Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

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.