Sheep Guarding Llama

I had a meeting in the city first thing this morning. My meeting was actually downtown, for once. I never actually have to go into the city. Sometimes I forget what it looks like down there.

The meeting ran until just after 1:00, which was pretty long. I got home just after 2:00. Man the days pass by quickly.

Still no further details from Wegmans. This is going to be another one of those years where everything I do is up in the air until the very last minute. I am really getting used to that just being the mode in which my life operates. It would be nice to have a firm schedule for something once in a while. But who do I think I am?

Sadly, today the EU bypassed its own constitution and instated a new law, at the request of Microsoft and a few other major industrial players, that hands over the intellectual property of European citizens to big corporations. Democracy failed today as a Belgian “facist state-in-the-making” yielded to money instead of people. Belgium and the EU are clearly acting with total disregard to the welfare of their people. We have been watching the events connected with this controversy unfolding over the last year as member state after member state has asked this to be voted on but the Presidency has denied the democratic process and pushed towards dictatorship. We can only hope that the decision today does no more than to begin to tear down the EU’s government as they have shown again and again to not be truly interested in the good of the people of Europe or, for that matter, the world. It is even worse to realize that the money they have accepted (their twenty pieces of silver, if you will) was provided by US companies not European companies. The EU Presidency is happy to sell his citizens into slavery.

Dad came over and took Min and I out to Denny’s for dinner. Min had woken up early and was ready to go out to dinner by 5:00, which is pretty early for her. So we actually ended up having time to watch two movies. We started with the Studio Ghibli film Porco Rosso which is a rather unusual film about a pig flying ace fighting sea plane pirates between the World Wars. It was cute.

I brought my laptop over so that I could work on the dailies while watching movies in the theatre. Although the reality is that I can’t write very much while I am watching a movie and I am afraid that anything that I do write will be even less coherent than usual.

Before Min headed off to work, we watched Calendar Girls which I have been wanted to see for a long time. Helen Mirren rocks. Min and I were laughing like crazy at this movie, it is really funny. I have noticed that when I laught I am still getting the rushing sound in my ears that started the last time that Min and I flew together. It was bothering me a whole lot right after we flew but it is not bothering me nearly as often anymore but once a week or so I notice it. It worries me a little that something is wrong with my ear.

After Min left for work, I did some regular maintenance on her computer and then installed Empire Earth II which I have been dying to try out for almost a week now. I only have a demo version of the game so it is really limited. But I was able to get an idea about the game play. The graphics are way better than EE 1 and there is a bit different about the game but it retains the basic feel of the first game. I think that it looked interesting but I don’t really see it being the big game to step in and replace AoE2. It just didn’t have the right feel. But, we will have to keep watching it, it has some potential.

Min was exhausted when she got home this morning. She decided that she really liked having her computer with her for her long shift but that she wouldn’t want to do it on the shorter shifts. So she will probably end up taking it with her on Sundays from now on. Especially now that she has a faster graphics card and the new Sims expansion.

So Min decided not to go to breakfast with Dad and I this morning. He picked me up at 8:30 and we went over to the Omega Grill. We had a good time and wrapped up around 10:00. I got home and had some calls and emails to take care of. I spent a bit of the morning working on a couple of different things that I need to get written up. I was supposed to have had a lunch meeting today but that didn’t pan out and we rescheduled for tomorrow morning over coffee. I have a 3:30 phone meeting this afternoon but most of the day is my own, for a change.

Today is one of the most beautiful days that we have had in as long as I can remember. Well, okay, for several months at least. It is about 50F out and everything is melting very quickly. It is nice to see the grass again. I really should go for a walk today. I will see if I can talk myself into it. Winter makes me awfully lazy. Okay, okay, I am just lazy and winter has nothing to do with it. Give a guy a break. The weather is so nice today that I really want to go sit out on the deck and work out there. There was about a foot or more of snow on the desk yesterday, though and it hasn’t all melted off yet. Not likely to, either, by the time everything freezes again.

There was more blasting today. I saw the lights flicker then I heard the alarm go outside and I assumed that there was about to be another blast. So I ran upstairs trying to get outside before the shockwaves hit so that I could try to determine if it was really coming from the Walmart construction but I didn’t make it past the top of the stairs because the blast happened. Of course, the blast work Min and Mr. Humphries up – which isn’t nice because the hamster gets interupted while trying to sleep enough as it is.

Wil Wheaton has put out a plea for help as TV Guide is holding a survey of its readers to determine who is the most annoying Star Trek character ever and currently, Wil’s Wesley Crusher has a pretty good lead on everyone else – believe it or not, even beating Quark! Okay, honestly, the Wesley character was pretty bad. But, as Wil pointed out, this isn’t really about honesty anyway. So if everyone could just hop on over there for a second and vote for some other really annoying character, that would really help Wil out. And please ignore the fact that the TVGuide web designers are awful and the page looks like total poop and it doesn’t work quite properly on any browser that I have checked it with yet.

I decided to make myself some PB&J for lunch. Not so much because it sounded good but mostly because I was feeling really lazy. I hate spending time preparing food. I don’t enjoy doing it and I just want to get back to other important things, like, for example, writing the updates on SGL!

Wil must be stuffing the ballot box over at TV Guide because (okay, obviously I voted more than once to know this) he is already moved from being far in the lead to being tied with Worf’s son in just half an hour (it wasn’t be, I only voted twice.) He just posted the link on his site a little bit ago so it must be him and other people reading his site doing the voting. It is really funny that he has a large enough fan base reading his website in the middle of the day to swing a TV Guide poll so quickly. Good thing that he isn’t running for President, he would just post something to his site saying how much it would mean to him if all of his readers were to write him in and suddenly, we have 250,000 write in votes for some guy names, um… Wil Wheaton?

I don’t think that I mentioned it the other day – Bob and Lisa are going to be hanging here next weekend as well. Nate is conducting the Erie County All County Festival and both Bob and Lisa are performing there as well. So they will be crashing here on Friday night. While they are in Erie County doing that festival, my cousin Jeremy will be performing in the Livingston County All County Festival out here, somewhere.

I am on an exciting hour long phone conference discussing nothing in particular. Everyone is totally unprepared for the project but things seem to be improving slightly. I am hoping to get them to see my schedule as being the optimum one. If I can do that, then I think that the project will be able to run smoothly for the rest of the year. Boy would it be nice to have regular work for the rest of the year. I have two projects in the works, at the moment, that could pan out to get me through this year. One is the Wegmans project that I have been working on here and there since December. That one has a lot less total work over the course of the year than the other project which is with RG&E. Both projects are overnights. The Wegmans work is part time, close to 30 hours a week, if it really pans out the way that I am hoping that it will. That would be absolutely perfect. Three days a week would be so awesome. Not just three days but three days doing an overnight! Min and I would actually work the same shifts! Wegmans is supposed to run through September. RG&E is supposed to go a little bit longer and it is full time, which would be more money, but I would be a lot happier running part time for the rest of the year. The best situation would be to do the part time work so that I am able to continue doing my regular work during the day but pay the bills at night. Everyone, pray about the Wegmans project, it could be really good for us now that they have changed the way that they are looking at it.

I had to do some work on the NTI website today. But I got to do it, along with the SGL updates, while on the phone in that meeting. What a productive way to spend the day.

I got a phone call just before I went into my phone meeting and I ended up not writing down who had called. So I ended up having to call back and explaining that I was an idiot that hadn’t paid attention enough to know who I needed to call back. Then when I called, they had no idea who it was I was looking for because I am a big idiot. But they did manage to find someone able to talk to me at least so it worked out in the end. Except for the embarrassment thing. But that is okay. I guess.

I don’t think that I normally look forward to the end of the day as much as I was today, but it is almost 5:00 now and I am really feeling glad to know that the day is just about done. No more calls left to make except my one contact out in Kansas on Central Time and that isn’t stressful at all.

Okay, I went back and checked now, half a day later (yes, yes, I voted again) and Wesley Crusher is really falling from the top of the Most Annoying list. The WW fanclub must really be coming through today.

Min woke up when Andy got home at about 6:00. She was really exhausted this morning so I let her sleep in more than usual.

In the never ending quest to make SGL the coolest blog around, I am trying out some new things today. I have added a profile on Technorati in the hopes of generating some traffic and in providing a way to search the site for content. We will see if it works. I was thinking just yesterday that I would like to be able to search the site for content. So maybe this will do that for us.

Don’t forget, Wil will be on CSI on March 10, that is Thursday evening. Mostly that is a reminder for me to have someone record it since I have no television.

Well, I got the search feature sort of working. They aren’t searching SGL yet so it doesn’t really do anything. But I am hopeful. The whole thing is still a beta so maybe it won’t even work.

Min made vegetarian pigs in blankets for dinner, just like mom used to make, and we ate them while watching the very bizarre Waking Ned Devine. This is one of those movies that really baffles me when it comes to the ratings board (the MPAA, I guess.) This movies had an extreme amount of nudity in it (and by nudity, I mean full frontal male nudity for WAY too long – and to make it even worse it was really, really old guys) and the movie STILL managed to pull a flat PG rating. I will probably never understand the MPAA’s pathetic rating system. How can Waking Ned Devine not even warrant a PG-13 when Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead BOTH got saddled with an X!! Both of those being movies I would be far more likely to let younger children watch (younger than being allowed to watch WND, not little kids.) The MPAA has no grip on reality.

We had a little time left before Min had to go to work so we squeezed in the final two episodes of Roswell Season Two. That is just such an amazing show. It is so sad that they only managed to make three seasons of it before it went off of the air. Roswell is amazing as a television show because it manages to force an incredible array of emotions. It really gets under your skin. I can’t tell if I like it because I am able to connect or because it makes me feel young or old or just takes me to another place. I find myself, often, not wanting to really do anything after having watched Roswell because I want to be able to take the opportunity to just sit quietly and reflect on the show. It just have been awful for people who were first watching the show because they would see it in small chunks, broken up by commercials and on televisions. Seeing it now, without commercial breaks and one episode following right after another, in the theatre on a 168″ screen has to be a totally different experience. The show was filmed in HDTV but I doubt that they broadcasted it that way or, if they did, hardly anyone got a chance to see it. I am really glad to get to see it in the way that I am getting to see it. I am really looking forward to the final season which is expected out this summer. Min hasn’t seen that season yet either so we will get to watch it together.

Andy has been hard at work creating new video game technology for a few weeks now. He has been hold up in his laboratory every night creating this super secret new concoction. I got to see some of it tonight, there is some pretty exciting stuff coming. I was really impressed.

Well, I decided that I didn’t want to stay up too late tonight. I have a morning meeting up in the city tomorrow (actually in the city, up on East Ave.) So I want to get to get at a reasonable time and get some actual sleep into me. I have been tired for days. So I shut down the Mac just after midnight and I am now posting and turning the laptop off as well. Min is at work, the hamster is napping, Andy is programming.

Unlike most mornings when people stay at our house, everyone woke up at around the same time this morning. That was awfully handy. Everyone but Andy, of course. He didn’t get up until later. He didn’t go to bed when the rest of us did either.

Bob, Lisa, Min and I went out to Denny’s for breakfast. Denny’s is like our place to go with Bob and Lisa, it is pretty funny. They first went there the night of Min and my wedding because they were staying at our house when Min and I were staying at the Hillside Inn where the wedding had been. So Denny’s has kind of become a tradition.

Bob and Lisa took off right from Denny’s to get back down to Ithaca. We came home and I worked on posting yesterday’s SGL dailies and Min played The Sims 2 University which she hadn’t had a chance to even tough yet. So far, she really likes it.

If you are online and trying to find out about the Omega Grill, we are now on the first page of Google’s searches if you include Geneseo in the search – “Omega Grill” Geneseo. Funny enough, you can also just do a search on “Bob and Lisa” Ithaca and there is our Bob and Lisa mentioned right there on the first page to come up as well. Tee hee. And Lisa thought that she didn’te exist on the web anywhere!

I did some work on my Mac today and got the X Window Environment running on it which gives me the ability to run programs remotely from my Linux machine which is totally cool. I have a thing called the “X Live CD” that allows me to do the same thing under Windows but it works tons more smoothly under Mac. It is very cool. Now both Min and I are able to use graphical Linux applications (including word processors, spreadsheets, etc.) through our regular desktop machines without having to have multiple desktops sitting around. Very cool.

Min ended up getting so hooked on her new Sims expansion pack that she packed up her desktop (yes, her actual desktop) and took it to work with her so that she could keep playing the game while she was at work. It is her sixteen hour double tonight so it makes the most sense for her to do that now. But that is still pretty fanatical over The Sims. I suppose that if I had to work a double like she does and didn’t have anything to do at work that I would pack up my desktop too. I remember those days.

I have been thinking recently that it would be great to get a D&D group back together. I don’t think that I have played in a real, steady group for twelve years and have only played a little here and there since then. So, if anyone is interested in playing in a group, let me know. I know that Jeremy is playing a little bit of the RPG’s these days, so I bet that he would be in. It would be nice to get 4-5 players who would be really dedicated to playing a game. Maybe getting together like once a month of something. I am looking for people who are into serious role playing, not the hack and slash stuff. This would be D&D 3.5 so everyone would have to pick up a copy of the Player’s Manual.

I haven’t been down to see my grandma in a week or so, so I thought that I would go down to visit this afternoon.

I ended up visiting for about three hours. We had Pizza Hit for dinner and played a couple of games of Skipbo. Then I went over and Jeremy showed me Morrowind, this RPG that he has been playing for a week or two. It looked pretty cool. They did some pretty dumb things with it though assuming that it would never be used on an LCD monitor which kind of sucks. So it will never look up to par on an LCD. It did look fun, though. But it is only a single player game and I never have a chance to really make use of single player games so it will just have to remain a game that looks interesting. Jeremy did say that he is definitely in for a serious D&D game in the near future. So that is one player already. Now just 3-4 more.

I had an email from Nicklin when I got home saying that he was ordering both of the Bunny Suicide books. I knew that he wouldn’t be able to resist.

The OpenOffice.org project announced the first public beta of version 2.0 today. This is a major milestone for the project and I am very excited.

Today is Nate and Tammy Parker’s baby shower. Bob and Lisa are supposed to be coming up sometime this morning but I don’t know when yet. Min and I were actually up decently early on a Saturday morning. I didn’t even realize that they turned the power on this early on Saturdays! 😉

I got a chance to chat with Steve and Jen Bulkley online this morning. I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to them in a couple of months at least. Jen had the baby just recently and they both have been busy with school.

Bob and Lisa are shooting to get here just in time to head right on over to the shower. The shower is in Perry at 2:00. I have no idea what is going on later.

Min and I went out for a late breakfast / early lunch to Dennys. Then we hit Walmart for a quick shopping trip. The Sims 2 University Expansion Pack is out and Min had to have that. So you know what she will be doing for the next few days, err… weeks. We also got Sabrina on DVD because it was $5.50.

While we were out, I downloaded the demo of Empire Earth 2. I will let everyone know how it is once I get a chance to play it. It might be a while before I get a chance to use Min’s computer again now that she has the expansion pack to her favorite game.

We got back and we did some cleaning before anyone arrived. Bob and Lisa arrived around 1:30 and we hung out for about half an hour before going over to Perry for the shower.

The shower went well. Bob, Nate and I did all that we could to avoid the “baby shower games” portions although we did take part in the “thaw the baby frozen in ice in an easter egg” competition which I easily won. Bob needed to leave the party a little early so that he could watch the SU basketball game. So we drove over to Nate’s parent’s house and watched the game. Everyone came over to join us later.

After the party, Bob, Lisa, Min, Andy and I went up to the Pakistan House for a nice dinner. We ended up sitting right next to Rochester’s Mayor Bill Johnson. It was an interesting day to have sat next to him at a restaurant considering that Sheriff Duffy announced just a few hours ago that he would be running for Mayor of Rochester in this coming election and that the Mayor has been such a hot topic recently because of Rochester’s purchase of the fast ferry under his direction. We were guessing that he was trying to get a quiet evening away from the city so he came out to Brighton for dinner.

After dinner we all went over to Borders to do a little late night shopping. We looked into going out to see a movie but didn’t see anything that anyone actually wanted to bothering sitting through – which is often the case. While we were there, Bob got a couple of books and I picked up The Return of the Bunny Suicides which is just way too funny not to own. I had seen it the other day but just couldn’t resist it anymore. Once we got back to the house, Bob had to go through the entire book!

We decided that everyone but Bob was pretty tired already so we went to bed pretty early. I am still making up for the night that I went without the CPAP.

No game tonight, it is very sad.

I felt like total crap today. I accidentally fell asleep last night without putting my CPAP on. I hate that. Min woke me up around 5:00 because I was snoring and told me to put in on. That wasn’t enough time to get any real sleep though and I felt it all day.

I spent most of the morning either in the shower or on the phone. My head was swimming from the “didn’t sleep right” migraine that I had. Dad came by the house at 8:30 on his way to the city and we went out for breakfast.

I ended up not even really having time to get everything ready for our trip down to the Castile school. I had to load up two more computers and a monitor. That cleared out a bit more of the basement. Things are really starting to get cleared out here.

At the school today, Min and I had to judge a snow sculpture contest. We had to trapse through a lot of snow and Min fell down once.

We ended up hanging out down at the school until 5:30. We headed home and stopped by Wendy’s to get some dinner.

No game tonight but now that there isn’t a game Min and I can’t figure out anything that we want to do. We are both in a “I don’t feel like doing anything at all” kind of mood. Jeremy and Sara can’t do anything tonight because they both have play practice at 10:00 in the morning. Tony is in the play tonight so he busy. Art and Danielle are also busy. No one can play with us. Andy doesn’t want to do anything tonight because he wants to work on the video game.

Min talked me into playing a two person game of Winopoly. For anyone who has every tried Monopoly with only two players, you should have a good idea of how that went. It took forever to buy all of the properties. After playing for about two hours, Min finally got the last piece that she needed to lock me out of ever getting a whole set of anything on the board and, obviously, the game was over because she did have one complete set. She said that she had never thought about it before but once I had explained it she understood why the game was over. No matter how many of my worthless little things that she landed on, she would never lose her $200 per round that she got passing “Go”. But, I might land on Boardwalk – or Champaigne, in this case – and have to pay out more than I had. So we knew the game was over, we just didn’t know how long it would take to play out. She was like “No wonder these two player games went on forever when I was a kid!”.

So, after the very intense Winopoly game, Min had me teach her how to play Risk. I am not into two player Risk since it is lacking most of the game play of the real thing. So we just set it up and she learned how it works. I don’t think that she was very excited.

We were both pretty tired so we went to bed early. I read some more of Wil’s “Just A Geek” before falling asleep. I remembered the CPAP this time.