Sheep Guarding Llama

I drove up to Rochester and worked at the University of Rochester today. It is really nice to be able to see all of the messages that people are sending to me. Eric and I worked around the hospital for a while and then we headed out to look for some racks for the house. I need a bit of shelving for the garage and basement. It is really hard to find metal racking that can handle all of the weight that the servers will put on it. But we didn’t manage to find anything that I really needed.

Andy got home from Puerto Rico today. I actually drove past him as he was heading south down i390. So I honked and rolled down the window and we yelled to each other.

Andy said that Puerto Rico was fun but the trip was unproductive and really stressful. On his way home, USAir allowed a Puerto Rican family to bring a yard sale worth of junk onto the plane as carry-on. So, of course, there was no room for Andy’s only luggage, his small carry-on bag. The airline came and took his bag just minutes before take off and wouldn’t give him and chance to check or declare it. So, he knew that that would be the last that he would see of that bag. He didn’t even have any way to put his name on the bag. When the airline brough him his claim check ticket, they attempted to give it to another passenger because they weren’t paying any attention. Andy had to ask them for it or he would never have gotten it at all. Everything that he had worked on during the past week was in that bag along with all of his new clothes and toilettries. The bag was even new.

Bob drove up from Ithaca to hang out for the evening. He is the first person who has come to actually spend some time at the house. We all went out to Walmart to do some shopping and then we drove up to Avon to get some food at Tom Wahl’s. Bob has never eaten there before so he had to try the Wahl burger. After dinner, Min headed off to work and Bob, Andy and I watched MASH. I am a big fan of the original MASH movie.

Dominica managed to get the patio bar furniture put together tonight. We actually have some way to sit around on the deck now.

Well, as many of you know, we had a major power outage today. I am sure that just about everyone in our reading area was affected in one way or another, even our Canadian readers, as the power outage hit from Detroit through Ohio all the way out to Boston and north through Ottawa, Toronto and North Bay. I went to my parent’s house around 4:00 pm before the outage struck and Dominica was working at home on some real estate stuff. When I walked in the door at my parent’s, I heard the telephone in the kitchen kick back on. So I asked if the power had been out and dad said that he guessed that it must have but he was working on his laptop in his office and hadn’t noticed anything. Then he said that there must be a brown-out because he could hear his fans slowing down. But the power came right back up and we didn’t have any additional problems. However, my cell phone stopped working. I tried to call Min at home and her cell phone wasn’t working either (we still don’t have any other phone line at the house.) I was at my parent’s house to do some work online so I hopped online and got to work. After a while, Arti called and left me a message, because he wasn’t able to get through, telling me that all the cell phones seemed to be down and that there was a major black-out going on all over the northeast. But at this point I still wasn’t able to make outgoing calls on my cell. Then I called Ingram Micro in Buffalo and my account representative out there told me that they were working in the dark and that there were tons of people in NYC and Toronto panicking because they were afraid that it was a terrorist attack. Dominica got through to me shortly thereafter and said that the power was out in Geneseo. So she drove over to my parent’s house so that she would have some power too. She was working on invitations for the wedding (no, they aren’t done yet.)

Geneseo proper ended up getting power restored around 10:30 pm and Pavilion never lost power. But Lima Road, where the Llamas now live, didn’t get power restored at all. So I got to go to sleep in the dark and quiet of a block without power.

We finally gave up on getting the SDSL line into the house all on its own so we ordered a regular Frontier telephone line. We will have that installed next Wednesday. That way, we can at very least dial-up and get email and do the basics online and order pizza and stuff. In the long run, we are going to use the line for my parent’s to dial into to get Internet access and for emergencies like when the power goes out (I swear, it never goes out around here!) So, maybe that will get out SDSL line rolling a little bit faster.

Min is enjoying her new job at the Conesus Lake Hotel. Tonight is her second night and it is really hot there because of the state of emergency not allowing unnecessary air conditioning. So I brought her some fans at work so that she could keep herself a little bit cooler.

My mom had an MRI today that she was in the middle of when the power went off at Highland Hospital. But the incompetent idiots at the hospital let her oxygen tank run out while she was in the middle of the MRI because it didn’t occur to them, apparently, that tanks have a limited supply and that MRI’s take a while.

Today, Eric and I drove down to Ithaca. We spent most of the day working on installing a new Dell PowerEdge server at Ward’s Auto Damage. We worked there all day and then we ran around town doing miscellaneous errands.

We are still desperately without any form of external communications here in Geneseo, no phones, no Internet not even a mailbox. We are going stir crazy being cooped up without any way to talk to anyone. No hope of getting Internet or telephone access anytime soon, Frontier would appear to be doing anything that they can to stand in our way. But I will be actively pursue a mailbox as well.

Dominica starts moonlighting at the Conesus Lake Hotel tonight. She is doing auditing and book-keeping there a couple of nights a week. Min spent the morning in Rochester at the Crown Plaza at a real estate conference.

We have been watching tons of DVDs since there is no television, cable or laserdisc player. The cost per view has dropped from $5.71 to just $5.55. We have been watching a huge variety of movies. Right now, I am watching Children of Dune. It is really long but so far it is really good. The first movie was awesome.

Ingram Micro approved us today and we are now a full blown computer and networking equipment reseller. We still have a little bit of paperwork to do with HP, Compaq, IBM and Apple before we are able to resell their products, but that is a minor matter (or so we think.) But we are already able to resell about 1,700 companies products including Netgear, Belkin and Linksys. Just about anything that anyone wants, we will be able to get for you. We are very excited because this will really broaden our horizons and allow us to do a lot more for our customers that we were able to do previously.

While watching movies tonight, I think that I heard a mouse in the wall. It is very hard to tell, though. I really hope that there isn’t one there but there have been seven already so the chance of there being another one of one of the old ones sneaking back into the house is pretty decent. 🙁

Min and I have a couple of DVDs that are duplicates. Fight Club, Shrek, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and What Women Want are all available for sale or trade. The Wedding Singer, The Truth About Cats and Dogs and Nine Months are all available for sale or trade on laserdisc.

No more mice for a week. We are very glad not to have them running around and pooping everywhere anymore. No signs of them at all.

Today I went to lunch with Gary Cottone at Peppermints in Avon. He is thinking of working with us in our Small Businesses services. Our lunch meeting ended up going on for three hours. I was supposed to have another meeting this evening but that had to be cancelled. Min and I went up to the city to buy some equipment that I need for tomorrow. Leanne called and met Min and I at CompUSA and we went to dinner at Empire Brewery on State St. across from Kodak.

Originally I was supposed to be working in Ithaca today but my schedule got changed and I get to stay around Geneseo.

I worked a little up in Rochester today while Min was working at Youngs and Linfoot. It is rare that I am able to get online and check my messages so I take the chances that I am able to get. At least the travel time up to the UofR isn’t too bad. Andy called from Puerto Rico while I was in Rochester. He said that things are going well down there but he is getting tired of eating chicken all of the time. He is hoping to be home early this weekend, maybe Saturday. But he doesn’t really know when he will get to return.

I have family in town visiting from Ohio and Florida. So Min and I headed down to Leicester for a family dinner. We had a good time. Mom and I ended up working for a while while we were there. We have applied for reseller status with Ingram Micro, the largest wholeseller of computer and network hardware and software.