Sheep Guarding Llama

Ah, Monday. Time to get back to the grind. Tomorrow my car is going to Syracuse for service and Min’s next week to Rochester. We are having caliper problems on the rear brakes (thank goodness for warranties.) I am going to get my 30,000 mile service as well. That isn’t cheap but it needs to be done. I have to take care of my baby.

Just for Craig, there is the addition of the Audio Books section of the SMML (Scott Miller Multimedia Library) Online. The online pages are far from being up to date but I will put a link for this one on here so that Emily can tell him what books on CD that I have (this is books on CD only, there are also three Dilbert books on tape.) So here it is, the Scott’s Audio Book Collection. Let me know if it works. This is one of my early attemps at my own programming of PHP with a MySQL database. I just got some Father Gilbert mysteries delivered to my parent’s house too. I have the entire Chronicles of Narnia on order and I just won Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone on eBay (that Philosopher’s Stone for the Canadians.)

Min and I had dinner with Kim from Advion right after work today to talk about her taking the pictures at the wedding. We met at Applebee’s in Lansing. After dinner, Min and I went to Hollywood Video and got Road to Perdition, The Four Feathers, Last Orders, Men with Brooms (the Canadians should be pretty happy there) and I Spy. So there are lots of new movies to borrow as well:)

The original plan was for me to go to Washington this morning after I did some work in town but with so many car problems recently, we decided that it would be best if I stayed in Ithaca this week.

After work, Min and I watched, I Spy with Owen Wilson and Eddie Murphy. It was okay but definitely not anything special. Kind of funny and a little bit of action but overall, nothing special.

This morning, Nate, Tammy, Min and I went out to look at Nate’s new house in Trumansburg. After looking at the house, we went to Little Venice downtown and had some pasta buffet for lunch. Then we went and got some warmer clothes, met Bob and Zach and went down to IthacaFest at Stewart Park. We got some good food but couldn’t stay long because it was really cold. IthacaFest wasn’t doing very well because of the weather. Almost no vendors showed up and the people were leaving in droves. At least parking was easy for a change. It is unfortunate, though, that it was doing so poorly.

After going down to IthacaFest, the whole house got together and watched Catch Me If You Can. Everyone really liked it. That is the best movie that I have seen in months. It is really cool because it is based on a true story and there is some good footage additional on the disc with interviews with Frank Abignale who the movie is about. It was really fascinating. The movie has some action and some drama and is pretty deep and times but not so much that it is hard to watch. I was very impressed.

Today was utility day for Min and I. We got up and ran out to Livonia to see Eric and Amanda’s new house (this is their first full day in the house and they are busy getting it ready to really live in.) We only had a few minutes there. It is pretty much right in Livonia, a raised ranch on the southeast side of town. They have a good sized lot too. And we got to play with the little puppy that they have now. Sonny, he is so cute! (I guess their next dog will be Cher? I will let Eric respond to that.) After stopping there, we went on to Geneseo and Min had to have pictures taken of her in the wedding dress that she likes so that she can email them to her family for their approval. While she did that, I made a trip to my parent’s house and dropped off a big load of stuff that we were moving out there. Then I headed back to Geneseo to pick her up. But, she was impatient and drove with my aunt to my parent’s house so they called me and had me turn around and go back. Then we drove up to Josh and Joanna’s in Rochester so that I could pick up a load of stuff that I have been storing up there for the last two years (ever since we first moved out of Sanctuary Drive.) It wasn’t a lot of stuff but it was three big items including the enormous Compaq Proliant 6500 server that we have been moving around for forever. I think that it has traveled more than any another piece of equipment that I have ever had which is really funny since it is the largest and heaviest and by far the hardest to move. All of that was then delivered to my parent’s house. After that, Min and I drove back to Ithaca. We had to drive seperately because we are borrowing my mom’s Buick Regal for the week because of my car’s condition.

While we were at Josh’s, I got Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets for Min and Catch Me If You Can for me.

Today was a very eventful day. I was very busy all day dealing with a new account that we have and out new employee who is going to be servicing that account. We are very excited about that.

I had to take my car into the shop this morning and then discovered how expensive the repairs were going to be so I have to take my car into Burdick in a week and a half. I will tell more of the story later.

Right now the big news is that Min and I have to go to Kentucky and meet Francesca tomorrow so we are hitting the road tonight. Sorry for the short update.

Ok, right after writing the update, Min and I hit the road to go to Kentucky. But, that ended up not working well because both of our cars were having brake problems so we made it no farther than the south side of town before turning around to head back home. We will have to see about getting the cars into the shop right away.

So, it ended up being a very short night of driving. Min’s parents are hitting the road in the morning to go down to Kentuckey instead of us.

Can you believe that May is almost over? Boy has this month flown by. It seems like it didn’t even happen at all. Today was an interesting day. I spent the morning working down at Lifestyle Properties again and got them set up with a new laser printer to ease the cost and effort of maintaining three seperate crappy printers (for those of you who are considering purchasing a new printer, consider investing in an HP 1300 LaserJet because it prints great, last a long time and cost far less to refill than conventional desk and bubble jets.) That took an hour or so and now they need me to completely reinstall one of their desktops too. Never is anything simple.

Min and I went down and had lunch at Ned’s Pizzeria in the Centre Ithaca. We also purchased our wedding bands down at Schooley’s on the Commons. My ring is already there but we had to order Min’s. Her’s should be in in a week or so. It is nice to have one more thing taken care of and not have to worry about it.

I got a lot of work done today on the business side of things and have pretty much sealed up a new contract with a national recruiting company for us to be a point of presence for them here in central and western New York with an eye towards covering all of their needs state wide. It is a small contract right now but has potential to grow in the future.

Eric’s laptop died and so he is coming down tonight to drop it off so that I can reinstall it with Linux (SuSE 8.2.) He is giving up on Windows 2000, it is just too much of a pain, I guess 😉 SuSE 8.2 is so nice that he will be much happier with that. Especially now that he has a nice computer at home that he can play video games on so he doesn’t need to use his laptop nearly as often as he used to for that.

Andy has to work tomorrow because he got Monday off for the holiday (funny how that works.) And first thing in the morning, I have to drop off my car at Bell’s in Varna to have my brakes looked at before I take a drive down to DC. Speaking of which, I am driving to DC on Monday after a meeting here in Ithaca and I will be gone all week. The week after that, I will be working in Rochester for a bit of the week at least. John is coming up from DC to work in Rochester so I will be there some of the time. Maybe I will be able to convince Josh to go out and try some selling with me. Our new Managed IT Services division seems to be a much easier thing to sell than our ASP services (maybe because the sticker shock isn’t so dramatic!)

Andy and I both got UPS shipments today. I love getting new stuff delivered to me, it is so much fun (this is how people end up getting addicted to eBay!) Andy got new books from Amazon and I got a new RAID controller from eBay. I find amazing computer parts deals on there. You really have to look around a lot for them but you can find some great stuff cheap.

I was hoping to be able to do some testing on Brainbench this evening but they were down for maintanence so that wasn’t going to happen. Eric and Amanda made it down with just enough time to drop off the laptop that needed work done to it and grab a quick dinner at the State St. Diner before driving back to Groveland Station. They are planning on moving into their house tomorrow although they have not yet closed so they are still panicking about that. Speaking of panicking, I need to talk to MY mortgage agent and see what is going on there. One more thing to add to my super long To-Do list. Eric needs his latop reinstalled because Windows 2000 doesn’t start up anymore. The laptop had been dual booting Win2K and SuSE 8.0 which is also really showing its age. So Eric opted to have the machine just totally converted over to SuSE 8.2. Boy is he going to be in for a shock when he sees how nice 8.2 is. SuSE really made some good strides over the last two versions of their product. Of course, laptop installs are always a pain, at best, but an Internet based install without a CD to load from will be even more interesting.

Lifestyle Properties needed me to repair a desktop for them this evening so I have had to spend a considerable amount of time working on that as well. I was thinking that I was going to have to totally reinstall the machine that was having a problem but I think that I was able to repair the damage and I think that it will work fine when I take it back tomorrow. After getting that machine back into good shape, I did a disk cleanup (boy did it need that, at least 500MB of extra junk) and then a defrag (every bit of the disk was totally fragged.) So, that should help them out a bit. I have to take my car into Bell’s tomorrow to have them look at my brake that is dragging. I am pretty sure that I have a caliper that is seizing up on me. It is a real problem and I really can’t drive my car at all right now. So hopefully they can do something with it tomorrow or I am going to be in tough shape come Monday and I have to drive all over town and then to Washington.