Sheep Guarding Llama

I was supposed to be going out to Albany today for an interview but that was put on hold until Thursday so today I am hanging out in Ithaca for a little while. I went into the office and helped out with a few things on Min’s computer and took care of some morning communications that I needed to do. Then we went out to State St. Diner for an early lunch.

After lunch, I headed north up to Rochester to meet up with Josh to run some errands this evening. When I got up there, he was busy at work so I headed over to Brighton and picked up Eric at the office and he ran a couple of errands with me. When Josh got out of work, I ran over to Soundworks in Pittsford and met him there. We picked up the B+W 303 speakers that I have been needing to finish off the theatre system. They are the last piece in our matching B+W 3 Series puzzle. We have the whole thing now, fronts, rears, center and sub all with matching Marantz MA-500 monoblock amps. The basement isn’t quite done yet so we can’t set it all up but I am getting very anxious because we have it all now, sitting in boxes taunting me to play with it.

After stereo shopping, Josh and I went to The Mundo Grill for dinner. [Update from July 24, 2006: Dinner was excellent and the atmosphere was quite good. I have no idea why I didn’t write about our dinner at the time. Josh and I vowed to return at the Mundo Grill again. Definitely one of our better dining experiences in Rochester. One of the few Rochester restaurants that gives a bit more of the big city restaurant feel and taste. While we were dining there was a major fire at the bowling alley across the street or perhaps behind the bowling alley. The restaurant had the whole front wide open – no glass just free air – and most of the restaurant had gotten up from their seats and were standing watching the fire.]

It was a chore to drag by lazy butt out of bed this morning to make it out to Leisure’s for breakfast. Dad and I drove over to Lakeville in John’s Camaro. Dad really liked it. He would like to get a convertible. He has wanted a Camaro convertible since the mid to late 60’s. So it is probably about time that he got himself one.

Min and I ran up to the city this morning to get a copy of my birth certificate for the trip next week. I have never had one with a county seal on it so I need to get one anyway. The office of vital records for Monroe County is right by Strong Hospital so that was really easy to find. It cost $30 and took like five minutes to deal with. That was so easy, I couldn’t believe it. We ran over to Media Play because Min wanted her own copy of Neverwinter Nights since it was only $10. She also found the latest Broken Sword game and decided to get that since they had one copy of it for just $15 (all of the others were $40, it seems to be a trend there to do things like that.) Anyway, we had really liked the Broken Sword:Shadows of the Templars game for the GBA so we thought that we would give this one a chance. I have been skeptical of getting games from The Adventure Company as they have a tendency to look too much like Myst and Seventh Guest (which are awful games.)

We got home and Andy and I spent most of the afternoon working on Waste Watcher designs. Min and Andy spent a little time getting Broken Sword installed on her computer. Once they got that working she played it a little bit and we were really impressed. That is a really awesome game. The graphics are good and the story line is neat and the game play is really cool. It is a lot like the old Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure games but translated into 3D which no one has ever been able to do right before. But this one seems to have really done a good job and it is really neat. We were all really impressed with it. So, I am hopeful that we may have found a source of awesome new video games in the genre that we like so much but can never find anymore. Boy wouldn’t that be nice.

Eric, Amanda and Julia came over for a little while. I have Eric’s new CD burner here and he needed to pick that up and Andy and I wanted him to talk about Waste Watcher stuff a little so we talked about that.

Well, no sleep for me today. I went to bed with Min at 11:00 this morning but the phone ended up ringing so often that I really got practically no sleep at all. I got out of bed just before 4:00 pm and got back to work on my main computer. It is working but there is still a lot work to be done getting updates done and software installed and setting configured. Min managed to keep sleeping after I got up.

I have an interview in Albany next Tuesday at 2:30 that I am really excited about. So everyone needs to pray that it goes well. It is only a 3-4 month contract but it is a really perfect job for me both in timing and in definition. It will let Min quit working at the hotel as well which will make her very happy. Min woke up at a quarter to 7:00.

The three of us went out to Avon to get dinner at Peppermints. That is a really nice place. We don’t go there often enough. After dinner we came home and just hung out for a little bit before Min had to go to work. After Min went to work, Andy and I headed over to Denny’s for some coffee. We worked on Project NSP (secret project with a codename) until 3:00 in the morning. I needed to get home and get to bed because dad is picking me up in the morning to go out to breakfast. And since I only got about one hour of real sleep today, I will need at least a little bit before tomorrow.

Min needed to go see the doctor first thing this morning so I got out of bed and we drove out to Batavia to take care of that. That killed most of the morning. We had to run over to the hospital for a little bit to get some tests done too. So it was a very busy morning. The weather was really cold today, we couldn’t believe it. We went over to the Miss Batavia Diner for some breakfast. That was really good.

We decided that we couldn’t keep the trip next week a surprise any longer because Min needed to be more involved in the decision process. She would also need to know what to pack. So, she found out that we are going to be going up to Acadia to celebrate its 400th Anniversary in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. She is very excited. We are leaving on Thursday next and will be gone for a full week. It will be really nice to finally get a vacation alone for a little while.

Today we say a sad eulogy for the now deceased Radio Free Ithaca. RFI played for about a year running first out of Washington, DC and then out of our offices here in Geneseo. In fact, it may have been running for far more than a year. It is sad that the radio station has to be turned off, but the project just didn’t move forward as we had expected that it would.

After lunch we headed up to Rochester. I had to stop by Empire State for a minute to pick up my sunglasses that I had left there a week ago. Then we headed down to Henrietta and did some shopping. Min got some yarn and then she went shopping for some new walking shoes. She hasn’t had any really comfortable walking shoes ever so she needs to get some prior to our vacation since there will be a bit of hiking involved.

While Min was shopping I ran over to Media Play and I managed to find a video game that I have been wanting for quite some time but it has always been too expensive, Neverwinter Nights, reduced to just $10. So I grabbed that right away. I don’t know what they were thinking but good deal for me.

Andy got screwed on his contract in Rochester. Just one day on the job and they dropped the contract giving him some lame excuse. So he is bummed and that really sucks.

Min hasn’t slept all day so she laid down on the couch and the three of us watched Starsky and Hutch which Min has seen but Andy and I hadn’t yet. It was really good. Lots of good cameos and the whole thing was very funny. I never used to watch the old show so I am sure that there was a ton of stuff that was based on that that made the show even better.

Min was exhausted when she headed off to work at the hotel. I am sure that she is going to be sleeping all day tomorrow. She really needs it. After she left, I headed down to the basement to get back to work on my desktop computer that is still not working. I have put so much time into this machine it isn’t funny at all. It really pays to not have a dual boot machine when you have high performance gear like this. I am so glad that all of my files are stored on a separate server so that I don’t have to worry about them while I am doing all of this work.

I am still awake and working and the current time is 7:33 am. Min will be home in just over an hour and a half. Even if I got the computer working perfectly right this second, I would still have so much to do that I could still be busy when Min got home. I feel as though I am closing in on the problem but it is really hard to tell. I am always trying to do such complicated things with my computers. It is good experience for me, I guess, to figh through all of thes problems here so that I know all of the things that can go wrong out in the real world, but what a pain in the butt this is. I am able to get Linux running on the machine without major incident but getting Windows working as well is another story. I am starting to get so tired that I am not able to do any more work tonight (this morning.) I have been up for so long that Eric has already gotten up and gone into work for a while and talked to me from there. You know that you have been up way too long when that happens. Way too long.

I finally decided to call it a night and headed off to sleep around 11:00 am. I had just managed to get the computer working when I headed off to bed. I am so happy that the computer is working now. You have no idea what a relief it is to have this computer fully functional once more. This has taken far in excess of 72 hours of labour to get to where it is now. But now it should be pretty stable (of course, I am not sure how I will go about doing an XP reinstall without going through a lot of this again!) Ok, well, off to bed, I really need some sleep. Min has been sitting down in the basement with me for two hours doing research on things to see and do in the Canadian Maritimes.

I slept in a little this morning and then packed up my hotel room and checked out. After getting out of the hotel I headed on over to John’s place in Annapolis. We actually had more time to talk to each other today than we have had all weekend.

I am borrowing John’s 35th Anniversary Camaro SS to take on Min’s surprise vacation next week so I drove it up to New York this afternoon. I left my Mazda 6 down at John’s for the next two weeks. Hopefully there is nothing in it that I really need.

The drive went pretty smoothly. I put about 350 miles on the Camaro already which is a pretty drastic amount since the car only had 2450 miles when I picked it up yesterday (no I am not kidding, 2,450 miles!!)

I got home in time to Min for about an hour before she had to head off to the hotel to work.

Andy got a contract today working up in Rochester for the next month. He is very relieved to have some real work coming in.