Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica was not impressed by my first Podcast on SGL. She thinks that I sound like a boring NPR personality which I thought was awfully impressive because that is what I like to listen to. So I was happy with the comparison. Dominica also happened to notice that SGL had a new look and was wondering how many months that had been there. So I guess now we have a good idea of how often she reads the site. So if you are out there reading SGL on a regular basis you can rest assured that you probably know more about what is going on with me than the people who live in my house. And if you are now listening to the SGL audio content that you are WAY ahead of Dominica since she can’t stand to listen me talking in my “podcast” voice and she says that I should play it when we go to bed so that she will be able to fall asleep quickly.

Art, Danielle and Michael came by at 10:00 this morning. Dominica, Danielle and Rebecca are going shopping all day today and Art and Michael are spending the day here. Michael homeschools so he had his regular day’s worth of schoolwork to do while Art and I hung out in the living room and kept an eye on him.

The girls got back decently late like around 6:00. We couldn’t believe how long they had been shopping. About the same time that they got back Andy stopped in to visit for a little bit.

We got dinner with Andy at Aunt Cookies’ down on Main Street. Andy and I just don’t really like Wegmans subs. The fact that Wegmans refuses to toast their bread and the fact that it is so thick and difficult to bite through really ruins it for me even though they do use good quality ingredients. They just don’t really compete with the good sub shops because they don’t put the same level of interest into customer satisfaction. The biggest problem, I think, is that they don’t toast their subs which is the preferred method of preparing them I am pretty sure but they get snotty with you if you ask them if you can. So I always think of them as being really rude and I don’t like to go there. But Aunt Cookies’ subs are really good. So we ate there before Andy drove back up to Brighton and Dominica and I drove over to York to hang out with the Ralstons.

It was kind of late by the time we got over to the Ralstons’. We played a round of Cranium, Min’s favourtie game. Min and I won again. I am pretty sure that it is her favourite game because we are really good at it. Art had been playing a little on the MUD this evening and we noticed someone named “Josh” playing on there. We are suspicious but we don’t know who it is yet.

On our way home from Art and Danielle’s house tonight, Min and I went to Super Walmart and did some shopping for the paint that we need so that we can paint our master bathroom. Min has been wanting to get it painted for a long time but we have been putting it off until now. Originally she had thought that she wanted to paint it a kind of light green but tried a little on the wall and subsequently decided contrarily. So she spent some time looking at the colour selection but was still unable to make up her mind. I looked at the available colour choices and determined that I thought that she would like to have the bathroom done in Fuschia Fizz. She couldn’t believe that I would let her have that colour but I had kept telling her that she could do it in any colour that she wanted. So Fuschia Fizz it was. She ordered a gallon of Kilz super ultra pink paint and we were set to begin the painting process.

We got in to the house a little after 1:00 and Min decided to start prepping the bathroom so that we would be able to paint tomorrow. She is very anxious to get the room painted.

Min and I had a very busy morning today. She had her interview at 10:00 this morning and had to leave the house a bit before me. She actually managed to call me after getting out of her interview before I even managed to leave the house to go to my own. Unfortunately, she felt like the interview was a bust and that there is very little chance that anything will come of it. We are still hopeful but it was very depressing.

My interview was at 11:00 but was only with a recruiter, not an end client, so my stress levels were far lower than Dominica’s were. My interview seemed to go very well but it is very difficult to tell with a recruiter because interviewing is much less an exact match for a particular position type of situation as it is attempting to figure out what is likely to match down the road. This interview was for a particular position but still it is quite different. I don’t have a regular interview for that position yet and we are not expecting to hear anything about it until Monday afternoon.

After my interview I drove up to Vincent Mazda in East Rochester which was right around the corner and I dropped off my car to finally get its inspection taken care of. That has been lingering on for a month now. What a pain that has been. Eric picked me up from the dealer and we went down to Jay’s Diner on West Henrietta to get some lunch. We drank coffee for a little while to make sure that they managed to finish up with the car before going back north to East Rochester to pick up the car. Then it was time to go back home.

Overall, my work day today was pretty short but I was kind of tired after having worked the Wegmans overnight last night and then having to get up for an interview this morning. Plus I had not gotten around to getting all of the paperwork necessary for the interview done so I did that this morning as well before I left.

Min had to go to work at 3:00 today to work the “B” shift so that left me home alone with Oreo. Oreo loves getting to hang out with me! I am his favourite, you know (shh… don’t tell Dominica.)

Nothing exciting happened this evening. It was a quiet night of sitting at the computer doing some miscellaneous chores and listening to podcasts which I haven’t managed to get to in a while. So that made me happy to catch up a little. I did a little work on my syllabus for the “New Media and the Internet Lifestyle” class that I am going to be teaching this semester down in Castile. I think that that class is going to be an awful lot of fun.

My big news of the day is that I recorded the first episode of the SGL Podcast. Technically, it isn’t a podcast yet because I haven’t syndicated it but that is just a technicality. The point of getting to where I did today was to see if I would be able to use Audacity with my new Logitech headphones to do a decent recording and it seems to have worked really well. Audacity is a really great product and did a great job of recording and then editing the show. It is about sixteen minutes long this time which, I think, is a pretty good length for what it is. I am really happy with how the show turned out sounding. I am always concerned that I will sound weird or awkward when I am recording but when I listen back to it I think that I sound a lot like any other professional podcaster that I listen to regularly so that makes me happy. Using Audacity to take care of things like compression and normalization really makes a big difference and recording in high quality with a nice USB microphone and doing all of the editing in high quality before mixing it down to the MP3 version makes it that much better too.

Min got home a little after 11:15 and was very glad to be home after having had that bad interview and then having had a really bad day at work after that.

I have decided, I think, that I am going to make the attempt to use WordPress to run SGL. I would consider using a hosting service instead of running it myself but the reality is that SGL is already so large that most hosting services won’t touch it. And now that I am starting to add audio on a regular basis, or at least I hope to be, it is going to grow at breakneck pace. It takes approximately one megabyte of storage for each minute of audio that I record. So that is pretty significant.

Min was very excited to see on CNN today that the Humane Society has been doing an amazing job of rescuing pets and other animals trapped in New Orleans from hurricane Katrina. Thousands of pets of being rescued and many are managing to be reunited with their owners although many, as you imagine, are now ownerless and will need new, caring homes and long term care. Dominica and I are asking everyone who can to consider donating to the US Humane Society to help save more of these poor pets that have had their lives torn apart by this disaster as well but were abandoned by their owners and had no way of escaping and didn’t get to make any choices themselves. And for families, espeically children, who have lost everything, bringing them back together with their pets can be critical in mitigating long term emotional trauma. Losing a house is devastating, losing a house and knowing the puppy that loved you starved to death in it because you left him behind could be the straw that tears a fragile family relationship apart.

Today is my relaxing day. Normally on Wednesdays I have to take a break and relax between having worked the overnight and having one to go tonight. So today I relaxed.

Tomorrow both Min and I are interviewing in the city so we would appreciate everyone praying for us. Min is doing her second round interview and we are very hopeful that she will get the position. I am doing an initial “interview” – after having done two on the phone – with a recruiter discussing a really perfect position up in Greece. It is too perfect so I am very doubtful that I will get it but we are really hoping that it comes through because it would make a tremendous difference for us. Also, my friend Ted is leaving tonight to go to Gulfport, Mississippi to help out with disaster relief and he asked for people to pray for him and his wife as they travel and work down there as well. So lots of prayer requests today.

Tonight is my last night at Wegmans for the week. Tonight I am at Culver Ridge which is just down the road from where Josh and I used to live in Irondequoit. On the way up to the store I was running a little bit early so I stopped by Borders in Henrietta and picked up some Lonely Planet guides to Montreal and Quebec. I figured that we needed to have some on hand in case we ever wanted to go up to Quebec at the last minute. It is so close that we can go there on the spur of the moment so best to be prepared.

Work went well tonight and I was back just a little after midnight. That worked out well. I need to get my sleep tonight to get ready for my interview tomorrow.

The BBC carried a good article today about support coming to the U.S. from the European nations. Lots of Americans complain about the support that we send to other countries and act as if we never need it ourselves. It is true that we have been exceedingly fortunate over the past several decades that we have not been ravished by natural disasters or domestic warfare (with the one obvious exception) but when we need support from the world, I think now people can see that the everyone is out for the good of everyone and, for the most part, we can all work together as a positive force. It is only unfortunate that it takes natural disasters such as this or the tsunami that hit southeast Asia earlier this year to show multi-national compassion. But at least at times like this we can see where people’s hearts are. I think that this is a really positive statement and it makes me very happy even at such a terrible time. And don’t think that only Europe is helping. There has been a tremendous outpouring of support from all over the world including some very small nations and several that were devastated by the recent tsunami and should not be expected to be aiding us now. Many of them are still in worse shape from that event than we are currently from this one. So, this is my personal big “Thank You World” for you all of your support.

Dad came over at 7:30 this morning and took Min and I out to breakfast at the Omega. We have hardly been there the last week or so with all of the college students back in town and the Labor Day Holiday and everything. It is nice to start getting back to normal.

After breakfast, Min went off to Canandaigua for class. Dad and I (mostly dad) ran three runs of Cat5e cabling down from the new office to the basement so that we don’t have to use wireless in that room anymore. That will be a big help. This house is really starting to come along now.

Min got home a little after 1:30 and then went back out again to go to Super Walmart to see if they had some supplies that we needed. I have a really busy week this week and had to work at home getting caught up on everything. So far things are going pretty well and I am well on track to have an okay week. It is tough having a short week, though, it is way too easy to fall behind. I really appreciate that Wegmans has me in town tonight. That will help a lot.

Min picked up a new memory foam layer for our bed. The platform bed is dramatically harder than the regular floor and I don’t think that she was prepared for that.

On a sad note: Bob “Giligan” Denver died today at age 70.

I walked to work tonight. Boy is that nice. I wish that I could walk to work every night. Excercise and no fuel costs all in one shot. I worked for forty minutes and then had a break so I walked down to the hotel and talked to Mary for a minute and then walked over to Tim Horton’s and got an egg salad sandwich and then walked back to Wegmans. I wrapped up around 12:30 am and walked back home getting in just after 1:00. I had some stuff that I needed to get done so I worked on that once I was home so I didn’t get to bed until closer to 3:00.