Sheep Guarding Llama

I was up and moving at 6:00 this morning. That is twice in a row now. I hope that this isn’t going to be the start of a trend! I like having time to sleep in with Oreo. He likes to hang out in the morning and just relax. If I get out of bed he will follow me into the office and sleep on his pillow there.

I went to Burger King on my way out of town. I needed some breakfast and knew that I wouldn’t very likely be able to get any lunch.

Nothing exciting going on today in Ithaca. Just fixing a broken desktop.

It ended up taking longer than I thought which I should really be used to by now since it always takes a lot longer than I thought. I managed to get out of Ithaca around 5:15 to head back for Geneseo.

While I was in Ithaca I had to make a stop over to Best Buy and while I was in Best Buy I checked out some of the new portable media toys from Samsung. I am very depressed that they are no longer making the same MP3 player that I have. The one that I have is near perfect. It has a few minor problems but the cost is good and the size is perfect. And the best feature is the forty-two hour run time off of a single AA battery. I don’t like the rechargable units because they get far lower run times and you have to have a charger for them and cannot simply go out and get a battery for them. You can get batteries anywhere making them extra easy to use. I think that there are a lot of people like me who like to use their MP3/Ogg Vorbis players for many things like long walks, car drives, flying, etc. In many of those cases you need to have very long play times or the ability to just change the battery so that you can keep on listening. With a rechargable battery you are often stuck with not enough charge, even if fully charged, to last for the whole time that you might want to use the device! Especially on days when you are doing some serious travelling – liking riding a bus. And on those days you never have any good way to use a charger so you are doubly out of luck with those types of units. But while I was there I did discover that Samsung has a first generation audio/video player out that looks to be very interesting. It is very tiny for what it is and it allows you to play all of the audio files that you are used to except for Ogg Vorbis which is a real shame but it also allows you to play MPEG4 videos! MPEG4 is a very high quality, small file size and popular web video standard. It is very exciting because it means that you can use this tiny and inexpensive unit for both podcasting and videocasting! I am totally wanting one now but I am sure not going to spend any money on one until I have a chance to really try one out and see whether or not it is really able to do anything useful. But it would be really cool to be able to watch my own Vlog on there as well as Rocketboom, Villagegirl and other neat Vlogs. It is a cool idea and a start one way or another. It would be really neat to replace television with something like that.

I got back to Geneseo at 7:30 and met dad and Jeremy over at Denny’s for some dinner. Jeremy has been begging to go to Denny’s for two months now so we finally got to go.

After dinner Jeremy came over and set up his computer in the living room. We tried to get a VPN set up with some of his friends so that we could play Age of Empires 2 but after several hours of trying we finally ended up giving up on it for the night. We worked on that until 11:00 when Min got home from work and grocery shopping. It is not an easy thing to get to work.

Jeremy played video games into the night. Dominica and I recorded the twentieth SGL Podcast last night and, for the first time, we have added music to it. I am excited about Min doing the show with me. I think that it will take some time before we start to get anything super interesting but if we keep at it, and you guys keep listening and sending in comments, that we will manage to figure it out and get a pretty awesome show going. We all ready have a special guest host that is planning on joining us for next weekend’s podcast. That will be neat.

By the time I had finished editing the show and getting it ready to post it was around 2:30 in the morning and I really needed to get to bed. Dominica managed to go to bed a bit before I did. She has to work tomorrow but it is her last shift for the week and she gets the next three days off!

Today is the big Microsoft launch event out in Buffalo. I am so glad that I signed up early for it. The show sold out some time ago and a lot of people that I know didn’t manage to get in. These shows are a major piece of being IT professionals. They provide a lot of training, new product information, access to important resources and free software and prizes. Most IT professionals get all of their t-shirts from going to these shows.

Some very important news. Sony is now actively hacking (cracking to be correct) people’s computers. At least the computers of their customers. They are doing nothing against pirates or people who are getting copies of their CDs, only aganist people who actually buy their products. Sony is root-kitting computers which means they are seizing total administrative control. This is the deepest form of hacking. Far worse than what has landed many people in long term holding cells and lifetime bans from even using telephones. Not only is Sony doing this for their own purposes but by stripping users of their control over their own machines they have also created an undetectable system for viruses writers to exploit. So Sony is now actively and secretively distributing hacking tookkits. It you want to hack someone’s machine – just get one of Sony’s new CDs and pop it in a friend’s computer and there you go. It takes more than that to make it useful to you but if you want to hurt people it sure doesn’t take too much knowledge. Sony has lowered the bar for entering the computer vandalism practice. There is, of course, a number of class action lawsuits begun since the hacking was first detected on October 31. Now there is a Sony Boycott. This includes BMG which is a Sony subsidiary. I will happily boycott Sony and will be cancelling all of my BMG memberships which I have had for sixteen years! It will be the end of an era for me. But I won’t really miss it.

For anyone who didn’t check it out on RocketBoom for the last two days, here is the link to the blue ball factory. You will be addicted. I can tell.

I had to be up very early this morning. Or at least very early for me. I was up at 6:15 and out of the door by 7:00 with Oreo taking him over to dad’s for the day. Dominica is working her second day at her new job today and will be gone for far too long for Oreo to be left home alone. The show was in Buffalo today which is a huge pain because they do it on the northwest side of Buffalo so there is a lot more driving for everyone and tons of rush hour traffic to be dealt with.

Normally I am pretty happy with the Microsoft shows but today’s was a lot more boring that usual. I think that they dumb down the topics for these sold out launch events because they start getting just everybody showing up to them and not just the regular highly technical people. The regular stuff that they cover would be way too difficult for the people who only come out to get the free software.

The morning session was decent. Normally I like the afternoon ones better. There was no space at all and I had to sit on the floor for a bit of the time. Andy showed up for the second show and by this time I had figured out that we had to get seats early so I got a halfway decent one and saved one for him. Our seats were way too close to the front and it made us stare straight up at the projection screen with the lights on right above us glaring straight into our eyes. That made it really tough to keep our eyes open.

The conference wrapped up at 5:00 and we headed out into Buffalo’s rush hour traffic in one of the craziest parts of the city. It took us a while to escape with all of that traffic. We decided to get dinner in Batavia so that we could get out of Buffalo as quickly as possible.

We got dinner at the Applebee’s in Batavia on 63 across from the Walmart. From dinner we went over to Martin’s Grocery across the street to see what British ethnic foods they had. I found some interesting stuff but not the stuff that I was really looking for. I will have to keep searching for clotted cream of Devonshire cream. I got gas while I was there at only $2.43. That is the cheapest that I can remember in a year! What a relief to see gas prices coming back down to something reasonable.

I drove over to dad’s and picked up Oreo. He was very glad to see me. Oreo that is. He misses me when I am away.

I only got home a little bit before Dominica. She got home and was very happy about how her second day went. Things are moving along very quickly at work and she should be taking calls all by herself maybe as early as Saturday. That is exciting but also pretty scary.

To relax we watched the last episode of As Time Goes By in season eight and watched the first episode of Season Nine which is the only season in HDTV. Although they don’t appear to have really put much effort into the recording equipment because it just looks like a wide screen version of what they had always done. I am sad and excited to be going through the final season. Only one and a half hours left plus the one hour final “season ten” looking back special.

I had to get to bed by midnight because I am working in Ithaca all day tomorrow and need some sleep. I was tired all day today and I have to be out of bed at 6:00 am to be able to make it to Ithaca. So that isn’t all that much sleep. I am going to be at Lifestyle Properties most of the day tomorrow if anyone needs me. I am taking Oreo with me so that no one has to watch him. He loves travelling with me and I expect that he will have a good time. Jeremy is coming over tomorrow and spending the night so there is a little chance that there might end up being a Friday Night Game. We will have to see. It would be nice if we can pull it off.

I am very busy in Ithaca tomorrow and have to get back to Geneseo as quickly as possible to pick up Jeremy so I won’t be hanging out with anyone down there. I know that everyone reads this and looks for me when I come down but I am afraid that, once again, there is no spare time on this trip.

It is one cold and rainy day today. It is so dark outside at noon that I can barely tell that it is daytime. Today is the two year anniversary of my mother’s passing. In so many ways it seems so recent and yet in many other way it seems so long ago. I suppose that we can say that about anything. It would appear to be just the “thing to say” about any event as time passes. At least now that enough time has passed I am having an easier time remembering mom the way that she was when I was growing up and not sick like she was for the last year or so. That is really important to me.

Dominica left for work at 10:00. Her very first IT job and her first day on that job. It is all very exciting. It is a ten hour shift with a one hour break so she is scheduled from 11:00 until 10:00. She should be home between 10:30 and 11:00. That is a long day but she will be done on Saturday night and have three days off in order to recover. It is going to take us a few weeks to get used to this schedule but it sure is a lot better than what it has been.

Dad picked me and Oreo up a little after 11:00 and we went over to the Omega Grill for some lunch. We also did some shopping at Walmart. I had been hoping to have been able to have found some seeds so that we could start raising some plants in the basement while my office has been relocated upstairs. We should have a decent amount of growing space all through the winter down there since we anticipate no office move until later next year at the very earliest. But Walmart has taken away almost all of their stock of lawn and garden supplies and has stocked that portion of the store with nothing but Christmas junk. So no luck there. I did find an orange bell pepper that I intend to eat and then harvest its seeds to see if I will be able to start four or so plants from that. I am hoping today that I will be able to find my old hydroponic system that is in the basement somewhere. I know that I still have all of it but I just don’t know where any of it is. It is a small basement so it can be hiding in only so many places. I am planning on setting up the unit that I all ready have as well as putting together a “from scratch” system using an old aquarium that dad has kicking around his place. Systems of this nature are really easy to work with but are only able to produce so much. Very handy for small home indoor gardens though.

While at Walmart I also dug through their new $4.88 bin and came up with Jaws 2, The Musketeer and Out of Africa. Not a bad haul for under $15. We have been buying very few DVDs these days and the bargains are getting better and better for what we do buy.

The rain has become a thunderstorm and I am very surprised that we still have electricity at this point. Normally it would have gone out by now. It is so dark out that the street lights on the culdisac in front of my office window have been on since 1:00.

I came across a great link that shows those of us with limited financial resources the best way to pimp their ride and get more bang for you car-mod buck.

Dominica has email and AIM access from work all ready. She has a phone now too but doesn’t know the main number, only her extension. So I can’t call her yet. She is shadowing someone at work today while she learns the ropes.

Late this afternoon I decided to watch Jaws 2 which I have not seen in many years. Maybe fifteen or more. Really hard to say. I definitely haven’t it in a really long time. It has been long enough that I can’t remember how it goes. I do remember that I used to like it even more than the original. But it has been a long time. I don’t have that as an expectation now. I know that the following films were terrible though. Especially the attempted 3D movie.

I did a pretty thorough search in the basement and in the garage and was not able to come up with anything in the way of a hydroponics system. I have no idea where it could be hiding. I asked Dominica and she didn’t know where it was either. Where do these things always managed to get to?

I also decided to watch The Muskateer from Miramax. About halfway through the movie the disc stopped playing so I switched to watching Roxanne with Steve Martin. I love that movie. One of the classics.

Jeremy is coming over to spend the night this Friday. We are planning on having one of the first Friday Night Games that we have had in a long, long time. I will be putting up an announcement shortly. I haven’t played AoE2 in a low time. I haven’t even had it installed in a long time. So I need to take care of that but it will be fun to get a game or two in after all of this time. Jeremy and I are planning on playing 2 vs. 5 or 2 vs. 6. Should prove to be a good time.

I have to be in Buffalo at 8:00 am tomorrow. That means that I really need to leave the house by 7:00. That is way too early for me. Especially with Min not getting in until late tonight. We want to watch a little BBC before going to bed. Tomorrow is the Microsoft launch event that has been sold out for some time. It should be a really good, fun day with a lot of valuable learning opportunities but it is going to be a long day no matter what. I believe that Steve Bulkley is going out to the show all day as well so I will have someone to hang out with. Andy is going to the afternoon portion of the event. This will be only the second time that I have seen him in the past several months! No one else is able to go to the show because it sold out before anyone else took the time to try to get tickets. It is a nine hour show so I won’t be home until after 6:00. Oreo is going to be staying with dad all day. At least dad’s house is on the way. I printed out my directions and my map from MapPoint (the same software as Microsoft’s Streets and Trips) so that I am all ready for the morning. I will be too tired to think about it in the morning.

Dominica made it home in just about half an hour. Her commute is not as long as we had thought that it was going to be. That is very positive. She really enjoyed her first day at work and is very excited about the availability of hot beverages. She says that they have between thirty and fifty different types of coffee and tea there. She is in hot beverage heaven.

For the moment, SGL 2 is working again and I managed to post a quick test audio blog. Who knows how long it will last. That services never works for more than a week at a time. I can’t believe that they use it as a marketing tool for their “pay for” service. After all of the issues and refusal of their customer service to respond to emails I would never purchase a service from them.

Min and I watched a couple episodes of As Time Goes By before heading off to bed. Only about five episodes left before we are done with the entire show altogether. That is very sad. I have been watching that show develop since around the time that it first aired in the early 1990’s. Getting to see a new episode now and again has been a part of my life since I was in high school! That is a pretty long time.

Today I am starting off the daily with the same news story that I started the day off with. Here is a really touching article from the BBC about the family of that twelve year old Palestinian boy who was shot and killed by Israeli forces because they “thought that he was a threat” when he was playing with a toy gun. The parents of the boy have donated his organs to Israel and five Israelis have received them. It is a very touching story.

The SGL Podcast had 99 feed views yesterday. Ninety-nine! Come on people. One more isn’t that difficult. We can do it. We rose to number 49 today on the all time chart. Boy that is cool. We broke the top fifty. Our rise as slowed considerably but we are getting there. Tonight will mark our twentieth episode!

Dominica got home from work this morning at her usual time. I didn’t really get a chance to talk to her but I am sure that she is really feeling realived that she is completely done with the hotel now. She still has a pretty busy day today but it is a lot better knowing that she doesn’t have to go to a second job all week.

I didn’t get back from breakfast with dad until almost 11:00. It is so nice to be back home. Oreo was asleep on our bed when I got back. Now that we are home he doesn’t seem to be worried at all.

Eric found this story on the web today. The thing that makes this interesting is that this girl went to high school with him at Warsaw! Sara Brown is a PA-C and a Panther’s Cheerleader. You never think of someone from Warsaw going anywhere. Eric still does not have a computer at work after more than a month, I believe, with no real way to communicate with anyone. Imagine working a job where your office is so loud that you can’t often use the telephone, the telephone line is owned by a customer and not by the company that you work for, the only fax line is a five minute walk away and not owned by your company either so any documents sent over can be read by just about anyone and you have no computer or other form of communications. They don’t even have a FedEx or UPS drop anywhere on site. What a pain.

Eric came over around 3:00ish and hung out for a while. Without having a computer at work he is awfully isolated. He was here until almost 6:30.

A judge in Wisconsin today calls the man who shot and killed six hunters “anti-social.” Now there is an understatement. And to top it off it wasn’t even a good argument. Just a dispute over a tree stand. Can’t cheese heads at least fight over something interesting like whether or not anyone in Wisconsin will ever be able to make a cheese as good as we make in New York?

Dominica got home from “work” where she was doing her initial hire paperwork. She is able to get benefits from work and, for the most part, they sound pretty decent. We are very much looking forward to having health insurance again. There is a lot of peace of mind that goes along with that. Having been without it for around six months now, since May, is a little stressful. Especially when you wife is as accident prone as mine is.

I have managed to get dad hooked on both Roswell which I had dropped off for him just before we left for vacation and RocketBoom. Roswell is totally not the type of show that dad would watch and I don’t think that he would ever had tried the show out on his own but we loved it so much that we made him test it out. Now he is hooked. He was watching several episodes a night for a few nights there. And those are hour long episodes too.

Dominica went to Wegmans and did some shopping. We didn’t buy groceries two weeks ago because we knew that we were going to be gone so the house is totally depleated of foodstuffs. So Min swung into the vet to get some more medicine for Oreo and then went to Wegmans and did the week’s shopping. It will be nice to have food in the house again.

After grocery shopping Dominica and I settled down in the theatre for a nice relaxing evening hanging out with Oreo and watching some BBC. We watched the last half of the short lived series Are You Being Served? Again which was way too short. The definitely had been thinking that the show would run longer than it did because there was no ending whatsoever. The series ended quite abruptly with a lot of loose storylines and a lot of potentially good shows left to go. I don’t know if they ended because they were cancelled or if it was just too much strain on the aging cast or what. It was a good show. Better than the original, I think. Much more serial and involving. You become much more attached to the characters in this series. You get to know them a lot better. They become much more of real people in this series.

We also watched a little of the eighth season of As Time Goes By which remains my all time favourite show. We just got the eighth and ninth seasons from Amazon and will probably be done with them sometime this week. Neither of us can resist watching that show back to back to back. It is so good. The final DVD comes with the “tenth season” special retrospective episode that they did called “You Must Remember This” where they look back over the nine years of the show and give kind of a wrap up. I haven’t seen it yet but I almost purchased it separately and boy am I glad that I didn’t. It is $15 on its own and included free with these two seasons which are only about $30 all together.

We were in bed by midnight or so. Tomorrow is Dominica’s first day of her new job with Fujifilm eSystems. She is very excited and nervous. It is her first IT job so it is going to be very different from anything that she has ever tried to do before.