Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Today was a sleep in day. Which didn’t actually mean that I got to sleep in or anything. I was up just after eight because, that’s right – you guessed it, of the dog. But I wasn’t all that tired at that point so I was okay with getting up. Dominica slept in until just a little before 10:00 when dad was coming to get us for a late breakfast. He has a really busy schedule this week and this is the only time that he is able to see us for breakfast so we decided to squeeze it in. He came around the house at 10:00 and over to the Omega we went. That is kind of the theme of our lives. We have actually eaten at the Omega more than we have eaten at home the past two and a half years. And I am not exaggerating. Maybe we haven’t eaten there twice as much but even that wouldn’t surprise me. It is just so close and convenient. We stayed at Omega for over two hours today! We didn’t come home until close to one in the afternoon!

My afternoon was spent almost completely on the telephone. At least busy means good things but it is also a pain. I had a hard time getting anything done today because I was on the phone so much.

I did manage to on the telephone with support over at Creative and they were able to help me out with getting the Creative MuVo Mix to work with Audible. It turns out that you have to install special management software off of their CD that replaces the Audible software that I was all ready using. Not something that I would do on my own since the Audible software was newer and I had all ready gotten all of the latest Creative software off of their website. The support guy had never heard of the unit that I was using and it caught him by surprise. So it was a bit of a pain that they didn’t give any directions anywhere about how to get this to work but at least it really did work and the support guy was really nice and helpful. Once we got past that little obstacle the player actually works really, really well. The direct Audible files are super tiny and you can fit several books onto just 256MB. In fact, a 128MB unit would be more than adequate for just about anybody. I am thinking about getting one of these units for myself although I am not sure whether or not that will end up causing a problem because of the way that the software works so I am not too sure that I want to get one and go through all of the possible problems. If anyone is thinking of getting an MP3 player specifically for the purpose of listening to books, especially Audible books, then we both totally recommend this really low cost player. We got it for under $38 and I have seen it only for around $40. So that is a really good deal. And it comes with a coupon for two free books from Audible so that is worth a LOT. If you were to buy two books on CD from the store you would easily spend more than the cost of the MuVo!

We hung out in the living room tonight and finished watching That 70’s Show Season Three and then watched the first season of the 1978 BBC show Butterflies with Geoffery Palmer. I watched a bit but had to spend a lot of time bouncing back and forth between the living room and the office because I am working on a computer for the school and it is a lot of work trying to get it to actually work. I probably burned seven hours or more working on it by the time that the night was over. I worked on it for so long that I didn’t manage to record the Scott Reads Bible podcast until 2:30 in the morning! The podomatic system is on Pacific time so I have until 3:00 am to post and have it register as being the same day so that is why I had to do it then.

Mary and Jocelyn were supposed to come over tonight to hang out but we didn’t end up hearing from them until after nine o’clock. They had just gotten in from Dansville and were exhausted after a really long day and decided not to come over.

Dominica had abandoned me before midnight to get some sleep so I was alone for a lot of the night. Oreo won’t go to bed until I do so he stayed in the office hanging out with me and the hamster until I was finally able to go to bed very, very late.

I have finally convinced Dominica of how long it takes to drive to church and we managed to arrive early this morning. What a great feeling that is.

Amanda is on vacation this week from the Silver Lake Family Restaurant so we felt that it might be dangerous to go down there. Who knows what is happening there. She totally runs that place. She does the ordering, does the prep, cooks the food, takes the orders, does the hiring… We felt that it would be best to wait for two weeks until she returned and just eat in Geneseo at the Omega. So dad and Dominica and I all drove back over to Geneseo and had lunch there. Then Min and I went home to take care of the dog and to change before going over to the Ralstons to hang out for the afternoon.

We drove over to York around 3:00 and hung out at the Ralston’s until it was time for them to run to the evening service at church. We brought Oreo with us because he can’t handle being left along and was really upset from having been alone this morning. Oreo was a real bully with Obi and wouldn’t leave him alone. We really aren’t able to bring Oreo over there because he is obnoxious around other dogs. He is so great with people but he just has to be the center of everything. Art wanted to show us the new office desk system that he had built and installed in their home office. He made an entire three wall desk system completely out of MDF. It is really cool. We are hoping that he makes some desks for us like that as well. Hint hint.

Dominica and I came home and relaxed in the living room watching some of That 70’s Show Season Three which we have been working on for the past few days. We pretty much just took it easy tonight.

We both got a hankerin’ for some dessert and so we drove over to Tim Horton’s and got some eats. While we were there we grabbed an extra donut and walked over to the hotel to drop it off for Mary.