Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Winter has returned. Serious snowfall this morning. Min got called by Keshequa this morning so she got up early and headed down to sub. I stayed in bed to keep Dexter relaxed. He gets very nervous when Min leaves. So I slept in a bit which was nice for a change. I have been getting very behind on my sleep. The snow was falling hard early this morning so Danielle and I decided not to do any sales today.

I worked in the bedroom all day with the little puppy sleeping at my feet. He would get anxious any time that I got up so I was pretty much stuck right there. But he was so cute just sitting at my feet. My Dexter loves me.

The snow fell hard all day. It took Min an hour to drive home from Nunda. The roads were awful. Her car isn’t so good in the snow, it doesn’t have snow tires. She got home and made some Soy Chicken Korma for dinner. Then we headed over to Highland Park to go to the depot to vote. It is the village elections today. Turn out was pretty good considering the horrible weather. I was number 375 from the first and second wards. Not bad for a small town small time election.

After going out to vote, we came home and watched movies. Min baked some cookies for us. Dexter cuddles on the couch with us. He is such a cutie.

We are really knocking off the movies now. Only 24 left unwatched and most of those are on laserdisc so we can’t watch them right now. I got quite a few CDs transferred today too. I hope to have that done soon so I can pack up the discs and get the house cleaned up. There are CDs everywhere.

I am heading out early in the morning tomorrow. I have a breakfast meeting in Canandaigua at 8:30 and then I have an orientation up at Empire State all afternoon. So I won’t be home until normally working hours. Min is working at the hotel tonight. Her week got shifted but she has Friday night off so she will be joining the game. Eric can’t make the game. So we are still a little bit short if anyone is interested in jumping in. I think we only have five or six so far.

I moved February out to the Archives and I updated all of the Archive pages to ASP.NET. That is one more section down. I also filled in a little late February info that was missing.

Well, I was almost done working on the site this evening, in fact I already posted, when Min tried to go off to work at the hotel and got stuck at the end of our driveway. Our homeowners association was supposed to plow the driveway, that is why we pay them, but they didn’t bother on one of the heaviest snowfall days of the year (and not to mention a voting day). The snow was so high in the driveway that Min could barely open her car doors. The car was really burried in deep. To make matters worse, the village hasn’t been out plowing either. You can’t even tell where our unplowed driveway ends and the street begins. It is just a sea of snow out there. That was at 10:45 pm that she got stuck. I went out and tried to push her but the car didn’t budge in the least. We tried putting some stuff under the tires to get some traction but it didn’t help any. The real problem is that the snow is so high that the underbelly of the car is riding on the snow. So there is just no way to get traction whatsoever. Her passenger side front wheel had so little traction that it was spinning at idle.

So for the next hour and a half we poured hot water down the driveway in strategic locations (that is a funny use of the term strategic since it is actually tactical) and eventually started getting the car able to move (we don’t own a shovel you see.) It took forever but I managed to slowly work the car up the driveway. Around 12:30 in the morning I finally had the car up to the garage door again where it had originally come from. So all that work and we were just back to where we had started sans one shift’s pay. So Min missed work tonight and can’t sub tomorrow because she would have to leave before they would possibly consider plowing the driveway. Needless to say, I am not a happy camper this evening. I have no idea how I am going to get to my morning meeting because I will have no idea if anyone is plowing far enough in front of me to get anywhere. My car does go through snow a million times better than Min’s does now with the new tires but it still rides really low to the ground and that is the real issue. Also, I would be afraid to take it down the driveway in case I slipped a little and slid into Min’s car. That would really suck. So it looks like I am cancelling that meeting (which sucks because it was looking to be a really good meeting) and I might not even have a way to get to my orientation at college which is a really big deal.

So since I am back on the computer, I am doing a little work that needed done. Dad ordered himself a projector just like ours today. He used ours a few weeks ago at church and really liked it so he decided to get one for himself. If anyone is interested, we are an InFocus dealer so just ask. The model that Min and I have and that dad has on order is 800×600 with a built in scaler so it acts as an HDTV with a maximum viewing size of 239″ (no really!) Unlike most business projectors, it does not have a 400:1 contrast ratio but rather a 2000:1! Boy does that make a difference. You can get projectors with higher output resolutions but DVD’s only output something like 720×480 so even this unit is overkill. And it had a mode for legacy 4:3 ratio television and 16:9 widescreen high definition. It is a rockin’ projector. We sell them, with the adapter to hook to your Progressive Scan DVD player (trust me, you NEED the progressive scan, it doubles the image quality) for just $1050 plus tax. Aren’t I the salesmen?

We are expecting to be doing business with a new warehouse soon that will allow us to sell video games and video game consoles. Isn’t that cool. It almost fits into our business plan but anything that lets us do more business is good. I don’t know what all we will be able to get but I will try to keep you all posted.

No sooner did I mention the projector than I noticed an email saying that dad’s projector just shipped out of Pennsylvania a few hours ago. He should have it on Thursday most likely. I am sure that he will be excited.

Okay, time to get some shut eye. I am pretty tired and I have to be up early in the morning to deal with cancelling meetings and stuff. What a day it is going to be. I have a lot of driving to do too! Okay, good night everyone.