Sheep Guarding Llama

My first day off of work. I will catch up here later.

I spent the day today in Frankfort with Min and her sister and the girls and the dogs. I didn’t have a lot of time to do much of anything. I slept in pretty late because I was totally exhausted after working the overnights the last two nights and hardly getting any sleep yesterday. This afternoon I mostly just watched some television and played on the computer for a little bit.

Bob’s new Dell computer arrived today. He was pretty pissed when he got it and opened it up and discovered that he can’t put any kind of half decent modern video card in it because it doesn’t come with any kind of video expansion slot. He couldn’t believe that a new computer wouldn’t have at least an AGP slot if not something newer. He had bought the machine so that he could play some of his newer video games that won’t run on his current machine but the brand new Dell was actually a step backward from the PIII-1GHz machine that he is using now. What a ripoff. He called Dell and the tech there tried to convince him that AGP was old and that PCI had replaced it. Um, yeah. I guess they don’t think very highly of Dell customers at Dell. So Bob is sending it back. The machine wasn’t nearly as fast or as useful as all of the 1-2 year old computers that we all have had. You should be able to expect more from a mainline new computer. But Dell isn’t known for making the best desktop computers. I am not really sure what most people think of them. I have never met someone who was happy with one after actually owning it. Just lots of people enchanted by the advertising. Let’s face it, I work there and I don’t own one. Andy has worked there, he doesn’t own one either. Same for Craig. Same for John. In fact, I have never met a Dell tech who doesn’t use HP at home. I would use a Dell if they provided them for us. They aren’t had. They just aren’t HP. My money goes to HP. At least for now. I have been very happy with them over the last six years. And their customer service speaks English AND you have ways to guarantee that your customer service people are local and here in America.

Tonight is my last night of work at Wegmans this week. Next week I will be in Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Oh how exciting. That was sarcasm folks. I had dinner with Min’s family and then it was off to Onondaga. Work went well tonight and everything went very quickly so I was done nice and early and managed to get out of there and head for home in good time. During my travelling today I managed to finish the book “The Cat That Went Bananas”. It wasn’t the best murder mystery that I have read. The characters are interesting and I like the social interactions just because I have read a few of those books in that series but I don’t feel like the author is very intelligent and I am not sure that I will be reading anymore of those books. Having a murder mystery with no killer at the end is just cheesy. It was just a fluffy novel. And the whole thing takes place in a weird, fanciful town where people are very strange and the city that they are supposed to be in exists in a real world location completely devoid of any population at all so it is really weird in the book. I really feel that the author is senile and doesn’t understand that the books have devolved into a sort of bizarre modern day fantasy freak show. The people act so abnormally that it is almost creepy. You don’t notice it at first but after reading two or three books you really start noticing that the people in this novel are really WEIRD. No one talks on the phone either. They call each other to arrange meetings the following day to meet in person. Everyone does it, not just one or two strange people. And then whenever anyone gets together they have two or three sentance conversations over tea or squank water (whatever that is, the author never says) and then leave again. No one seems to really work. Everyone is retired or wealthy or something and just calls, makes appointments and drives around to chat for two seconds. Really weird.

After work I stopped by the hotel here in Geneseo to see Mary at work. We hung out for several hours. She gets really bored there. We talked about computers and the potential for nuclear war with North Korea, women’s issues in the middle east, etc. etc. I finally got home around 5:00 or so.

I hooked up my laptop with my new power supply this morning and sat on the futon making sure that SGL was up to date. I moved the April and May dailies out into the Archives so that the page would load faster. I was way behind on doing that this time around. I have been way too busy. I was a little concerned about how little I had been writing but I guess that I had nothing to worry about since April and May together already represent the second busiest quarter that we have ever had here. So much content, so little time.

I got out of bed and Min made breakfast for me.

We didn’t do too much this morning. Min watched tons of Alias while I worked on my laptop. I had some work that had to be coordinated today. We have one guy busy working on a large project in Rochester. It was supposed to be a very small project but it blossomed into a really good opportunity. Makes me sorry that I hadn’t handled the work myself. But oh well, I suppose I am not the only person who needs money. And I have a guy who is interviewing for a position in Buffalo. We are excited about that possibility but we will see where it goes.

Dad’s Road Runner is finally coming in this week. It is supposed to be installed on Thursday. So I have to go over there to deal with that to make sure that they don’t try to pull anything funny. I know how they can be. And I have to install his new wireless firewall unit so that he will be all set to go once Time Warner is there. That will be awfully nice to have high speed access whenever I am over there. It will make it a lot easier for me to visit from now on. It has always been an issue before that whenever I am at his house I am off of the network. Not just Internet access but the company network as well. Now being at dad’s house will be almost exactly the same as working from home. That will be really important starting, coincidentally, Thursday when Oreo goes to live with him for seven weeks. Min and I are planning on being over at the house quite a bit during that time to make sure that Oreo knows that we are his parents but I will need to stay connected when I am there and having the RR and the firewall unit let me do that. So that is quite a relief.

I am working at Dewitt tonight. So not much happening today. I have to leave around 7:30 to get out there on time.

Work went smoothly tonight. Had a good time hanging out with the night manager and managed to leave by 1:30. I got back to Frankfort and Min was still up watching Alias on the futon cuddled up with the two Boston Terriers. It is tough sleeping with two people and two dogs on a futon but we make it work.

Slept in late. Min got up and packed up the puppy and headed out for Frankfort. She will probably be coming home on Thursday night.

I have a lot of errands to run today. I did some work around the house this morning. Just as I was heading out the door, I got a couple of calls that I had to deal with. So I was running pretty late by the time that I got out of the door.

I went over to Josh’s to pick up my tuxedo vest. It has been missing since the wedding. When Josh and Joanne got back from Disney, they discovered that someone had dropped off the vest and left it on their porch while they were away. We can only guess that someone had picked up the vest while I was in the shower at their place before going home and must have taken it home with them. Luckily they only went on a one week honeymoon and that Tuxedo Junction was so cool about the whole thing. They could have easily charged me $100 for that waistcoat already by this point. So I picked up the vest and drove back out to Marketplace to drop off the vest. What a pain this vest has been. We have probably put over an hour into looking for it with four people looking and driven a total of about 90 minutes moving it around and made several phone calls to people and Tuxedo Junction to deal with it let alone TJ’s hassle in not being able to get that vest back out to someone else.

While I was at the mall, I grabbed some quick food over at Tom Wahl’s in the Marketplace Food Court. Can you believe that it has been ten years since I worked there? That is crazy.

I had to do some banking while I was in Henrietta and then I had to run to CompUSA to find an AC Adapter for my laptop. I found one but it was $100. At least it seems to be a pretty nice one. It should be for that much money. Man are those expensive. No wonder laptops cost so much.

After shopping, I was able to head for Syracuse. I was doing okay for time but I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take me to find the Wegmans in Liverpool so I left myself some extra time. It is a long drive today. In the car I am listening to “The Cat Who Went Bananas”. I like these low-key murder mysteries. That is something that I inherited from my mother. I find them to be very relaxing. But they hold my interest and make the drive easier.

I made it to Wegmans in good time and managed to get an early start on the evening. That was good because it ended up being a longer than usual evening. But not too bad. I did manage to get a late night snack before I left. I was done around 1:45am. Then it was off to Frankfort.

I got into Frankfort a little before 3:00. Min was still up watching Alias waiting for me to get in. She had both Boston Terriers on the bed with her and they were all waiting for me. Dexter was very excited to see me. Both dogs ended up sleeping all night with us.

Oreo got me up twice during the night. I was a little tired after that and Min was still exhausted from her drive so we ended up sleeping in with the puppy until around 10:30. That was too late to be able to make it to church. But the puppy needed lots of reassurrance from us. He seemed to be happy once we convinced him that he was allowed onto the bed. That put him more at ease. He sure is a sweetie. Very quiet and subdued. Not at all like Min’s parent’s Boston Terrier, Dexter.

I got up this morning to the phone ringing. I jumped out of bed trying to get to the phone. My glasses were on the computer desk. On my way to get them, the laptop power cable got caught between my toes and it got pulled off of the book that it was sitting on. Now it is dead. Crapola.

The telephone call was nothing. Discover card called us to talk about an online automatic payment program that lowered our interest rate. On a Sunday morning? I was NOT happy at all. I plan on cancelling that card. I can’t believe that they would have the audacity to call us on a Sunday morning. It isn’t like we owe them money. If we did I would understand. But we don’t. In fact, I paid a whole month ahead! They said that they had called just to get some information checked. I didn’t believe them, I was pretty sure that they were a scam. But they knew our purchasing history. Which might be better or worse, I am not sure. I made Min give me the phone and I asked for a manager. Once the manager was on the phone, she made up a lie that they had actually called to lower our rate even though the guy that we talked to had gone through the entire schpiel without ever mentioning it. He said that he had called to get information. There is no way that we could possibly be expected to believe that they had actually called for something legitimate and that they didn’t just lower our rate because I was furious. I was extrememly tempted to log on to our account and pay it off right on the spot and cancel the card. I can’t get over that they called us at home on a Sunday morning just to collect some personal information.

So now I have no laptop, that isn’t good. I really need that and I really need it this week more than normal. I am working in Syracuse this week and am going to be staying at Min’s parent’s house during the week to cut down on drive expenses and to spend time with the girls and Oreo. But I really need to be able to get to my email and IM and all of that. Plus I use my laptop at Wegmans so that is a problem too.

Early this afternoon Min and I took Oreo along with us down to my grandmother’s house for my dad’s 59th birthday party. We had a good time and everyone enjoyed getting to meet Oreo. He is such a sweetie. Everyone loved him. Taffy, my aunt and uncle’s dachsund, kept coming in to meet Oreo but she is nine years old and very low key. He was very excited to have a new friend to play with and she was very scared so she kept running to the nearest person and jumping onto their laps for protection. But she really wanted to meet Oreo and couldn’t resist trying to meet him over and over again. We got Chinese take away from the Shanghai in Geneseo and had brownies for dessert.

After dinner, Min and I took Oreo over to dad’s house where he is staying tonight so that he can get used to it with us there. We took a few movies along to watch while we were there. We ended up watching Good Morning Vietnam and Disney’s Get A Clue with Lindsay Lohan. You can check out the reviews of these movies at my new movie review blog Scott’s Reviews. I thought that that would be a nice way to keep this blog from being loaded full of movie reviews but make it easy for people who are reading this blog to be able to access my reviews while reading the dailies. See what a good job I do of leveraging blogs and tying them all together?

Dad had a multi-adapter for laptops and we tried that before we were going to try taking the laptop apart to fix it. Unbelievable as it seems, the power supply was actually the problem. The cable going from the adapter to the laptop actually snapped. Pheww.

We had decided that we were going to spend the night at dad’s and that we were going to drive out to Frankfort separately tomorrow so that she could go out early with the dog and I could go straight to work in Syracuse and then go out to Frankfort. But then we figured out that it would be silly to not sleep at home so we called Andy and he said that that was fine. So we went back home after watching the movies and got some sleep. It was pretty late by the time that we went home. We were pretty tired.