Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is a long day for us. We got up early and got moving. We went to Burger King in Geneseo on the way out of town to get some breakfast. That is our special treat for teaching all day on Fridays.

Min taught most of the day and I spent most of the day focussing on getting ready for this afternoon’s lecture that I am going to be doing. I still have a number of slides to get ready in my presentation and I have a lot of proof-reading that I need to get done to make sure that everything makes sense.

Classes went pretty well today. Dad came to the school around 2:00 and helped set up for the lecture. This is my first time lecturing since 2001. I am a bit rusty.

Overall, I think that the lecture went pretty well. It was almost a full two hours long and I had a lot of glassy looks coming at me but most everyone hung in there until the end. Hopefully I won’t lose them all by next week. Only one teacher came (other than Dominica so I guess that you can say that two teachers came which is a pretty decent percentage in the grand scheme of things) and my dad was there video taping the whole thing but we got about fifteen to eighteen studens which was a really good turn out, I thought. Especially when several students weren’t able to come because they weren’t able to get rides, a few had to work, Jeremy had tennis practice and Tony wasn’t allowed to leave his house (Tony’s life = house arrest.) So the turn out was quite good.

After wrapping up at the school, we drove the Case kids to their grandparent’s and we and dad went to the Silver Lake Family Restaurant for dinner. Time was running short, though, since we had a Friday Night Game scheduled for tonight.

Min and I picked up Jeremy on the way over to Art and Danielle’s to set up their new VPN hardware so that they can connect to our network. It took a little while to get that working but it did, finally, and we headed back to Geneseo to get the game moving.

We ended up having to wait for Art’s band practice to wrap up and we didn’t get a game going until 10:00. So, we only got a chance to play one but it was a really good one. Well balanced and we had a really good time. The VPN worked like a charm. That is going to make gaming SO much nicer as we move forward. We are really looking forward to Phil and Kate getting high speed Internet access as well so that he can play remotely too. I just think that that is the coolest thing.

Everyone got to bed before 2:00. A miracle for a Friday night. Not having anyone packing up and leaving the house really speeds up the “going to bed” process.

I wrote up yesterday’s update and then neglected to actually post it. Oops. I am slacking again.

Min decided not to get out of bed this morning because she had taught yesterday and was really exhausted this morning. So I went down to Castile on my own to teach the elementary kids on my own. Luckily, Min had already decided what everyone was going to be doing today so that I didn’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what to have them doing all day. Actually, the day went pretty smoothly and the classes behaved really well for me. I made it through the day without any major incidences. Yay for Scott the teacher.

I got home and was immediately put to work doing some cleaning and then running to the grocery store to get supplies. While I was at Wegmans, I was acousted by a woman who felt the need to tell me about how she lost 157 pounds by walking briskly and drinking protein shakes. She kept repeating herself to me for thirty minutes. I couldn’t escape. It was terrible. I hate going to the grocery store.

Eric, Amanda, Julia and Dad came over around 6:00. We are watching the “Love is a Decision” video series. We were hoping that Phil and Kate would be able to join us but we haven’t been able to get a hold of them recently.

After the video we had Dominica’s maple glazed salmon for dinner. It was very good. Eric and Amanda hung out until 9:00 or so before heading home.

Min and I pretty much went straight to bed. We were both really tired today and I have a lot to get prepared for tomorrow.

Yesterday I forgot to mention that I have a new weblog now, There, But For The Grace of God Go I, where I keep essays that I write about God, the Faith and Christianity. I had written one essay recently, which is already posted, and I thought that I might work on some more and I wanted to have a place to put them so that they would be accessible to people because there isn’t much point in me having them and keeping them all to myself. If I do that, I won’t even get anything out of them because I will lose them and forget that I ever wrote them.

Here is a “shout out” (and a blogroll) to Patrick of Notorious Ruminations who mentioned me on his blog this morning. Go check him out, he is an ex-Geneseoin living in the Buffalo/Niagara region now.

I got woken up at 6:30 this morning by Livonia Central calling to see if Min wanted to teach today. Just yesterday I was thinking to myself that she never gets called to sub anymore and “ta da” the phone rang. They knew that she was working the overnight and only needed her to come in in the late morning. So that worked out pretty well. I called her at work and she called them and decided to go in. It was especially cool because they wanted to make sure that they called her because it was a Biology teacher that was out today and, as you all know, her degree is in Biology. So she is at Livonia today teaching. It will be a big teaching week for her this week.

I was really tired and did some catching up on sleep this morning sleep until around 10:00. Andy was still here until after 11:00 but we never crossed paths so I don’t know why. He was gone by the time that I got up so I can only surmise that he went to work late today. He only has two weeks and three days left before his contract is up and they are winding down the projects for him at this point. They think that they only have about two days worth of work for him to do from here on out so he is going to be exceptionally bored at work until the end of April.

Speaking of work there, still no word on my contract. Today is the day that I was promised the contract would be signed so I am waiting to hear what is going on. I am expecting that I will be asking for significantly more money, about 30% more, to deal with all of this. I have had it and someone had better step up to the plate or I am going to go find something else to do and leave everyone else flapping in the breeze. Everyone is really banking on me on this project but no one is willing to put any money into keeping me around to do it. (That is necessarily true, the end client has expressed that they will do whatever is necessary to keep me on the project but that mentality has not trickled down to the people who are actually paying me at this point. But it might result in there being different people paying me very shortly.)

It is another beautiful sunny day. Boy it is nice to have Spring going on. June is busting out all over and it is only April!

I went out on the deck this morning. It is almost time to get out there and start enjoying the outside! At the end of last summer, Min and I got a nice four seat deck set with a real table so that we could use the deck as a second dining room since it attaches just a few steps away from the actually dining “area”.

At noon I realized that I had forgotten to take out the garbage. I ran outside but everyone else’s garbage had aleady gone. At least we don’t really generate all that much these days. It won’t be so bad to wait for next week. As I was coming back to the office I swung by the fridge and, while looking for something to nibble on, I discovered whipped cream that expired in January, 2004. That whipped cream must have been in the fridge every day that we had that fridge! It was like throwing out a piece of the house.

Eric discovered a really cool website selling affordable wind generators. I really want to get one and try it out up on the farm. That would be really neat. I know that Phil will be interested if he ever reads the page.

Today’s bizarre website is a Flickr page dedicated to Unhappy People at Disneyland. Check it out, you will love it.

More bizarre news today. Some MIT students have developed a system for randomly generating computer science papers for submittal to conferences. You can check out the MIT students here, if their link slows down enough to allow connections again. They were pretty busy today having been Slashdotted.

Min got home around 3:00. She was really tired but had a good time teaching. The only class that she had today was AP Biology and the rest of the day she had free. She managed to study a little for her A+ and she even managed to get in a little nap.

Min and I are going to be teaching down at Castile tomorrow AND on Friday. We are able to get in all of the younger classes tomorrow and then all of the older ones on Friday. That will make it far less rushed and give us a chance to really work with the students a lot more.

I didn’t set my alarm correctly last night and didn’t wake up this morning until walked in at 8:00 and asked why I wasn’t up yet. Dad was supposed to be picking us up at 8:00. So I jumped out of bed and got ready as fast as I could. We went over to the Omega Grill for breakfast. I only had a danish since I had just gotten up and couldn’t eat yet. My stomach just doesn’t let me eat for an hour or more after I wake up. After breakfast, Min went to bed.

I spent most of the day working on the training materials for the XHTML class that I am teaching on Friday. There is a ton for me to prepare because I am making all of the materials myself.

The weather was really nice again today. I am pretty sure that it was warmer than it was yesterday. There was lots of sun. Very nice day.

Min and I did some grocery shopping this evening at Wegmans. We got home at 8:00 and Min cooked salmon for dinner. Then we watched Beverly Hills Cop III before Min had to go to work. It was a really short evening for her but tonight is her last night working so it isn’t so bad.

The other day I was talking to a couple of people about the cost of living in some large cities. I found CNN’s ranking of the world’s most expensive cities. I was not surprised to find Tokyo at the top with London close behind. I was somewhat surprised to see Moscow at number three, however. What would make that city so expensive? It seems like they would have plenty of land around the city to expand and the income levels don’t seem high enough to make the city able to be all that expensive. I was also surprised to find a couple of small Swiss cities at the top of the list as well.

After Min left, I watched Bloodsport which I haven’t seen since some time in the early 90’s like 1992 or so. Thirteen years. Boy that is a long time.

I was pretty tired after watching two movies and playing with the hamster for a while. So I decided to hit the hay. Rather an uneventful day. But that is nice sometimes. The end of this week is going to be really busy. Tomorrow is still slow, but I have to do some insulation in the basement in the evening. Thursday I will probably be at the school at least part of the day. Min will be teaching Thursday and Friday, I think. Friday at least. Thursday night we are having a thing at our house with the Millens and maybe the Ayers. Friday I teach that class and after that we have a game. Then on Saturday the Cases are coming over to watch the extended edition of Lord of the Rings III. So, the week is packed. And all of the spare time between now and the weekend is going to be spent either on that class, insulating or cleaning. Fun, fun, fun. Well, on that note. It is bed time now.

It is another absolutely awesome day today. I am so glad that spring is finally here. I think that I am more glad to see spring this year than normal. I am not sure why. Maybe because I have spent so much time in Maryland over the last several years during the winter and really didn’t this year.

I slept in a little this morning but not very long. The phone kept ringing and that makes it awfully difficult to sleep. So I headed down to the office to get some work done. I am just wrapping up getting Eric’s new desktop for the office all set up for him. It is more than twice the speed of his last desktop so he should be pretty happy with it. He is still only moving from a PIII-450 to a PIII-1000 but it is still quite a leap.

My accountant called today and Min and I have to stop in to deal with our taxes. They are being e-filed. We are getting almost $1,300 back! I didn’t even know that I had paid that much this year. That made me very happy today. That money will really help around here. Next year we hope to do even better since both Min and I are doing so much volunteer work down at the school. That should really help.

I called Eric to see if he wanted to get some coffee and sit outside today but he had an “emergency” with a client in Elmira and he had to run down there for the day. I went out onto the deck early this afternoon but discovered that it is much colder than it looks and it really isn’t good weather for sitting around outside yet. Maybe next week. According to the weather channel, it is only fifty out today but feels like forty-four. That seems about right. It is supposed to be even colder tomorrow. Ho-hum.

For some reason, Google has bumped all of my pictures. That really sucks. I used to be so easy to find. How fickle they are.

I got Min up and we went out to Perry to take care of our taxes. Boy does it ever feel good to be getting a nice refund this year. After filing our taxes we went over to the Silver Lake Family Restaurant and got some dinner.

On the way home from dinner, Min and I stopped off in Leicester to visit with the family. Everyone was hanging out at Grandma’s. Dad was there. He just got in from Ohio where he was all weekend. We hung out until around 9:00 and then headed home so that Min could get off to work.

I got home and discovered that the awful contract that I have been working has been postponed AGAIN! I have had enough. I contacted the subcontractor that I am working through and told them that we were either getting a retainer or renegotiating my rate and terms. I expect that I will rapidly become far too expensive for this game to continue. But really, how bad could it be? It isn’t like this project is going to move forward anyway. I need to get my money and get out. I refuse to be left holding the bag when the bottom drops out. I have been in this game for too long to not see the writing on the wall. I used to not want to leverage what advantages I had but I have been screwed too many times over the years and it is time that all those hard knock lessons paid off. I might end up losing the contract all together, that is a real possibility. But the reality of the situation is that two weeks ago I turned down the work and was looking elsewhere for opportunities. Then they made a bunch of promises about the project starting and I caved. Foolish me. Well, now all of that is over. I am in the drivers seat and we are in for a ride. I have always threatened to try the continuously increasing rate strategy – they get a few days to go to contract at one rate and if they don’t pull it off, the rate goes up and we start again. Eventually, I get so expensive that it isn’t even worth considering me. Which would be a problem if I cared about getting the job. But since I don’t, they are not in a happy place. I will keep everyone up to date as this saga unfolds.

Dad is meeting Min and I are 8:00 for breakfast so I need to get to bed.