Sheep Guarding Llama

Today Dominica had to get up early and I got to sleep in with Oreo. He wasn’t much in the mood for being snuggly, though. As soon as Dominica was out of bed he moved over and slept on her pillow. 🙁 Neither Oreo nor I felt much like sleeping in this morning and we were both up long before Dominica even left the house.

Dominica made me promise that we were not going to do anything for St. Valentine’s Day. She has decided that it is just a commercial holiday without any real meaning and so she thinks that it is okay to ignore the entire thing. Works for me. I have never held much stock in the whole holiday thing anyway. If I didn’t like Christmas songs so much I would completely ignore the entire Christmas season. My biggest complaint today is that Ask A Ninja didn’t do a special Valentine’s Day Special Episode or something. That would have been really cool.

Oreo slept most of the day with me. I just worked around the house. I didn’t even really eat anything until Min got home so that we could go out to get dinner together. She got home at about 4:30 and we ran over to the Omega. That place was dead today. This was our big Valentine’s Day dinner. We came home and watched that new Reese Witherspoon movie. Something like Heaven Can Wait but I have no idea what it is really called. Min watched it and I ended up on the phone working for most of it. I really don’t like Reese Witherspoon anymore. She was great in A Far Off Place and Man in the Moon but she just hasn’t kept up the quality. Now she just does Hollywood fodder. Blah, I say to you. Blah.

Dad wanted to go out to see The Pink Panther this evening so he came over at 6:30 to pick us up. I took Oreo out just before we left and he started limping really badly. I am pretty sure that the problem has been with his rear right hip and not with his stomach at all these last few days. So we called the vet and he said to put him onto aspirin to reduce the inflamation. We didn’t have any aspirin so dad and Dominica drove over to Walmart to pick some up and I stayed home to watch Oreo. He was certainly in a bit of pain. He appears to be able to walk fine after he works out whatever the problem is but when it comes on it is really bad and he almost falls over. When they got back dad decided that it wasn’t a good night for a movie so he went back home.

Dominica and I decided to just stay in and spend some time watching over the dog. So we finally got around to watching Spanglish which ended up being a really good movie. I was really impressed. Adam Sandler needs to do more serious acting like that. He is much better being a light element in a serious film rather than being a silly element in a ridiculous film. I was very happy to have noticed that Paz Vega was not actually Mexican but Spanish. I figured it out from her accent. No small feat for a non-Spanish speaking American – world renowned for our inability to recognize cultural nuances.

After Spanglish we watched Ocean’s Twelve – not particularly because we were in the mood for it but because it was sitting upstairs in the living room and it meant that we didn’t have to go looking for it. It wasn’t a bad movie. Nothing really special. It is unbelievable how many people they get to be in such a middle of the road movie.

Tonight is the night that Microsoft rolls out their security updates and I always end up getting called early on Wednesday mornings because that always causes some disaster to happen so tonight I decided to stay up and deal with the problems myself before anything could go wrong. So at midnight when Dominica went to bed I went into the office and applied the updates and did a full system backup while I was taking everything down. It was a good opportunity to take care of a few things at once. While I was doing the system backup Oreo decided to get back out of bed and make me take him for a walk. I was quite happy that he was feeling good enough to want to walk but wasn’t too pleased with his timing. We ended up walking for about half an hour or so. He was plenty tired, as was I, by the time that we returned. I am very thankful that tonight is not one of the bitter cold New York nights. There is hardly any snow or ice on the ground and it is only mildly windy – mildly windy in Western New York is like saying blustery anywhere else. Unfortunately he caught be off guard as we went out so I was not wearing walking shoes and was only wearing a light fleece and not a jacket at all. And I didn’t take my mp3 player. But I needed the excercise so I shouldn’t complain.

It was just a little before 2:00 in the morning before I had a chance to get to bed.

After all these years Andy decided to really post For Me to Poop On someplace where it is likely to actually get some traffic. If you have never heard it before, be sure to check it out. Even if you have heard it before, go ahead and download it and listen again. Let’s get the traffic numbers up on this little number.

Andy wrote this song back in February of 2000. February 19th, to be exact. He debuted the song out my “moving out” party at Josh and my apartment in Greenleaf Meadows in Greece, New York (a suburb of Rochester.) I was moving out of the apartment to move to Ithaca. Josh was moving out and moving directly next door to a smaller apartment. Andy had no idea what he was going to be doing at all. He had been living with us for the last several months and he had no plans whatsoever. He didn’t actually have to be out of the apartment for about a week so he wasn’t worrying about it yet!

On February 20th we through the moving out party in the empty apartment. This is the party where Andy’s sister Dana West brought their cousin Amanda West who met Eric Millen and they are now The Millens. And to think, it was “For Me To Poop On” that brought them together. Josh had all ready pretty much moved completely out of the house. I moved out the next day. The 19th had been my last day of work at the Wellesley in Brighton and I was free and clear from there on in. Andy was scheduled to be in to work the following day.

On February 21, 2000, I loaded up the moving van that I had rented and prepared for my move down to Ithaca to move in with Nate Parker at his Gaslight Village Apartment just off of Triphammer. Just before I was ready to leave Andy decided that he was going to take the job with the company that I had offered to him a month before and he threw his few possessions into the moving truck and we took off for Ithaca. He used my cell phone to call into work and to tell Esther, who was working the evening shift on the desk, that he was moving out of Rochester and that he wasn’t going to be making his shift that night… or ever. They were all pretty surprised. I was pretty surprised. I think that Andy was pretty surprised.

So that is how Andy and I ended up moving into Nate’s apartment in Ithaca. Bob Winans ended up moving in to that same apartment later that summer when his lease was up in Oneonta. Andy and I were out of Ithaca by March 20th when we went down to Pittsburgh to start our first big project. But I was there a bit over the summer before moving down to Alexandria to move onto another stage of the project. It was a crazy year. I have to say that from the January of 2000 to July of 2001 had to be the craziest time of my life. Everything was changing at such an unbelievable pace. I went through so many jobs, apartments, cities, cars, careers, etc. And by June 9, 2000, I had met my future wife (and had all ready had her mistaken for my wife!)

That was an awful lot of stuff before even starting my day today. It is Monday and that means helping out with dad teaching down in Castile. I got down there about 9:10 just in time for the first class of the day to come in. It was a really good day down at the school. The new lab is really working out. We decided to switch from trying to teach the kids Perl right away and are instead working with almost all of the students getting them to learn LOGO using KTurtle which comes with SUSE Linux. The kids seem to really enjoy using KTurtle. They get quick results and it is interesting to see something graphical happening.

I spent most of the day working on a project at the school to get a working search engine that the school can use because, due to their “white listed” Internet access, using other search engines like Yahoo! or Google are out of the question. So I think that I have come up with a working solution but I have yet to implement it. There is a lot to go wrong yet.

Dad and I got our regular country fried fish sandwich lunch at Lorraine’s. We got take away so that we could eat our lunches in the computer lab. That way we don’t miss an opportunity to have a class come in. We have been very fortunate recently that the kids have been pushing to get into the lab and we have had most of the computers in use all of the time. At least on the days when we are there. It is very encouraging. We have been really concerned that we were going to get the lab up and running and that there wouldn’t be any students coming in to use it at all but that isn’t happening. In fact we are starting to get students looking to do some research on current events. Very nice.

I came home after school and Dominica was out shopping with Oreo. When she got home she said that Oreo was feeling much better than he was yesterday and that, so far, he seemed mostly normal. So we are relived that it is probably nothing more than a very upset tummy. It is tough being a little puppy and wanting to tell your family that something is wrong but having any way to communicate with them. It is very upsetting.

Dominica and I went over to the Omega for dinner. Then we came back home and watched more of the first season of Remington Steele. We went to bed fairly early so that Dominica could get up and get in to class first thing. She and dad are teaching tomorrow and I am staying home with Oreo. We thought that it would be best if we didn’t leave him alone while he wasn’t feeling well because we need to monitor him and make sure that we are missing any symptoms.

Back in 1994 my friend, Steve Baumbach (from Syracuse who attended GMI with me), managed to get a VHS copy of this really cool video of a guy racing his Ferrari across Paris to meet his wife who was waiting for him by the river. The video was shot by a camera strapped to the front bumper of the car. If I remember correctly the whole thing was done as a bet. Something about this guy with a Ferrari being at a dinner party with a movie producer – you can imagine how it went from there. Anyway the movie was called Rendes-vous and I finally managed to find a copy of it posted on Google Videos. The quality of Google Videos isn’t that hot but at least everyone can now see the video.

We managed to make it to Sunday School again today. That is three weeks in a row. Quite an accomplishment for us. But we have only been travelling about one third the distance that we used to try to go so that helps quite a bit. We went to Sunday School but did not stay for church. Dominica’s back hasn’t been good and she took some ibuprofin before we left the house to try to keep the swelling down but by the end of Sunday School her back was all ready hurting enough that we didn’t feel that we could stay any longer.

So we came home for a little while and snuggled with Oreo. He is still a little sick today. Not has bad as the last two days but you can tell that he is not his usual, fun-loving self.

We had lunch with dad at the Omega. After lunch dad and Dominica did a little shopping at Walmart but I came home and spent some more time with Oreo. Then Dominica went up to Henrietta to do some much needed shopping for a while. I was going to go with her originally but with Oreo not feeling very well we decided that it would be better if I stayed home with him so that he would relax and get some sleep instead of being nervous and making himself worse.

Dominica got back from her shopping and we decided to continue watching Remington Steele. We ordered dinner from the Shang Hai over in the old Ames Plaza (I am sure the plaza has a new name like The Livingston Plaza or something but I have no idea what it is.)

Oreo was definitely not feeling well this evening and we got kind of worried. Throughout the evening he appeared to get worse, not better. By 10:00 we were pretty worried as he paced all over the house wimpering. We decided that we needed to wake up the vet and see if he could see Oreo. We went into the clinic and met with Oreo’s doctor at 10:15. We were there for over an hour. The vet is pretty sure that Oreo just had really bad indigestion and he gave him some medicine and put him on a really strict diet for the next week to see if that makes any difference. We were really relived to find out that that was all that it was. Too bad we had to wake up the vet. He went into the office in his pajamas. But at least we weren’t the only ones – he got another emergency call while we were in the office. They were probably pretty surprised to find him still there.

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.