Sheep Guarding Llama

Today was pretty busy for me. I had to get up this morning to take the dog for a walk. This is becoming a regular ritual. So much for me sleeping in anymore. I guess those carefree days of my youth are officially over. It is good, though, because it forces me to get up and to get moving in the morning. And I start the day off with a walk. I would never do that on my own.

I had to work this morning to get some copy ready for an ad that we are placing up in the city. We are making an attempt at “placemat” advertising up at the Mt. Hope Diner on Mt. Hope right by Strong Hospital where Eric works. It isn’t too expensive and we will see whether or not it has any affect. It is cheap enough that getting a single customer that way will pay off.

I had a lunch meeting over at the Omega Grill with Melissa from ADP. This is our second meeting and her third, altogether, with the company. We had a good lunch. I didn’t get home until almost 2:00.

I had some work to do around the house before I was able to take off for the afternoon. I spoke with Rob Ellis in Jacksonville, Florida today for about an hour. We had talked two days ago. Rob used to live around the corner from John and I in Annapolis and he had worked with John in getting the accounts in the DC market. So Rob and we go way back. He and his wife Trish moved down to Jacksonville two years ago or so. He is down there working for Cingular and she is working for Waste Management.

My great aunt and cousin are up from Ohio and are visiting with Richardsons today so Min and I are heading down there at 4:00 for an early dinner and to hang out. Oreo will be going with us. He really doesn’t like being left home alone.

I am getting closer to getting the MUD server up and running. The first step was to get all of SUSE 9.3 downloaded and I now have that. Now I have to get it installed onto a MS Virtual Server so that we can get it to run all of the time. I might have to buy some more memory for the server so that we can have a couple of MUD’s running all of the time. It would be nice to just always have that available. It is the kind of thing that is nice to be able to play from time to time and there are lots of people out there who have played them in the past and would be interested in playing on one from time to time. I bet Mary would play if it was up and running all of the time.

Min, Oreo and I got back from visiting with my Aunt Betty and my cousin Paula down at my grandmother’s house in Leicester around 9:00. We had a very nice time. It is too bad that we only get to see so much of my family so little of the time. That is the price that you pay for living in a different state than all of your relatives (mine all live in northeastern Ohio for those who are not aware.)

We got home and Min ran off to Wegmans to do some shopping. She had run out of stuff to eat in the house so she had to get something else there. I stayed home with Oreo aka. “Mr. Snuggles.” While we were down at grandma’s, we discovered that Sara now has a job working at McDonald’s here in Geneseo. Now she can following in the footsteps of Art. He worked there around 1992! I can’t believe that it has been so long.

Art and Andy were playing the MUD tonight and I had some time between other tasks that I was doing so I decided to join in for a little bit. I am always up for some MUD time:)

While I played on the MUD I did a bunch of cleaning and organizing around the house. I have been out of town and Min has been working extra so things have been falling behind (yes, more than just SGL updates.) So I took the time to get as much caught up this evening as I possibly could. I had tons of mail and bills that had to be taken care of as well as just books, DVDs, and magazines that were pilling up around the house. It takes some serious effort to keep all of the magazines around here under control. I get 10-20 a week (yes, that is a week) and most of them simply get read and thrown away but some get stored so it is a constant management battle. It is difficult enough just trying to get the time to read them all.

Min finished reading the final book in the Left Behind series. By final book I mean the last one written that isn’t a prequel. There is a prequel yet that Min has not read and there is going to be at least one book left at the end of the series that hasn’t been written yet. She is really into those books. I am so glad that there is only one book left because she gets totally consumed by them. She was so into her book that she had no idea that I was cleaning around the house.

I worked on doing my first SUSE 9.3 server install tonight. I was feeling super productive so I sat at Min’s desktop and played the MUD, cleaned the house, paid bills, sent out mail and installed a server all at once. It is nights like this that make me feel good tomorrow. Min got into the mood too and started taking care of laundry, dishes, organizing our room, etc.

After cleaning and MUDing, Min and I watched some of “The Simpsons” before heading off to bed.

Oreo was still very sick this morning but by 10:00 he was starting to feel much better. We are pretty sure that he had a bad reaction to the pain killers / muscle relaxers that he was on and that that was causing most of the problems. He is still limping fairly badly but as badly as he was yesterday. He is able to get around and was so restless this morning that he convinced me to take him for a short walk.

Early this morning we had made an appointment for Oreo with the vet but we decided to cancel it because he was feeling so much better and we were concerned that he might find going back to the vet today to be overly traumatic. I think that he appreciated that decision.

Dad needed me to help him pick up his car from the garage today. So I went over to his place around noon and we picked it up down in Pavilion. While we were out to Texaco Town to get some lunch at the diner there. Yes, the place’s real name is “Texaco Town” and no, there isn’t a Texaco station there but there is a Sunoco. Min’s new graphics card came in last night and I brought that home with me as well. She is excited to be able to play all of her 3D games again although, she really could have been playing them before. The HP dx5150 that she has has a built in ATI graphics card that is not too shabby. Probably the equivalent of a midline GeForce FX.

Dominica had to go to work this afternoon from 3pm until 11pm. Mary is still out with her ankle injury and will probably be out for two or three weeks. It is just sprained but very badly.

I finally posted the last two weeks worth of posts today. I have been trying to go back and get old ones filled in before I posted but that just wasn’t happening so I finally just gave up on some of those days and moved on. I hate having to do that but it is better than having the site go stagnant when I get too busy to keep up with it from time to time.

Andy and I went out to Denny’s for some dinner. While we were gone, Oreo finally worked up to being able to go to the bathroom again and was anxiously awaiting our return so that I could let him out. He hasn’t gone in two days so we were very relieved that he finally went today. He is getting much better quickly. He is started to bounce around again like his old self and he even wanted to play a little bit tonight although he is still really limping.

Andy fired up CircleMUD 3.1 on his desktop and we played some of that this evening. Art had really wanted to play but wasn’t around tonight to be able to play.

No sooner do I type that Art can’t make it than he signs into the game. Cool, three of us playing tonight. Now if we can just get Min and Danielle to get into the game, we will have a decent game going. If anyone is interested in playing, email me and I will get you the details to log in. It is one of the few online games that can be played by someone over a dial-up connection.

It is finally cool enough here that we were able to turn off the air conditioning and go back to having the windows open. It has been a long time since we have been able to have fresh air in the house and it makes me happy to have it if only for one day. I am sure that it won’t last. It never does.

Art, Andy and I played the MUD for several hours. Everyone is really getting addicted to it. I am hoping to get it moved over onto a real server in the near future so that we don’t have to wait for Andy to be home and to have his one desktop up and running in order for everyone else to be able to play.

Min got home around 11:30. She was very happy to get to see Oreo now that he is feeling better. She and I really didn’t get to see each other today so we decided to hang out in the living room watching some of the fourth season of The Simpsons to relax before going to bed.

Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day for me. So if anyone is looking for me, expect to have a hard time tracking me down. I have some important work that has to be completed first thing in the morning. Then I have an important meeting for lunch. I have a little time in the afternoon, I hope. Then Min and I will be going down to Leicester around 4:00 to visit with my family. My cousin and aunt are visiting. They came up tonight but I won’t see them until tomorrow and it is the only opportunity that I will get to see them.

Dad emailed me this morning to tell me that Oreo had run off last night when dad took him out before going to bed and that he had hurt himself some distance away from the house. He didn’t think that Oreo had been attacked but he was limping badly. So Min decided to take him to the vet and to go pick him up so that we could watch over him.

We got over to dad’s and Oreo was, as always, very glad to see us. He was limping quite badly but otherwise seemed to be okay.

My new digital camera arrived today. I bought it with birthday money that I had been saving. I have been wanting to get a small, portable digital camera for a while now and I finally decided to splurge. I got a refurbished unit through dad’s employee discount at Kodak. It is the Easy Share CX7530. It is a 5 mega pixel unit that uses SD cards to store the pics. Those were the two features that I was really looking for. So I am pretty happy.

At 2:30 we went up to Avon to take Oreo to the vet. Normally we would take him to the Genesee Valley clinic in Geneseo but they are closed today so we took him to the sister facility in Avon. They gave him a shot of a painkiller that was supposed to last all night and some medicine for him to take when that wore off. They told us that it was just a sprain or bruise. Nothing too bad. We also had them insert a microchip into Oreo while we were there. Orea was definitely not too happy about that. It obviously really hurt him but it was over quickly. Now we will have a much better chance of recovering him in case of him really running away.

After getting him home, Oreo kept getting more and more sick. We got really worried about him. He was acting very stangely and we didn’t know what to do.

Min had to stay and take care of him because I had to work in Auburn tonight. I left around 7:00 and grabbed some quick pizza at Wegmans in Geneseo on the way out of town.

On the way out to Auburn, I finished listening to the last little bit of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I am all caught up now. Eagerly awaiting the final installment which could take more than a year most likely.

The map on Wegmans’ site is completely wrong and got me totally lost looking for the store. I had to call the store and get directions once I determined for sure that the map was wrong. I ended up not getting to the store until almost 10:00 which is significantly later than I normally start. Once I was there things went okay.

I took my regular walk this evening during the migration process and took a little walking tour of downtown Auburn. I have never really spent any time in Auburn before and I was really interested in seeing town. Everyone that knows me knows that I am really into small communities. I love local history and small towns and all of that kind of stuff. Auburn is a really cool, old historic Upstate New York town. I had a great time walking around looking at all of the grand old houses. What a beautiful area!

I managed to get home and get into bed around 3:00. Oreo was still very sick when I got in. We are really worried about him and don’t know what we can do. He appears to be really scared but he can’t tell us what is wrong.

I didn’t get out of the hotel until a quarter after noon. The room wasn’t really cold enough for me and that always makes me sleep much longer than I normally would.

I spent the afternoon working in the Varna area. It worked out well that there was some work to be done in the area so that I was really able to make use of my time down here. I ended up being very busy today. Then it was off to work in Syracuse.

I got to Syracuse a bit early so I went to the mall and did a little shopping at Borders. I did manage to find the book Planning Extreme Programming that I have been looking for so I picked that up. Then I went over to Wegmans on James St.

I got to Wegmans and was still way too early so I drove around the area looking for someplace that had pizza. I got a couple of slices and then went back to work.

Work went well and I managed to wrap up very early but they had some issue at corporate and I wasn’t able to leave the store until almost 1:30. That sucked. I had been hoping to have been home by that time.

During the trip out I have been listening to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (HP6) on CD. Both Min and I bought it on the day that it released. She got it in hardcover and I got it on CD as I always do. She finished it days ago. On the way home tonight, I made it to the last few minutes of the book. It was good. One of the best ones yet, I think.

I left to go to Ithaca right after Min left to go to work in Geneseo. I figured that I would, for once, get down to Ithaca way ahead of time so that I could get checked into the hotel and be all relaxed before going into work. So I left around 3:00 and got to the Comfort Inn in Ithaca around 5:00. That gave me over three hours before I had to go into Wegmans.

I got into work a little bit earlier than I had meant to but it gave me a chance to get a good head start on the evening. I called Bob to let him know that I was in town at the Wegmans. He said that he would stop by to see what was going on when he was done with stuff for the evening.

Bob came by and visited me at Wegmans around 10:30. I was moving along really well so he hung out until I wrapped up just before midnight. Then we headed out to the commons to attempt to find a bar that was still open. That isn’t the easiest thing to do on a Monday night in the summer in Ithaca where closing time is 1:00 as it is. We eventually settled on Moonshadows and got one drink each before they closed. Then we went down to our old haunt, the State Street Diner and got some late, late night dinner.