Sheep Guarding Llama

Happy Labor Day. Labor Day, America’s most useless and misunderstood holiday. Who thought that Labor Day would be a good idea? Apparently, the United States’ Department of Labor thought that it was a good idea. Apparently, Labor Day is a celebration of socialism. Unlike all of our other holidays which are designated to celebrate great people, events or religious holidays, Labor Day is a political party holiday and not appropriate in a nation trying to free itself of partisan politics. You can learn more about Labor Day from the official information page at the U.S. Department of Labor. See, SGL is educational.

We got back from the Comics Cafe around 10:30 and Oreo was extremely glad to see me. He gets so worried when both Min and I are away. We think that his previous owners might have packed before taking him to the shelter and that he might connect Andy’s packing with me abandoned because it seem to bother him with Andy moving.

We saw Demetrius Nicodemus last night and he was really good. But it doesn’t appear that he has an official website so I can’t send you to his page. If you do a search on his name you get a listing of places that he was performing at over the last couple of weeks including lots of links to write-ups, listings and reviews in Rochester. So now that I have written that we saw him, you are likely to get SGL if you do a search for him. Either way, he was really good. I would have to say that he is the best comedian that I have seen at Comics Cafe since having seen Kirk Nolan there with Min a few years ago.

It is great having the windows open finally. The house was only sixty eight degrees this morning and fresh air too. So nice that summer is finally winding down. Spring and Fall and definitely my favourite times of year. I know that everyone says that but it is really true. Fall gets a lot of publicity up here because of the incredible foliage but I think that Spring is very underrated. It has a lot to offer if you don’t mind the mud.

Art, Danielle and Michael came over just after 12:30 and Art began building Min and my new platform bed. We have never had a bed so this will be a real treat for us. The bed is made of MDF (medium density fiberboard) and is super heavy. Now that it is in place, there is no moving it. Ever. It is about 12″ off of the floor which is perfect for us. It gets us closer to the window so that we can make better use of the breeze coming in as well. We are rearranging the room so that the computer desk is no longer going to be along the wall between the main door and the bathroom but is going to be along the side of the bed against the outside wall. And instead of being the big new desktop (big meaning mini-tower so not all that big) but will be used as a stand for our laptops. So that is going to change the room a bit as well. We are planning on adding some speakers that go on either side of the bed so that we have the ability to listen to stuff in our bedroom and then adding a small shelf above the window in our bedroom that will allow us to put a projector (I saw A projector as if we were going to get a second one, I really mean put THE projector) there so that we can watch stuff on the six foot empty wall opposite the bed. That is the really nice thing about projectors. They are so portable and flexible. With a small house like ours, if we really wanted to we could easily get three or four usable locations for the projector. Right away we are going to have two and the plan is to make a third spot in the downstairs office area. That really allows us to maximize the use of the projector since it is such a large single investment. We really like having the LCD monitor in the living room because it allows us to watch more than one thing at a time if we want to. So we don’t plan on making any accommodations for the projector in the living room.

Dad is coming over this evening to get some dinner with us for the one time that we were able to schedule it all weekend and to inspect the new office area to see what is going to be needed to run cabling from there down into the wiring plant which, luckily, is just below it.

We had dinner at Dennys, they were about the only place in town that was still open. I really dislike pointless holidays. Then dad came over and took a quick look to see what we were going to have to do to make the wiring work in the basement. He didn’t think that it looked like it would be too bad so we are planning on giving that the old college try tomorrow morning after breakfast.

After dad left, Min went back to bed and got to try out sleeping on the new bed. Oreo was happy to sleep there too. Min is really happy finally having a real bed to sleep in.

At 9:00, I went out for me evening walk. I went down Lima to Highland to Center and up 20A. I stopped in at the hotel and found Mary working the evening shift. I talked to her for a minute and then went back to the house to wake up Min at 10:30. So 90 minutes of walking while listening to my book on my MP3 player. It is a total walk of about four miles. It is hard to measure out exactly because MapPoint 2004 that I use doesn’t have my road, the road that I connect to or Volunteer on it so there is a lot that I have to estimate. While I was walking, I used my Pocket PC to do a quick survey of the streets that I was walking down. The trip down my road showed many wireless access points – many of which were open. Maybe thirty total just in that little stretch. It really shows how popular wireless networking has become. It is true that almost everyone that I know has a wireless access point now and I am about to graduate to my second one. Even my dad has one and my aunt and uncle are talking about getting one. Jeremy will love that.

I took Min to work and Mary and I went over to Tim Horton’s and got some donuts and some dinner for Min that we took back to the hotel. We walked to and from there too but that wasn’t far enough to care. I just love living in Geneseo now that I can walk everywhere and that I have something productive to do while walking. MP3 players, books on MP3 and PodCasts are the best! Mary drove Oreo and I home and came in for a minute to check out the new bed but couldn’t stay long.

Dad is supposed to be picking Min and I up to get breakfast around 7:30 so I can’t stay up too late tonight.

The weather is gorgeous today. It was nice and cool last night and bright and sunny today but only about seventy degrees. So we have the windows open and are enjoying the fresh air. Min and I slept in until 1:00 which is normal on days when she is going to be working a double. She needs to sleep right up until she is going to leave for work so that she doesn’t get totally exhausted while she is there.

I think that I forgot to mention about Min’s interview on Friday. The person that she was supposed to be interviewing with ended up cancelling because he got called away on an emergency (nothing bad, work stuff) and wasn’t able to see her on Friday. So they rescheduled for this Thursday at 10:00 am. So, it sucks that she has to wait for a week wondering whether or not she is going to get it but at least she still has the interview. So if everyone could remember to pray for her on Thursday, we would really appreciate it.

Eric called this morning and said that he had tickets to go to Comics Cafe tonight and was wondering if we wanted to go or not. Min is working but I am not so I decided that it would be fun. Min has been there since I have been. She was very unhappy with how crude and inappropriate they were the last time that she was there. They are pretty consistently bad but every now and then you get something that is really good. Like the “Midget Caller” comic that Min and I saw some years ago.

Andy got back to Geneseo around 1:30 to continue his packing. He just has the little hard to deal with stuff left. All the little things that need to go into bins. So he is working on that today. Everything should fit into his car when he is done packing it all.

While Min was having breakfast this morning, she had a disaster and had raspberry jam go all over the kitchen chair and the carpetting. So the time before she went to work was spent attempting to keep the jam from staining everything. While she was still cleaning that stain up, I discovered one of my books on CD that had been in the car that Dominica had accidentally spilled coffee onto some months ago. I think that I see a trend here.

I did some site maintenance and moved August out to the archives. With the updates from August added to the archives, the archived dailies now contain in excess of one half million words not including any of my XHTML formatting which must account for many thousands of additional works. To give you a good comparison, the King James Version of the Bible has 783,000 words. At the end of this month, I expect SGL to pass the two thirds point and should in about a year be actually longer than the Bible. So for all of you who have taken the time to read the entire site and say that you can’t find time to read the Bible. Shame on you.

I did some more work on the site today. It has been pretty ugly all weekend so I thought that it would be nice to get that underway. I have taken too much time off the last two days from working on it and it isn’t the pleasent site that it used to be. Soon enough I will have it working better. I promise.

Dominica stole my Pocket PC today to take to work with her. Apparently my geeky toys are too much fun to resist.

There isn’t a whole lot going on today. I am mostly relaxing around the house working on the computer and hanging with Oreo. Andy is packing and cleaning getting the last of his stuff taken care of around the house so that he can get up to his apartment and get started on getting that all put together. Min is at work and I will be spending the evening with Eric, Amanda and Amber (Amanda’s sister) at Comic’s Cafe so I decided that I wanted to post the update on the early side today so that it would be taken care of and I don’t have to worry about it later. If anything exciting happens yet today, I will tell you about it tomorrow.

I forgot to mention that gas in Henrietta last night was only $3.19. That is a 60¢ drop from yesterday morning’s prices in Caledonia. So things are looking better even if they aren’t looking good.

Just in case someone out there is not familiar with the cent “¢” sign, it is the correct way to write monetary amounts less than $1 (correct being an awfully relative term) and you can learn more about The Demise of the $0.01 Sign.

Andy is moving out today. Min and I have the house to ourselves – for the time being.

I was pretty exhausted when Andy came in to wake me up this morning. Only about four hours of sleep. I had an email waiting for me from dad saying that the latest shipment of “toys” – demo equipment from a partner company – had arrived last night which is perfect timing because Andy needs his wireless adapter back that we have been using and there is a new one in the package of demo gear. Since he is moving out today, that works out pretty well.

It is really weird that he is moving out today, though. I know that I keep saying that but it is true. It is almost like I am moving on to another phase of my life. This is a pretty significant demarcation that my twenties are over soon. Only a few months to go and I will be in my thirties and not living with a roomate.

Those of you diligently reading the site yesterday and today should slowly notice the look and feel of the new site taking shape. I have managed to keep the site working, more or less, as I have been making changes to it which is pretty impressive, I think, considering just what all I am doing to it. Modifying a table based background on the fly to a fully CSS positioned one is a little challenging with so much site content to work with.

Andy woke me up just after 8:00 so that we could get “moving.” I need to run him to Henrietta to pick up his rental truck, stop at the bank to make a deposit and swing by dad’s to pick up the new networking gear that has arrived. I am dreading going out and seeing the price of gasoline this morning.

On the way out of town we stopped at the Mobil station near to the house and filled up on gas. When I was pumping it, it was $3.39 a gallon and by the time that I was leaving, it was $3.49 a gallon. While I was there, my old school superindent was at the pump behind me and he talked to me for a second about the incredible price of fuel. I didn’t realize who it was until he drove away and then it snapped that it was Superintendant Dalton that I haven’t seen in a dozen years.

We got the truck in Henrietta then I went over to my bank and took care of my day’s banking and then I drove down to dad’s house to pick up the latest shipment of stuff that had come in there. There is a new wireless print server that I plan to use to hook up our two printers in the living room, at least for the time being, and to hook up the Macintosh Mini in the living room since that doesn’t have a dedicated ethernet outlet anywhere and the print server doubles as a bridge. So that is really handy. Also in the shipment is our new wireless adapter that we can use for Min’s desktop in our bedroom which is perfect timing since we have been using Andy’s wireless adapter and I am sure that he is going to want that back today as he moves out.

I got home around 10:30 and Andy was just ready to load his desk into the truck. So I helped him get that onto there and that was about all of the loading to be done until this afternoon. Unfortunately, the truck smells of urine and Andy is pretty sure that a homeless guy was using it as a port-a-potty or something because the back of the truck is all stained with it. It is really gross. We got the desk loaded and then drove over to Taco Bell and got a quick lunch. While we were there I spotted my aunt and uncle coming out of the Omega which is really something because that is so far away I can’t believe that my eyesight was good enough to make out who it was. They spotted me getting into the Mazda and waved. They were heading over to the new Super Walmart.

We got home and Min had just gotten up. Andy had to get moving and get up to his new apartment to wait for Value City Furniture to deliver his new furniture sometime between 1:00 and 4:00. I hate waiting for stuff like that because you have no idea when anyone is actually going to get there and you could easily blow your entire day waiting for them. Furniture is awfully tough because quite often you have nowhere to sit while you wait since that is the stuff that you are waiting for.

I was totally exhausted this afternoon so I decided to lay down for a short nap. Oreo came in and lay down with me which was very sweet. I talked to Nate this afternoon who is working up at the Great New York State Fair. The Party at the Pond has been, more or less, cancelled this year. He is trying to figure out when some people can get together but the regular party is off. That has been going on for a really long time like almost ten years now.

Andy and Tony got down to Geneseo after taking delivery of Andy’s new furniture in Brighton around 4:30. Then the real moving began. Luckily, Andy only has a couple of large items so moving really isn’t all that big of a deal. And he is able to get all of his usage of a truck done in a single day so he doesn’t have to deal with very much truck logistics either.

I talked to Art this afternoon and he has Min and my new bed halfway done already. We didn’t think that we would be seeing the new bed for at least a week but I guess that it is a holiday weekend. Boy is this weekend the weekend of our house changing. With Andy moving out, his bedroom is being turned into my temporary (but very long term) office. That will be a huge change. For Min and I it is almost like that front room wasn’t even a part of the actual house. So that is a big time change for us. Then there is the redecorating that Min wants to do very soon. She wants to repaint at least four rooms of the upstairs. And with a new bed going into our bedroom, that is going to completely change things there as well.

Originally dad was going to come over and we were going to go to dinner with him but we ended up not being able to work that into our schedules. So Min ran over to Wegmans and picked up subs for everyone before we took the truck up to Andy’s new apartment. After subs, Andy drove Tony home in the moving truck and Min and I drove up to the apartment with Oreo who insisted on coming along. He hates to be left behind. It was probably around 6:30 when we got up to the apartment. It took Andy and I until just after 9:00 to get the truck unloaded. Then we had to drive back down to Henrietta to drop off the truck at Budget. On the way down to Henrietta we remembered that we had packed things into the car that Min and I were driving as well so we had to go back to the apartment to drop off those items. On the way back north we stopped into the Abbott’s Custard on West Henrietta Road and got some cool desserts to reward us for all of the hard work that we had been doing.

It was around 11:00 when we finally got back to Geneseo. All of us were exhausted. It has been a long and busy day. Min has to work a double at the hotel tomorrow so she was hoping to stay up late this evening but she laid down on the couch and was out in no time. Andy had been planning on doing some more packing tonight and taking another large car load up to his apartment with him but he gave up on the idea and just took a few items when he left just before midnight to go to his new home. So it is official that Min and I are now here in the house alone. Almost like a normal married couple.

Andy currently is without telephone or Internet access. He will be ordering that stuff on Tuesday, I guess, when businesses open back up. But it will probably be a week or two before he has any real form of communications in his new apartment. To see what his options were, I took my PocketPC with me up while we were moving stuff this evening and used some software to do a site survey and discovered that a bunch of his near neighbors had open wireless access points so that it was really easy to get onto the Internet in the interim either way. In fact, my PocketPC was just online without having to do anything. It was really handy. Now I need to figure out where in Geneseo that I can go for walks and not lose Internet access because that would be really handy.

It was nice and cool out this evening. It was hotter during the day but tonight it was decent. So we took the opportunity to shut down the air conditioning (hoping that we won’t have to turn it on much for the rest of the year) and opened up the windows.

Today is the last day of Andy living here in Geneseo with us. I am taking him up to the city tomorrow to pick up his moving truck at 8:30 so that he can start moving. This is a momentous occassion for me. I haven’t lived without a roomate since I first moved out from my parent’s house to go to Michigan in 1994. That is just over eleven years of not living on my own. Now, it is true that I am married now so I am not really living alone because Dominica lives here but still it is different. No more roomate. Of course, John Stephens, the Surfing IT Wizard, might be moving up here at some point which would mean that we have a roomate again for a while. But that isn’t looking too likely at this point. He has a pretty decent job down in Endicott that he isn’t likely to be leaving anytime soon.

I have decided that it is about time for SGL to have a face lift and maybe some serious structural change. Down the road I hope to completely reimplement the site using XML and RSS but until I get to that point I am going to be settling for a CSS redesign with a new look and hopefully no tables used for structure. I would also like, if at all possible, to finally do away with all images used on the site and go to a totally CSS and XHTML designed page. I only use the images for a tiny bit but I don’t think that they are making the site all that much more attractive and I think that I can do better without them and the pages will definitely load a bit faster without them. And it would be nice to have a new look for the beginning of a new school year since I know that there are a ton of students at York that will be ready the site diligently again.

Jeremy decided last night that he wanted to spend the night but hadn’t worked that out with his parents yet. But, since it is the last time that he will be able to come over and play the MUD before school starts most likely, I drove him down to Leicester so that he could leave a note that he was up here. On the way down we noticed that gas in Geneseo had climbed to $3.19. So that is $1.61 to $3.19 in just 48 hours. Doubled in just two days.

Also, it is now September, so it is time to celebrate SGL’s FIFTH ANNIVERSARY! That is right. Five whole years of non-stop blogging action even before there was such a thing as blogging. Whoo-hoo. Happy birthday to us. Yeah baby.

I decided that I wanted to start working with the site live last night as very few people read the site at night and I just felt like being lazy. So there is plenty of site damage going on today and I have to apologize for that. But it makes my life a lot easier to just do it this way so I guess that everyone just has to deal with it. The good news is that it is coming along, I guess. Also as a quick technical note: somehow Blogger got my site feed messed up for the SGL2 podcast but it appears to be working now just fine. I had to spend about an hour tweaking it, however, just to get it to register at all.

Art came over around noon today to go over the plans for Min and my new bed with Min. He is building us a stylish, European platform bed so that we won’t have to sleep on the floor anymore which Min can’t stand. I have been sleeping on the floor since 1997 so I really don’t mind at all. But Dominica has only been sleeping on the floor over the last few years and she doesn’t really like it. She especially doesn’t like being close to things that may or may not be crawling around on the floor. But I do admit that the floor bedis not the most attractive way to go in bedroom furnitings but I have always had a really difficult time justifying spending any type of money on a bed just to have something that looks better than I enjoy less than sleeping on the floor. I really like the floor and find it to be incredibly comfortable and simple and cheap.

Art was only intending to be over for a little while but ended up hanging out until 5:00 or so. Then he ran home and picked up Danielle and Michael and they all came back over to the house to get dinner. Art and I stayed at the house with Michael and Oreo while Min and Danielle went over to Wegmans and did some shopping and picked up some subs for dinner.

Mary and Jocelyn were supposed to come over tonight. We had been planning on seeing them all week. They called and made plans with us this evening and headed on over from Silver Springs. But they never ended up making it. We called over there several times looking for them and started getting worried after a while. Mary called at 1:10 am to let us know that they had gotten a flat tire between there and here and had just gotten back to their place after getting it fixed. So we didn’t get to see them at all tonight.

Min’s friend Rebecca or Big Bec as she apparently goes by came over at 10:00 from the hotel to hang out with us all. She, Art, Danielle and Michael all stayed until about 1:00. At that point I had to get to bed so that I could get some sleep. Andy is moving out tomorrow as you all know and I have to have him in the city at 8:00 to pick up his Budget rental truck so that we can get him moved. He is waking me up in the morning when it is time to go so I need to get to bed. Have a good night everyone and I hope that you all have a good Labor Day weekend.

Andy moves out the day after tomorrow. Weird.

I was pretty tired when I pulled myself out of bed at 11:30 this morning. Driving twelve hours can take a lot out of you. But I managed to get up without an alarm this morning even with Dominica having gotten up just two hours before I did and Oreo being very snuggly.

I showered and headed out to go down to Castile where I had an appointment with Pastor Joel this afternoon. We are working on coming up with a plan for the new computer lab at the school. The school has grown so much this year that we really need to do something to be able to accommodate all of the students that they have there now. So we are working on getting together a main lab that can handle a dozen students at a time which is significantly more than the seven that we were able to take at a time last year. And we are also looking to add an additional three computers in another area for non-computer class work where students can go just to work on papers or whatever they need to do. It is going to be quite the project and will take quite a bit of time. We have a building project which will take a little while so that we have places to put all of the computers and then there will be a lot of wiring to be done. Then we have to get the computers put into place. That is always a pretty decent challenge on its own. We still need some more computers if anyone out there has one that they would be interested in donating. Anything in the PIII 600 or faster category would be greatly appreciated. We are hoping to phase out most computers that are slower than that mark which most of what we have currently is. Definitely nothing slower than a PII 350. But the 133MHz memory interface of the PIII 600+ machines makes a really big difference. Machines faster than 866Mhz are even better. We only have one that is that fast currently. We do have one fast machine, hopefully, going into the school this year but one is not much. About eight new machines would be really great. Even better than more computers is more monitors. Currently we are pretty short on monitors. We really need a minimum of 17″ with a resolution of 1024×768 which isn’t too hard to come by and lots of people have gotten rid of monitors like these but we can still use them. We have a computer of monitors that do us no good because they are either way too tiny or their resolution is way too low. So almost anything that anyone has would be most appreciated. What we are really hoping to get is 15″ LCDs but we will probably be a year or two away from getting more than one or two of those.

I got back home around 3:00 and Oreo was very happy to see me. Min had just gone to work about half an hour before I got home so he was alone for a very short period of time today.

Supposedly the builders working on the complex here were going to come over and look at the house this morning to see how much that they would think that it would cost to install one or two new windows into the house. We could really use some extra natural light and we are really for want of more air flow. We want to add one window to each bedroom if possible. That would make a huge difference. And since we are hoping to paint the rooms shortly, now is the perfect time to do some light construction. But it will probably cost way too much to have it done. We will see.

The news coming out of the south today is exceedingly grim. New Orleans is still under several feet of water and there are thousands expected dead. The remains of the city has descended into total chaos and there is little aid that can be brought into the city as large numbers of militants are taking up arms and seizing control of the city. The convention center has fifteen to twenty thousand people trapped inside with, apparently, a number of teenage boys with guns killing and raping with little anyone can do. Forty thousand National Guardsmen have been called up and are on their way down to suppliment the large number of troops that are already in place there. There were even snipers going after the people attempting to evacuate the hospitals. There is no food or water and people are doing anything to get it. This is truly an unbelievable American tragedy. This event will surely be remembered in our history as one of the low points. How embarrassing that the world must watch our second poorest city become so uncivilized. FEMA has stated, quite rightly IMHO, that with all of those people still in the city so long after a mandatory evacuation was ordered it really is difficult to feel that they didn’t bring this upon themselves. Sure there is a small percentage that simply were unable to leave the city. Many sick, elderly and some extremely poor (as well as some tourists) who were unable to get transportation were trapped. But the tens of thousands who were left in New Orleans were surely not mostly of this type. They were people who thought that they would take their chances, were dumb, arrogant or as it now appears, were planning on taking advantage of the situation now that we see widespread looting in the city.

One of the most upsetting stories of all though is that of a group of tourists who were lied to by their New Orleans hotels telling them that they would be able to come down without a problem just to arrive and realize that they were in a war zone and that they had nowhere to go. A group of tourists banded together and spent tens of thousands of dollars getting hired bus transportation arranged to get them out of the city before things go too bad. Many of the people trying to escape were elderly with some with walkers and some with wheelchairs. People who had nowhere to go. No legal means of doing anything as all business was closed. And then the military, while the tourists were standing outside their hotel waiting for the buses, stole the buses from them and used them to evacuate Louisianna residents instead of the toursits who had paid for and owned them. This is an act of total prejudice, lawlessness and slaughter. The tourists who were mislead into going to New Orleans or who simply became trapped there had less means of escaping than anyone and have many disadvantages like not knowing the layout of the city, not owning anything or having anyone at all to turn to and now they have no money as that was stolen by the National Guard. The locals that the military chose over the tourists chose to live in New Orleans and chose not to leave when they had the chance. But many tourists found out too late and were unable to get out of the city. I hope that New Orleans never recovers its tourist industry. It has long been a blemish for America. Now is our chance to start over. Unfortunately, it is probably not in the interest of the state of Louisiana to do so. They have long capitalized on their loose Napoleonic code laws and vice industries to make them money while keeping the vast majority of their population in abject poverty. When I visited there I was appalled by the third world status of so much of the city.

Anyway, it is incredibly sad. And we have maybe a month or more of this before we will see anything really get any better. There are so many people displaced now, at the very least. So much business disrupted. This is a major national set back. The entire city of New Orleans will have to be rebuilt. It is hard to imagine that there is a single building left that will be worth saving. It is a substancial loss as New Orleans is one of our oldest, most historical and most unique cities. So much incredible history is lost forever. Not something that we think about happening very often in America. To us, almost everything we have is permanent and safe. Our museums, our historical buildings, our monuments all stand for all time. But we are a young country and we forget that we can lose our past as easily as anyone else can. I am so glad that I travelled to New Orleans and saw the French Quarter a few years ago. I know what the city looked like and I know its famous sections. I drove along the Mississippi there and over Lake Pont

Anyway, gas is super expensive. It has been shooting up like crazy. Just two days it was $1.61 a gallon. Today, Andy filled up at $3.09 and we have heard reports of it being higher in different areas. Rumor has it that Atlanta hit $6 today.

Min went to work at 3:00, she is working the “B” shift today after having been at FLCC for college this afternoon. I went down to my grandma’s today to visit for about an hour with her and dad. Then Jeremy came back with me so that he could play on the MUD for a little while. He came over around 7:45 and is planning on heading home around when Min gets home.

Remember to keep Min in prayer (in addition to everyone in Louisiana, Mississippi, etc.) because she has her second round interview in the city tomorrow (we might have to move up there if she gets it so that we can afford to have her commute 😉