Sheep Guarding Llama

Min brought me breakfast from work this morning. She discovered our little tiny mouse in the mouse cube this morning. So I let him out before we ate. He must have been very young because he wasn’t as scared as the mice normally are. I went to bed really late last night so I went back to bed after breakfast.

We got up in time to just get ready and head on up to the city to meet Josh and Joanna for dinner at Gordon’s up at the Port of Rochester. It was a really good dinner. We all had fish or seafood. It took a really long time to eat, though. We got there right as the doors opened at 4:00 and we weren’t done eating until 6:30. The people who arrived for dinner just a little bit after us didn’t end up sitting down to eat until almost the time we left. After dinner we went down to Media Play to see what was out and to do a little shopping. Min and I have been running really low on stuff to watch now that we have been cutting back on our movie spending. The cost per view and dropped dramatically and we have been borrowing more stuff than we used to but we have discovered that we really need some more BBC television shows because that is what we find ourselves watching so much of. We are hopeful because a couple of new series have released and we have exhausted everything that we have now. We picked up a couple of new things, Gilligan’s Island Complete First Season, Rescue from Gilligan’s Island and Once Upon A Time In Mexico.

We got home and watched some of Gilligan’s Island. The disc that we got has the unaired pilot episode. It is funny to watch because they decided to change half of the cast and then they reshot the pilot as episode one of the show but still used a lot of the footage from the pilot which looks really weird once you have seen where it comes from. We also noticed that in the title sequence of the film, it is the pilot cast that rides out to sea on the SS Minnow. After that we watched Once Upon A Time In Mexico. I have really been looking forward to seeing the final of the Mexican Trilogy which I have been waiting for for nine years. It was good, but not what we were expecting. Phil was right that Salma Hayek was in it way too little. And the plot was very disconnected from the earlier films. It didn’t make things any better that they used Enrique Inglesias for one of the mariachis. He is really corny under the best circumstances and is only marginally acceptable in the film. Antonia Banderas, Danny Trejo, Salma Hayek and Johnny Depp rock as usual. The film has a lot of action but it is a little weird the way that they portray it.

No game tonight. No one could make it.

We had a relaxing evening in tonight. I don’t think that I left the house all day. Having no car does that to you. Min and I watched Mystery, Alaska which we both really like. You have to love any movie with Hank Azara.

While Min was at work I went out to the garage and brought in the stair step machine. No sooner than I started using it than I noticed a little tiny mouse running across the dining room floor into the living room. I flipped on the lights and he looked pretty panicked. He took off under the door leading down to the cellar and hid. So I had to break out one of the mouse cubes and put in on the stairs. This is our mouse number sixteen! That is pretty bad. I am pretty sure that this guy must have run into the house while I was going into or out of the garage. So I will have to be more careful than that.

I had the evening to myself so I watched some of Lindsay Lohen in Disney’s Freaky Friday and I played a round of AoE2 because I was sad that we didn’t have a game this week.

So I finally got to talk to John Holtz and find out what is going on with my car that has been in there for a full two weeks today. It turns out that all four of my tires were bad on the Mazda 6 – the one had blown on its own and the other three all had bad belts. So new tires have been ordered for the car to replace the ones I have been driving on but hopefully the other ones that I have been waiting for will be in soon too because those are the ones that I want ont he car. This is getting to be a bit of a problem never having a car. I can’t believe that they still haven’t gotten me all of the stuff that I bought and paid for in mid-July. We are up to a full seven months of waiting for those wheels and tires that I bought just for winter driving. If I don’t have the wheels and tires pretty soon, I am going to be forced to contact Mazda’s credit department to explain to them that the full package that they loaned me the money for has not yet been delivered.

There is a good article over at FlexBeta.net that talks about thirteen simple reasons why you should give Mozilla FireFox a try instead of sticking with tired old Internet Explorer. And just in case you are wondering, SGL is designed with FireFox in mind. I am a big supporter of both Open Source software as well as alternative and choice to popular, monolithic and monopolistic software packages. It is important to always have choice. Different people like different things. If every computer system was exactly the same, technology would stagnate and that is the last things that we want. It is important for Windows to have Linux and vice versa. Either one alone would maintain status quo and never improve. But perhaps more importantly, they would only be able to cater to a single user group and not diversify and be able to offer alternatives for specialty interest groups.

This evening, Min and I headed up to have dinner with Josh and Joanna. Min hasn’t seen their “new” apartment yet and I haven’t been there since the week before Min and my wedding so sometime in September last year.

Josh and Joanna made eggplant parmesian for dinner, it was really good. While we were there they announced their engagement! I guess Josh let it slip to Bob “Montana” Crissman a few days ago. I have to hold off posting this to the site, though, because the Ayers are in Florida visiting family and escaping the real world and they didn’t want them to find out reading the site. So this post is a few days late but now we will remember when it happened.

We couldn’t stay long up in the city because Min has to get home in time to work tonight. It sucks working different schedules. I can’t wait until she can find a better job, this one really sucks. We got home just in time for her to leave again. So I went and worked in the basement and watched Undercover Brother, which I borrowed from Josh. It is a pretty good movie. It is cute. Nothing special. Pretty funny.

With so many people reading the web site, I decided that it was time to start reaping some of the advertising benefits. Amazon has granted us permission to link to them from our site. I am very excited about the prospects. I have added a link at the bottom of the navigation bar to take you to them. I hope that our readers will be able to take advantage of this. I am also making all of our references to movies and other items that can be purchased from Amazon will have direct links to make shopping incredibly simple. I will do my best to not just provide links but provide them to the best cinematic versions of the films (when we are talking about movies) favouring anamorphic widescreen editions, DTS audio, Superbit transfers, etc.

Nothing exciting today. Min has to head back to work at the hotel tonight. Both of us worked around the house during the day. Eric did IM me with a link to a pretty hilarious video that he found on the web. He also noticed the news that Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, is attempting to take over the Walt Disney Company. That would be pretty cool because no one likes Eisener anyway.

I got Lindows installed last night and, as promised, here is my review of it post-download. The download is a single CD image and that is easy enough to deal with. One has to wonder as to the benefits of such a small distribution, though, since other distros like Knoppix and SuSE Live run right off of the CD and don’t need to be installed at all. Those distros make really good use of their size and are uniquely suited to particular market segments (like people who want to be able to work with a common Linux desktop with certain tools no matter where they are and whose machine they are using.) But to have an entire distro on a single CD that you have to install doesn’t have a lot of charm, not to me. I guess I am spoiled by SuSE having thousands of available applications as part of the distribution. I hear Debian has like five times as many as SuSE! But Lindows has practically none. The install itself is simple and straight forward. But I am not sure that all of the other installs of Linux that I have done are hard enough to make this really a plus. The install has absolutely no options, more like Windows, and in fact, the install is even easier than Windows because there are no settings at all. Once installed and restarted, the desktop comes up and, as far as I can tell, everything functions just fine. The desktop is based on KDE but modified to make it hard to tell what any program is. This is both positive and negative for new users as it does shield them from having to know program names but it also makes them unable to ask questions or to look things up online. Also there appears to be a slew of basic functionality programs missing that one would expect in any base, user focused distribution of an operating system. The two biggest missing apps are an office program (KOffice or OpenOffice preferrably) and a photo editor (The GIMP.) This means that once you spend $60 and go through heck trying to download this distribution, then you discover that you have been totally ripped off compared to a base installation of any of its competitors. The worst thing, though in my humble opinion, is that every inch of Lindows desktop is dedicated to advertising for their subscription download Cick-n-Run service. I am not exaggerating, a link to it appears on the desktop, a quicklink to it appears in the taskbar, a flashing notice for it appears at the other end of the task bar and links to it appear in no less than TEN locations in the main start menu! The entire reason that all of the critical apps have been left out of this distribution are to make it necessary for you to subscribe (at no reasonable fee) to their click-n-run service that does nothing more but cost you a lot of money for the honor of installing software that is already including in every other distribution of Linux for free. This is the distro for fools made by crooks.

So, to make sure that the support people at Lindows knew how I felt about the way that I was treated (long before I knew what total crap their product was) I wrote them an email which I am happy to add to SGL in An Open Letter to Lindows Support. This way everyone can see what I think of their process and people searching on the Internet will be able to look it up for reference purposes later. Like Mandrake, this is one Linux company that I hope goes out of business before it has time to do too much damage to our industry. Bad software companies don’t do anyone any good no matter whose side they claim to be on.

Sorry to rant and rave about Lindows so much but what a total waste of time and energy that proved to be. I have already erased it from my computer and I have no plans to reinstall it so I hope that you won’t have to hear about it again.

Tomorrow I have two webinars in the middle of the day. One right at noon and one immediately following that one, both for ScriptLogic one of my company’s newest parters. Tomorrow evening, Min and I will be running up to Rochester to do some shopping at Bed, Bath and Beyond before heading over to have some dinner with Josh and Joanna. They are pretty confused as to what to cook for us since Min eats some fish and some shellfish but is relatively picky and I eat any fish but salmon but no shellfish. I said it was easier to avoid fish altogether and just go with vegetarian so we will see what happens. Andy was originally supposed to be coming home tomorrow from his foray into Canada but has decided, since his company is STILL refusing to contact him at all, that he is going to stay up there until Monday or so.

The price per view of the movie collection continues to drop and is now just $4.58! Wow is that cheap.

I did install Oracle Database server for the first time today. I figured that it was about time that I start working with it and beefing up my old resume. There are too many technologies out there that I don’t have any experience with so I guess I will do something about it. That isn’t too hard to do since so many things are available for free for educational and development use as long as you know where to go to get them. Speaking of which, I spent a bit of the evening installing Solaris 9 onto my Virtual PC. Solaris seems to work really well in that environment. I am really glad that it does because I really like Solaris and I have been wanted to get certified on it and this will make that much more possible that it has been. Now I can make studying for that a priority.

I decided that the most appropriate icon for the site was a hamster so if you notice, as of today, there is a little hamster up by the site name. Isn’t he cute. I also found, some time ago, this wesite about gnomes. This isn’t a new website and you may notice that some company (I don’t remember who because I don’t watch television) is using this stuff for commercials now. I don’t know which came first, this website or the movie Amelie, but they definitely are connected. Anyway, the site is cute.

Okay, enough for today. All I have to say is, still no car. That is probably best, though, since we don’t yet have the garage cleared out and we need that to be done so that there will be space to pull the car in once I get it back (if I ever get it back.)

THE FEBRUARY LLAMA OF THE MONTH IS MR. HUMPHREYS!

Mr. Humphreys is just way too cute not to be our llama of the month.

Eric worked really late last night so he went into work late today. So he stopped by and we went out for lunch down to Main St. Min had a lunch meeting at the Omega Grill so Eric and I couldn’t go there.

Min’s meeting went well. I had a webinar on wireless bridge system and cellular backhaul networks that I had to get back for. It wasn’t all that exciting. I spent most of the afternoon working. I have plenty to get done. Min has been going through all of the wedding photos that we have back now. There is a task.

I spent alot of today trying to download Lindows 4.5 so that I can install it on my Virtual PC. I have been interested to see how it is. But as many of you read, I spent all day yesterday trying to get it downloaded to no avail. So this morning I got a response from their support techs who said that my problem was that I wasn’t sitting around waiting for the 6-10 hour queue to work its way down so that I could begin the download process within fifteen minutes of getting to the front of the queue. This is real important information to have had since the queue takes so long to get through that there is no way that you are sitting at the computer that whole time. In fact, you shouldn’t sit at the computer all that time since that will encourage you to use it which you don’t want to in case it crashes or that the browser crashes. But apparently you have to. The problem is that the queue can take so long to get through that you probably can’t quite sleep during it and it takes longer than a full work day, typically. So you are pretty lucky if you ever get to a point where you can begin the download without it expiring. So today, as I finally was sitting at my computer and was closing in on the download being ready to begin, Lindows’ server crashed and the queue was deleted. At that point I became incredibly irate and wrote a very nasty email to Lindows support. What a total waste of time. I am totally disappointed in Lindows. I can’t believe that they charge people $60 for the pleasure of going through this hassle. Just for a Linux distribution that is stripped down and isn’t supposed to be installed on multiple computers. What a sham. I am embarrassed to be continuing to attempt to complete this download. I feel like a fool for even trying. I was just downloading it to evaluate it and to be able to put it on my resume. If I was a customer I would definitely have demanding a refund by now. And not only does Lindows sell this product that is delivered by this sad method, but their real money comes from a service called “Click’N’Run”. This service is an automated software delivery service that you get for $15 a month. Well, if I have to wait 48 hours everytime I want a new software package I think that I will pass. The worst part of it is that almost all of those software packages are available for free and can be downloaded and installed just as easily on every other Linux system. I got lucky (if actually getting Lindows after all this hassle can be considered lucky) because I sat at my computer for almost an hour attempting to restart the download and I manage to catch the servers right after they came back up and I got into the queue only about an hour later than where I had been. After another hour, I was able to begin the download. Afte waiting through a queue that takes so long, I at least expected the download to be snappy. The installation is just a single CD image so I expected it not to take very long. If this had been SuSE which comes with ten times the software I could imagine it taking a little while. But instead, the download took around two hours. Who knows why they have the queue system if they let that many people download at once. Doesn’t make any sense to me.

I was doing some research on the largest cities around the world and in the US. I always find census data very interesting. Boy doesn’t it sounds boring when it gets put like that? I started looking at the world’s largest cities. Tokyo has been the largest city for a while (this is by metropolitan area, not city limits) but I didn’t realize that NYC has moved back up to second place! People don’t realize just how big NYC is. The list shows NYC as having about 21 million people. I have heard statistics that say that the true NYC metro area should include the cities of Hartford, Boston, Philadelpha, Baltimore, York and Washington because they all fall within the standard definition of metropolitan area but because they are such well defined cities, they are typically split off and counted seperately. So NYC would be the world’s largest city by that definition giving it over 110 million inhabitants. I thought that it was really interesting that LA has moved into the sixth place on the largest cities list. You really should look into the world’s largest city list, it is really interesting. I thought that the top US cities list was interesting as well. The really interesting bit, to me, is that the Detroit metro area is now number eight and on the list includes Flint. So I have now lived in the fourth and eighth largest American cities and even moved to the largest once but moved right back out again. I have been to nine out of the fifteen largest cities over the years. That is pretty cool. If I manage to pull that job in San Francisco this month or next, then I will be to a whole ten of them. What is really interesting is that just one hundred years ago, Buffalo was second largest American city (soon to be passed up by Chicago.) Chicago would hold the title until sometime in the 1980’s. I also found a page talking about the world’s largest cities throughout history which I thought was really interesting. No one ever thinks about this stuff (except me.)

Min and I settled down for the evening watching some more A Fine Romance Series 2. It is very dry but an enjoyable show. We are just waiting for Series 3 to release on DVD. I hope it is soon. This is the show that made Judy Dench famous and the one where she starred along side her real life husband.

We had some shopping to do so Min and I headed out to Walmart and Wegmans to get it done. We got some joint Christmas money that we haven’t yet spent so we are getting a spot rug cleaner for our really hard to keep cleaning carpeting. We keep getting spots on the carpets that need cleaning.

We got home and the Lindows download had finally completed. I did the Windows updates and restarted the computer because, for some reason, just about every programming running on the computer had crashed. I got it restarted and started installing Lindows 4.5 and when it is completed I will report on my findings – post download saga. Min started pretreating the carpeting to try out the new Bissell that we got at Walmart. We also got a new runner to put from the doors to the living room. Hopefully covering up some of the hardwood will reduce the constant stream of dirt that seems to be constantly making its way onto our carpeting. We are looking forward to putting some carpeting in the basement too because there is always dirt coming up from down there as well. Dirt, dirt, dirt.

So today has become one of the longest updates ever. I feel bad for falling behind and I am working had to make up for it now, I guess. Last year we had 71 views of the site a day. It was obvious from the web logs that during the months when I was updating the site more frequently, people were reading it lots more. So I am going to make a real effort to keep up with the site. I am also going to make an effort to add a lot more content to the site. My goal is, by the end of the year, to have added 100% more to the site. That is as much in 2004 as all of 2001, 2002 and 2003 combined. Now we will see how I do.

The first change, other than the longer updates, is the addition of the link to Amazon.com that appears in the navigation bar. I am also going to be making all of our references to movies and CDs and such link directly to Amazon so that you will be able to shop for things discussed here quickly and easily.

In case no one has noticed me not mentioning it – I still don’t have my car. I haven’t heard anything about it yet either. Andy called this evening to say that he, Miranda and Natalie are hanging out in Toronto tonight. Miranda and Natalie are going to a concert tonight and Andy is just hanging out at the Royal York. They will be heading back up north tomorrow. Andy is planning on coming home on Thursday but might stay as long as Monday. He was supposed to be returning to Puerto Rico on Monday (according to what they told him while he was down there) but they have not been willing to even call him to talk to him for two whole weeks. The chances that they are going to ever call him is getting slimmer and slimmer. Imagine a company that doesn’t even have the nerve to tell you when you are done but instead give you two weeks unpaid vacation and then just refuse to return your phone calls or contact you when they said they would. The definition of unprofessional.