Sheep Guarding Llama

At 32 years old, my last hourse died today. Melody has been my horse since I was five years old. She was ten years old when we got her. Over the years, we had six horses on the farm (two mares that each had two children) and Melody was the eldest and the last living. Cleo was the second oldest and died about two years ago. Dad found Melody collapsed in a mud puddle when he got home last night. My aunt and uncle came up to help him try to hoist her up with ropes but she ended up throwing my dad and kicking him in the head and neck. He is ok, though, but really soar. Melody was just too exhausted to get up and they called the vet who came out late this evening and put her down. So, for about the first time in my life that I can remember, the farm has no animals living on it. The three dogs, countless cats, two hamsters, three raccoons and six horses that have all called the farm home over the years have all passed away. Growing up on a farm can be a really sad thing. So many friends have died there. It is especially hard when it is a friend who has watched me grow up all these years.

Min and I slept in late today and got up just in time to shower and head south to Spencer to have lunch with Craig and Emily (and Ellie!) This is the first time that either Min or I have been down to their new house now that they live less than thirty minutes away! Of course, we live so far away for so long and they finally move closer and now Min, Andy and I are headed back Rochester way, figures. We had a really good time at lunch and Craig and Emily decided that they would come up to Ithaca to hang out after some commitments that they had in the afternoon. Craig has never played Quake or any other computer based first person shooter so he was intrigued by the idea of playing with everyone in a seperate room and a full screen to yourself.

Bob picked up the ingredients (99 Blackberries and Mountain Dew) to Dewberry Juice and we mixed up some and prepared for a serious Quake II fest. Bob has been jonsin’ for some Quake action ever since he was reading the SGL Archives the other day and he is all excited that we are going to get to play tonight. Loopy only got the parts to put his computer back together this morning so her is really excited just to have a computer to use again. We got Quake II installed on all of the computers (Loopy just rebuilt his, Bob has a ‘new’ graphics card – VooDoo 4 and Craig is playing on Min’s computer in the closet) and then decided that we really wanted to try being able to hear each other so we all installed Microsoft’s Sidewinder Game Voice (Min and I have the GameVoice hardware, the others just use the software version) and got that working. Craig and Emily showed up (Min, Emily and Tammy hung out in my room with the kids, Ellie and Tess, while the men kicked each other’s butts,) we served out some Dewberry Juice and the games began. We played for hours, until about 1:00am (so probably five hours total gaming time.) With four players (we normally only ever get three) and the game voice, this was probably the best Quake matches we ever played. Bob totally kicked butt. It is really cool to be able to rip on each other while the game is going, though. The GameVoice really adds a new dimension to the game. I can’t wait to use it with lots of people when we play AoE2 or EE! Rise of Nations is coming soon and I am really looking forward to that as well.

Today is Loopy’s day off. His new job is only four days a week and he is loving it. This morning, he and I spent hours down at Lifestyle Properties working on their computers there. We ended up bringing one of them back with us because we had to do so much work to it. Loopy is still without a computer of his own until his paycheck clears the back so he can afford the memory that he needs for it to get it working again.

Happy 24th Birthday to Natalie Clarke our Canadian Blonde!!

Eric came down first thing this morning because we needed to get his computer set up and he had to drop off a computer that needed to be prepared for deployment at the University of Rochester Medical Center. In the process of switching computers around, we managed to come up with an extra 3DFX VooDoo 4 graphics card that Bob is going to be using as an upgrade from his VooDoo 3. So he is excited to try Quake 2 again to see how it will look (I remember way back when, when I first upgraded from the VooDoo 3 to the VooDoo 4 on my old PII 350 128MB machine and it was pretty noticeable then – Bob’s PIII 500 384MB machine should really be noticeable.) Bob was also mentioning that he was all nostalgic to play Quake 2 because he was reading the archive of SGL yesterday while he was at school. The archives are almost 2 1/2 years of SGL happenings and news. Isn’t that hard to believe? We have been doing this site for an awfully long time.

I finally caught up on the old dailies and there shouldn’t be any more gaps. I will try hard to keep up again. I should be in town for at least another week so it should be easier to do.

After getting our work done, Eric and I played a round of Empire Earth. Eric decided that he needed to get himself a copy to play on his new computer because he had only played it a little bit and I whooped him pretty bad.

Last night, after going out for dinner at Maxie’s Supper Club for Zach’s birthday, Min and I went to the movie theatre (and got in for free!) to see X-Men 2. I thought that it was a bit better than the first one and so did Min. The guys all went to see it two nights ago and thought it was about the same as the first movie.

After doing tons of work on that terrible Sony VAIO Picturebook, I finally have it mostly working and am ready to start installing the Waste Watcher software on it. What a pain! I am also installing Windows XP Pro on Eric’s old machine at the same time. Keeps me busy that way.

Tomorrow is Andy’s day off so he will actually be home during the day. But he will probably be sleeping for the first half of it.

Tons more time working on the crappy Sony VAIO laptop. I can’t believe what a pain this thing is. I can’t even begin to express how much I hate Sony for having scrapped all of the work that I had done previously on this thing. What jerks they are.

Well, that is the bulk of my day today. Just working on that laptop thing.

I have been trying out the new web and email clients, Firebird and Thunderbird respectively, from the Mozilla project. I didn’t think that I was going to like having the browser split up but it does react a bit faster and I like the new look. Thunderbird is still pretty quirky but Firebird is working really well. I like it and am using at my main browser now. It seems to have most of the advantages of both Mozilla/Netscape and Opera. So it is nice.

Andy is really enjoying his new job with Carrier in Syracuse. This is his second week there and he is getting all kinds of stuff done for them. He really likes the environment and hopes that they will find a way to keep him longer than the original contract was expected to be. But that never happens so it isn’t likely.

I am busy getting papers taken care of today and trying to get things moving with the house in Geneseo. I can’t seem to get my banker on the phone.

It looks like things are going ok for getting the wedding back on track in Wyoming in October. We will see but at least things look better.

Eric is coming down to Ithaca tomorrow to get some work done down here and to deliver a computer that is being re-outfitted for use at the University of Rochester.