Sheep Guarding Llama

Well today is full of exciting events. I got up late, as I have been recently since I have been working so late at the hospital, and packed up my hotel room (which turned out to be very fortuitous indeed) and went out to lunch at the Double T Diner in Annapolis with John. We had a nice lunch and talked about work and then I headed into the office in DC. I got to the office to find that the new signature pad that I have been waiting for had arrived and so had the new truck mounting system for the laptop. So now we are really ready to dig into our new hardware down here.

While I was down here we realized that our lease for 13 Observatory Cirlce was due to expire tomorrow (Saturday) and that we had to deal with all of the moving out stuff or arrangements of some sort by tomorrow (or more realistically, tonight.) Since this involved coordinating with an awful lot of people, it became quite the undertaking. So we talked to Lifestyle Properties and they agreed to rent us the house at a reduced rate for part of the month. However, once you add in the water, electric and gas costs into that equation, quite quickly it became more expensive than staying in a hotel by more than $1000 just in a two week period. So that didn’t set well with our wallets and so we are looking into alternatives. The final decision is that we are moving out as quickly as possible and figuring out what to do after the fact. So this will be an adventure. I plan to be staying in Washington for the next two weeks and getting a ton of work completed down here. Min will stay at a hotel in Ithaca or Cortland. I am not sure what Andy is going to do yet. Bob is trying to find a place to keep all of his stuff until the fifth when he can move into his new apartment.

Ok, another change of plans. Lifestyles lowered our rent until it was practical for us to keep renting from them. So we will be renting in Ithaca for another two weeks. Wow, what an adventure that turned out to be. What a mess. But at least life will be more convenient now.

Andy found some really exciting news today! Earthbound, or Mother 2 as some of you know it, is releasing soon as a double cart (along with the elusive Mother 1) on the Game Boy Advance. This is very exciting for those of you who are familiar with the SNES version of Earthbound. Josh and I originally bought the game when it first released and I remember the two of us playing it for two straight days and calling each other every couple of hours to see who was ahead of the other and where they had gotten stuck. We had the best time. The game even game with a scratch and sniff pad to add some realism to the other-worldly locations that you travel to in the game. Andy and Dominica have since played the game. Earthbound is the best console game that I have ever played, the only one to ever hold my attention like that. I am totally excited that it is coming out for the GBA. It might worth owning a GBA just to be able to play this game. There is also a rumor that a new sequel, Mother 3, will be coming shortly there after as well. That may be the most exciting news, because many of us in the Earthbound/Mother fan community have long awaited a sequel that Nintendo has teased us with for years but has never actually released. Mother 64 / Earthbound 64 was one of the original games that they hyped with the Nintendo 64 and many of us bought the console eagerly awaiting that game and it never came to fruition. Everyone should run out and buy both of these great titles for the GBA and show Nintendo that there is still a strong community committed to the Mother / Earthbound games. Maybe if there are enough sales, Nintendo will finally decide to continue the series like they have with Mario and Zelda. From the fanatical following that the game has generated, it would appear to have the opportunity to become the King’s Quest of its time. To really be a strong, cult, franchise.

Since I am not really moving tonight, I have to spend a long evening, again, at the hospital center getting things working more and more smoothly. One little baby step at a time.

I got dinner at the hospital. Veggie Pizza and Mac-n-Cheese (or Mac-n-Salt as would be more appropriate.) Food is really cheap at the hospital, though, as long as you have ID. I can’t imagine spending more that $7 and $4 will often feed you easy. While eating dinner, I listened to some of “Life, the Universe and Everything” on my laptop. I love Douglas Adams’ books.

When the truck finally got back from Providence Hospital, I found out that our laptop had been stolen. This is the second time that the laptop has been stolen out of the cab of the truck. What a great evening I am having now. So I had to spend a great deal of time dealing with that disaster and now I have to get up early in the morning to go and get another computer and configure it so that they can use it on the truck! Then, it turns out, we are missing some vital code that we need down here in DC so Andy and I had to stay up late working on that as well. It has been a really long night. I did get to take Brainbench exam, though, so at least the evening was not entirely wasted.

Well today is full of exciting events. I got up late, as I have been recently since I have been working so late at the hospital, and packed up my hotel room (which turned out to be very fortuitous indeed) and went out to lunch at the Double T Diner in Annapolis with John. We had a nice lunch and talked about work and then I headed into the office in DC. I got to the office to find that the new signature pad that I have been waiting for had arrived and so had the new truck mounting system for the laptop. So now we are really ready to dig into our new hardware down here.

While I was down here we realized that our lease for 13 Observatory Cirlce was due to expire tomorrow (Saturday) and that we had to deal with all of the moving out stuff or arrangements of some sort by tomorrow (or more realistically, tonight.) Since this involved coordinating with an awful lot of people, it became quite the undertaking. So we talked to Lifestyle Properties and they agreed to rent us the house at a reduced rate for part of the month. However, once you add in the water, electric and gas costs into that equation, quite quickly it became more expensive than staying in a hotel by more than $1000 just in a two week period. So that didn’t set well with our wallets and so we are looking into alternatives. The final decision is that we are moving out as quickly as possible and figuring out what to do after the fact. So this will be an adventure. I plan to be staying in Washington for the next two weeks and getting a ton of work completed down here. Min will stay at a hotel in Ithaca or Cortland. I am not sure what Andy is going to do yet. Bob is trying to find a place to keep all of his stuff until the fifth when he can move into his new apartment.

Ok, another change of plans. Lifestyles lowered our rent until it was practical for us to keep renting from them. So we will be renting in Ithaca for another two weeks. Wow, what an adventure that turned out to be. What a mess. But at least life will be more convenient now.

Andy found some really exciting news today! Earthbound, or Mother 2 as some of you know it, is releasing soon as a double cart (along with the elusive Mother 1) on the Game Boy Advance. This is very exciting for those of you who are familiar with the SNES version of Earthbound. Josh and I originally bought the game when it first released and I remember the two of us playing it for two straight days and calling each other every couple of hours to see who was ahead of the other and where they had gotten stuck. We had the best time. The game even game with a scratch and sniff pad to add some realism to the other-worldly locations that you travel to in the game. Andy and Dominica have since played the game. Earthbound is the best console game that I have ever played, the only one to ever hold my attention like that. I am totally excited that it is coming out for the GBA. It might worth owning a GBA just to be able to play this game. There is also a rumor that a new sequel, Mother 3, will be coming shortly there after as well. That may be the most exciting news, because many of us in the Earthbound/Mother fan community have long awaited a sequel that Nintendo has teased us with for years but has never actually released. Mother 64 / Earthbound 64 was one of the original games that they hyped with the Nintendo 64 and many of us bought the console eagerly awaiting that game and it never came to fruition. Everyone should run out and buy both of these great titles for the GBA and show Nintendo that there is still a strong community committed to the Mother / Earthbound games. Maybe if there are enough sales, Nintendo will finally decide to continue the series like they have with Mario and Zelda. From the fanatical following that the game has generated, it would appear to have the opportunity to become the King’s Quest of its time. To really be a strong, cult, franchise.

Since I am not really moving tonight, I have to spend a long evening, again, at the hospital center getting things working more and more smoothly. One little baby step at a time.

I got dinner at the hospital. Veggie Pizza and Mac-n-Cheese (or Mac-n-Salt as would be more appropriate.) Food is really cheap at the hospital, though, as long as you have ID. I can’t imagine spending more that $7 and $4 will often feed you easy. While eating dinner, I listened to some of “Life, the Universe and Everything” on my laptop. I love Douglas Adams’ books.

When the truck finally got back from Providence Hospital, I found out that our laptop had been stolen. This is the second time that the laptop has been stolen out of the cab of the truck. What a great evening I am having now. So I had to spend a great deal of time dealing with that disaster and now I have to get up early in the morning to go and get another computer and configure it so that they can use it on the truck! Then, it turns out, we are missing some vital code that we need down here in DC so Andy and I had to stay up late working on that as well. It has been a really long night. I did get to take Brainbench exam, though, so at least the evening was not entirely wasted.

Sorry that yesterday was so insanely boring. Imagine living my life! I slept in late this morning hoping to get over whatever was causing my headache. I left the hotel a little after noon and headed out for the grocery store because I need some soy milk for protein because it is hard to get enough being a vegetarian in the south. I hit SuperFresh and then went to the Bay Mills deli to get a sandwich for lunch before driving into the hospital. I am sure that today is going to be a long day again so I want to be prepared as much as possible. I also stopped at the Walmart in Bowie and picked up a few movies since I have run out of things to watch down here. I got The Love Bug, Punch-Drunk Love and Just Married. They were a good deal since all of them were on sale. I am on the prowl for Children of Dune from the Sci-Fi channel’s mini-series. I have been excited to see it ever since the first series came out a few years ago. The second one is just out and supposedly even better than the first one which I thought was really incredible.

Mom had to go to the emergency room this morning. She was having a hard time breathing – we assume because the ozone levels are so high because of the weather.

It is very hot again today. I hate the heat. Weather.com says that it is 92 but feels like 95 here. You New Yorkers get to relax in the high 80’s. 89 in Ithaca today.

After a long day of working around the office, I finally got a chance to relax a little bit after Thomas, our driver for the evening, took the route truck out on its first evening run. I have little to do while he is out since I am pretty much just waiting for him to get back. So, I popped in The Love Bug, one of the great Disney classics. What a great film. Some day I will have the whole series. Buddy Hacket and Dean Jones are hilarious. I love those old feel good family movies. It just occurred to me that Dean Jones and Paul Walker look a lot a like.

I have found a new DVD player that I really like for playing DVDs on the computer. I have never been very impressed with WinDVD or PowerDVD. And on Linux, there have never been any good DVD players for the longest time which has driven me crazy because I don’t want to watch movies on Windows very often. But I finally came across VideoLAN. VideoLAN has been around for some time but I had been under the assumption that they were no longer working on the project. But this is apparently completely not the case. VideoLAN is now a full fledged piece of awesome software that runs on many platforms including Windows, Linux, BeOS and MacOS X. It also has the unique capability to play movie files from harddrive, broadcast movies over a network or watch movies that are being played over a network. It is a really neat piece of software. And it is OpenSource available under the GPL so it is totally free. Everyone should download it and give it a try. And they are constantly making improvements to it to so it just keeps getting better and better. And of course it can do other cool things like ignore Regional Encoding to allow you to watch movies from all over the world.

I also found another cool piece of DVD software that rips a DVD movie onto your harddrive. It would be neat to have an online movie library that would come from a central server so that you don’t need to go looking through all your discs to find what you want. It would make movie watching a lot easier. And the ripping software is nice enough to remove any extra menu and advertising crap from your movies so that you can show them like they are shown in the theatre without all of the setup and announcements.

I am staying at the Comfort Inn in Annapolis again tonight. This is probably the last night that I will be staying at the hotel. I expect that I will be at John’s house in Arnold after tonight. I am hoping that tonight is my last really late night at the hospital for the rest of the week. We have new hardware coming in over the next few days that we need to try out so I will be working during the day a little bit more. We have new signature pads to try out.

Dad called. Mom has to stay in the hospital. They think that it is her pneumonia but they don’t know for sure. She will be staying in the hospital until they know more, which may be a while. Dad is going to be working out of the hospital during the day for the next few days.

After watching The Love Bug, I watched Adam Sandler’s new film, Punch-Drunk Love which won “Best Director” at Cannes. So I am very excited. I am a huge fan of independant films. This is also the first title in my collection that is transfered in “Super Bit” which is supposed to really help how good it looks. It has its sound in DTS and Dolby Digital AC-3 EX too. Too bad I am watching it on a laptop. This is most definitely not your average Adam Sandler movie.

I am making up, now, for all of the falling behind that I have done recently with the updates. I think everyone has plenty to read each and everyday now.

This morning I got up with a throbbing headache. It made for a long drive into the office with the sun blazing down on me. I got into the office around 10:30 and tried to work until around 2:00. By this time my head hurt so bad that I was starting to feel sick. So, since there really is nothing but babysitting for me to do at the hospital, I decided to drive on home to the hotel in Annapolis. I wasn’t tired but I was worn out. I set my laptop up on the little coffee table in the hotel room and watched the rest of Patton which was about 2.5 hours more of movie. While I was watching it I ordered a pizza from Dominoes. They make the best thin crust with onions and green peppers. Patton is a good movie. I learned a bit about WWII from that. I never really knew much of anything about our generals in the war.

After watching Patton, my pizza arrived and I watched Grave of the Fireflies which is a very sad Japanese piece, only 88 minutes, about two children who live in a small village on the outskirts of Hiroshima. The film is hard to follow but it is very sad and morose. It was good though and has been called one of the greatest war movies of all time.

I watched an episode of Drew Carrey and went to bed early. What a boring day! My head felt better after being in the dark and cold of the hotel room and taking a much needed shower to moisturize my sinuses.

Day Two in Washington, DC. I got out of the office at 2:00am last night (i.e. this morning) and drove out to Annapolis to stay at the Comfort Inn at Bay Dale. So, in case anyone needs me, that is where I am most likely staying. I got a restless night of sleep and then drove into the office around 10:30 this morning. On the way out to Annapolis last night, I finished listening to “Krakatoa” on CD. It was a bit drawn out (twelve hours) but there was a ton of really interesting things in there. Simon Winchester really covered all of his bases on the subject. I am very eager to “read” some of his other books. At the end of the CDs there was an excerpt from Winchester’s first big book, “The Professor and the Madman” and that sounds like it might be a really good listen as well. Winchester really knows how to pick some rare and obscure topics but makes them really interesting. Now I am back to listening to Douglas Adams’ “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” or Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 2. I will have that finished up, most likely, before I start driving back to New York.

It is really hot and humid in DC today. Weather.com says that it is 83 but feels like 84 here in DC and 84 feels like 85 in Annapolis but I think that that is low. There is no air moving today and it feels really hot.

Ok, so the other day I was looking for some information on the web and stumbled across this page all about Groundhogs. It is a really funny site and it even has videos to watch.

In addition to having fallen behind recently with LoTMs, I also forgot to update the LoTM page itself with the last couple of entries. This has now been taken care of. I knew that I was going to have a lot of time sitting at my desk this week to write the updates.

I looked up a couple of entries in Mirriam-Webster today. And the two big finding are that AUNT is pronounced correctly linke ANT and NOTHER is an actual word, as in “a whole nother way of looking at it.” I always that that NOTHER was some word that I had made up because it sounded like people said that.

I am very tired today. I hope to get a chance to relax some after the main part of the day is past. I might even get to watch a movie in the office. That would be a nice change.

I had to do some work on my resume today. I haven’t been selling myself for technical work outside of NTI for a few months now and I decided that I wanted to streamline my resume a little bit. For some time now, my resume has been four full pages, which is a bit much to wade through. So I worked it down to three pages. It is still a pain to look through but there is a lot of stuff that I have to convey and it really doesn’t seem to be reasonable to try to get it any smaller at this point. I think that it is a bit more readable now. It is rough when you are a contractor because you do tons of jobs that are only one or two days long or maybe a week at most. Once you do a large number of those, you end up with a really long resume if you list them all. And if you don’t list them all, then you are leaving off valuable and current work experience.

I am having a terrible time trying to get the laptop working on the truck down here. None of the peripherals that attach to it are able to keep working. We are using a printer that breaks down all of the time, a wireless system that for some reason looses the ability to communicate and a signature pad that used to work fine but does nothing at all now. I put in a call to the sig pad manufacturer and they agreed that it sounded like the pad itself was no longer working so the are rushing a replacement pad out to us right away. That is good. I am glad that it wasn’t some software problem that we were having.

I worked in the office until around 10:00pm then I drove back out to the hotel. I would have stayed later but we had a small fire on the truck and it wasn’t going to be running again for a while so I decided that some sleep would be the best thing for me.

I got back to the hotel and finished watching Jackie Chan’s Project A 2 that Eric and I had started watching last week but hadn’t made it very far through. It was ok. One of the earlier “middle period” Chan films. Maggie Cheung is always good. Then I started watching the very long movie Patton that is an all time classic that I have somehow managed to never see. I only made it about half an hour into the three hour film, though, before I needed to go to bed.