Sheep Guarding Llama

Well, I have really fallen behind on the updates, haven’t I? My laptop died while I was working on a couple of days of updates last week and I had to completely reinstall Windows XP onto it and that took two days and then I had to reinstall all of my software onto it that I had had and get my files back and everything and in the process, I fell way behind. So I am attempting today to do a little bit of catching up. I have some time to myself this morning while Min is sleeping. She worked last night and we had the Friday night game here. We had seven people make it so that was pretty cool. That game is a LOT of fun once you start getting enough people playing it.

As always, I am on the hunt for ridiculous website. So, here is the website Better Than Life. I am not sure what this is but isn’t it weird. Take a look at the cats. Hopefully soon I will start posting pictures of Mr. Humphries because I know that everyone wants to see him.

Andy took Tony home this morning and then hit the road for the great white North. We are not sure how long he is going to be up there visiting Miranda but he should be back sometime during the week. He was supposed to go into work this week in Buffalo to meet with BOC so they could talk about what he is doing now that he is back in the area and when he might be going back but they won’t call him. He called BOC as soon as he got in and has been calling them all week but they are just ignoring his calls. When he left Puerto Rico, they told him that he would probably be coming back down in two weeks but that they would give him one week’s notice before he had to be back down. But they are already up to that point and no one will even talk to him. Just a line they fed him hoping that he wouldn’t go looking for another job. What a bunch of crooks.

I am downloading Fedora Linux today to give it a try. Fedora is the successor to the infamous Red Hat dynasty. Red Hat gave up on making their own free Linux product but turned over what they were doing to the Fedora project. So I am giving Fedora a try to see how it is. I have always been a really big SuSE fan and it will be pretty hard to persuade me to use anything else regularly but I want to have some experience on it and see how it is. It is always nice to try something different anyway. Now that I am able to load multiple operating systems onto my main computer and run them in emulation windows, I can easily try out all kinds of neat stuff. So I figured that it was the perfect time to give Fedora a try. I need to know how reactive Linux is going to be running on Virtual PC 2004 because I am thinking about not buying that second computer that I was sure I was going to get (I still really want a Frag Gear Shuttle XPC) but instead just beefing up my main computer and running Linux in a Virtual PC windows instead. It won’t be as fast but I want have to run ANOTHER computer in my office just to have the functionality of two. Plus then I can have a screaming fast main machine instead of two pretty fast ones, use less electric, make less noise, take up less room and have lots of power to run tons of experimental stuff on my desktop. I am excited about the idea, I hope that it really works.

I made myself some Miso soup for lunch. I had to mention that because that isn’t something that you do everyday.

Fedora installed on Virtual PC 2004 really easy. In fact, even more easily than installing on a regular computer. The VPC allows you to mount CD images (ISOs) that are located on the hard drive instead of having to burn them to CD first. That is one of the handiest features that I could possibly imagine. What a time saver. And for me who has to get up and walk around his desk everytime he needs to change a CD it is especially nice to be able to switch CDs that way. I am really impressed with this software. I think a lot of people would benefit from having VPC installed (although they, and I, recommend at least 1GB of memory!) Fedora ran quite nicely and look absolutely gorgeous. It couldn’t be easier to use. It works fast enough to really use too. And it connected to the network right out of the box. I didn’t have to do anything to get online; it was able to update itself immediately. I am very, very impressed.

Dad came over for dinner tonight at 5:30. Min made Quorn Pot Pie with a mushroom soup base. It was really good. And we tried out Perry’s new French Silk Pie ice cream for dessert. That was really good too. Dad hung out until 8:30 but had some work to get done so he had to take off.

Min and I decided that since Valentine’s Day is right around the corner (one week from today) that we owed it to ourselves to get As Time Goes By Series 6. So we drove up to Rochester and tried both Media Play and Borders and neither of them had it. It has been out for almost a week and no one is stocking it yet. I am not sure what logic they are using because they both price it $8 higher than Amazon and since Amazon can get it to you on the day of release, what is the benefit of going to a brick and mortar store? As far as I can tell, the only advantage to the old business model is that you can hop in the car and drive to the store and get what you want right now. But the reality is, you just can’t for most things. You would not believe how many times Min and I run to the store to get something that we are willing to pay tons more for just so that we have it right away and end up looking at three or four stores and then giving up and ordering from Amazon anyway. And consistently, Amazon gives us better service than the regular stores too. So online I get products faster, cheaper, more conveniently and with better customer service. Hmmm. No wonder online shopping is making such an impact. So, Min and I gave up and headed home. Once again made fools of for thinking that Borders would be the right choice for anything other than browsing.

Today is the big game. We skipped the Friday night game last week so everyone is really looking forward to it this week. I worked at home during the day. Just the usual. Andy and I went out to Aunt Cookies for some lunch and did a little shopping at Walmart and Wegmans. I had to pick up some earplugs because the sound of all of the computers in the basement is really getting bad. There are eight computers right around my desk that run all of the time and it is way past the OSHA safe sound limits. I have been getting terrible headaches from being down in the office and I have been having problems with my eyes recently that might be connected to it. So I got some earplugs and gave them a try. They seem to be working wonderfully. I can barely hear a thing when I am downstairs but I see the phone ring (it lights up) so that isn’t a big deal.

Min slept for a little while, about four hours. Then she did some work and watching movied this afternoon. She finished watching Lagaan: Once Upon A Time In India which we almost got to finish last night.

Jeremy was the first one over for the game tonight. He came over just before six. Andy had to run up to the city to send back that stolen software that was sent to him and then he went to his parent’s house to visit for a little while then he and Tony came down after that. Phil and Kate came over and Josh. Art was the last one over at 9:20 or so. We got set up and the games began. Min and Kate watched DVDs while we played. Min had to go to work tonight so she didn’t join in for a game. The first game was the big one, 3×4. Josh, Phil and I vs. Art, Andy, Tony and Jeremy. Unfortunately for Andy, Josh and I found him first and he was out of the game in twenty minutes or so. Then it was 3×3 and eventually we took them. After that, Phil and Kate had to get home so they took off and we reorganized teams. Then we played two games of Art, Jeremy and I vs. Tony, Andy and Josh. My team won both of those games making me the only person to win all three games and Phil and I to tbe the only two players to not lose a game all evening. We had a good time and wrapped up around 3:30. So it wasn’t nearly as late as it could have been.

Everyone had a lot of fun playing with my Smart Mass. I have had it for a while, since a year ago Christmas, but apparently no one has had a chance to see it yet.

I wanted to go out and get some food after the game but I forgot that I don’t have a car right now. That kind of sucks. Hopefully I will be getting it back sooner or later. John Holtz has had my car for over a week now! Just for the stupid tires.

Today I installed the Trial version of Microsoft’s brand new product Virtual PC 2004 (formally Connectix.) So far, I am super impressed with this product. What an awesome tool this is. VPC creates a “software computer” that you can use just like it is a seperate computer from your real computer only it runs right on top of the operating system. What that means is, I can install other operating systems on top of Windows XP (or 2000) and use both at the same time. Obviously this slows things down a little bit but for 99% of the stuff that I do, it works perfectly. I have a real copy of the software coming in about a week but the trial lasts for 45 days so I figured that I would download it and gets cracking on it before it actually arrived.

Virtual PC 2004 is really easy to use. I can’t believe how easy they made it and how well it works (so far.) It is like you have a little monitor, right there on your desktop and you can watch the computer start up and you can boot off of CD or floppy or anything you want. It is really awesome. You can even save an ISO image to your desktop (an ISO is the filetype that you use to burn a CD from) and you can tell VPC to use that image instead of the CD drive and it can boot from there. That is about the handiest feature ever. It makes it so easy to try out new software and operating systems it isn’t even funny.

I did a bit of work today attempting to move stuff over from the web server that we have been using to the new one that we are switching to. I want to get things switched over quickly because I want to be able to shut some computers down. There are too many computers running here right now and three of them are not needed but I have to port over the applications that they are using before I can turn them off. I need the space and the quiet, not to mention all the electricity that they are using.

This morning I have an Oracle show in Rochester at the Hyatt to attend so I had to get up early and drive up to the city. For a change, this show actually had a full breakfast included (a nice buffet at the hotel, eggs, breads, meats, juice, coffee, tea, etc.) I got there just in time, got breakfast and went into the show. The show only ended up lasting about an hour and a half. It was supposed to be a bit longer than that. But they show didn’t end up being super applicable to me so I wasn’t disappointed. They did a good job, it just wasn’t really geared towards me all that much.

After the show I headed on over to the hospital to catch Eric at work. We took off and went over to Bruegger’s for some coffee (anything is better than Starbucks!) We ended up getting bagels and eating there. I worked out of the hospital for the rest of the day and didn’t get home until almost 4:00.

Eric came over after work for a little while because we have a project that we need to get some work done on and we had to make some phone calls that are much easier to make from the house than to make from the office. So he hung out for about an hour.

Andy’s order of Visual Studio .Net 2003 arrived today… sort of. It turns out that the place that he ordered from, Softwaremedia.com, isn’t a real company and in fact is a racket that takes garbage, throughs it in a box and charges $600 for it. What Andy received was mismatched bits of different products that are neither what he ordered nor legal. He received some CDs that he was able to install the product from but did not receive a certificate of authenticity nor a license. That means that the CDs are worth exactly the amount you can get for the plastic once you melt them down. The media set from Microsoft costs only about $10 but has a certificate of authenticity to make them legal. You still can’t install them legally but at least then you could go get a license for them. But these discs were totally worthless. And it was obvious that the thing was a scam. The discs were not legal to begin with (by the way, this is called software piracy and the amount that was stolen from Microsoft was about $2500 which is way into the grand theft range) but they also just came as discs, not box or books or anything which you get quite a bit of with that product. It was a total scam. If he had wanted to steal the product he could have easily used a peer to peer network to steal it or at least spend $10 (1/60th what they charged him) and get the discs from Microsoft. At least for $10 the discs themselves would have been legal even if the install wasn’t. Then just as a kick when he was down, the jerks charged him extra to guarantee morning delivery but only had regular delivery put on the package so he had to wait all day after paying extra for it. And it wasn’t FedEx’s fault because it was standard delivery that was marked by the company on the package. What a problem. So now Andy has to figure out how to deal with being robbed of $600 and what to do with a company that is a blatant piracy operation preying on people who are not familiar with how the licenses and certificates work.

Min cooked dinner tonight. Shepherd’s Pie and bread pudding for dessert. I know, you all wish you were me!

This morning, Eric picked me up and drove me up to the city to pick up my car which has been in the shop. We had breakfast at Mel’s Diner and then went to get the car. When I got the car, there was some confusion because they tried to make me pay for things that I wasn’t supposed to be paying for (like the tow that they had agreed to pay because they had already screwed up so much.) But they did end up letting me leave without even paying so that we could work out who had to pay what later.

I got the car and drove over to Phil’s apartment and picked him up and we went over to the hospital to see Eric for a little bit. As I was driving I noticed that, even though the one tire had been replaced, the car was still having the same problem that it had been having before which is why we thought that the tire was bad. So we turned around and took the car right back to John Holtz and Phil drove me around the rest of the day. We went over to Best Buy and Phil picked up Red Dwarf Seasons 3 & 4 which released this morning. Then we drove down to the house and watched Season 3 with Min. Min has been dying to see the new DVDs because she has never seen the show on television so these are all new to her and she is really enjoying them.

Phil had to take off early to get to class (sucks having to work around a class schedule) but he left Min and I with Red Dwarf Season 4 so she and I watched that for most of the evening. Andy and I ran over to dad’s to pick up Andy’s car that has been in the barn over there. Dad managed to get the barn doors open and move the car out so we took the chance to go get it.