Sheep Guarding Llama

Today’s update is brought to you by the letter “H” and the adjective “Crappy”.

We made it to church on time again this week. Pretty soon, if we aren’t careful, people are going to start to develop unrealistic expectations of us!

When church was over, Min, Dad and I were going to go over to the Silver Lake Family Restaurant like usual. I stopped to talk with someone at church and I thought that Min had left with dad. I didn’t see her when I went out to get into the car. I tried calling both of them but neither had their cells on. So, I assumed that Min had caught a ride because she wanted to get us moving along so I drove quickly down to Perry so that, if she wasn’t really there already, I could zip right back to the church to look for her more extensively. Well, she was still at the church and realized that I had left just seconds after I had but she didn’t bring her cell phone with her so she wasn’t even able to call me. She managed to find a way to call me right as I was getting in Perry. She found a ride and came down to meet us. She wasn’t very happy. I am in a bit of trouble today.

After Min went to work, Andy and I hung out in the living room for a while talking and then I got to work cleaning the basement some more. I am so much more productive when the office area is all cleaned up that I think that it is really time well spent getting it to be just perfect. Of course, for any of you that has seen the basement, it is SO far from perfect right now! The place is really a mess but it really is improving, one little bit at a time. We just have so much stuff it is practically impossible to get it all put away somewhere. So much of it has no place to go to. There is an overabundance of paperwork floating around in the basement. It is tempting to just throw it all away but you never know when you might end up looking for something that was in all of that paperwork.

I did a ton of cleaning in the basement today. I am really proud of myself, it is really noticable down here. Around 8:00 I went up to the city and picked up Thai from The King and I on East Henrietta and took it to Min at work. I had to make up some for leaving her this morning. While we ate dinner, we watched some of the 1995 Harrison Ford film Sabrina. I always thought that I had seen that movie but I am beginning to think that I never have. Julie Ormond is in that and does a horrible job. They act like she is a little girl in part of the movie but are completely unable to make her look like anything but a frumpy, middle aged woman who has tanned far too much. No amount of makeup can adequately cover that many rinkles. She was only 30 when she did Sabrina (I am guessing they meant her to actually look 18 but they didn’t convey it very convincingly) but she really looked much older. She has a strange accent and I was never able to pinpoint what she was trying to do with it. Min thought she was trying to sound British but I thought that she was trying to fake a French accent. I don’t know. But it had Harrison Ford in it, so it has to be good.

I got back and continued cleaning. Andy watched Coupling: Season Four. I could hear him laughing upstairs. He is completely hysterical.

Well, I was supposed to be doing some minor server work this evening involving installing some new memory in our main server. But this was not to be the case this evening. One of the memory sticks that we purchased recently had a short in it and it burned out part of the server motherboard. What a horrible night I am having. Our instant messaging server ended up crashing during the night as well while I was starting and restarting everything. I decided that that service was less critical so I am leaving it to be dealt with tomorrow. One thing at a time.

I finally got our main server back online and functioning more or less properly by 5:30 am. What a long, stressful night. And I had been hoping to be going to bed around midnight.

Sorry that the weekend updates are running a little bit behind. I was planning on posting everything tonight but things got out of hand and I need to wait until tomorrow.

Bob and Lisa were up and out of town long before any of us woke up this morning. They both are helping Nate with the Erie County All-County Chorus out at Pioneer just outside Arcade today. So they have a long, busy day ahead of them.

Min, Andy and I went up to Henrietta this afternoon to do a little shopping. We hit Best Buy and we picked up Dark City, which I have been wanting for a long time, and Apt Pupil which is okay but stars Ian McKlellan so we had to have that (it was only $5.) But more importantly, we found Coupling: Season Four, whoo-hoo. The really sad thing is that it looks like Coupling is probably done. Only four seasons were shot and there is nothing on the BBC website about there being a fifth season underway. In fact, Stephen Moffat, the writer, has left to work on the new series of Dr. Who which makes it far less likely that there will be another season of Coupling. I am very sad. Season Four only has six episodes, so it is shorter than the previous two seasons by 33%. That is not a good indication either.

We got back from shopping just in time for Bob and Lisa to call to see if we wanted to get a bite to eat. So we met them and went over to the Omega Grill for some dinner. They needed to get back to Ithaca, though, so they took right off from eating to go back down. So Min and I went over to Walmart and did a little shopping. She wanted to get Stand By Me but they didn’t have it. But we did find Sleepless in Seattle really cheap (I already had it on LD but decided to upgrade) and we got the Sean Connery classic, The Name of the Rose which I haven’t seen in so many years but is a really good movie. We also got a door knob for the other theatre door so that it will stop hanging half-way open in the dark. I have been running into it every so often and that kind of hurts.

We got home and immediatley popped in Coupling: Season Four and proceeded to watch the entire series, which is only three hours long. Series Four definitely lacks something compared to the earlier three seasons. Losing Jeff really hurt the show. The chemistry has changed and the new guy isn’t very good.

After finishing Coupling we watching Dark City which Min has never seen before. I love that movie, it is so good. I haven’t seen it in years.

Today is Min’s first full day of teaching down at Castile Christian Academy. We have a busy day ahead of us.

We started off the day having breakfast with dad. From there we headed right on down to the school to get ready for the day.

The school rearranged the computer lab so it looks a lot better and we have a lot more space to work with now. It is starting to look, sort of, like a real computer lab. Min starting teaching at 10:30 and went straight on through without any breaks at all until the end of the school day. Almost every class in the school managed to get into the computer lab while we were there. All of the classes 3rd grade through the seniors were able to get into the lab except the sophomore who had a scheduling conflict. I did manage to get one of the sophomores after school onto a computer so we eliminated one. While Min was teaching, I worked on getting the lab set up better, getting the kindergarten room set up and getting the high school room set up. By the end of the day, we had quite a bit going. We even managed to get all of the kindergarteners into the system and they began working with the computer in their own classroom too! That is really encouraging. They were very excited to be working on the computer and are really getting somewhere. Now are challenge is going to be working with the first and second graders. We really haven’t addressed them at all yet. Overall, the day was a great success. We had some really specific goals that needed to be achieved and I think that we got there. So I feel good about it.

After the school day, Min and I hung out with the kindergarten teacher for a few hours talking about teaching computers to students and things that could be done in the school, projects, etc. At 5:00, we all headed down to Castile Baptist Church where some of the parents were throwing a Teacher Appreciation Dinner for all of us. It was really nice. Dinner was awesome and there was just a ton of food. We had a really good time and hung out there until 7:30.

On the way home, Min and I stopped by and spoke with Letchworth Computers in Castile to see what they knew about Linux because people in the community are bound to be looking for ways to get Linux computers with so many of the students using them all of the time now. Luckily, the guy who runs Letchworth Computers is a Linux guy and uses it himself and has some customers who use it too. So that is a good sign.

We got back home just minutes before Bob got there. He was driving up from Ithaca but there was terrible snow the whole way so it took him a long time. We all hung out for a little bit and then he and I drove over to Perry to pick up Lisa who had been in Arcade with Nate practicing for the All County Chorus tomorrow that is being held at the Pioneer School in Erie County.

We got back to the house and pretty much just crashed. It was after midnight by the time we got back and Bob and Lisa have to be up way too early tomorrow.

I actually woke up, on my own – without any alarm, around 7:00 this morning. I couldn’t believe it. Just five hours of sleep and I was up. Weird. Nothing pressing this morning either. So it wasn’t like I felt the need to get up and get moving.

Novell must have known that tons of people were looking for information on SUSE 9.3’s supposed launch yesterday. They are now only taking pre-orders for it and it is expected to release in mid-April.

So here is an interesting fact. In school, we are always taught that Russia is the world’s largest country by land mass and that Canada is second. This is not strictly true. In order to keep the position of second largest country, Canada has to include the Hudson Bay, which is a tremendous amount of open water – not a lake. By LAND mass, China is the world’s second largest country followed by the United States and then Canada. But all three are extremely close in size. [Source: The CIA World Factbook.]

Min is going to be teaching all day tomorrow down in Castile. It is her first full teaching day so far and she will probably be really busy. I am going to be going down with her if I can. So far my schedule is clear so it is looking like a strong possibility.

Is it just me or is everyone having problems using the Internet Movie DataBase today? I haven’t been able to get it to load properly since yesterday.

The blasting continued today. I can’t imagine how much blasting they could possibly be needed to do over there. This has been going on for way too long. At least Min was awake already today and they weren’t waking her up.

I was doing some office cleaning today (and boy does it need it) and I discovered some old bills and notes I had about some problems with Time-Warner Cable from when we were living at Observatory! I have notes about a manager named Mary Ann and the reference number, 11876748. This is the manager that they kept claiming would call me back. I called a dozen or more time – seriously. After a week they yelled at me when I said that the manager was blowing me off. They told me how busy I was and it was ridiculous for me to make an accusation like they were blowing me off. Uh-huh. I was supposed to be getting money back because they shut down our service and refused to do anything for weeks we were without service for a long time. I never got my money back, the crooks. The date on the nate is August 30, 2002. Two and a half years ago. No one has called yet. I don’t want to be rude and call them, though, obviously they are just really busy.

Today’s big project is writing up stuff for my college degree review. Yes, I know I should have done this in, oh say, December or earlier. But sometimes you just have to wait until there is a good time to do something. Apparently, having missed that window, I am going to work on it now. It took me three hours this morning just to get my login working so that I could see the stuff that I had already been working on! If that doesn’t indicate that it is going to be a long day, I don’t know what does.

Okay, so recently, in the past two weeks, I had missed my regular dosage of Protonix twice – I know that I go too long without it because it causes incredible indigestion and heart burn because it is my anti-acid medication. When I first had this terrible mosaic, plantar wart, I couldn’t get rid of it no matter what we did. I had it for about three years. Then I went on the protonixs and it just went away. Well, it came back when I missed the Protonix. But, I upped my dosage of the Protonix (I am still at half what my doctor recommends but I just don’t need that much) and the wart is gone again. I am positive that it is tied to the Protonix and this really indicates that. I have done nothing else to treat the wart to make sure I wasn’t causing it to go away through some other means.

Min and I had a meeting over in Perry this evening at 7:00. We went over and ended up not getting back to Geneseo until 9:30ish and then we went straight over to McDonalds to get some dinner which we had forgotten to get earlier. So it was decently late by the time we got home. Which is rough because we didn’t really feel like going to bed yet and dad is meeting us for breakfast at 8:00 tomorrow. Then we head over to Castile for Min’s first full teaching day. I expect to be going down with her but might get stuck in the office if something comes up.

Andy was doing some looking online tonight and discovered that Age of Empires III is being released later this year! How cool is that? We got to see some of the in game screenshots and the game is unbelievable. I have no idea what kind of monster machine that game must require but I am pretty sure that no one around here has a computer that can handle generating graphics like that. It looks like it is going to be truly amazing.

Min did some laundry and I worked on cleaning in the basement. It really needs an overall and I am doing what I can.

I spoke this morning down in Castile for about forty-five minutes. Min had gotten home just in time to be able to go down to Castile with me so we ended up getting to spend much of the day together. I think that things went really well while we were down there and we were pretty productive with our time.

After speaking at the school, Min and I went over to the Country Cafe to get some lunch. Then we came back home and she went to bed and I headed down to the office.

Thay are blasting again today. The house just keeps shaking, all of the time. It is getting to be pretty annoying. I can’t believe how much blasting they are allowed to do without telling anyone what is going on.

I was doing some research tonight for the school and came across a LOGO programming tool. Boy does that bring back memories. I never really learned LOGO myself but I remember it going on around me all of the time. The school that I attended didn’t teach LOGO and I am pretty sure that they didn’t have it. It is really a pretty silly thing but it is great for getting young students acclimated to procedural thinking at a very early age. So I was looking for a version of it that we can use down at the Castile school. I did find one from UC Berkeley that looks like it will be really good.

Min ended up going to bed shortly after we got back. She couldn’t fall asleep for hours, though so she read “Just A Geek” which I finished reading last night. She fell asleep sometime around 4:00. Her Wednesdays are always tough.

I spoke with Nicklin in person this evening. I am pretty sure that that proves that he is alive and not just sending emails through a Turing contest email generator bot.

Here is some cool new technology that I found out about today. I knew that stuff like this would be coming but I wasn’t expecting it to be out quite this soon. A company has announced that they are making a PPU or Physics Processing Unit which is basically like the 3D graphics accelerator cards for your computer only this one accelerated the physics engine. This will affect the same type of games that the GPUs are used for, for the most part. This is some really cool technology.

For all of you Linux geeks out there, like me, who are into SUSE – SUSE 9.3 Pro released today. I don’t know yet how it is being made available but I am trying to look into it. I am surprised that I haven’t even been able to find any mention of it on SUSE’s website and there is no sign of the directory on either SUSE’s or the mirror’s FTP servers. If Novell is doing what SUSE has always done, then the download won’t be available until months from now when the store version has aged considerably. But I was hoping for, at very least, a Live CD to play around with. – I have done some additional looking around and it looks like the release announcement may be nothing more than a hoax. We will have to wait and see.

I ran over to Wegmans and picked up a pizza for dinner. I brought it home and Min and I sat down and watched The Alamo with Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thorton. I was prepared to really dislike the movie for glorifying what was actually a really awful thing. But they actually did a decent job of portraying the men that were there and their motivations for being there. They didn’t make Davy Crockett to be anything more than a disinfranchised pro-slavery politician looking for an easy career boost or Sam Houston as much more than a real estate salesmen (until the very end of the movie where he amazingly became a decent general). They should the men of the Alamo, which were mostly Mexican traitors who wanted to be able to keep slaves when Mexico didn’t allow them. The men who fought “bravely” there did so only after being trapped and being abandoned by their fellow separatists. But, you have to wonder, how smart is it to rely on the honor of someone to risk their lives to come save yours when the thing that they are fighting for is the right to enslave others and to take away their basic human rights? So I was pretty happy with the film.

After The Alamo we watched the classic World War II bomber movie Memphis Belle with Sean Astin. I haven’t seen that movie in a long time. There are a lot of good people in it. Min and I both noticed, long before he had his one speaking line of “Oh no, they only have one wheel down!”, that the guy who plays the captain in Red Dwarf was in the movie. It had to be about the same time he was filming Dwarf.

It was close to 2:00 in the morning by the time we finished watched the second movie. Min wasn’t tired but I needed to get to bed. I don’t get to sleep in in the mornings like some people.