Sheep Guarding Llama

We were up and at’em early this morning. Min and I actually managed to get to church early for once. That was pretty amazing. I can’t remember a time that we were actually early for church. More or less on time, sure, from time to time that will happen. But early is unprecedented. We tried a new way of getting from home to LaGrange today going up Covington Road in Leicester and that took a few minutes off of the trip.

After church it was time for our weekly luncheon with dad at the Silver Lake Family Restaurant where Eric used to work, many moons ago. We got home just in time for Min to head on off to work. The weather is supposed to be really awful tomorrow morning so I might have to go up to Henrietta to pick her up.

I got home and Andy and I hung out for a few hours in the living room talking. It is nice having a real living room that doesn’t have any sort of a television in it because it doesn’t tempt you to just turn it on and watch whatever happens to be on. Of course, since we don’t have cable or an antenna, we aren’t normally all that tempted to do that anyway. But at least we aren’t tempted to pop a DVD in.

I rode along with Andy over to Denny’s to get dinner. I had eaten relatively recently so I just got some coffee and a salad. After eating we went over to Walmart to see if they had a doorknob that we needed but we weren’t able to find one. We did find some good movies in the bargain bins, though, like Abandon, Swing Shift, Memphis Belle and The Terminator. We didn’t get back to the house until almost 7:00 or so.

I have some catching up on the blog to do today. I have fallen a little bit behind the last few days because of the new computer. I don’t have everything set up yet to allow me to write the dailies from there so I am over on my laptop for now. I assume that I will have that all set up over the next few days. I am still getting used to the new system.

Only five days until Min is teaching her first class over at Castile Christian Academy so I am working tonight getting, hopefully, another computer ready to take over there. We want as many decently fast computers there as possible to make it easier for her to teach. The slow computers will be a real hinderance to the process. She and I plan on spending most of the day Friday over there getting things ready for the class in the morning and then her teaching the class in the afternoon. This is her first time as the actual teacher having to prepare a lesson for the class.

While I was working on the dailies, I decided to try out watching a movie on the Mac – so I watched The Man Who Knew Too Little with Bill Murray. It is awfully silly but relatively entertaining. It has some really funny people in it that you would never guess like the guy from the British television show that always says “I don’t believe it” – Father Ted fans know who I am talking about – and Alfred Molina who is always really, really good.

After The Man Who Knew Too Little, I decided to move on to Josie and the Pussycats. But between movies I spent some time reading Dancing Barefoot as I had to go back and forth between a couple of comuters for a while and wouldn’t have a chance to get into a movie. Actually, I was GOING to watch Josie but when I sat down to actually watch it, I decided that I was in the mood for something sentimental so I switched to Lover Come Back – another sappy sixties Hudson / Day movie. You know the ones, anything with Doris Day singing the title credit music has to be a certain type of movie.

When my cousin Sara stopped by to pick up Jeremy this morning, I was so dazed that I was barely able to get to the door and I didn’t have my glasses with me so I wasn’t able to see at all. We really need to wrap up the Friday Night Game a little bit earlier so that I can continue to function on Saturdays.

After Jeremy went home, Tony, Min and I went out to Denny’s for breakfast. Andy was pretty exhausted and decided that he wanted to just stay in bed. So just the three of us went out to lunch.

When we got back from lunch, Andy took Tony back to Avon and spent some time up there hanging out with his family. Min wanted to do some shopping so we headed up to Henrietta. We went to Home Depot and picked up the insulation that we needed for my office. I really want to get that done because the room is still really live. But the insulation that we put into the server room really is helping make that a lot quieter. I can barely hear the servers upstairs anymore. After picking up the insulation, we went to Borders and did some book shopping. I picked up Wil Wheaton‘s latest book, Dancing Barefoot which I have been wanted to get for a week or so. Min kind of wanted to read it too and I know that Andy will read it so I figured that it would be a good buy even though it was a little bit expensive for such a short book. I had really wanted to get his first book, Just A Geek but they didn’t have it at the store. Of course, their computer had it reversed which one they had there. Their inventory system is completely useless.

We came home to have some dinner. I wasn’t really hungry after the late lunch so Min just cooked some dinner for herself. I had a little but not very much. While we had dinner, we watched Hilary Duff’s new movie, Raise Your Voice. It was okay. Not her best film but it was well done and enjoyable. While we were watching the movie, Josh called and wanted to play AoE2 again. He hasn’t been able to play much over the last few months so he is addicted again, I guess. Being able to play remotely over the VPN connection really makes it convenient to play. I wish that we had a few more people who could play that way, it is so easy to play a pick up game.

Josh, Min and I got two games in. It didn’t take too long. I completely squashed them on the first game. The second game we kept having problems wih my computer crashing so we finally gave up with me losing pretty significantly at the end.

Min and I decided that it was bed time because we had to get up to go to church tomorrow.

Its Friday! Whoo hoo. The game is tonight. Everyone is looking forward to it, we are expecting a full house.

I had a lunch meeting today up at the Pakistan House in Brighton. Boy is that place good. After my lunch meeting, I went over to the UofR for a little while. Eric and I went over to Bruegger’s, our regular hang out. We took off to head home around 5:00. I had to get home and ready for tonight’s game.

We ended up not getting a full eight players, only seven. Art, Min, Jeremy, Tony, Andy, Josh and I played two games starting around 8:00 and going until 3:30am! It was a really good set of teams, though, even with an odd number of players. We had a really good time. The first game was quick but the second one went on for hours. It was a really good night.

This morning I had to run down to Ithaca to do some work. I was down there for the day. I was smart enough to bring along Andy’s MP3 player and I was able to listen to hours of seminars while I worked which was really nice. Normally when I am working at a client site I have nothing to do while I am waiting for the computer – this made the time pass a lot more quickly and I was able to actually get some seminars out of the way.

While I was down in Ithaca, Min called and said that my new Mac Mini had arrived. Finally. It has been weeks since I ordered it. I have really been looking forward to it.

I got home around 8:00 and got to work setting up the new Mac. This is the first new computer system that I have had in a long time. I have had plenty of chances to work with all the different Windows and UNIX/Linux systems but using a Mac is something that I haven’t done in years. I am really interested in trying out the Mac to see how it has changed over the years. Last time that I tried it, back in 2001, it was absolutely pathetic. It was totally unintuitive and I was unable to get anything to work when I used it. I had no idea how anyone who wasn’t a total computer expert with plenty of time to work on the system could possibly use it. But, I head that a lot has changed since then and the new OS X platform has really improved.

Min and I decided to wrap up the evening watching a movie. We watched the Roc Hudson and Doris Day classic Pillow Talk which is really good. Min and I just love the feel good movies of the sixties.

I got the computer set up without a problem and got started using it. It was pretty late so I didn’t get much chance to really use it but I got the basics working. So far so good.

Happy Birthday to Art Ralston! He is 29 today.

I was supposed to be going out to breakfast with dad and Pastor Dan this morning but when I got up the weather was really awful and Min hadn’t made it home yet. I checked my messages (our phones are still having major issues and lots of calls are being redirected straight to me cell phone) and dad had been trying to get a hold of me for hours. They had cancelled breakfast but not because of the weather but because his car’s transmission was having serious problems and he needed help getting his car into the shop. Min got home almost an hour late. She said that the drive home was just awful. It was above freezing outside and thick, heavy snow was falling very quickly making the road very slippery. Andy had gotten up after me and decided not to go into work unless the weather got better later on in the day. At 9:20 I headed on over to dad’s. Dad and I had a morning meeting down in Perry that we had to go to so we went down there in my car that has a working transmission (yeah Mazda!) and has absolutely amazing snow tires. Even though there was a ton of snow on the roads – as much as four inches, my car didn’t have any problems cutting right through it all. We got back from our meeting a bit later than I had anticipated and I had to call the guy that I was supposed to be having a lunch meeting with in Rochester and postpone until Friday. We have been having a terrible past two weeks trying to get together for lunch or coffee. Then I took dad home to get his car and we drove it over to Balconi just up the street from my house. Since we were already in Geneseo, we picked up Min and went over to Denny’s to get some lunch. When we got Min, she said that Andy had decided that the roads were good enough to drive up for at least half a day of work.

After lunch Min and I drove dad back home. Min hasn’t seen the AS/400 yet and was pretty surprised by how big it was. Dad’s tractor has died so he is now unable to move the AS/400 even if we have a spot to put it into. His house is like the black hole of mechanical equipment… everything goes there to die. We stayed there for about an hour hanging out but dad was really sleepy and starting falling asleep on the couch so Min and I came back home.

I was doing some searching and found SGL listed on this random page. But better yet are these people talking about our LotM on Yahoo Groups – they actually liked the site! Here is a Google quick image link to a bunch of our headshots. I think that the guys talking about us is awesome. Someone out there actually knows who we are and stumbled across our little site here!

I added a new site for the Friday Night Game. I will have a menu link to it soon. This will give everyone a single place to go and check in on the status of upcoming game nights. Hopefully all of the information that people need will be able to be made available here. This should be a lot easier than calling everyone. Maybe we will make a sign in page so people can reserve a seat at upcoming LAN parties.

I had to get onto the phone with Netgear for about an hour this afternoon. They have been having problems with their website and haven’t been able to get our new router out yet. I talked to them and got everything squared away. We should have the new unit on Friday afternoon which means we will hopefully be back up and stable sometime Friday evening.

European papers are apparently beginning to uncover case after case of blackmail against European governments that are considering opposing the insane software patents law there. The proposed new law is causing unbelievable turmoil throughout the world as it will allow any and all software to be patented making anyone who uses any software anywhere prosecutable for patent infringements as the laws do not in any way protect common practices.

I have been asked to serve on the Professional Advisory Committee for the Computer Science Department at Onondaga Community College. That is pretty cool. Tim must be behind this. This should be fun and a really good opportunity to get some stuff onto my resume that will help me land a professorship somewhere.

I got Andy’s MP3 player prepped for my day in Ithaca tomorrow. It is nice to be able to load up a whole day’s worth of stuff to listen to all at once. I am hoping to get an MP3 player for myself relatively soon. I think that one with 512MB would do me well. I have been using Andy’s player when I go to bed to be able to listen to things as I am falling asleep. I have been finding a ton of really interesting interviews and talks to listen to.

Dad’s laptop is beginning to die. Actually, it is just about dead. A few months ago he decided to lift and hold it by its monitor and he must have squeezed it too hard because it apparently busted a seal on the LCD screen and the screen has been deteriorating. It is just about to the point of not being usable. So he had to do something to replace his laptop. Our meeting this morning resulting in us releaving ourselves of our Verizon wireless Internet access so that we can scale down to the more affordable Road Runner service that is now available over at his place. That is the first step. We are thinking of letting dad use my laptop (yes, the only machine I currently have on my desktop) and getting me a Dell Axim X50v handheld PDA. Yeah, it would be a bold move not only doing away with Windows XP on the desktop but also doing away with an Intel architecture (I have to say architecture since I moved physically away from Intel to all AMD years ago) desktop altogether and living only with the PowerPC based Mac Mini. It is especially bold since I haven’t used the Mac Mini yet. But, it seems like it may be the option that best fits our overall needs. I am really looking forward to getting a handheld that is powerful enough to be truly useful. The new units are fast enough and have enough features that I am hoping to be able to really replace the laptop and actually do a significant amount of work on it. Now that there is built in 802.11b wireless, it means that I can use it in almost all of the places that I was using my laptop previously. And as our customers are adding wireless faster and faster, it is less and less common that I have to work in a place where I do not have regular access to wireless. I can work in Ithaca without a problem at all of our customers there, in Perry, in Geneseo, soon in Castile and very soon at dad’s place since he will have wireless as soon as the cable line comes in. The DC office, the hotel in DC and John’s house all have wireless. If things go as planned, Eric’s office at the UofR should even have wireless in the next six months. So, I think that I can probably get away with using the handheld a lot of the time. It is going to be a stretch, but I am really interested in the possibility.

I got an email from Emily and Craig tonight. Yes, they are still alive, can you believe it? They may be visiting the area sometime in April. The big news is that Emily is pregnant and is due on July 4th! So congratulations to them.

Min has been trying to cook tilapia for two days so we are finally having it tonight. She decided to try mashed potato encrusted tilapi and whipped carrots and crescent rolls.

Okay, another cool link for the day. Everyone needs to check out utility fog which is a cool new material (not a real material but they are working on it) that is built out of nano-robots that change dynamically to suit temporal needs. It is a long way off and I think that they get a little extreme in this article but it definitely holds a lot of potential down the road. I will be really interested to see what they end up being able to do with this stuff.

Dinner was delicious. I really like mashed potato encrusted tilapia. I have always been a fan of tilapia and luckily we can get it at Aldi’s very inexpensively and Min seems to like it too now so I can actually have it occassionally. Tilapia is now America’s sixth most popular seafood product!

While we ate we watched my dad’s copy of I, Robot which Andy said he didn’t think that I would like so we have been avoiding but actually I quite enjoyed. It wasn’t an amazing movie but it was pretty good. After that we watching Rock Hudson and Doris Day in Pillow Talk. We have the entire Hudson/Day collection now.