Sheep Guarding Llama

Min got like no sleep yesterday so she slept in pretty late today. We didn’t go to church because it was pretty much going to be over by the time we were getting out of bed. We finally got up and went to the Omega Grill for some lunch. Then we headed over to Walmart because Min has been playing her GBA a bit recently and she ate through her batteries. That is one of the greatest thing about the new GBAs compared to the regular Gameboys, the batteries just last forever. It is really incredible just how long they last. It isn’t uncommon to hear rumors of people getting 20+ hours out of a pair of AA alkanlines! That is pretty incredible. And when you realize how powerful that little machine is, then it is really cool.

Speaking of really cool handheld game systems, if anyone out there is not aware, there is another game system that completely whomps all over the GBA and is only a little bit more expensive. What could this system be, you ask, well, I will tell you. It is the GamePark GP32. This is a system based on a similar, but more powerful, processor than the GBA. But unlike the GBA, the GP32 went out and added better audio and video support and twice as much memory giving it loads more power. But the two coolest features of this little unit are that it has built in wireless networking and that it uses industry standard Smart Media cards for its software. Using the built in wireless means that four GP32 owners can sit in a room or ride a bus together and play head to head games without all the cables hooking them together. The Smart Media cards means that you can download and play games off the Internet without having to go to a store to get them. And since there are lots of emulators written for the system, you can play NES, SNES, Atari 2600, Lynx, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, GBA, MAME, NeoGeo Pocket, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Vectrex (this one is for you, Francesca), WonderSwan and many others, you can play tons and tons of classic games from the consoles on here. And since you can just pick up the cartridges for it at Walmart, and huge ones at that, you can put hundreds of games on a single cart and take them anywhere with you. And since the carts are SO tiny, you could easily fit thousands of games in your pocket.

Min spent a bit of the afternoon learning web site design as she is working on her own site. Hopefully she will have it up later today and then everyone can stop by and take a look at it. She is just getting going so it should be changing pretty rapidly. She is getting the site up for her new business of making designer knit fashions. So as soon as everyone is ready for some cool new purses and scarves, let her know.

Min has been pretty excited about her new video game, The Sims: Bustin’ Out on the GBA.

Min got called late this afternoon about subbing for the week. Keshequa has already decided to use her for three different classes this week. She is the acting librarian on Monday and then is subbing for two different social studies teachers on Tuesday and Wednesday. It is really cool that she is already lined up for the week and knows what she is going to be doing. That never happens. I have a busy week too. Danielle and I are planning on doing sales on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I am working in Ithaca all day on Wednesday and then I am working Saturday, Sunday and Monday in Endicott. So we are both going to be very, very busy.

I won Nintendo’s Golden Sun for the GBA on eBay this afternoon. Recently we have discovered that Min and I both love playing JRPG’s (Japanese Role Playing Games) so we are trying to beef up our collection a little bit. She has liked them for a long time but didn’t know what the genre was called and I have always liked them but she didn’t know that the games I were playing were JRPGs. So we finally figured out that we like tons of the same games so we are trying to get more of those. We both really like the handheld game systems so we aren’t getting anything that isn’t GameBoy or potential GamePark related (I am looking for a good deal on a used one.) I really want to get a GP32 because there are tons of great SNES games that I would really like to play but don’t want to bother breaking out my system and hooking it up to the projector to play. The handheld systems are just tons more convenient. So I have been scouring eBay looking for games that we like or think that we will. I am also looking at some original GameBoy titles from way back when. I had an original GB back in like 1992 but it was lost while I was in high school and I lost all of my original games. Then I didn’t have a system at all for years (big mistake) but I replaced it around 1998 or 1999 with a Game Boy Color. I got a few games for that but not nearly as many as I had had long ago. So now I am looking to get the games that I had always wanted but never did and since most of them are really cheap on eBay, it is easy.

So we were looking for something to watch tonight and Min bought the first season of Roswell, which she has already watched, so I decided to give it a try. I actually ended up liking the show. It is more serial like the European shows that I really like than most American shows. So I started watching it while I was working on my laptop in the living room. I ended up watching ten one hour episodes of Roswell, almost half of the first season. Min thinks that it is hilarious that I like the show. This was her and Jenn’s favorite show when they were in college.

Min got home from work and got two hours of sleep before we got up to drive the puppy back to be with is parents. We drove out to the Weedsport Thruway exit and met them there. Then we went into Auburn to get some lunch before heading back home without our dog 🙁 It is sad to have a dog and then not to have one. The house and the car already seem very empty. But, Mr. Humphreys has been very upset that Dexter was in the house so he will be very relieved.

We went shopping at the outlet mall in Waterloo on our way home. We were hoping to find some plates and stuff to replace some broken and missing ones that we have but didn’t manage to get anywhere with that. We did find a really nice set of Christmas settings that we got on sale really inexpensively that is really nice. Min was very excited. Then we went up to Henrietta and did some shopping at Kitchens Etc. because Min is trying to find a nice tea set. But we have been looking everywhere and can’t find anything that we like at all.

We got home and felt that we needed something new to watch so we popped over to our local Walmart and picked up A Few Good Men, The Birdcage and Le Divorce. I had never seen The Birdcage before even though I have seen the original in French a couple of times. Min loves the movie so we got it and it is really funny. Robin Williams is always great and Hank Azaria is one of the funniest people ever. This has to be his best role, even better than The Simpson (as you know, he is THE Simpsons – he is the voice of just about everyone on the show.) After that we watched Le Divorve with Kate Hudson. It was okay but not the awesome movie that we had been expecting. It is a change from the usual but nothing outstanding. Worth borrowing but I wouldn’t suggest buying it. No special features on the disc either. Kind of strange these days.

Andy is coming home on Tuesday night and will be here on Wednesday while I am out of town working in Ithaca and then he is flying back to Puerto Rico on Thursday. He thinks that he will be coming back to New York early on in May. We will see what happens.

I have been playing Advance Wars on the GBA and I am really starting to like it. It is a turn based strategy game which doesn’t really do it for me but it is hard to do anything real time on a handheld machine so I think it is about the best that they can do. I have seen AoE ported to a handheld but I doubt that it works very well and it sure wouldn’t run on the GBA. Newer handhelds like the HP iPaq, Dell Axim and Sharp Zaurus have four times the processing power of the GBA and that really makes a difference. But Advance Wars is really nice and easy to use. They made the interface work really well and it does a good job at scaling to the tiny screen. I am interested to see how good the sequel is. The nice thing about Advance Wars is that it allows you to play with 1, 2, 3 or 4 players using either a single GBA or one GBA per player. That makes it really flexible in a number of multi-player configurations. Because it is turn based, it is really easy to just hand a single GBA around.

We are playing AoE2 tonight but there are only four of us. I spent the day working. I wish that I could spend the day warming up for the game but I just don’t have the time. I basically only get to play on every other Friday night. I never get to play in between games anymore.

I spent a lot of time today working on security certifications with Symantec. I am working towards their big security sales knowledge award. I racked up four more certs today, that takes my total to 79. Yeah, baby. I need to get some security certs out of the way so that I have more leverage to get credit at Empire.

Phil, Josh and Art came over around 6:30 and we got the game moving. Altogether we got three games in this evening. It is nice to have an even number for some 2on2 game play. Phil and I kicked butt winning all three games!

I wrote yesterday’s update and forgot to post it. What an idiot I am. I always forget to post like the day before I stop writing for a few days which just compounds the problem.

Well, when I got up this morning, they actually plowed the road and the driveway. As usual, the homeowners association didn’t return my call from last night. I called them four times last night just to be sure that they knew that I wanted something done. I also complained about the cabinets not being installed over two weeks ago like I was promised but nothing has been done about that and Min was here all day. So I am still incredibly disappointed about that. I think that they sell the stuff to other people for some extra cash and hope that we eventually give up.

So I headed out to Farmington this morning to meet with Ted Miller from Berien Business Solutions. I actually made it all the way out there on time. It is a good thing that I allowed as long as I did for the meeting because we used all of the time and he was running late for his next appointment and I had little extra time before I had to get up to Empire State College for orientation. I swung by the UofR and checked my email before headed up to the college.

Orientation started at noon and ran all afternoon. Five hours of totally worthless information and treating us like we had no clue how to deal with a college. Admittedly, a few future students really did have no clue how to deal with college but the orientation session was not gong to help them in the least. Half of the people there were not going to be helped by anyone and the other half were bored out of their minds with nothing to gain from such a silly session. It was such a waste of time. I did manage to spend a lot of time with professors and mentors and actually got some things moving. But the orientation was practially offense with how stupid they treated us. And having spent time at the college, I knew that a lot of the stuff that they were saying was just marketing crap and completely unfounded. It pissed me off enough and showed me just how full of crap their informational sessions are. Enough that I am not even planning on going to any info sessions about ESC’s grad programs because I don’t feel that I can trust what they say. The grad programs have never looked all that impressive so they have finally managed to push me completely away and I am planning on applying to the far more serious programs over at RIT. It will cost a lot more but at least I can be a little proud of the degree and have an actual MS and not an MA. ESC only offers MA.

I got home and Min made some dinner. We watched some of Joan of Arcadia, which Min really likes. I like the show and think that they tackle lots of good subjects but I often think that they overlook important aspects of the subject matter. I think their mistake is often using big issues to tackle little ones leaving the big issues ignored. And they often take a lot of liberties that, while it would be very hard not to do, seem to be overstepping bounds of appropriateness. But, for example, the episode we watched tonight using major civil rights and child pornography crimes to make characters tackle simple school pranks. They make a big deal out of the high school rivalries but completely ignore the big issues that would have people arrested (and often do) in real life.

Min may have gotten out of work last night but she has to go tonight. She might end up working Friday night to make up for the lost shift. We will see.

I am taking a full course load this semester (my semester is starting towards the end of March.) I am taking two Java courses, an IT management course and my academic planning. I know that that doesn’t seem like much for a “full load” but it is the maximum that ESC allows. Yup, that is right, their max is like 75% of many colleges’ minimums. When I was at MCC, there were students with double that load. Everyone at ESC acts like it is some phenominal load. I don’t understand at all. It is like no one that works there ever went to college themselves. It isn’t like I haven’t taken upper lever classes at ESC before and don’t know how much effort goes into them.

As you can see, the site is marching forward again. I am trying to get real updates back on here. I would still like to see this season be the most ambitious that SGL has had so far. I am doing alright thus far.

I am starting to teach myself Java this evening. I want to get a jump on the semester since I am taking two classes in it back to back. It will be a bit challenging having to do each in only half the normal time but I don’t think that it will be all that bad. While I studied, Min and I watched The Count of Monte Cristo. It is a great story if anyone hasn’t seen it or read Alexandre Dumas’ book. Unfortunately, they chose to use Richard Harris in the film but it is one of his better performances. Guy Pierce rocks as always. This was James Caviezel’s real break out movie even though he had done a couple of decent things before this, this one really put him on the map. Although, obviously, his real fame will always be for The Passion of Jesus Christ which is already one of the biggest movies of all time and still going incredibly strong.