Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica went off to work and I went down to Castile to do some work at the school. On the way out of Geneseo I stopped into the cell phone store to see what mobile models they offered that Dominica would have to choose from. Then I drove over to Leicester and picked up Jeremy and the two of us went down to Castile to work at CCA.

Yesterday I got an email from CCA letting me know that Washington Bible College had donated a bunch of equipment to the school but they didn’t know yet what all they had received. So Jeremy and I were going down to get a good idea of what we had to work with.

It turns out that we got a dozen computers donated that are all in the approximate range of the machines that we are currently using which is going to help us immensley at the school. We have plenty of machines to completely stock the computer lab with, we hope, at least Pentium III machines which will make a huge difference for kids taking compute classes and enough other machines that we might even be able to have at least one computer in each classroom. Currently only the kindergarten classroom has a computer. There were about twenty monitors which were all checked out before they were shipped to us too. A box of mice. A nice commercial deskjet colour printer with a duplexer addition and an awesome HP LaserJet 5 laser printer that could massively help us to control our printing costs. It is a really generous donation and it is really going to help a lot.

While we were there we managed to get four more computers ready for school to start on Monday. New carpetting was being laid in the reception area while we were there which will be nice as well. While we were down there Jeremy and I got some lunch from Lorraine’s Place in Castile. Their country fried fish sandwich is awesome.

I had to get Jeremy home by 3:00 so that he could go with his family to get some dinner at the Olive Garden in Henrietta before they all went to see King Kong. I was home for about an hour when Eric called to let me know that he and Amanda and Julia were going over to Denny’s just down the street. So I went over there and had some coffee with them while they ate their dinner. I haven’t had a chance to really see them in weeks.

I was only home for about an hour before dad came over to pick me up so that we could go to the Omega for dinner. We had some work that needed to be taken care of so we had a business dinner.

I spent the evening working in the living room on recovering some digital photos for Francesca. I started working on that last night after having tried quite a bit a month ago or so. It takes a long time for a lot of that software to be able to get anywhere so I kept starting programs and letting them run while I was out of the house to save time. It is taking a really long time to get anywhere with the drives because at one point they were all in the basement with labels on them that said what each of the drives was. There were several of them in the house because we had a rash of hard drive failures over a two week period and drive after drive was shipped here but almost no one actually ended up needing the drives to be looked at. Well, the drives all got moved at one point and not by me and separated from the labels so I was quite surpirsed one day to find all of the drives in a pile and no way to tell which one was which. Well, to keep a long story somewhat short, it is taking a really, really long time to get really good results on the drives because I have to do a really thorough job searching through each one until I have enough data recovered from it to prove which drive it ISN’T! And that can take several hours per drive and at least one of the drives cannot be read by anything which makes it so much worse because we have no way to rule out that drive as being Francesca’s. And to make matters worse it is the one that I am pretty sure is Francesca’s because it is the only one that makes any sense at all to have been in her computer.

Anyway I worked on that project all day and all evening and finally late at night around 11:00 or later I finally discovered a drive that had been separated from the group of dead drives and decided to have a look at it as well and then discovered that I had actually gotten the wrong drive picked out as the one that hers had to be and there were her pictures once I went through the recovery processes. Dominica, of course, told me all along that I had the wrong drive but I was sure that I had the right one so she was right and I was an idiot. Francesca is very happy.

Wednesday. Well the week is starting to get back to being a little bit more like normal. Min and I got up earlier than usual for a work day and we met dad at the Omega Grill for breakfast. Normally we wouldn’t do that during the week because it is so hard for Dominica to get to work but dad has Min’s new cell phone and we wanted to get that taken care of as soon as we could. We are losing money each day that we don’t get the cell service switched over and at the moment we are carrying two accounts until we can get the old one turned off.

I had what we think was a really bad back spasm this morning. It caught me by surprise while I was standing and I had to lower myself onto the bed. It ended up going on for a really long time. I have no idea what brought it on but it is definitely the worst back pain that I have ever had to deal with as far as I can remember. We are hoping that it was just something muscular and not something to be worried about.

At breakfast we ended up sitting next to the Richardson clan. We run into someone in the family at breakfast at least once a week. Leo, Sharon, Shirley and Jim were all there. So there were seven of us all together. Dominica got her new phone and then had to head off to work pretty quickly.

I found an interesting web site called Housing Maps that takes information about home and apartments and mixes it with Google Maps. It is a pretty cool idea. I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet but it has been getting a lot of press recently from things like the Where 2.0 Conference. Too bad this site doesn’t have any useful information for anything in Upstate NY.

Dominica decided, after using her new cell phone a little bit, that she really wants to get a nicer model. The one that she has right now is the LG VX3300 which is a lower end model than the one that she currently has. The big deal is that it does not have a front display screen which is a bit of a nuisance especially once you have gotten used to having one. So she is going to start looking for a new phone and will take that one back.

I called and had her old cell account shut off today so she is only on the new phone with the Rochester LATA (585) phone number. Call the house or email me if you need the number. Her Pittsburgh number has been turned off although just about no one had that one anyway. The only annoying thing is that I finally memorized her old number in the past few weeks. Oh well.

While I was on the phone with Verizon I got my account changed from the 800 minute plan to the 450 minute plan which is saving us an additional $40 a month. Between the two of us we are saving between fifty and sixty dollars. Boy is that ever nice. I got a new cell phone ordered too. I decided to go with LG’s top of the line VX8100. It comes with all the features including a one week battery life, stereo speakers, MP3 player with dedicated controls, a MiniSD memory card slot, BlueTooth networking, 1.3 MegaPixel camera for still or video pictures and dual full colour displays. I managed to get it for free after rebates so I am pretty happy about that. Verizon offers a couple of phones that are more expensive than that one but none of them really did it for me. LG technically offers one phone that is higher in the chain then that one but it isn’t strictly a phone and is far too large to use for regular telephone functions. It is one of those units that opens sideways into a full keyboard and horizontal (landscape) oriented screen. I should be getting the phone on Tuesday or so. They have to ship it.

Another busy day today. Vacation weeks always turn into being very busy. Bob is here today having stayed over last night. Bob hasn’t been up to the house in many months and we haven’t even seen each other for four or five months and that was when I was down in Ithaca working with Wegmans.

I had to run over to Perry this morning to meet with pastor at 11:00. I ended up being over there for about three hours. I got back to Geneseo just before 2:00 and Bob said that he was giving me just nine more minutes before he was going to leave. We went right over to the Omega Grill to get some grub. Neither of us has really had anything to eat since we ate there yesterday.

Bob took off from the Omega to head back down to Ithaca.

Dad got together with the Richardsons this morning over breakfast to sort out their new cell phones. The five of them – that is dad, my aunt Sharon, uncle Leo, cousin Sara and wife Dominica – all decided to get onto a Verizon family plan so that they could all share minutes and minimize the cost. So everyone but Min got together this morning to hand out their new phones. Min will get hers tomorrow. We are pretty happy because her old plan was costing us more than $40 a month and she wasn’t even beginning to take advantage of it. This new plan should cost a bit less than $30. Every little bit helps.

After Bob left I had to drive out to Syracuse to pick up Dominica. Her parents drove her out to exit 43b on the east side of Syracuse and I met them out there at almost 9:00. It is about a two hour drive to get to there from Geneseo. On the way back we had to take 690 through the city because I had seen an accident in the other direction that was blocking the thruway going east. We didn’t want to get stuck in that awful traffic so we avoided as much of it as we could. We ended up entering the thruway right where the accident was so we didn’t get stuck in traffic for very long but we were able to get a good look at the remains. We followed up with the news in Syracuse and found out that a State Trooper had been involved in a high speed chase and attempted to avoid a car changing lanes. The area where the accident happened is a really dangerous area where motorists who are entering the expressway from the toll booths have almost no space to get onto the highway and almost no visibility and the drivers in the area, such as the police apparently, are driving quite too quickly considering the conditions. The trooper went off of the road to avoid the car changing lanes and ended up sliding on the side of the road and then shooting out perpendicularly into traffic (sound familiar to any of our readers out there?) At that point the police vehicle was struck by another motorist in an SUV that flipped right over the police car. Five people were in the SUV but no one was killed. Both policemen involved were not hurt. But it really shows how the innocent can be the ones in danger when the police decide to get involved in high speed chases. How many lives do we really save by chasing people who drive too quickly? Are we really making the roads safer places? And for whom? If speeders end up having their own accidents and on average hurt themselves then why is it any of our business to be ticketing them to make a few extra dollars (oh yeah… its the end of the month and the end of the year, I wonder if there were any quotas to be filled…) but if we have chases and end up hurting innocent motorists who are not involved in driving recklessly all we have done is move the hurt from the people at fault to the innocent. I sure don’t want to be responsible for anything like that.

Dominica and I got home a little before midnight. She needs to get some sleep so that she can get to work tomorrow. I am exhausted all ready from a long week.

I didn’t manage to get very much sleep last night so I am really exhausted as I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in several days and the past few days have been really busy too. I got up this morning and talked with Bob who is coming up for the funeral as well. We decided to car pool so he is going to come from Ithaca and meet me at the house. I am pretty much on his way to Perry and he is going to be staying here tonight so it makes a lot of sense.

I spent two hours on the phone with Art this morning which took up all of the spare time that I had and some that I didn’t. Bob arrived while I was on the phone and I had to get dressed in my suit while on the phone while Bob was waiting for me. Bob ended up driving us over to Perry with me on the phone the entire way and I even was on the phone for a little while while standing on the sidewalk in Perry. Dad was still feeling sick this morning and didn’t come until pretty late to the funeral. I was supposed to call dad when we left Geneseo but I was on the phone and had forgotten. But it was probably best because he was asleep and feeling sick enough that he really needed the sleep.

The funeral was for John Howlett, Joe’s father, who died last week from the complications arising from a stroke that he had suffered almost two weeks ago. The service was really nice. Bob, Nate and even Jeff Simpson managed to make it. Dad made it but had to take off quite quickly afterwards.

After the service Bob and I came back to Geneseo and I spent a little more time on the phone getting some things scheduled and dealing with a few loose ends and then we went over to the Omega Grill for some dinner. We were both pretty hungry having not eaten all day.

We came back to the house for a little while and then went over to Perry again to hang out with the Parkers in their new “piano room” that they are just finishing building for their newly inherited Steinway piano. Bob has only ever played euchre a couple of times and didn’t really know how to play so we taught him how to play and then he and I played against Nate and Rachel and we kicked their butts pretty good winning three out of four games. We couldn’t hang out too late because Oreo was left alone almost all day long and he needs some company.

We went back to my house in Geneseo and we watched Batman Begins which I have only seen at the drive-in in Perry and Bob has not seen yet. Bob loved the movie. It is really awesome. I think that it is the best comic book turned movie that I have ever seen.

Merry Christmas everyone! Dominica and I celebrated the holiday in Frankfort as usual. We arrived in town around 2:00 in the morning and got a little sleep before we had to get up. The dogs fight over who gets to sleep with us and there isn’t a lot of extra space so it makes actually sleeping pretty difficult.

We pulled ourselves out of bed around 8:00 in the morning or a little thereafter. Christmas morning is a busy time. Everyone was awake and the present opening started around 9:00. Present opening went pretty quickly this year. We were finished not long after 2:00 in the afternoon. The highlight of the day was marshmallow guns. Dominica’s parents put together marshmallow gun kits that we each had to assemble so that we could shoot each other with marshmallows. That was a lot of fun.

Dominica and my big present for Christmas was a Canon Elura 60 camcorder that we had asked for. We are really excited to have a digital camcorder because we have been doing a lot of video recording using our Kodak digital camera over the last few months and we have really discovered that we would really like to be able to record a lot more stuff and in a lot higher quality. So be sure to be paying attention as new vlog content is likely to be coming very soon once I get this thing figured out.

I also got a game of twenty questions called 20Q which is really cool. It is a little video game handheld device that plays twenty questions with you. It is really amazing how good that it is at guessing what you are thinking. I am really impressed. It is a lot of fun. Everyone was addicted to playing Francesca’s 20Q game all afternoon.

At 4:00 we went over to Dominica’s grandfather’s house for the family dinner. We were there for several hours. I had to take off shortly after we got back to Min’s parent’s house. I have a funeral tomorrow back home. Min only gets a little bit of time to visit with her family so she decided to stay in Frankfort for another two days. It was between 10:00 and 11:00 when I finally got onto the road with Oreo back to Geneseo.