Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

I had to get up earlier than usual this morning because I had an early conference call. It didn’t go amazingly well but it didn’t really go badly either. Andy and I have to go down to Pittsburgh in early March as a result. That will be the real deciding meeting to see how this phone call actually went.

I did some Amazon shopping today. Dominica and I ordered some new television shows on DVD like Firefly, Gilmore Girls Season Two and Growing Pains Season One. I also ordered some books for the business. I just love getting new books.

CNN cover the news that an Eighth Grader Outspells Spelling Bee Judge and the school is unwilling to reverse the decision. The spokesperson for the school says that they hope that they can work something out with the parents (apparently short of treating the student fairly) because they feel that being defendants in a lawsuit is not a good use of school district funds. Well then, maybe they shouldn’t cheat eighth graders. How defending a lawsuit can be better than admitting that your teachers can’t spell as well as the students and moving on eludes me. Everyone makes mistakes. But in this case they have an opportunity to fix this one but instead of fixing it they are making it far more wrong. To make a mistake on the fly is a true mistake. But to refuse to fix a mistake when they have a chance is ridiculous. In fact, it is what we call cheating. What if someone at that school cheated on a test and a teacher didn’t find out until after the test was all ready graded? Would the school just say “Oh well, it all ready happened. That is just the way it works.” Of course not. They would be furious. But how can they expect any other behaviour from the students. This is the exact behavious that they are teaching them.

Today was a stay at home day. I really didn’t end up leaving the house all day. That is a nice change. Sometimes it is nice to be able to just stay home. Oreo always prefers it when I am home all day. It gives him so much more opportunity to make me take him for walk and to make my throw his binky for him.

I got a bit of work done today. I always feel better when I am productive and this week has been pretty good. Some really important things have been getting taken care of. The biggest thing this week has been making the new Niagara Technology Group web site. We have been running for the past six months by just pointing the domain name at the old Niagara Telecom web site. The old site needs to be revamped but we really need a new site dedicated to what we do as a business. So I took the time to actually work on that this week and am pretty happy with the first stage of development. When I really have a chance to do it right, I really enjoy doing web site design. It is a lot of fun.

I did a little cleaning around the house before Dominica got home. She came home and we watched one episode of The Next Generation and went to bed. We were both pretty tired. I am getting up in the morning and having breakfast with dad. I read for a while in bed. I am almost done reading “The Object Oriented Thought Process, 2nd Ed.” I have been reading more this week that usual. Earlier in the week I read Chris Pine’s “Learning to Program” which teaches the basics of Ruby programming. That was a really good book.

Today is the day that the SGL Dailies top 700,000 words! Wow is that a lot. I can’t believe how many of you have read all of it too. Now that is some serious dedication.

Okay, so it ended up being quite a bit after five in the morning before I went to bed. Dominica was still up studying and watching Buffy on her laptop and not even tired. Her scheduled is all thrown off now because she had tried to shift her sleep schedule so that she would be able to work last night. That is going to cause her problems all week long.

Somedays there are good stories. Some days their are great stories. And some days you get to tell people about the couple that managed to blow up their own car using a balloon while on their way to the Super Bowl. [Balloon: $.25, Acetylene $100, Making the Top Story on CNN When Your Car Explodes: Priceless]

I had to get up this morning at 9:00 when the phone started ringing. For those who read yesterday’s really, really long post you will notice that that means that I only got three and a half hours of sleep. Yup, that is correct. I went back to bed after the first phone call only to get another about ten minutes later. I went back to bed after that one and, yup, another one came about ten minutes after that. At that point I gave up and just got up.

Everyone knows that I love Internet videos. CNN had some news today that linked to some good spoofs on the recent Ang Lee film, Brokeback Mountain which I have not yet seen but is by an incredible director and has Jake Gyllenthal and Heath Ledger, both of whom are excellent actors. But, serious movie or not, the spoofs are pretty funny. Brokeback to the Future – Top Gun 2: Brokeback Squadron – Broke Mac Mountain (link from Rocketboom not CNN.) And, this one I found all by myself, you should check out the scene’s from Anita Rowland’s Brokerat Mountain.

Dad and I went to lunch at 12:30 over at the Omega. The weather isn’t nearly as bad today as it was yesterday and dad was able to get his driveway plowed. It is days like today that make me so happy that I live in a townhome so that I have no snow worries at all.

Dominica still awake when I got up this morning and didn’t end up going to bed until around noon! And then she got up again around 3:45 in the afternoon. Her body’s schedule is all messed up now.

Before going to bed last night I managed to finally get caught up with all of the IT Conversations Podcasts that were backlogged on my desktop. There are nine or ten left on my MP3 player that I need to get through before I am truly caught up but I am very, very close.

Well, they took an extra day but Verizon actually got back to me and appears to be making a serious effort to get my cell phone fixed. I am impressed. I thought that they would just drop it and say that they couldn’t do anything. Now, nothing is fixed yet, but we have a plan of attack. Tomorrow, if possible, I have to call a bunch of Verizon stores to see which ones still have copies of the old cell phone software. If any of them do then we are going to attempt to flash to the phone back to its previous version. Verizon has committed to replacing the phone if it does any damage. So we will see what happens tomorrow.

My meeting in Pittsburgh is on hold until after a phone conference tomorrow morning, first thing. The idea of that phone conference is to determine who needs to go down to Pittsburgh next week. We are very hopeful that the fact that there is a conference call is a good sign that they have something positive that they want to discuss and not something bad. Only fourteen hours to go. Hopefully my ulcer will hold off for that long.

For dinner Dominica and I ran over to Wegmans and just got some ready to eat pizza. Then we did a little light grocery shopping before coming back home.

I had plenty of work to do in the office and Dominica only had one episode left of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Four so she watched that and studied for her CompTIA A+ exam. After that we went down to the theatre and watched Serenity which is the movie based on the television show Firefly. I actually like the television show better. Because the show itself is shot in HD there isn’t much advantage to a full blown feature film production. The downside is that everyone acts differently and a lot of the crew is probably different. I felt like everyone was out of place and had lost the rhythm of the show by the time that they made the movie. The movie was good but it could have been better. One downside is that they had to make the movie able to stand on its own without needing viewers to have previously seen the series. That, combined with its attempt to be more epic than its episodal counterpart, made the project overly ambitious in comparison with the series. If you have seen neither I would recommend watching the pilot episode of the series rather than the movie but it you only have access to the movie definitely don’t miss it.

Neither of us were ready for bed so we decided to watch The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants which I had bought for Dominica the last time that we were down in Maryland for the Christmas Holiday. The movie was good. Not great but pretty good. Dominica really liked it. It was an interesting plot device to connect the characters in the film.