Sheep Guarding Llama

Today ended up being a disaster. I left the hotel at noon in Scranton and headed up to Ithaca before going up to work in Syracuse. I took care of a few things around town. Then I went over to Steve and Pat’s and hung out for a while before heading up to work.

The real disaster happened when I got up to the store in Cicero. There was a mistake and I was supposed to be in Woodbridge, NJ tonight. I didn’t even know that they had a store in that town. I was so confused. I was sure that the mistake had to be mine but I couldn’t figure out how it could have happened. I had even called the day before to verify that I had all of the right information. I couldn’t believe that I had gotten it wrong. It was five hours travel time from Cicero to Woodbridge so we decided that it couldn’t be done and would have to be rescheduled. It wasn’t until after I had had my phone conference with everyone that I finally took the time to go through my paperwork and discovered that I had not been told about the store at all. I had no way to know to go to that store. It completely wasn’t my fault. Boy was that a relief. I had really felt like an idiot trying to figure out how I hadn’t known to go to Woodbridge.

The good thing was that I got to go home early and got to spend some time with Min before I had to go to bed.

I didn’t bring my CPAP with me on this trip so we will see how I manage to sleep without it. I forgot it when I left the house but had remembered it just outside of Geneseo but the way that i390 works around Geneseo it is a huge effort if you ever have to go back for something. So I thought about it and decided that I would give it a try without. It is only two nights and there is no one here with me to hear my snoring so I figure that I might be okay. Last night proved that that wasn’t the case, however, as I never slept more that two hours at a shot without being awake enough to get up and look at my cell phone to see what time it was. I got up at noon after only five hours of “sleep” without getting what felt like any rest at all. And, of course, once I sleep like that I start getting heart burn as well. I am not dreadfully tired today but we will see how I feel after working tonight.

I had a conference call scheduled for 1:00 this afternoon so I played on the MUD to pass the time. I am so glad that I am able to play that from here. That is really nice. I did notice one of Jeremy’s friends playing when I first logged on today too.

Around 2:00, a couple more of Jeremy’s friends got online. It is cool that people are getting into the game. It will be tons more fun if we get a few people playing all of the time.

At 3:00 I ordered myself some Domino’s Pizza. I haven’t had that in a long time. Domino’s has long been my travelling hotel room food of choice. Ever since Nicklin introduced me to their thin crust pizza like five years ago, I have been living on the stuff when I am away from home even though it tends to give me terrible heart burn.

I played the MUD a bit today. What can I say, I am addicted again after all of these years. I have so many found memories of playing on the MUDs that it makes me happy to play again after so long. It has been about eleven years since I first played a CircleMUD based game. Back in the summer of 1994 when I was attending school at Kettering University then called GMI Engineering and Management Institute. Then I set up out own game at Josh and my house in Greece, NY in 1998. And now, seven years after that, we are playing again. I can’t believe that this last break has been so long!

I went into work at 8:00. It ended up being a long night and I got back to the hotel right at 4:00am. Boy am I tired. A long night tonight and almost no sleep last night. And I have to be out of the hotel by noon. Ugh. I will be going to bed right after I call Min. She has three hours left to go before she is done for the week. Unless she works extra on Thursday. I don’t know her whole schedule yet. The one really nice thing tonight at work was that I discovered that I am able to play the MUD from work all night. There is a ton of time that I have that I have nothing to do and just sit in the back room waiting for the computers. The MUD is a perfect way to pass the time as long as it doesn’t end up tempting me to play instead of going out for a walk to get some excercise. But it didn’t tonight. I went out for my walk. Not as long as last night’s walk of almost an hour, but I get twenty minutes or more in tonight. I didn’t want to risk holding anything up considering how late we were already. But I did get a chance to MUD significantly while I was there and I am way ahead of Andy now.

Boy is this year flying by. I can’t believe it. Last week was Min, Andy and my two year anniversary of living in the house in Geneseo! Two years! It was two years ago last weekend that Andy took the job in Buffalo that turned into the job in Puerto Rico.

Today is a travelling day for me. I had to get up this morning to go to lunch with dad. We were meeting someone from ADP at the Omega and I had some paperwork that I wanted to get together before going over there. So I didn’t manage to get more than six hours sleep last night which is fine for me.

After lunch, dad came over and picked up Oreo to keep for the next two days while I am out of town and Min is working her two doubles. Then I was off on my trip to Northeastern Pennsylvania. I have never worked in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area before so this will be a little new for me. Not much because they are like an extension of Upstate NY and I drive through them more than almost any other cities but at least it is something to look forward to a little bit.

It is about a four hour drive down to Scranton. On the way I listened to an older book by David McCullough called “A Path Between the Seas” which chronicles the building of the Panama Canal. It isn’t as long as most of his books but it is pretty interesting. I never realized why they had had so many problems building the French canal several years before the Americans built the canal that is there now. The French canal had actually been the work of a con artist. The French people were inclined to believe him because he had been the same man who had built the Suez Canal but the reality was that he had done nothing for the construction of the Suez Canal and had, instead, simply been the man who had made friends with the right despot to get to be the person in charge of the work. He was a crook on a scale almost unimaginable and the number of people who gave him their life savings just to have him cover up the fact that he couldn’t make a canal in Panama and even if he could, he made sure that the engineers weren’t allowed to build it the only way that would work. The collapse of the French Isthmian Canal was the great business failure of all time and several months after the collapse the truth finally came out that everyone in government and in the press had been on the payroll of the company. So not only was this guy a thief and a swindler but the reality is that he must have hated the French people more than anyone and even so, even after he shafted all of those poor people – perhaps hundreds of thousands of middle class French workers who lost their entire life savings to him – they still loved and worshipped him. The hard facts are that he probably should have been led to the gallows as a traitor. Few would ever do more to destroy the French nation.

I am staying at the Comfort Suites in Scranton on Montage Mountain right off of Route 81 at exit 182. It is pretty convenient here since both the Scranton and the Wilkes-Barre Wegmans sit right off of the highway. I really like Comfort Suites, they are very comfortable. I got checked into the hotel and brought my laptop up to my room and got online just to make sure that that was working and then headed out to go to work.

Work went about as usual tonight. They had some problem in the main office in Rochester so I wasn’t able to leave at 12:30 when I was done but had to wait until almost 1:30. While I was there with nothing to do, though, I did get a chance to discover that I am able to play the MUD from work;) So if I ever get really bored there again, I know what I can do.

I got back to the hotel and wasn’t tired so I spent some time playing on the MUD. No one was on but me but I could see that Jeremy and some friends had been on playing earlier in the day. I did manage, eventually, to level to level eight. I am staying one step ahead of Loopy. But just barely. He made it to seven today.

I decided that I was hungry so I stayed up late enough to be able to go to breakfast down in the lobby before going to bed. I really like that they have eggs and English Muffins on the menu so that I was able to make myself a sandwich. I sat outside and ate before going up to my room to call Min and to go to bed.

Min was up bright and early this morning, before 7:00 am! She even took Oreo out who had decided to get up with her. He, however, was happy to come back to bed after having gone outside. Min had to leave by 8:00 to get out to Utica for her cousin-to-be Katie’s bridal shower. Katie and Dominica’s cousin Sam are getting married in October. This will be the third October wedding in two years (technically, two years and a week) for Min and her immidiate first cousins. We apparently set a precedent for weddings right at the beginning of October.

Dad came over after church and picked me up to go to get some lunch. I had slept in long after Min went to bed last night so I stayed in bed snuggling with the dog.

This week I am working in the Scranton Wilkes-Barre area of eastern Pennsylvania. My plan is to stay in Scranton both nights. I work in Wilkes-Barre tomorrow night and Scranton on Tuesday night. Then on Wednesday night I work in Cicero. So I will not be spending the night in Syracuse but coming straight back to Geneseo right after work. So I will be in town on Thursday and Friday. Min is working her usual Monday and Tuesday double shifts this week and maybe a shift on Thursday but we don’t know about that shift yet. We haven’t heard how Mary is doing. Hopefully she is reading the site and will drop us an email to let us know.

I finally got the new MUD up and running. We never managed to get the old one back to the state that it had been in. Loopy and I have some ideas yet but haven’t had a chance to work on it. Maybe I will be able to work on that while I am out of town this week. I always say that and never end up having any time to do antyhing.

Andy and I went over to the Omega for dinner. Actually, Andy got dinner and I just got coffee and a piece of pie since I had eaten there not that long before hand. After dinner, I drove down to Liecester and picked up Jeremy so that he could come over and try playing the MUD. He has been dying to try out the game since I described it to him last week.

It was about 8:00 when Jeremy came over just minutes before Min pulled into the garage after having been in Utica all day.

Andy, Art, Jeremy and I played the MUD for a while but Art didn’t stay in for too long. He liked the old MUD better and we haven’t gotten that one running yet. Maybe this week. Jeremy thought that it was the greatest game ever. He is really into it. Loopy played until around midnight or a little after but he had to get to bed so that he could get to work in the morning. Min and I are both working the overnights starting tomorrow so we are already prepped for staying up very late so that is my plan. Jeremy will, of course, stay up all night playing the MUD since it is always there to be played. That is one of the great things about games like the MUD, you can play it at anytime and always have it be a part of the game that you had been playing. You don’t have to wait for other people to be around but you can do that as well.

If anyone is interested in playing SunTzu with us, I will give you the connection details. Simply telnet into 67.138.186.75 port 5000. If you don’t know how to telnet, try opening the Windows command line and typing “telnet 67.138.186.75 5000” without the quotation marks and you should be all set. If you like the MUD, you will like it even better when using something better than the Windows command line. Simply do a Google search for “putty” and download the first thing that comes up. Putty is a remote access tool that is free and works very well for playing on a MUD.

I worked very late last night but I finally got the new MUD server up and running. I wanted to have some flexibility so I loaded both the traditional CircleMUD 3.1 code like we had been playing for the last week as well as the new Sun Tzu code from CWG. So we will have two different games that we can choose from when we want to play.

I didn’t get up until just after noon. Oreo wanted to sleep in and snuggle – so who was I to argue. He is a very snuggly dog.

For lunch, I went over to McDonald’s. Andy was there early today and saw my cousin Sara working. This is her first week at her first job. So I went down to see her working as well. Min and the puppy went with me.

After lunch, I drove Min up to Michael’s in the city so that she could do some yarn shopping. I drove around with Oreo and did some banking.

We got back home and Andy and I did some work on Waste Watcher 2. Then we went up to Avon and got some dinner at Pizzaland. Then I got some ice cream at Woody’s II. Mackinac Ice Cream rocks.

Min played some “The Bard’s Tale” while we were out. She is enjoying having a new amazingly fast graphics card.

Min knit while snuggling with Oreo while I played the new Sun Tzu MUD with Andy and worked on the dailies.

Tomorrow, I am being left home alone. Okay, home with Andy and Oreo. Min is going out to Frankfort for a bridal shower. She is leaving first thing in the morning so I will be without her all day.