Sheep Guarding Llama

OUR JUNE 2004 LLAMA OF THE MONTH IS NATHAN PARKER!!

Nate is getting married this month and is one of our original llamas so he earns the semi-regular honor of being our LOTM!

Another month already. Is it possible that there are only twenty days left in Spring? It doesn’t seem possible. This year is just flying by.

I am loving working on my new laptop. It isn’t so much new as new to me. But it is barely used and I think will suit me well for a while. I haven’t heard from Min how she is liking her laptop but I am guessing that she is very happy. She is using my old one now. My new one is an HP Pavilion (yes, yes, I know, NEVER buy a Pavilion – but beggar’s can’t be choosers) with an AMD Athlon XP 2200+ and 256MB of memory. It is bigger than the Compaq Evo that I have had, the screen is bigger and brighter and I like the keyboard action better, I think. I really like that the USB are exposed and I don’t have to open a flap to get to them. I have been using this laptop for almost a week now and am pretty happy. I am planning on getting another 512MB for it to really make it usable for me. It is less noisy than the Evo and that is really nice.

In case anyone needs to track me down, I am back in Bowie and I am staying in room 315. I am trying my best to keep the cell phone on but I don’t always manage to. I only have one battery with me (I think) so it is a struggle to keep the phone charged.

I decided that I had waited too long before moving updates out to the archives so I caught up with that this morning. I need to make sure that we aren’t getting too long in the loading here.

I spent the morning hanging out in the hotel. I only got a few hours of sleep because I was up working last night and then the hospital woke me up really early this morning. If they had called when they were supposed to, they would have caught me before I went to bed. But instead they waited until the next shift and woke me up. So I plan on making it a short day today.

I ended up working all afternoon and didn’t get back to the hotel until 5:30. I took a short nap, maybe an hour. Then I showered to get the sleep out of my eyes and I drove over and fueled the car, picked up dinner at McDonald’s and off I went back to the hospital. It was light when I left but dark when I arrived. I worked at the hospital until about 9:30.

When I got back to Bowie, I parked at the hotel and walked over to Borders because Min said that the third season of Coupling had released today. I figured it was a long shot but I didn’t have a lot of other stimulating things to do so I used it as an excuse to take a walk. Much to my surprise, they actually had it!

I am back in the hotel now, in for the evening. As I strolled back from my late night shopping I began thinking about the secret lives of travelling consultants. So many people think of travelling for work to be glamorous and exciting. But the reality it is exceptionally lonely. Lonely dinners at odd hours, a quiet hotel room to return to. Shopping for things not needed just to fill time. Walkingd the quiet parking lot of the Borders/Target shopping center here in Bowie takes me back to living in the Extended Stay America in Alexandria, Virginia when John and I were first getting Washington up and running. I remember walking over to the CompUSA, Bennigans, ChiChis or the mall for something to do. Walking the streets of sprawling suburbia late at night when all of the regulars have gone off to bed. Now, sitting alone in my hotel room, talking to you in my head as if you are really listening as I sit at my laptop. Behind the laptop is a mirror. The room is dark and my face is lit up eerily in the mirror from the light of the laptop. It is strange to work at night with me looking over my own shoulder.

It is June, that means that I have now been working for Nicklin Associates for five years. It doesn’t seem possible. Back in those days all there was was our account at the University of Rochester. John was living out of the Wellesley Inn Rochester South. That was before Andy and I moved to Ithaca and then on to Pittsburgh. In some ways it seems so long ago. In other ways, just like it was yesterday. Man, how time passes. It is nights like tonight that make me feel old.

I keep meaning to mention on here about how to find free Anti-Virus solutions for home users. As everyone knows, it is vitally important that everyone have a good, up to date Anti-Virus solution on their computers. It isn’t just important for protecting yourself but by protecting your own machine you are helping to prevent outbreaks. I know of two solutions. One is Free-AV which I, Min, Eric, Andy and many other people have been using for some time. It is a good package but it does require manually updating the package everyday. So it is important to be diligent with your updates if you are using it and if you leave you computer on for weeks at a time when you are not around then it is not a good solution for you. The other option is AVG by Grisoft which Cory turned me on to just recently. This one has a much more complicated intall and registration process but it has automatic updates which makes it really nice. So, everyone get out there and try one out and help defeat viruses!

Happy Memorial Day!

I slept in this morning and then headed into Washington Hospital Center to work with one of our managers there on the Waste Watcher. With all of the new managers, there is lots to be done. Mostly, little bits at a time so that no one is getting overwhelmed. I was in the office for a couple of hours before hitting the road to head out east to John’s place in Arnold for a relaxing Memorial Day party.

I got out to John’s house around 2:30. Tommy, Cookie and Cookie’s sister Karen arrived around 3:30. We hung out on the front porch for a while and then John went out to the grill and made a ton of hamburgers, veggie burgers and hot dogs. It was a very low key afternoon. It was warm and overcast making for a very sleepy day. Everyone left around 8:00 or so.

John, Michelle and I started to watch Almost Famous but gave up on the idea because the phone kept ringing and we just weren’t able to pay attention to it.

I made it back to the hotel room around 11:00 and immediately ended up having to fix a server again. I can’t believe how many problems we have. I spent some time on the phone with Andy and we think that we might have a decent idea of what could be the problem so I am going to look into potential solutions. Wish me luck. We got it fixed for now and are able to get work done again. It would just be nice to have the actual long term solution figured out so that we don’t have to constantly go through this on the same issue. I tried to relax and get some work done in the hotel.

I am going to be in Washington tomorrow and Wednesday and then head back to Geneseo Wednesday night. I am playing golf with Josh on Thursday. We are celebrating my dad’s birthday on Friday. Then it is Nate’s bachelour party on Saturday. Sunday, Min has to be in Ithaca and I will be returning to Washington. Just so everyone knows.

Sunday, the day to relax. I slept in late since I had worked late last night. I didn’t get up until 11:00. John had to get up around 5:00 and head out to northern Delaware to pick up a truck that Dave was dropping off. So he had a really busy day and didn’t get back to the house until afternoon. Michelle and I just hung out for a while until John got there and then I headed over to the hotel in Bowie to get checked in and to get everything settled there. I needed to get a little bit of work done and needed the hotel’s network to do it. I got to the hotel at 4:00. I have a king room this time instead of the two double beds which is so much nicer. I have a much better desk and chair arrangement here which makes working from the hotel a million times better. In the last room that I had, the desk was so high and the chair sank so low that it was really uncomfortable. And with only one bed, this room has a lot more open space in it. Plus it has a coffee table and a couch. Of course, they didn’t make them face the television which is weird, but I haven’t even turned the television on in so many trips here that I think that it is unlikely that I will be starting now. If the televisions had DVD players built in, I might take advantage of them. Or even if I could just plug a DVD player into the television. But since you never can, I never even think about them.

John and Michelle ordered some pizza and had me run out to Walmart to find something random to watch. So I went shopping and found the original movie Battlestar Galactica which was one of my favorite television shows when I was very young. I hope to get the original series on DVD as well. There is also a mini-series that came out recently and talk of a regular television show. Cross your fingers.

I got home late and pretty much went to bed. I was pretty tired.

Min decided to head out to Frankfort because her sister and the girls are coming early and she is able to schedule a couple of days out there. So she won’t be back to Geneseo until Tuesday night, I believe.

Today is another driving day. I left town around 7:00 this morning and headed south. I don’t mind these long drive days. The thing that gets me is the packing. I hate preparing for long trips. There is just so much to forget.

I arrived perfectly on time. I left Geneseo needing to be in Annapolis at 3:00 and I pulled in right at 2:57. Not bad timing for a whole day of driving. The rest of the guys were late to the meeting but we got things rolling around 3:45.

We did the manager’s meeting out in John’s boat. He got it last year and only yesterday did he finally manage to get it out of Deep Creek. So he has really been itching to take it out. We went way out into the Chesapeake Bay and had the meeting about a mile or two out from the Bay Bridge. The water was nice and calm. It was a perfect day to be out in the boat. We had a really good time. Had lunch out there and did some fishing. No one caught anything. I didn’t fish but everyone else did. I was too afraid that I might actually catch something and then have to do something with the fish.

After the meeting we went down with those of us with free schedules and we had dinner at Deep Creek. I had the Mahi Mahi with chipotle sauce. It was the best fish that I have had in years.

After dinner, Omar and I had to go into the hospital to get some work done. We ended up working there until about 3:00am. We got some good work done, though. I think that things are going well.

Once work was done, I drove back to Annapolis to crash at John’s house. They don’t have the girls this weekend and the hotel in Bowie is full. So I slept in John’s office. There wasn’t room to pull out the futon so I slept on the floor. I didn’t even notice so it was probably less hassle in the long run anyway.

My last day home and my last chance to see Min for a week. Min only slept a have day today so that we could spend the majority of the day together.

Min and I went to bed early because we both have to be up early in the morning.