Sheep Guarding Llama

I had a busy morning this morning. I had to run some errands early in the morning. So I jumped out of bed nice and early and drove up to Rochester, did some banking and stuff and the zipped back home.

Steve Lucente drove up from Ithaca this morning to meet with me. I thought that he was going to be down for most of the day but he was only able to stay for a little while. We managed to get lunch before he had to go but that was about all.

Andy came home today from Puerto Rico. He was originally flying out this morning but that flight was cancelled and he had to fight hard to find another flight. Luckily he managed to get one later in the day that went through another city for his connections. He had to spend the entire day at one airport or another just trying to get home. Every single time that he flies with USAir this happens. Time and time again they delay a flight and miss his connections and don’t come up with any good way to get him where he needs to go. They seem to be completely incompetent. And for the prices that they are paying to fly with them, you think that they would get things together a little bit more. I will stick with AirTran, thanks.

Andy finally managed to get in and I went to pick him up at the Rochester airport around 10:30.

I tried to do the updates from the last few days this evening because I had fallen behind being out of town but while I was working on them, my computer kind of ground to a halt and stopped working. I think that the operating system just died on me. Hard to say. Could be a virus but there was no sign of that. It has been way too long since I did a full install so I dug out my restore CDs and got to work. It actually didn’t take all that long to get the reinstall done and with my handy dandy software install directory on the network, I am able to put all of my software back in place in a matter of thirty minutes or so. I use so little commercial software that I have to have install CDs for that it makes life really simple when I have to do things like this.

The eight of us slept in this morning and then we had to get everyone up and organized so that we could all go out for breakfast. That was a bit of a project. Min and I couldn’t hang out too long because we had to drive all the way back to Geneseo.

We hit the road a little after noon and Min let me drive south into the city because I had never had the chance to actually see the city of Phildelphia before and I really enjoy seeing new cities. It took us about half an hour to get into the city but as we were driving in we noticed that the expressway going out of the city was backed up for miles so we decided that we couldn’t head back out the way that we had come in. So instead we drove all the way south through the city and eventually figured out how to catch the expressway from down there and took it up and took PA 30 west out of the city. That road is so slow. It took us forever to get anywhere. It must have taken an hour and half or better before we were able to get to the turnpike. We had decided to try a different way going home to see if it was faster. Instead of going north on 476, we decided to take 76 west to Harrisburg and take our usual route from DC home from there.

It was dark by the time we reached Harrisburg due to our little adventure driving around Philly so we decided to stop at the Elephant and Caslte to get some dinner (yes, the same restaurant that is on King St. in Toronto that Nate, Josh and I ate at years ago.) Dinner was really good but the crowd there was watching the super bowl and being very obnoxious. We were in a hotel restaurant, very secluded, and could barely talk over the screaming. And it wasn’t excited screaming. It was drunk losers yelling stupid sayings over and over again because no one was listening to them and they wanted attention. It was so annoying.

We got home around midnight. The trip was fine but really long. We think it might be a draw. Going north or west out of Philly is about equal. Fewer tolls going west the way we went though. So maybe that makes it worth it. It really depends where in Philly you are going to. That would make a huge difference.

Min got home normal time this morning. We packed the car and took off for Philadelphia. We ended up leaving around 10:30 and drove down to Dansville to get some lunch. We stopped at the Buckhorn for lunch. I tried their Belly Bustin’ Fish Sandwich and it was awesome. I am going to go there for their fish sandwich more often. Not something you would expect to be so good from there. I did a search on the web to make a link for you to the Buckhorn chain but didn’t have any luck finding it. Funny enough, when I tried to narrow the search with “Dansville” in order to find the right Buckhorn, only about two sites came up referencing what I was looking for and SGL was one of them.

After lunch we drove east out on US 86 and then down 81 to Scranton where we caught the Turnpike’s Northeast Extension, US 476, that took us on down to Philly. I have never gone to Philly from the north before (and only once ever when there from the south) so it was a neat drive for me. That is an area of the country that is so close to us and yet I know so little. I always forget that there is even a major city there and it is a MAJOR city. Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the US when measured by population inside the city limit (#1 New York, #2 LA, #3 Chicago, #4 Houston and #5 Philadelphia.) We are going to Jenn’s apartment warming party tonight and she lives on the Northwest side of the city (about 30 minutes from the city itself as far as I can tell) in Norristown. The directions that we had didn’t exactly get us straight there and Min was getting pretty frustrated after a while (it sucks having to turn back over and over again on toll roads) but eventually we made it around 6:30 or so. The actual drive time should be under five hours. I think it SHOULD be four hours but I am not sure about that.

We had a really good time at the party. The place was packed. Three of us (Min and I and Erin Seamen) drove down from Geneseo, a ton of people drove down from Long Island where Jenn is from and a number showed that were local. Seven of us crashed there so the place was pretty crowded all night. It was a really good party. Good mix of people. I didn’t know hardly anyone (I had only met Jenn’s friend Bob before the last time that Min and I went to Philly to visit Jenn) so I got to meet lots of new people.

No game this week. Almost no one was going to be able to make it and I have to be up early in the morning in order to get down to Philadelphia for Jenn’s party so we decided that it was a bad week for it. Jeremy did come over this afternoon to play a few rounds though. Min still has to work tonight but other than that, not a lot going on. I turned in early so that I could be rested for tomorrow.

In doing updates to Ithaca Portal, I have noticed that just about all of our competition down there has packed up and gone away. Good news for us. We have held on a whole lot longer than any of them did and we aren’t planning on going anywhere. And I still think that we have had the best service all this time anyway.

I slept in late this morning after working so late last night. Nothing scheduled for today so that works out. I really appreciate slow days. I wanted to play some video games today but never got a chance. Min slept in until well after six so I just kept on working.

I have made the decision that I will start referring to male friends as blokes. Far too few Americans use this term.

Okay, I am terrible with having to have bad jokes. This one has been around for a while but there has to be a place for people to find over and over again as they look back into the archives. So, here we go. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him…. what? (Oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good) A super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

I had to run over to see dad this evening so Min and I only ended up seeing each other for about an hour all day. We watched the last disc of Ranma 1/2. That is a really great show. I can’t wait until we are able to get the second season. After Min went to work, I watched some Monarch of the Glen.

I forgot a while ago, Eric sent me this link that he thought that everyone should go to.