Sheep Guarding Llama

No more silly day colour names. It is very cold again today. The heater is running in ernest for the first time, that I have notice, this season. The thaw of the past few days has made Oreo’s skin get really bad again. We are totally convinced that it is a grass allergy that he has. As long as there was snow on the ground he was fine. He was doing so well and then the snow melted and we were right back to where we were. We are hoping that an entire winter of no grass being exposed might really help his body to repair itself. His skin gets so bad. And we have to have him on this medicine all of the time which makes him drowsy. That is kind of handy for us but it would be nice if he felt at his peak all of the time. He hardly plays anymore because of the medicine. He sleeps all day long. It really took the “puppy” out of him. I can’t believe that we have had him for over half of a year now. He is totally a member of our family.

Eric was supposed to come down today and get some work done in the office here but, once again, he is short people at work and has to fill in. So he is stuck in the city all day.

My quest for the day is to find snow tires for Dominica’s car. We have been trying to get them online and have finally given up on that process. Apparently Dominica has a really unpopular tire size or else there just isn’t a good selection with those online places. But I am kind of relieved that we are not going to get them online because I am so happy with my winter Nokian tires. So I am shopping around today trying to find someplace nearby that can sell us some of those.

I spent a good chunk of the morning today listening to The Jedi Council Speaks which released last night (or actually this morning at midnight but podOmatic is on Pacific time so they list it as last night.) Bob’s latest show is really long so it took me a while to get through it.

I did finally manage to find the tires that we wanted from Brigg’s Tire in Livonia. How handy that I managed to get them so close. We are getting the Nokians that I want and it wasn’t too expensive. We are having them mounted and balanced there on Monday morning. Dominica is really relieved to know that we have the tires and that that has been taken care of. Her current tires are quite scary to drive on when it snows. Now we are planning on driving her car down to Maryland next weekend when we go down there so that we are able to pick up my bicycle which has been rusting down there for several years now. I bought a nice, new bicycle while living in Ithaca and ended up only ever taking it to North Carolina one time and then dropping it off in Maryland it has been just sitting in John’s garage ever since. And now they have moved. Who knows where the bike is now. I am sure that John will be very happy to have the bike out of there.

Nate called to have me get tickets from Geneseo High School for Seussical the Musical that is being put on there this weekend. We are going on Saturday night. It should be fun. Show starts at 7:30. You can reserve tickets online by calling the Geneseo High School Media Center at (585) 243-3450 ext. 3013. Maybe we will see you there. Here is the show link but it probably won’t be a good link for very long.

The SGL Podcast went over its storage limit today on podOmatic so I had to start removing some of the old shows so that we could keep making new ones. That is really sad. I guess that the time has come for me to begin looking for an alternative hosting service to handle the show. Apparently we are a larger show than they were prepared to accommodate.

Here is a cool little secret XML RSS feed link, you can get a direct feed of all music destined to be played on the SGL Podcast. These are the same songs that we are choosing from. The feed is generated by me when I select songs to be put into our future playlist for the podcast. By subscribing to this link you have an opportunity to hear the music first and to be able to automatically download all of the music, even the stuff that never ends up getting played, at a higher quality than we play on the show.

I did some more hunting on the Podsafe Music Network today and found a number of good tunes to play on the show. That is such a great idea. An entire network of artist making their music available for use on podcasts. There is quite a bit of really good music up there.

When Min got home from work we went out to Walmart and did some grocery shopping. I was only planning on getting a few thing but we ended up doing an entire shopping trip and stocking the house with stuff. At least we got a lot out of the trip. While we were there we saw that season four (that is volume three) of The Family Guy was out. We have a love/hate relationship with that show. The first three seasons were awesome and only so inappropriate but the fourth season is far less entertaining and much more inappropriate but we still really enjoy the style of humour. So we are caught between wanting to continue to watch the show that we are all ready attached to and being mortified by the stuff that they do. Definitely not a show to allow children to watch. Ever. But every once in a while they do something that is so hilariously funny. On the way out of Walmart we ran into Mary. We talked for a minute and she and Jocelyn are planning on coming over on Saturday night after Mary’s shift at the hotel to hang out. Saturday is going to be a really busy day. I have a meeting first thing in the morning and then hanging with Andy at noon. Nate and I are going to the show that evening and then Mary and Jocelyn are coming over late.

Wil Wheaton has a new podcast up now. Check it out at Radio Free Burrito. He used to have a really short podcast that he did from his car on his cell phone but he seems to have given that up a long time ago. So I will be interested to see how this new one goes with a long format. Should be good. I hope.

We watched a little television and then it was off to bed. I really wanted to do a podcast tonight but my eyes were killing me and I could barely look at the monitor to wrap up this segment on SGL so I am calling it a night.

I can’t believe that it is all ready the end of November. Getting old is way too easy. The older you get the easier it seems to be to get older and older faster and faster. The weather turned cold again today. A little snow even fell but not too much. Just enough to remind us that winter is coming. At least, so far, we are on track for a nice, white Christmas.

Just in case any of you out there is Llamaland thought that SGL was totally devoid of any real content I will kindly direct your attention to Nickerblog because I believe that you will find, after watching his video posting from the other day, that SGL is actually just chock full o’contenty goodness. So stop whining. You are the ones reading this anyway!

I actually remembered to take out the trash today. I am so used to the trash piling up and being everywhere that now that we produce less than a single bag of trash a week I am really not expecting it to be trash day all ready. It makes it hard to remember.

Dad was in the city in the middle of the day so he called to see if I wanted to get some lunch on his way back down to his house. He picked me up around 1:30 and we went to, you guessed it, the Omega Grill. I was just commenting to Eric this morning that I am pretty sure that I have eaten more meals at the Omega since having moved to Geneseo then I have eaten at home during that time. While dad was down I got him the SUSE Linux 10.0 LiveDVD so that he can start playing with it at home. Since he is going to be teaching at the school he is going to need to be familiar with it. He is really excited. Okay, not really. But he is going to suffer through it.

After lunch we swung into Walmart. Dominica had wanted to go last night but I didn’t have the energy to at that point. So I went today to get it out of the way. I had to pick up some additional garland for Min so that she could finish decorating the Christmas tree and I had to get a new toothbrush for me because my old one just wasn’t holding up to the abuse. Sky High is out so I had to pick that up. I love family movies, leave me alone. No seriously, stop picking on me. Dad is addicted to movies as well and, for once, bought more movies than I did getting Mr. and Mrs. Smith and March of the Penguins. It was a big release day for us.

Today is one of those days when I have a really hard time actually sitting down and getting any actual work done. I hate it when I have one of those days. I like the feeling of being productive but some days are just a loss. Best not to try to force myself into ruining the following day by losing today by not doing anything fun because I need to be productive and not feeling happy with that because I don’t actually manage to do anything. Hmmm…

This weekend is the Nicklin Associates Christmas Party in Annapolis. Dominica has to work on Saturday during the party so we are not able to actually make it to that. I think that this is going to be the first one that we have missed in several years. Maybe ever. But we are going to leave Geneseo as soon as Dominica gets home from work on Saturday and drive straight down. We figure that we will get there around 3:00 am which will be just in time to help clean up. We are excited that we are going to get to see the Nicklins’ new house. John and Michelle are just finishing moving into their new 6500 sq. ft. house in the Annapolis area. That is such a huge change from the last house that they owned. That one was smaller than Dominica and my house here in Geneseo. We are going to be staying at the new house and will be in Annapolis until either Monday evening or Tuesday morning. I am letting Dominica decide about that because she has to go to class on Tuesday and it is her next to last class and she really needs to be there and awake for it. But she is able to sleep in the car while I drive pretty easily so it might not be too big of a deal for her.

I spent about an hour on the telephone with Francesca tonight trying to get her computer working. She has a computer that her mom gave to her a year ago and they have never figured out what the administrator password is on it so we are trying to reset the password but since she doesn’t have a working computer anywhere it makes it very difficult. I had sent her a link to a tool that I thought was going to do the trick but I accidentally sent her the wrong one so that didn’t help very much. We are going to have to try again tomorrow. She did get her first taste of a Linux desktop, though, and might consider trying out a Linux LiveCD distribution instead of going back to Windows which has proved to be a pretty big pain for her.

I wasn’t very productive today so I made sure that at the very least I did some cleaning around the house. I got stuff put away, vacuumed the floors and did the dishes. Better than nothing, I guess.

The LCDs arrived today for the school. Hopefully they will have power down there this week so that we can get them installed. I don’t know how much dad wants to store five boxes of LCDs at his house.

Dominica got home and we immediately went down to the theatre and watched Disney’s Sky High which was great. We were both really happy with the movie. I am really glad that we bought it today. There are a lot of really good people in the movie and lots of good new actors as well. The story is good and there is action and emotion and plot twists and everything. Of course, it is still just a silly Disney family movie but it is one of the better ones to have come along in a long time. I actually feel that the movie was far too short and that they could have kept it going well for a little longer even though it ran to 100 minutes as it was which is quite long for this style of movie from Disney. It was just a really well put together film.

I got the podcasts posted tonight and checked before going to bed to get the latest from The Jedi Council Speaks. Bob’s second show was released tonight just after midnight and there is a pretty good chance that I might be the first person other than Bob to have downloaded the show. I did not decide that I wanted to listen to an hour and a half of the show before going to bed so I just made sure that I had it downloaded and left it at that. I will most likely have plenty of time to listen to it tomorrow. Eric is planning on coming down to Geneseo so that he can get some work done since he STILL does not have a computer. Another week without any way for him to do anything. I also have to figure out where to get tires for Min’s car tomorrow. Her current tires are shot and we want to get her good winter tires but I have checked with the online tire dealers and that have just about nothing for her car and I really wanted to get really awesome Nokians like mine. No such luck so far. She has an odd tire size, apparently, and it is really hard to find anything for her car.

Boy, once I start getting behind I take forever to catch up, don’t I? I was up really late last night trying to get a computer ready for Castile and managed to finally get it done around 3:00 in the morning. So I didn’t get to bed until it was awfully late. But I was really relived to finally have that machine working. It is the only wireless machine at the school and those have a tendancy to be really difficult to get set up. I put in so much time trying to figure out what was wrong that I decided that I needed to post the directions to get through it all over on my tech blog so if anyone needs it, you can learn how to install a Netgear WG311v2 Wireless 802.11g adapter in SUSE Linux 10.0 over there.

I woke up when Min got up to get ready for class this morning. It wasn’t a full night’s sleep but it wasn’t too bad. It was SO windy last night. I couldn’t believe it. Totally out of control. It was one of the windiest nights since we have moved here to Geneseo. It was so warm last night that not only cracked a window but completely opened both of our big bedroom windows that are directly above our heads when we sleep but also the bathroom window so that we would get a crossbreeze! By this morning it was pouring out and ended up raining all day. But it was so warm that even in the heavy rain no one needed to wear a real coat today. I just had my fleece all day.

I left to go down to Castile Christian Academy just a little after Dominica left to go to class in Canandaigua. She only has two classes left after this one if I am not mistaken. Three at the very most. But I am pretty sure that she is right down to the wire on this class. She will be relieved to have it over with although she does enjoy it.

I had a really good and productive day down at the school. The wireless machine actually worked even after I transported it down to the school. I managed to get a number of the computers set up and working today. In fact I managed to complete everything on my “to do” list before the bell rang for the end of day so I was very happy. I even managed to get lunch from Lorraine’s during the day too. I am going to be speaking at the school’s PTA meeting next Thursday evening so I need to prepare for that. I am giving general information on Internet security and dangers of having an online presence.

Dominia got home a little before me. I had Oreo with me. I hadn’t planned on taking him today but he was so anxious to go that I couldn’t bare to leave him at the house. I put in a few hours working on the computer in the office and Min puttered around the house doing some chores here and there. Dad came over at 5:30 and we all went over to the Omega for some dinner.

I discovered today that Amazon had forgotten to ship me a book that I had purchased several weeks ago. They shipped part of an order but not all of it but their website said that it had all shipped about the same time and that everything was scheduled to arrive at the same time. This isn’t the first time that I have had them completely mess up an order for me and have their website report all kinds of weird information that isn’t correct. It was around Christmas time several years ago when it last happened. It had to have been a long time ago because it was books that I had bought for mom and it wasn’t for her last Christmas, I don’t think, so that would have been four or five years ago. Anyway, so I had to email Amazon and we will see how we go through this process. Usually they are really good about these things and this time things should really work easily because they have a tracking number on the website for USPS and if you use that number at USPS, USPS says that no package was ever assigned that number so clearly there is a problem in Amazon’s system. I just hate dealing with things like this. I am also dealing with an eBay purchase that I made months ago that never came. The guy finally emailed me this week but we will see if he really followes up on sending me the package. It was a cheap item but, once again, I just hate dealing with this kind of stuff. I always feel like I am being so mean trying to get people to send me the things that I have all ready paid for. I really shouldn’t have to do that.

After dinner Dominica and I really just did our own things. She is listening to the sequel to Eragon, Eldest on her new Creative MuVo Mix MP3 player that I managed to get working for her yesterday. She loves the new player. Even though it was really cheap compared to the iRiver that she had been using this one works better and can handle the books better. It is able to hold a ton of books on it at once because the compression scheme that they use is so efficient. She just sat in her moon chair in the back of the upstairs office and listened to her book and knit a sweater for Oreo. I did some work and then decided that I wanted to relax and so I played a one player round of AoE2. Oreo just slept next to me on his pillow as he does.

Dominica decided that she gets too nervous doing the podcast and she doesn’t really want to do it anymore which is too bad 🙁 We were having fun doing the show. I think that her schedule really hurt her desire to work on it because she was always so exhausted whenever we had to do a show that it made it a real burden instead of something that was really fun to do. So I will mostly just be doing the show on my own now, again. I did a bunch of listening to new music tonight auditioning stuff for the show. I found tons of good stuff and some good holiday music is starting to appear as well. I think that the music segment really adds a lot to the show.

The Firefox 1.5 web browser released today so everyone needs to get out there and get their copy so that they can have the latest and best web experience possible. Don’t wait. Get it now. Go on.