Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica and I managed to pull ourselves out of bed this morning and get ready to go to church down in Leicester. It is really tough getting up on Sunday mornings because of the way that Dominica’s schedule works. But today we got up and managed to get down to Union Prebyterian in Leicester in time for Sunday School so that we could attend the “Come Thirsty” book study that Dominica was interested in.

The church service today had the senior high kids putting on a puppet show with Jeremy and Sara’s friend Sarah (aka Toast) dancing. It was pretty funny. Dad video taped it. Maybe I will managed to get a copy to post 😉 Anything to embarrass Jeremy. It’s good for him. Builds character.

After church dad, Dominica, Uncle Leo, Aunt Sharon and I all went up to the Omega Grill for Sunday lunch. The kids had too many plans to be able to join us. Oh to be young again.

I had a ton of work that needed to get done before Tuesday and I didn’t manage to get any of it done yesterday so this afternoon and evening for me was lots of work. Dominica watched Gilmore Girls in the living room while I worked. I was very productive and managed to get everything completed that I needed to. It turned out to be a really good evening.

Okay, so Tom Cruise made an episode of South Park that explains Scientology be taken off of the air, apparently because he doesn’t want people to know anything about Scientology – maybe he is selfish and wants to keep the subway control to himself. So anyway, I am on a mission to make sure that everyone can find out about Scientology from South Park. So everyone needs to link to South Park’s Information on Scientology. By linking to Tom Cruise’s banned South Park episode online we can all band together and show that freak that censoring isn’t effective and that Scientology has to face the fact that no one will take a religion that Tom Cruise joins seriously.

I was totally exhausted from yesterday and slept in a bit today with Oreo after Dominica left for work. My plan was to get tons and tons of work done today that has been hanging over my head but I didn’t end up managing to actually do that. Andy called not all that long after I had gotten up and we decided to get some lunch. He came down and then we went out to Aunt Cookies in downtown Geneseo and got some subs. Yummy toasted subs.

Then we stopped by at the Quality Inn and hung out with Mary for a little while. Niether of us has seen Mary in weeks and we haven’t seen Mary all that much other than that either. So we stayed at the hotel for a couple of hours before heading out to Walmart to do some quick shopping. Andy needed to pick up some “draft dodgers” or “door snakes” as we call them – those things that go in front of a door to keep the cold air from coming underneath. Then we went back to the house to hang for a little while.

Andy had luckily remembered to bring down Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Four because Dominica and I had finished the last two episodes of Season Three just last night. Perfect timing. Andy and I sat around and watched two episodes of Red Dwarf Season Five before he decided that he had to get back up to Rochester.

It was probably around 8:00 by the time that Andy left and Dominica gets out of work at 9:00. So I started doing some cleaning that I wanted to get completed before she got home. She got in and was very excited to be able to watch more Star Trek. We watched a number of episodes and went to bed just after midnight. Dominica wants to get up so that we can go to a Sunday School class down at Union Presbyterian tomorrow morning and we are not used to getting up early on Sundays so we need to get to bed early. Sundays are especially tough for Dominica because they are her first day coming off of work and she gets extra tired on Saturdays because her hours are shifted a little and she doesn’t get enough sleep the night before either.

Today is a big day of work down at the Castile Christian Academy. Originally I was going to get up this morning and pick up Jeremy and take him down to Castile with me but he didn’t get home until late last night and ended up getting into trouble and not being allowed to go so it is just dad and I working down there today.

I left the house at 8:00. The plan is to meet dad at Lorraine’s in Castile for some breakfast. I ended up getting stuck waiting for the Buffalo and Pittsburgh running through Leicester. I have never gotten stuck waiting for a train there before. It ended up making for perfect timing. Dad and I both pulled into Castile at the same time.

After breakfast it was over to the school for some serious work. Dad is getting a curriculum together so that he can start teaching the computer classes on Monday, just three days away. I am frantically trying to get the school’s network up and running so that everything is ready for the kids when we get back. There is an awful lot to be done by then. Since the last time I was at the school the electric has been run and there is now a dedicated circuit for every two computers in the computer lab. So, for the first time, I can really work to get the computers set up and into running condition.

It took several hours just to get most of the computer set up onto the desks, plugged in and running. We installed the new LCD monitors that are now available for half of the lab. There is a total of ten workstations and we have five LCDs. There is one more but it won’t be here until Monday. We expect at least one more LCD by the end of the school year. We are hoping that the LCD monitors really help to get the students excited about working in the computer lab. The computers are not all that fast but the nice monitors might really help give the impression that it is an up-to-date computer facility. Most of the computers are up to later model Intel Pentium III’s now but there are still a few older Pentium II’s in the mix which really slow things down. It is significant how much better the lab is going to be this year than last year even so. Last year we ran almost exclusively on Pentium II equipment, no LCD monitors and almost every monitor we did have was on its last leg and ran, at best, in 1024×768 (XGA) mode. This year there isn’t a single machine in the main computer lab that isn’t running at least 1280×1024 (SXGA) mode. That will make a big difference all by itself. I am sure that everyone will notice that upgrade right away.

I had to get SUSE Linux 10.0 installed on about half of the machines that were not completed yet. That took every minute of the day that I had to spare. While I was waiting for several machines to get installed I was able to get networking hooked up to all of the computers and get the computer portion of the room cleaned up significantly. By 3:45 when I was finally able to leave we had all ten computers installed, tested, working and on the network ready to go for first thing Monday morning.

By the end of the day I finally had the lab set up and ready to rock and roll on Monday. I took a picture of the lab as it stood this afternoon.

I got home at just a little after 4:00 and Oreo was very, very happy to see me. He was definitely a little scared that no one had been home with him for so long (Dominica had left for work at 10:00 am) but he hadn’t done anything bad and was in good spirits. He was definitely ready to be let outside but other than that he was fine. He had been sleeping on our bed. I could tell from the warm spot where he normally likes to lay.

I spent the evening hanging out with Oreo and doing some miscellaneous stuff around the house. Oreo was totally in need of attention and was not about to let me get away with not spending just about every single moment with him. So it gave me a good excuse to relax some and to do some reading.

Dominica got home and we watched some more of the third season on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Only a little bit more to go before we are done with that season.

After wrapping up my paperwork for Empire State College last night I decided that my database paperwork was too weak and that I needed something to back up my database experience. So I stayed up late taking Brainbench certifications to improve my credibility and my resume. Getting additional certifications is never a bad thing. I stayed up taking two tests: Data Modeling Concepts and ANSI SQL (Structured Query Language). I passed both tests. I have to retake one test that expired last year and one additional database programming test and I will qualify for the larger job role of Database Administrator (DBA). So that is my goal. Only two additional tests to take tomorrow and I will be there. And retaking a test is never as hard as doing it the first time.

While I was up working on the certifications I also managed to scan in tons more slides. All of 1994 is now complete and I have a good head start on 1995. It is really cool going through the pictures in chronological order the way that I am because it is kind of like taking a walk through history. In some ways some of the things in the pictures seem like just yesterday but other things seem to be from so long ago that it is like I was just someone watching a movie of someone else’s life. One of the saddest things is that I have found tons of pictures of my cat from 1995. He was a great cat and was very photogenic as well. But the sad thing is that he has only been gone now for ten or eleven years and I don’t even remember his name! I remember the cat, but I just can’t put a name to him. I am sure that I am the one that named him too. And he wasn’t one of those cats that we had during a time when we had dozens of cats at once. It was just him. Our one lonely cat for a year or two and I can’t recall his name. If I remember correctly, I think that he just wandered off sometime in late 1995 or 1996. He was one of the rare healthy cats that we had. Most likely a neighbour was feeding him instead of expecting him to be a barn cat like we did. And eventually they convinced him to stay. At least I like to think that that is what happened. If so, there is every possibility that he is still alive. He would only be twelve or thirteen now. Not even that venerable for a cat.

I talked to John Stephens – the Surfing IT Wizard – and the plan is that he is going to drive up on next Friday evening and hang out for the weekend. He is bringing the last three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for Dominica (I won’t watch those shows – they make me very unhappy.) But, more importantly, TSITW is bringing Firefly which I am very anxious to watch. Everyone has said that that is a really amazing show.

I went to bed around 4:30 figuring I would need at least a little sleep before getting up in the morning. My plan is to have lunch with Eric in Rochester in conjunction with taking my cell phone into the Verizon store on Jefferson Road to have the technician check it out. Maybe I will get lucky and they will be able to do something for me.

I slept in a little this morning, as you can imagine, but was up around 10:00 am which isn’t too bad considering when I went to bed. I got up and got onto the computer and scheduled lunch with Eric. Andy is having a super busy day today so he wasn’t able to get lunch with us. I managed to get up to the city to meet Eric at 1:00. In the attempt to get out of the house there was, of course, a million obstacles. From Oreo needing to be played with several times and needing to be taken outside several time all while the phone was ringing and ringing.

Eric wasn’t in the mood for our regular bagel stop so we hit Jay’s Diner. We ended up hanging out for over two hours. Good thing that we have coffee. I took him back to the hospital and then went down to Verizon to get the cell phone looked at. It took Verizon an hour to look at both Dominica and my cell phones. The final verdict was that the issue with my cell phone’s battery dying so quickly is that I am using it full time down in Geneseo where there is no EVDO service and the cell phone is constantly looking for that service. Apparently looking for the EVDO service uses a ton more energy than just getting the service. So my cell phone is running down its battery really quickly and there isn’t anything that we are able to do about that. Bummer.

While Verizon was looking at the phones I drove down to Borders to scan some books. I ended up getting a number of books including “The Visual Quickstart Guide to C++ Programming”, “Linux Server Hacks Volume Two”, “The Perl Pocket Reference” and “Build a Program Now! Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition”. Quite a load of books but I got really good deals today. While I was there I managed to help a retired pastor who was looking to build his first web site. We talked for probably twenty minutes. I think that I was actually able to help him a bit.

After picking up the cell phones again I had to run up to Greece to drop off Dominica’s cell phone at her office. Then it was time to get back home to Oreo who has been home alone all day long. I talked to Andy on the way home. He is really excited about tomorrow being his final day on his contract. Today was a really busy day as he prepared to be able to leave tomorrow but, most likely, tomorrow will be a pretty slow day for him since it is the final day. Generally that becomes a blow off day.

I got home and Oreo was very happy to see me but there were no signs of him having been upset from me having been gone all day. That is a really good sign that he is starting to become comfortable living here with us. He now must be understanding that we are not going to be leaving him and that we are just out for the day. He was definitely happy when I got home. He seemed to have been in a “wanting to spend the day with my daddy” kind of day even before I left the house this morning. He was so snuggly this morning when I woke up that his head was on my pillow right next to my head. I was only barely able to keep from falling out of bed. Then he followed me around all morning right up until I left to go to Rochester.

I continued working on scanning old slides into the computer today. Only so many more days left of this until it is all completed. Then I can return to scanning negatives and prints again.

The plan tomorrow is to spend the morning and early afternoon down at Castile Christian Academy. I am going to pick up Jeremy a little before 8:00 in the morning and we are going to meet dad down at Lorraine’s for breakfast before going into the school to get as many computers as possible set up and ready to go so that we are able to start classes on Monday. It is rather a tall order but I think that we can get far enough along to be in a position to at least begin limping through classes next week.

I pushed forward on my Brainbench certifications tonight. My first challenge was to take the MySQL Administration certification. I was very happy with the results: Number Seven in the World. Whoo-hoo. After that success I attempted the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Programming certification and skimmed by – passing by the slimmest margin. But I am fine with that as the knowledge necessary for that certification is completely outside of my usual knowledge domain. Most importantly, though, I have now completed all of the individual certifications necessary for the must larger Brainbench Job Role Certification of Brainbench Certified Database Administrator or BCDBA. That is the goal that I had been working towards.

I wrapped up the last of my certification tests just as Dominica got home from work. I edited my credit by evaluation paperwork for Empire State and resubmitted it. I wanted to make sure that it was as complete as possible.

We popped in Star Trek: The Next Generation and watched an episode before heading off to bed. I have to be up early in the morning to go over to Castile so I want to get a full night’s sleep tonight.