday so he spent the day sleeping beside me. He is the sweetest little boy. The sun was bright today and he would occassionaly move around the house to find the warmest spot. He actually got out of bed early this morning because the sun was streaming in through the eastern window in our bedroom. The sunlight was just barely hitting the floor in front of the bedroom door and he was there in that nook sunning himself.

I downloaded a number of the Microsoft showcase WMVHD videos so that I could see how they look. They are pretty impressive on my 19″ monitor here. I can only watch 720p here. I am anxious to see 1080p on dad’s new monitor when it comes. That should be really cool.

I started recording episode 45 of the SGL Podcast last night but Andy came over while I was working on it so I had to save finishing the show for today. I also put in some time today auditioning new music for the show. I hope people realize how much bad music I have to listen to to be able to find the really awesome stuff that gets played on the show. You really have to wade through a sea of crap to find anything really good. It is a good thing that I have headphones on or Oreo might get sick again.

I forgot to mention yesterday that my Aunt Sharon went into Castile Christian Academy at 3:00 and met with the school to talk about her teaching art classes there. She is going to be starting in two weeks teaches classes on Fridays. That school is really expanding.

For anyone into fixing up old houses and martial arts there is Home Improvement Ninja. I have no comment as to the quality of the blog. But anyone called Home Improvement Ninja gets a link from someone with a blog called Sheep Guarding Llama.

Andy and I spent a ton of time on the phone this evening trying to fix some networking issues that he was having at home. After several hours of work he finally discovered that there is a known problem with his Linksys RTP300 router that is a part of his equipment from Vonage. The router is known to be flaky and instead of fixing the problems Linksys has removed any indication from their websites that they ever had anything to do with manufacturing the device. They not only took down any obvious links to the product that they might have had but they have also completely erased the product pages that were linked to by big hardware reporting sites like Tom’s Hardware. So if that isn’t a good indication of something being fishy… So Andy spent a ton of time on the phone with Vonage trying to get some answers. Well, they passed him off to a guy in some other country who didn’t speak English. Andy had a hard time understanding him but, more importantly, this guy couldn’t understand Andy’s English (read: this guy didn’t actually speak English) so there was nothing that could be done. So Andy got passed off to a manager who basically told Andy that Vonage doesn’t support people who only have a Vonage phone line and if he wanted Vonage to try to fix anything that he would have to have another phone line! Good sales technique, Vonage: “We only support customers who don’t believe in us enough to have given up their other services.” They also said that they would not replace the known bad equipment until it had been proven to be bad to their satisfaction. So, Andy is probably going to be moving over to a different phone service provider like Broad Voice. One of the big issues with Vonage is that they lock down the service to only work with hardware that they provide. And if that hardware does not function correctly or does not work in a specific type of installation then the service just doesn’t work and there is nothing to do but drop the phone line. Broad Voice allows you to use their equipment or your own or just use a piece of software on a computer if you want so that you are never tied down to equipment that they have chosen. That is SO much better and more flexible. And so much easier. Why are companies so set on making it impossible for normal people to do business with them. Vonage isn’t happy that Andy pays them $25/month. They would rather see him go to the competition than to have to actually have their service work. Why is that a good business plan?

Here is an important tip: If everyone who gets treated badly by a company doesn’t just lie down and take it and instead goes out and tells everyone how badly they have been treated. And then continues to stop doing business with that company and switches to a competitor then pretty soon companies will start making good products and standing by them. But if we all continue to just accept that fact that companies treat us badly, make poor products that don’t work, pass us off to people who don’t speak English and try to brow beat us into thinking that somehow it is our fault that people who don’t speak English can’t communicate with us, lie about their support, fail to deliver on promises, etc. then we will continue to be treated this way because WE are responsible for making it the most cost effective way to do business. So just remember: Everytime that you let a company do the wrong thing you are making the whole system worse for everyone. No one lives in a vacuum. What we do affects everyone.

Dominica came home and really wanted some pizza so I drove over to Walmart to get one for her. She also really wanted to watch Remington Steele and so I picked up the first season of that as well. I have never seen Remington Steele but I was always a fan of the 1980’s hour long mystery action genre (there has to be a better name for it than that) but you know the type that I mean: Simon and Simaon, The Fall Guy, Magnum P.I., Charlie’s Angels, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, etc. Remington Steele ran from 1982 until 1987. Strangely enough I never saw this show when it was originally on. I wasn’t even very familiar with it. I have never come across an episode in all of these years. It is a pretty good show. We watched two episodes before going to bed.

Oreo is feeling some better today but not completely. He is still having “sick”moments. We are going to have to do something next month about his worm medication. It is apparently just too much for him.

I had to be up and out the door before Dominica was out of bed this morning. We had two snow days this week so today is the only day that the computer lab is going to be open at the school and we have at least one class that never managed to get in for their regular class so we are hoping to get everyone caught up today.

I got to the school around 9:30. I didn’t miss anything so I am glad that I didn’t rush to get in any earlier. We ended up having a packed lab in the afternoon with one class coming into have their “make up” class and another coming in just to get some time on the computer. Dad taught class and I spent most of the day updating all of the computer with the Scribus, TuxPaint, TuxType and KDEedu3 packages that we have decided to add.

While we were at the school I discovered two title in the school’s library: “Wisdom and the Millers” and “Prudence and the Millers”. Apparently there is an entire Miller Family Series of books written by Mildred A. Martin. I pulled the first book off of the shelf and showed it to dad. We had a good laugh. What a funny title. We started looking at the book and realized that the name of the author was a family name. The name of the illustrator was also a family name. Then we realized that it was published by Green Pastures Press which is an Amish/Mennonite Press. And then we saw that it was printed in Minerva, Ohio – just one town away from the towns where both of my parents grew up: Louisville and East Canton. Minerva is in Stark County along with both of them. So there is a very good chance that the books are written by someone in the family. Pretty weird.

We did our usual and got lunch at Lorraine’s in Castile. They have the best country fried fish sandwich. And their prices are awesome.

Dad ordered his new Westinghouse LCD 37″ 1080p television today. He has been wanting one for months and finally decided to take the plunge. It will be several weeks before the television actually ships but since dad does not yet have anything to connect the television too it doesn’t matter so much. He has to get the basement ready for it anyway. That is a much bigger screen than he is used to having in his television room. It is really going to change the way that it feels in there.

While he was doing some research today for his television he came across an article in the Crutchfield Advisor that said that there were currently no 1080p sources. Well, just to prove him wrong I went and did some research. Not only can just about any computer video game output in 1080p these days (and have been able to for many, many years) but there are all ready WMVHD DVDs being sold through tons of outlets that are in 1080p. Plus the upcoming (okay, technically not available yet) Sony Playstation 3 is going to be 1080p. And, of course, there are lots of scalers out on the market that produce 1080p. But the big thing is that most computers produce 1080p and computers are the source of the next generation of signals because everyone is tired of the old format wars. We want centralized, integrated video sourcing. No more DVD player for one thing, VHS VCR for another and LaserDisc for the previous collection. We want all of our video stored in one single location so that we need only one machine and one interface. And we don’t want to paw through huge collections of discs to find the one that we want. We want it all on hard drive in a single location that we can watch from anywhere. We want our video collections to be like our audio collections now. And now that I get a significant amount of what I watch off of the web it makes no sense at all to be putting things onto disc after downloading them just to be able to watch them on a computer again later.

I was doing some searching online today and discovered that Microsoft has a site where you can download high definition trailers made using their WMV9 HD technology. You can also buy HiDef DVDs right from there as well. Amazon is starting to carry WMVHD discs too. I will be getting one or two soon. They are not expensive at all. As long as you have a 1280×1024 monitor you should be able to watch 720p videos just perfectly. 1080p requires a higher resolution to watch without scaling down. You can also find WMVHD stuff like Lewis and Clark at National Geographic.

Andy came down around 5:00 so that we could do some work. We worked until 6:15 and then took a break to go down to my aunt and uncle’s house so that we could go through my grandmother’s books to see if there was anything that Dominica or I might want out of the piles. I did end up taking four bags or so of books. Not a ton but at least we were able to find some stuff that looked interesting. I definitely got my book interest from my grandmother. We have always ended up reading a lot of the same books.

After book filtering, Andy and I went to Mama Mia’s on Main Street and got us some dinner. Dominica doesn’t really like Mia’s so we have to go when she isn’t home. We went back to the house after eating and worked for several more hours.

Oreo was pretty sick tonight. He was visibly not feeling well and he ended up throwing up too. He kept coming up to me and pawing at me but I didn’t know what to do for him. Dominica reminded me that we had given him his Interceptor worm medicine yesterday and that he always ends up getting sick the day after we give it to him. So we are hoping that that is all that it is. Poor little boy. He is very sad tonight.

Dominica got home later than usual. She didn’t get a chance to leave work until 10:15 and then had to go out and clean the snow off of her car. She called the house to see if we would go and pick her up a pizza but we didn’t think that it would be wise to leave Oreo home alone when he was feeling so poorly so I ordered her a pizza from Pizza Paul’s. She got home around 11:00. She has been having a tough time at work because the work has really turned into a lot of repetiveness and the cool troubleshooting that she used to be able to spend her time doing has been moved to another company so it is a lot more boring than it used to be. Hopefully things will be changing there soon but with the company losing so much money it isn’t all that likely.

I got up this morning and went right out to breakfast with dad at the Omega.

My day today is not a really hectic one and for that I am very thankful. I managed to do some work with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 today. It isn’t very often that I really get a chance to play around with doing any programming so that was fun. I also managed to do a little cleaning around the house. Not a lot but it was an improvement. I ran some errands around town today as well including going to the post office and the UPS Store.

Now here is a really cute Rabbit Stealing A Cookie. Now who wouldn’t love that?

I finally managed to record and release another podcast tonight. It has been forever since I have managed to get one turned out. Sorry about that gang – I know that a lot of you look forward to listening to the show. Apparently, however, I didn’t really have a good feeling for just how many people do listen to the show. I was looking through my media files hosted over on the Internet Archive and discovered that the Sheep Guarding Llama Podcast Episode 28 from November 25, 2005 has been downloaded 4,500 times! None of my other podcast episodes are in that kind of range at all. I am completely blown away. I was not expecting to see anything like that. I was really surprised that that particular episode was so popular considering the fact that I have never, until just now, directly linked to that media file so people have been getting there through other links or by discovering it on their own or something. It turns out that there is a bit of media that I have hosted over there that has become decently popular. Our quick video of Dominica and I in Disney’s Animal Kingdom from our vacation last year has been watched 500 times.

I am linking to a story about StudioGlyphic’s friend Jake’s girlfriend, Christine, who has been diagnosed with cancer and is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. Normally bone marrow donors are near impossible to find but for her it is harder than usual because she is Filipino and there is not a large Filipino population in the United States. Everyone is being asked to link to the story to get the word out. Thanks to Wil Wheaton for tipping us off.

Dominica came home tonight and we watched the very last episode of Star Trek: Then Next Generation Season Four. So now it is time to get the next season from Andy. Boy, we just burn right through those babies.

Rumor has it that the filming of the next Chronicles of Narnia movie has begun. The next movie will be Prince Caspian and is expected to hit theatres sometime around Christmas of 2007. Boy that is a long time to wait.