Sheep Guarding Llama

Monday, Monday. Josh was actually on our IM server this morning so I got a chance to talk to him some. He is able to play AoE2 this weekend but I don’t know if there is going to be a game or not. I haven’t had a chance to check into it yet. Although I think that there is a decent chance that we won’t have another game until we deal with some computer and monitor issues. Too many people just don’t have hardware able to handle the game and we are spending half of every evening dealing with hardware issues. The biggest one being me since I am stuck playing off of my laptop for now and it just isn’t able to handle it. As soon as my Mac Mini arrives, I will get a Mac copy of the game and should be able to play it just fine on there. At least, that is the hope.

Speaking of computers: If anyone out there has an older computer that you don’t know what to do with, the Castile Christian Academy could really use it. We have four desktops going in there this week but every one that we can get more could really help them out. We need machines no slower than a Pentium II 233 with 128MB of memory and a 3GB hard drive. Not exactly stellar specs but a lot of old machines don’t meet them and we aren’t able to use them. It would be ideal if the machine had a Pentium II 350 or faster and at least 192MB of memory. The little bit extra really makes a difference for the stuff that they are doing. Remember, donating to a non-profit is a tax write-off. Also, if anyone has any spare PC66 or PC100 memory, we could sure use that too. Especially 64MB, 128MB and 256MB sticks. 128MB is probably the most useful. I have tons of 32MB sticks that were given to us by Gentiva a year or so ago. The memory makes a huge difference on these machines and having just a little bit more can really speed up these machines.

I forgot to mention, the other night I sat down in one of the new mushroom chairs from Walmart and it just collapsed on me. We thought that being made of steel that they were really strong and they felt really sturdy but it just bent right over when I sat in it. One of the pins on the side hadn’t caught for some reason and let go and it just bend the side bar right over. So that sucks. Now we have to return that and hope that we can find another one. So that means another trip up to the Chili Walmart which is way too far away for a casual drive.

More work at home today. Still getting computers ready for the Castile school. Min and I went out to breakfast with dad this morning at the Omega Grill. He is taking today off from babysitting over at Grandma’s. He really needs a break.

I got a hold of the Castile school today and dad and I are scheduled to be in there tomorrow morning at 9:30 to begin installing their computers. I am hoping to have four desktops for them tomorrow and two over the next few weeks. That will do a lot to clean out this place… too many loose computers just hanging around. So we are planning on having breakfast before heading over. So, once again, I don’t get to sleep in in the morning.

I saved writing the rest of today’s update until Wednesday. That was a bad idea. I can’t remember Monday at all now. Oh well.

I bet that everyone is really excited to have the site back up and tons of new content to read. This should keep everyone busy for a little while. There had better not be any complaining now about nothing happening with the site.

Min and I woke up this morning around 7:00 and wanted to set an alarm to be sure that we would wake up in time to go to church. We were too tired to actually get up at 7:00 and it wouldn’t be good for Min since she has to work her double today. It wouldn’t be good if she got up early too. But for some reason, we couldn’t find the alarm clock so that we could wake ourselves up. We were awfully tired so we went back to sleep. At 10:00, we woke up to an alarm. We couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Finally we realized that the sound was coming from the bed. So Min pulled back the fitted sheet and felt beneath the feather mattress that we have and there was the alarm clock. Apparently, when Min made the bed yesterday, she accidentally let the clock get into the bed and it got made into it. So we got up too late to make it to church but we did find the alarm clock. We thought that that was pretty amusing.

We had a few things that we needed to go shopping for so we went out to Walmart for a little bit and did some light shopping. Of course, while we were there, Min found some movies that she wanted (I honestly had nothing to do with it this time) and so she picked up three new Rock Hudson movies to watch at work tonight. She goes through movies so fast at work it is unbelievable. After shopping, we managed to get a hold of dad when he got home from church and he came over to Geneseo and met us at Denny’s for lunch before Min had to go to work. Min and I ran over to Wegmans to do some quick grocery shopping while we were waiting for him to come up to Geneseo. Denny’s was packed full of people and it ended up taking a really long time for us to get served and Min and I ended up having to run out to get her off to work. We are planning on having breakfast with dad again tomorrow so it wasn’t so bad to eat and run.

As always, Sunday is a big work day for me down in the basement. It is about the only day that I can work straight during the afternoon, evening and night so I am pretty productive.

I got a lot of work done tonight. I have been working hard on getting the Linux machines ready for the Castile school and I am hoping that tomorrow I will be able to wrap up the last of the ones that I have and that on Tuesday I can make a run down to Castile to install them (and to get them out of the house.) We have so many machines in this house that I have to do something just to come up with some space to work in.

Min and I got up around 10:00 this morning. Jeremy was sitting in the upstairs hallway with his computer set up in the hallway watching the replay of yesterday’s final AoE2 game. So I joined him sitting on the hallway floor and we analyzed the game. Min’s parents had called last night and said that they were coming out today to pick up some stuff that we had of theirs here so we had plans to spend the afternoon with them. Sara came to pick up Jeremy around 11:15 and they headed home. I hopped into the shower to get ready for lunch.

My dad arrived around 12:15 and Min’s parents arrived around 12:30 with Dexter. We hung out for a little bit but everyone was hungry so we headed off to the Omega Grill for some lunch. After lunch, dad took right off to go down to Leicester because his mom came home from the hospital yesterday but needs someone to be with her all of the time and my aunt needed a break. Min’s parents came back to our place and hung out for a few hours. They had come down to pick up a snow blower part and a desk that we had here for them. They took off mid-afternoon to get back to Frankfort before it got dark.

Min played some Sims 2 while I took a nap. I couldn’t believe how tired I was this afternoon. I probably slept for an hour almost while Min played video games. Then I took another shower just in case I was tired because my sinuses were so dry.

I, as usual, had work to get done so I headed down to the basement to work on a few things (including getting this site back up and running again now that I finally know that it was down.) Luckily, we are back up and running and finally everyone can see all of the new dailies that I have been posting. Min watched some more Star Trek originals while I worked. Eventually she watched “The Menagerie” which is one of my favorites so I sat down and watched it with her. I even made dinner (frozen pizza and ice cream.) Then, after Star Trek, I headed back to the office and she watched one of Nate’s favorite movies For Love or Money with Michael J. Fox and Gabrielle Anwar (Scent of a Woman).

I still had work to do after Min’s last movie so she decided to stay up a little bit longer and scare the crap out of herself by watching the new Dawn of the Dead movie with Ving Rhames.

Boy was it nice to get a real night’s sleep last night. Josh told me today that the site hasn’t been coming up for a few days. No one has told me and I have been working on it thinking that there wasn’t any problem. It works fine here. So, apprently all of the updates that I have been working on so diligently have been for naught. I would have hoped that someone would have mentioned an extended outage before now.

I had to run out this morning to run a few errands around town. I hit the bank and the Chamber of Commerce. While I was out there, I noticed that work on the new Starbucks has really been moving forward quite well and they have the new signs up on the building and out in front. It almost looks like they are open. Maybe they will be soon. Their new Chantico, drinking chocolate, is really good. I had a double yesterday while I was there. Min decided to play some AoE2 this afternoon so that she would be all ready for the game tonight. I am spending the afternoon continuing to work on the computers for the Castile school. The server appears to be ready so now it is just a matter of getting the desktop machines ready to go.

Normal work around the house this afternoon, nothing exciting. There never is.

We had a good turnout again this week. Tony wasn’t able to play because they got his report card today, but we had Andy, Min, Jeremy, Art, Danielle and I. And Michael played a little and spent most of the evening wathing movies or playing games on his own. It is a lot easier to play when you end up with an even number of players which has always been really hard for us to manage in the past. We didn’t play too late, just until 2:30 or so.

Well, yesterday’s dailies were enough to take us one notch higher on the list. I stayed up pretty late last night installing SUSE Linux on that Compaq Proliant 3000. It took a really long time but I finally got it working the way that I wanted and I think that it is going to do a really good job for the school.

Danielle took Min out shopping at Aldi’s this morning. Min has been wanting to try getting some groceries there but was nervous about going there on her own. Danielle has been going there for a while so she should Min how it works.

I had to leave the house at 1:30 to make it up to the Starbucks in Brighton for my 2:00 meeting. That went really well and we were there until about 4:30. Then I headed over to the hospital which is right next door, practically, and talked to Eric for a little bit. We are having dinner at his parent’s house at 6:00 but he and Amanda aren’t able to get there until almost 7:00. I left the hospital at 5:00 and Eric was just about to leave. I drove home and picked up Min and we ran over to Wegmans to pick up a hostess gift and then we heaed out towards Warsaw.

We arrived over at the Millen’s around 6:30. Dad had only gotten there a little bit before we did. Pete and Patty and their kids arrived around 7:00 and Eric, Amanda and Julia got there just a little bit after that. We had a really nice time and hung around until 9:30 or maybe 10:00. Min and I were both totally exhausted by the time we headed out. I have been losing ground on my sleep all week and Min has too. So we really needed to get to bed.

Andy, apparently, had to work a lot extra today. He wasn’t even home yet when we got home a little bit after 10:00. I never ended up seeing him since I went straight to bed. Min watched a little bit of the first season of Star Trek before turning in.

Things are looking good for having another AoE2 party tomorrow night. If we have everyone that we think we do, then we already have seven people committed to playing… Min, Andy, Tony, Jeremy, Art, Danielle and myself. So only one open spot left for anyone interested in playing.