Sheep Guarding Llama

Okay, first things first. Oreo seems to be feeling much, much better today. It really looks like his stomach was just very upset yesterday and he kept eating and drinking and making himself sick over and over again. He seems to be fine, more or less, now and is happy and hanging out like normal.

The SGL Podcast has finally made it onto the all time most popular list. We are currently Podcast #84 and the Jedi Council Speaks is at #74. We have not left the #50 of the day for an entire week, though, and should be climbing through the all time list at a pretty good pace now.

I woke up to the alarm this morning at 8:30 but then fell right back asleep and didn’t wake up on my own until around 9:20. Oops. I am supposed to be in Springwater in southern Livingston County at 10:00 this morning. I jumped out of bed and got ready as quickly as possible. I wasn’t doing too badly and was out of the door by around 9:40. It is a bit of a haul down to Springwater though. Maybe forty minutes. Not quite I guess. But it is a bit of a drive.

So why am I in Springwater today? I am mentoring a student in programming down there. He is a student that goes to Wayland-Cohocton school down in Steuben County. The school called the Chamber of Commerce and got ahold of me through the Business Education Alliance here in Geneseo and they called me and asked if I would be interested in working with this student. We have been talking about it for about two weeks ever since Eric and I went to Business After Hours a few weeks ago. So today was the first day that he and I worked together. I was down there from about 10:00 until almost 1:30. We got a lot done. I had a good time and I think that it was pretty successful.

I came home and picked up Min and Oreo and we over to the Omega to get some lunch. We came home and Dominica got to work packing up everything under the sun for us to take with us to Florida. Oreo went into the office and enjoyed some of the only sunshine that we have had in weeks.

We just found out that we ARE going to have high speed Internet access while we are in Florida BUT we are not going to have it all of the time. Internet access at our hotel costs $10 a day so we aren’t going to be having it available to us all of the time. We are most likely not going to have it at all on October 31st, Monday, the day that we arrive. And we will definitely not have it on November 7th which is the following Monday when we are leaving. We will most likely not have it the day before that either. That means that the SGL and SGL Podcasts will not be updated on certain days but you can be sure that we will still be working hard getting content together so that we can blast it out on the days when we do have access. We might luck out and find some way to get access everyday but it seems rather unlikely. We will do what we can though. I am trying to get as much stuff in place to make the whole interactive experience even more exciting. Since we are not going to have regular Internet access we will be doing more than expected on SGL 2 through the podcast there to keep people connected since we are able to do untitled audio posts there without having any direct connection to the Internet. The cell phone will be indispensible while we are down there. We are also taking the “new” digital camera with us so we should have lots of great images for everyone by the time that we return. The first thing that we are going to be doing to make the trip more interactive is to add an SGL Flickr Stream that people can check out. If you are using a media aggregator then just point it to the stream and you will be able to see our syndicated Flickr images coming through with RSS. There is also a new Flickr badge over on the right in the navigation menu to make it easier for everyone to get to my Flickr page. You will be able to see the latest images automatically over there but just click on the badge and it will take you to the page.

If anyone is interested in seeing what SGL was like way back when you can check it out at the Internet Archive which is an amazingly cool project attempting to catalogue all human knowledge and is doing a pretty impressive job of it.

Don’t forget that tonight is your chance to set your clocks back an hour. Min and I wanted to hang out tonight so we watched Disney’s Ice Princess. I think that it probably goes without saying that this movie stank so bad that I had to open the windows. Can anyone say “Josh cooking rotten monkfish?” If you want the whole story check the review but definitely avoid this movie. This film is totally, absolute crap and Disney should be ashamed for doing so much to mock figure skaters. This movie doesn’t do to much to encourage people to become movie script writters either. This movie smacks of having been written by a hoard of monkeys. Clearly Disney is not paying anything beyond minimum wage to their writting staff. Can anyone say interns? Dominica is definitely skating on thin eggshells as far as getting to choose movies in the future.

I am working on trying to discover how to do vlogging using the free hosting from the Internet Archive. If it ends up working then we should have some movies from WDW to show you. At least that is the theory.

Min and I needed to forget having watched that awful movie so we popped in Herbie Fully Loaded. We had all ready seen HFL at the drive in but we own all of the other Herbie movies so we couldn’t skip over this one.

I had to order our tickets for Disney World tonight. Let me tell you, the Disney web site… oh wait, they don’t have a web site, they use the crappy GO.com service. No one knows why Disney made the decision to have the smallest web presence of any company with more than twenty employees in America. So anyway, I tried to use the awful web site to order some tickets. First I went through the entire order process (which is confusing because they don’t give you the option of “ordering” tickets anywhere) and then found that the button to actually order the tickets didn’t work. So I went through the entire process again using a different web browser. This was extra annoying since the shopping cart feature on the site didn’t work. Then I discovered that there was a check box that had to be clicked but that was hidden on the page (and I mean HIDDEN so that you had to scroll to find it without anything indicating that it was there.) Once I figured out that bit of sloppy, “I didn’t pass my freshman year of web design” site design then I had to fill out all of my contact information (again… that didn’t get saved either.) Then the site would not let me continue complaining that it needed my email even though the email was clearly filled out AND my username was my email. Then it turned out that the button that I clicked to automatically fill out the shipping information didn’t do anything and they needed that to be manually filled out even though it wasn’t indicated. So I finally got to the point where I could actually purchase the tickets and then, after they took my credit card information (TWICE!) the site said that I couldn’t get a confirmation number because of a system error and that I should wait for an email to tell me the number that I need to pick up my tickets. As you can imagine: that confirmation number still hasn’t come and I am FURIOUS. If I didn’t have plane tickets all ready paid for and confirmed I would not be so sure that going to WDW was such a good idea. I can’t believe that Disney is willing to treat their customers like this. I just spent $500 (or maybe $1000, I have no idea) and they don’t even have the decency to make sure that I have a confirmation number! And I was given no way to deal with not having a number. And they assume that I will have access to my email before I get to Florida (which is only one day away!) Which I might but it really matters when they decide to send that confirmation number. We could very easily end up not getting those tickets.

Well, that is just what I needed just before going to bed. Oh brother. I am getting so sick of Disney that I really am beginning to hope that I don’t have to go back there again. It is so unfortunate because I used to love WDW so much but I find it harder and harder to really enjoy doing any kind of business with them. It makes me unhappy that I have given them my money. They don’t care about me as a customer and so I don’t care to be one.

Before I begin to record the events of the day, one quick announcement: Dominica got her first professional IT job today!! That being said… read on for details.

Min and I had to get up this morning so that she could get up to the city to an interview. This is only the second job that has been interested in her so far. It is hard for her looking for word at this stage because she doesn’t really have any experience yet so everything is based off of what she has learned in school, done in certifications or whatever. The first couple of jobs are always hard. The interview was at 10:30 this morning up on Lexington in the city. We got up there plenty early with Oreo riding along with us. He is so happy to get to go places with us and hates being left alone so even if he never gets a chance to get out of the car it is still better if he gets to go. So Oreo and I sat in the car while Dominica went into the interview. They told her that the interview would only last twenty minutes. I had some phone calls to make so that worked out all right. I got some stuff done that I needed to. I took Oreo out for a walk and still had plenty of time. Dominica ended up being in the interview for almost an hour! There was definitely a bounce in her step as she came back out. She was very happy with how the interview went and was very confident.

We went to Borders after the interview because I wanted to see what JAVA book options there were. Then we decided to go to Friendly’s to get some lunch. We called Eric and he came down and met us at Friendly’s. He just had some coffee while we ate lunch.

We arrived home around 2:00 and were hardly there at all before the recruiter called to tell Min that she had been offerred the job. Boy was Min excited. She had to go to work at 3:00. But she was able to go in and tell them that she got a new job and that she is cutting back her hours there. The hotel was looking to scale back hours anyway because they are heading into the winter season and things just aren’t busy there during the winter. So Min told them that she would work just the two audit (overnight) shifts and not the evening desk shifts starting next week. The hotel was pretty happy as that actually made a lot of things a lot easier for them. Min is scheduled to start at Fuji eSystems in Rochester on Wednesday, Novemeber Ninth. They wanted her to start earlier but we are on vacation obviously and Dominica needs an opportunity to talk to her professor out at FLCC so that they can figure out what they can do to work around her schedule.

As mentioned on the SGL Podcast, you HAVE to get out there and check out FireANT – a free video blog or vlog aggregator for Windows and MacOS X. The incredibly cool vlog RocketBOOM. If you haven’t seen Amanda at RocketBOOM yet, you are missing out on the vlogging revolution. RocketBOOM also releases all of their content under the Creative Commons license making them extra cool.

I should mention that according to Technorati this blog is the leading authority on both sheep and llamas! Now there is something we can say about ourselves.

Oreo got really sick this afternoon. Sick enough that the vet made me take him in right away so that they could get a look at him. They were pretty worried. Oreo was definitely feeling badly – I could tell from the way that he looked at me. He was scared. They gave him some medicine at the vet and made me take away Oreo’s food and water for most of the night. I stopped by Wegmans on the way back to pick up some supplies for Oreo and some dinner for myself. Then we came back home. I tried to work in the office but Oreo was so upset and needed me so often that I wasn’t able to do anything in the office. So I finally just put in a DVD in the living room and watched some BBC television while Oreo tried to snuggle with me. He really wanted to sit on my lap and be held but he couldn’t get comfortable. It was really scary with him acting strange. He couldn’t decide where he wanted to be and he kept wandering from one part of the house to another. He was so restless that it was really worrying me. I have no idea what he thinks he is doing. I am hoping that he is dazed from the medicine making him so tired and just wanting to do something and so it makes him wander around. I know that I can get tired yet restless sometimes. I hope that that is all that it is.

Nate called this evening from Perry. Apparently he is over there this evening without a lot going on so he decided that he was going to come over to hang out. That is pretty awesome since we almost never get a chance to see each other. Our schedules just don’t ever give us a chance to hook up these days. Getting old is tough.

Min came home from work and the three of us watched Napolean Dynamite down in the theatre. Nate hadn’t seen it yet if you can believe that. Of course he thought that it was hilarious. Oreo managed to sleep through the entire movie to our great relief.

Three days until Walt Disney World, can you believe it? I can’t. It doesn’t seem real at all. I have been telling people all week that I will be out next week and in my mind I have the time blocked out but it doesn’t seem like I am really going to be getting onto a plane and flying out of the cold north in just three more days. This is the first vacation that Min and I will be taking together that involves us flying. We have flown together a number of times but never on a “family vacation” so this is a little new for us.

I didn’t get to bed last night until after 4:00 and wanted to sleep in a bit this morning. Min got up and got off to school but Oreo and I had a nice lie in until around 11:00. It is so much nicer staying in bed when you have dog to hang out with.

podOmatic is back up and running this morning but its statistics are still not working. Episode ten did get posted this morning so you can get over there and check that out now. It is really long so be sure to set aside some time to listen to it.

Dominica came home from class this afternoon and had stuff from her class for me. Her professor got me a really nice Finger Lakes Community College sweatshirt/hoodie as a thank you gift for having been a guest speaker. That was really nice. He even managed to find one that fit me. Min was disappointed because she actually wanted the sweatshirt and was hoping that it would fall to her when it was too small for me. No such luck for her. I was wanting one of these too. I would also like to get some clothing from MCC. I am a graduate from there and I don’t have a single piece of clothing from there. Seems like I should. I also got a really nice thank you card from the professor and everyone in the class. They are signed it and wrote me some notes. It was very thoughtful. The college has asked me to come back and give the same lecture again so that they can video tape it this time. I suppose that this time I will have to be more prepared and have a powerpoint presentation or something.

Eric came over this afternoon to use the computer and the Internet access since he has nothing at work STILL. How they expect him to get anything done at all without a computer or access to his files or anything at all, I have no idea. Min headed off to work at 3:00.

Oreo’s vaccinations have expired and he needs to get his boosters. He dislikes going to the vet but we want to make sure that it is taking care of before we leave to go to Disney World or else dad might end up having to deal with something. So today is about the only good day to deal with it so I called the vet here in Geneseo and got Oreo an appointment for this afternoon. He is going in a five o’clock and will be getting two shots.

The dog and I left for the vet at 4:50. It took a lot longer than I had expected. He ended up getting a full physical, two shots, some blood work and his nails done. Err… cut. It took a full half an hour by the time that we were done. He was a very good boy, though, and behaved very well. Everyone there really likes him. They think that he is the sweetest thing.

Dad was waiting at the house when we returned. So we transferred Oreo over to dad’s car and then we went over to the Omega to get some dinner. We had a business meeting that needed to be taken care of over dinner so we were there for a while. Oreo napped out in the car. Then we stopped by the auto store in the plaza with the Omega so that dad could pick up a battery for his car. Then it was off home again. Dad had an entire load of books that he had packed up from his house and brought over to here. Now I really need to get more book shelves. As it is there is no room for anything anymore. The book shelf upstairs in the dining room is packed full. All three book shelves in my office downstairs are full. There are even books piled up on top of the books that are on each shelf. There is a ton of books on top of the cabinets in the kitchen too. And there are boxes of books all over the house including the garage. So I need to come up with some sort of solution to the book issues before we are no longer able to find anything that we need.

I checked back with podOmatic and the stats for yesterday were finally posted again and the SGL Podcast shot up to #35 for the day. Still not onto the all time top one hundred list but we have to be making really good progress having not dropped off of the daily counter now for several days and being relatively high on it from time to time.

Dominica called from work tonight and wanted me to meet her at Tim Horton’s when she got off of work. So I bundled up the little one (read: Oreo) and took him out to meet his mommy for coffee. Min was so exhausted when I got there, though, that she was barely able to keep her eyes open and we had to come back home pretty quickly so that she could get a little sleep. Remember, tomorrow is her interview up in Rochester. I am going to be driving her up to the interview so that she doesn’t have to worry about driving and navigating on top of the interview itself. So I am going to be out most of the day tomorrow.

Earlier today I did write two articles on one of my other blogs in response to the Catholic High School in New Jersey that banned blogging. I decided that since it was a technology issue that I would spare everyone my ranting. I also have a copy of a response to an anti-blogger that I wrote. Just so everyone doesn’t think that I didn’t write anything today. I was working on a podcast when Min called me and made me leave the house so I hope to be able to wrap that up in the morning and get it posted shortly.