Sheep Guarding Llama

Got up and moving quite early this morning. Eric and I are driving down to Pittsburgh today, so we have to make an early start of it. We managed to get out the door around 7:00 and we hustled our way south. Our first stop was breakfast at McDonalds. Then straight on to the hotel in Oakland. We arrived around noon which means that we made really good time. It is so much nicer coming from Geneseo, it is an hour closer than Ithaca is and that is really noticeable.

Our first meeting is at 1:00 at the Oakland hospitals. We were there for a couple of hours. The meeting went well. We were over to the hotel to check in (we weren’t able to check in earlier) around 4:00 and then we headed off in rush hour traffic to meet up with our partners over at Westband for a dinner meeting. It took us quite a while to find their offices on the southeast side of the rivers. We didn’t make it over there until almost 6:30. We got a tour of the offices and then we went down to TGI Fridays at Riverside for some dinner. Eric and I didn’t end up making it back to the hotel until almost 12:30!

Min got to sub today. But she didn’t get a whole day in. She was called around 9:00 when the sub that they had called before her didn’t show up. So they had to call Min and admit that they had called someone else and had to beg to have her bail them out.

Today is the Novell sales training show in Rochester. Min signed up so that she could spend the day with me. This is her first industry show so she is pretty excited. We had to get up early since the show started at 8:30 up at the Marriott Airport (which isn’t anywhere near the airport.)

Novell provided a light breakfast for us. There were supposed to be eleven people in the training session but only eight people arrived. One of our competitor companies was there with four people, we had two and two other companies each had one. So we had a real presence anyway. The Novell guys spent a lot of time talking to us finding out who we were.

The training class went well. I already had last years certification so it wasn’t much different from what I had already done but the classroom setting was nice and covered some things that I didn’t know. Min got a lot out of the day. She didn’t really know what we did with Novell going into the show and now she is really gung ho about them. They provide a really good product range and really fit our business model well so we are hoping to be able to do a lot of work with them in the near future.

Novell provided a nice lunch for us. They forgot to ask if we were vegetarians but luckily I thought of it in time and told the waitress and she had time to alert the chef (yeah, it was a real hotel restaurant meal.) It was a really nice lunch and we managed to make some good contacts there. The Novell guys ate lunch with us so we got to know them a little bit more.

The training went on until about 5:00. It was a whole day thing which is nice because too often these things are way too short for the hours of driving and prep needed to get to them. This was a really valuable day and at the end of the day we got to take the CNS 2004 exams right there so that was really handy as well. So Min should find out whether or not she is CNS Certified in a few weeks. It is really nice that they do it like that. Really works out well for sales staff.

After the seminar, Min and I stopped by Phil and Kate’s place in Henrietta. Phil had to run off to a class (midterms today) so Min and I went down to CompUSA and did some shopping that we needed to get done. We came back and the four of us went down to Friendlys for some dinner. Phil had to run back to class because he had left in the middle of the test to have dinner with us.

Then it was off to the airport to pick up Andy flying in from Puerto Rico. Yup, a whole week there. He is planning on returning to PR on March 25th. He made the arrangements himself so he will probably be actually going then. But he is planning on being in Canada next week so he won’t be joining us for the Friday night game even after he whined and asked us to hold off on the game and wait for him.

We got home and I just had to get to sleep because I have to get up really early in the morning and head down to Pittsburgh with Eric.

Today is my one day here all week. Well, and Friday. But the whole middle of the week I am out of town. I worked around the house this morning and then went to Perry early this afternoon to drop off some stuff with one of our clients and to consult with another. After I was done out there, I drove down to Pavilion to help dad drop off his car at the shop.

Min subbed again today. She has been doing quite a bit of subbing down in Nunda.

Min and I slept most of the day away. We were so exhausted by the time we had finally gotten to bed that we slept for like thirteen hours or so. Boy did we feel better after that. We were pretty hungry so we drove on down to Dansville and got Bob’s Belly Busting Fish Sandwiches at the Buck Horn. Their fried fish there is really exceptional. The day is quiet and rainy and we thought that it would be nice to just relax at home. So we came back and watched the Vicar of Dibley which is such an incredible series. Dawn French is just brilliant.

I talked to Bob this morning. He is thinking about moving into the realm of high end audio and video soon and so he might be coming up to Rochester to see what the audio city has to offer.

If you read yesterday’s update, then you know that there was no sleep period between yesterday’s update and today. Phil, Chris and Josh hung out until 1:00 or so. Everyone was pretty delirious from lack of sleep. We all sat around in the living room being completely deranged.

Min took off right about the same time as everyone else. She had to get over to Perry for Tammy Englert’s bridal shower at Brick Presbyterian. Nate arrived just after Min left and we went down to Main Street and got some lunch from Aunt Cookies. We got some subs – Nate is always dying for Aunt Cookies’ subs. Then we headed off to the shower for the last half or so. Susan and Emily were both there so Min and I had some people to hang out with while Nate and Tammy were busy with shower stuff.

After the shower, Min and I went over to dad’s to hang out. We were so tired that we both ended up taking naps when we first got there. I slept for about an hour and Min slept for about two. Then we went down to Pavilion and got a pizza from Davis’ Farm Market and we watched the PBS fund raising drive. Phillip Bretherton and Moira Brooker were both in Rochester at the WXXI studios to help with the fund raising. Min wanted to drive to the airport and wait for them to get on a plane so that she could see them (they are lead characters from our favorite television show.) By 9:30 we were exhausted and headed home to get some sleep. We were in bed by 11:00 and boy did we need to get to sleep.