Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Well, Dominica did her first tech work this morning over at Autoworks in Varna. That went really well. She was happy that the first people that she had to work with were so nice and friendly. She managed to get her work done there and then head off to Lifestyle Properties to work for the rest of the day.

I am having a crazy morning. The phone has been ringing like crazy (both here and back home, I can only imagine that Andy is asleep because he has missed about a call an hour all day.) I have been busy coordinating with Min on her job and interviewing for other positions and talking to this person and that, dealing with the hospital, etc. It is going to be a long day but busy is good. Busy is very good.

After things calmed down a little bit, I got the chance to relax around the hotel for a while. I needed some time just to myself to unwind a little bit. There has just been so much going on. I played and completed the video game 5 Days A Stranger which I thought was pretty good. It is a classic styled but new adventure game in the horror/thriller vein. I am not normally into that kind of thing but I found it to be quite enjoyable. If anyone is looking for a low cost video game experience then you should download it and give it a try.

It’s a driving day today. I slept through my morning alarm and didn’t get up until 8:00. I had to get dressed, packed and out the door fast. Min and I grabbed a quick morning bite at Dunkin Donuts by Walmart in Geneseo (which is now a Mobil station instead of a Hess station, much to our surpirse.) It was 9:05 when I finally headed out of town for Annapolis.

I made the trip in record time. No stops. Didn’t need gas, food or even a bathroom break. I was pretty exhausted by the time I arrived in Annapolis at 3:30. I would have been down much earlier but there was a major accident up in Baltimore and that held me up for a really long time. And then there was heavy traffic on the Bay Bridge and that backed up Rt. 50 just terribly.

I spent the afternoon hanging out at a cookout and party at John’s place. I didn’t party too late tonight, though, and was out to the hotel by just after midnight. I have been having a terrible time getting enough sleep for the last month or so, so I was looking forward to getting some sleep tonight.

I am very fortunate that I have been staying at the Comfort Inn in Bowie so much that they were nice and got a room together for me even though they were sold out. It is nice when you give a place enough business that they make sure to treat you extra well. It makes the additional cost worth it even more.