Sheep Guarding Llama

Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Birthday Madeline! Francesca’s (our September Llama of the Month’s) daughter Madeline turns a big 3 in Webster, Texas today. We would have called to wish her a happy birthday but Min was a little preoccupied with the events of the day. I wrote the update yesterday but somehow I didn’t remember to post it so for all of you who have been following along and think that I forgot to do it, it isn’t true. I just forgot to post it. Well, today started off good but didn’t end up being so good in the long run. Actually, maybe it was all bad. The day started off with the alarm not going off, apparently it had gotten turned off at some point. So instead of jumping out of bed at 5:15, we started moving at 6:45. So we were in a pretty major rush from the moment go. We have to be out the door by 7:40 to make it to work on time. And there are three of us to get ready in one bathroom. And on top of that, we had to pack and check out of the hotel and then load the car. So it was a bit much for first thing in the morning. Then, the car was out of windshield wiper fluid and we had to get some before we could go anywhere because I couldn’t see. And we were out of gas. So a quick pit stop to refill both items had to be done and that takes a little while. But, since we were in such a hurry, I tried taking a short-cut that we had heard about and we ended up making it to work right on time. In fact, we pulled in in front of the other team. So it ended up being okay.

Our day went pretty smoothly after that. It was different from the rest of the week. Today was our first day in a shop instead of in offices. So the environment was much more casual. The day ended up going really fast. We took a late lunch and headed over to Anthony’s for a free lunch. It was awesome and today they had us go over to the full service dining room instead of the fast side. We had an amazing lunch. After lunch, we had very little to do and we just finished up and hit the road by 2:30. Pretty good deal for St. Valentine’s Day.

Since we were on the road so early and the weather was good, I got on the phone and managed to convince Turback’s in Ithaca to give me a reservation for 9:00 pm. I knew that Min wanted to go there and I was hoping that we could get in. I had been calling her since 11:00 am (because I knew that I was going to be getting out early by then) trying to make sure that she didn’t make any plans or anything because I would be home early enough to have dinner. But I was never able to track her down. I left messages at the house, at her office and on her cell. I finally talked to the receptionist at Advion and she told me that she had left for the day. We stopped in Herkimer on the way home to see if the Super Walmart there had any more copies of My Big Fat Greek Wedding because the one in Schenectady was sold out. They did have a few so I picked one up (Min wanted to watch that for Valentine’s Day.)

Right after we left Herkimer, Gibran called to say that Min had been taken from work to Cayuga Medical Center because her back had gone out on her at work and she had collapsed. She is the first person to ever have been taken out of Advion on a stretcher. However, Advion didn’t call me or anyone else to tell them that she had gone to the hospital and everyone with a local phone number was out of town. So she was stuck there and had no way to tell anyone where she was or anything. Luckily, Min was able to get a hold of Ingrid who was able to get a hold of Gibran who drove up to the hospital to take care of her and was able to call me to let me know what was going on. We were about ten minutes east of Syracuse when we found out where she was so we rushed straight back to the house to meet them there. Min and Gibran were able to convince the hospital to let her come home for the weekend to recover here.

They gave Min a lot of drugs at the hospital so she wasn’t in so much pain and she barely knew where she was. I went out and got McDonalds for dinner (Min didn’t get to eat all day because she went to the hospital before lunch time) and got her prescriptions filled because she will need more pain killers before the ones that are in her wear off because her back is really bad. She ended up sleeping most of the evening. At least she doesn’t feel her back too much. So that is Valentine’s Day here. Hope that everyone managed to have a good one.

Day Four in Schenectady. Today went well. So far we are really happy with this job. Nothing has seriously gone wrong yet (other than not having internet access the first night.) We had lunch at Anthony’s again and they asked me if I could work with them next Tuesday. So, I will be working over there after work on Tuesday. They paid for our lunches, which were awesome again. Since we are really short of funds right now, getting free meals is pretty valuable. Because we are in a state of heightened terrorism alert and because we are working in a chemical plant, we have to go through more extreme security measures now. The plant is at Code Orange and we have to be sure to log in and out of the plant everytime we come and go. It isn’t too inconvenient but it is noticeable.

I talked to Eric this evening and he has been working on teaching himself PHP programming. I went out to his test web site and took a look at the programs that he has loaded up there. He said that he is enjoying it. We will see, maybe we will have another programmer 🙂

John had never heard “For Me To Poop On” before so we had to download it from here and listen to it in the hotel room. He was laughing pretty hard at that. We also fired up SGL Radio to see how things were going on the server. It is so weird to be in a hotel room and be able to listen to the radio playing off of your desk in your bedroom.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day but we don’t think that we will be able to get back to Ithaca in time to be able to make it to dinner:( I wanted to but because of the weather, I am unable to guarantee that I will be home before 10:00 pm or so and that is awfully late to be going out for dinner. So I am hoping that Dominica will let me wait until Saturday to take her out. I was looking at some of the site this evening and noticed that there was a typo in the Bios section so that no one has ever been able to check out Loopy’s web site. I went to the site and corrected it so you can all go to his site now. I am sure that that will help with the overall hits on Loopy’s site. We will have to see how me being away for most of the month will affect our hits on SGL. John is a semi-regular reader and he is away from his computer all this time so that is hurting us a little bit. But after such an amazing showing last month, it would be nice to see at least 80 hits a day.

There is a new patch out for Trillian today. You can download it for free from www.Trillian.cc. This is a patch for AIM users. Trillian is a free instant messaging client that allows you to IM using AOL’s AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ and IRC all at the same time. Very handy for those of us with friends everywhere. I am on AIM (itsallaboutscott), Yahoo! (scottalanmiller) and MSN ([email protected]). So you should all add me and IM me.

It is beginning to look like the IT spending freeze that has been killing us might be over. Analysts have been saying that IT spending can’t stop forever and companies have been holding onto their IT funds waiting for the economy to pick back up (which it won’t do until the IT spending continues again.) Well, we are starting to see that these companies are starting to spend again. This job is the first clue. Three of us working at good rates for three weeks. How long has it been since that happened. On top of that, we have each been called about multiple jobs this week. John has two interviews this weekend, Loopy has been contacted about three jobs and has an interview on Monday and I have been contacted about three jobs and I have an interview on Saturday! They told us that the Dell work would pick up shortly into the new year and it appears to have done so. Maybe this year won’t be so bad yet. I am not holding my breathe yet, but things are definitely looking a whole lot better.

I did a little work on the web site this evening and I reworked the Bios page to work a little bit better. That page used to be loaded with huge graphics that took forever to download. Now the page is really bare but it loads fast and has working links. Better than what it was before.

The official quote of the week from the PC Tech in Schenectady is “Everybody dance, in the Walmart in my pants.” You will have to ask Loopy about that one.

Day Three in Schenectady. I am very tired again today. We got up a little bit late this morning and had to rush to make it to work on time. But, Kevin, who is supervising us, had a meeting this morning so we managed to get the truck loaded and still have to wait for him so we just went to the company cafeteria and got ourselves some breakfast. Around 10am, we headed over to Rotterdam to work again. Today we heard about a great little Italian place nearby where we could get some lunch. So, we headed over to Anthony’s and had an amazing lunch. We ended up talking to the owners for a long time and I am expected to be doing a little bit of work for them in the next couple of weeks since I am in town already and don’t have a lot else to do.

Work went well today and we managed to get out pretty early. After work we headed home and watched “Who’s Harry Crumb” and then we went out to Friendlys from dinner. We went to bed really early (around 10pm) shortly after that.

Jennifer Middleton emailed me a pic from the Kelley’s Heroes trip to Toronto in November. From left to right it is, Josh, Leanne, Jennifer, me and Jamie. I hope that I am able to buy a scanner soon. Since this job is paying me in about two weeks, I might be able to get one then. I am thinking about getting one of the new tiny HP scanners that is only $50 and is designed to scan 5×7 photos. It isn’t as useful as a larger scanner would be but it is smaller and would fit on my desk better and it is very inexpensive. So I am thinking that that might be the way to go.

Our first full day in Schenectady. Last night the thermostat started shorting out in the room so that really helped make us uncomfortable staying there. But the final straw was the fact that our telephone line was so bad that we were unable to get online but had to pay $1 for the phone calls anyway. So we packed early in the morning and took off for work. We arrived at work on time and started the day by loading the truck with all of the computers that we were going to need during the day. We drove from Nyskayuna where we start in the morning out to Rotterdam Junction around 10am. We spent the rest of the day out there.

The day went really smoothly. We are really enjoying the job here. The people are really friendly and the work is very low stress. We get to hang out with a lot of really nice people. The work isn’t exciting in any way but it isn’t going to last all that long either. For lunch we took off and tried to find some fast food. We ended up driving out to Amsterdam before we were able to find anything at all. So we won’t be trying to do that again.

After work we went out looking for hotels again. We heard that we could get into the Days Inn for the same price that we had at the Econolodge so we headed there. We looked at the rooms and decided to give it a try. Of course, our first room had no working heat so we had to change rooms before we could stay. We had discovered that we were going to be working in the plant for the next couple of weeks and we don’t really have any clothes that we can ruin with us so Loopy and I went out to Walmart to find some cheap clothes. There is a Super Walmart just 2 miles away from the hotel (there is also a Friendlys diagonally across the street and a Stewarts right across the street.) We picked up some cheap jeans and shirts and we even managed to get two pairs of matching Sponge Bob Square Pants pajamas! We also picked up some water and Hawain Punch so that we would have something in our room to drink.

John and I ran out to Prima Pizza again to get another pizza. We just couldn’t resist after last evenings dinner was so delicious. We got a large pizza and headed back to the hotel to share it with Loopy.

Last night, Loopy and I eneded up staying up until 1:30 in the morning talking about file systems. So I am very tired today. I was hoping to get some sleep when we got back from work but between shopping at Walmart and going out for dinner I didn’t get a chance to. The Days Inn does have an phone lines that our allowing us to get online (with AOL at less than 28.8!)

Two updates together yesterday. It was a short day so I figured that I would wait and post the two days together. Today is a super busy day. Loopy and I got out of bed at 3:15 am and got ready very quickly. John Stephens arrived at the house around 3:45 and we started packing the car. We managed to hit the road around 4:15 and headed towards Schenectady. We got breakfast at the Oneida Rest Area on the Thruway at 6:00 am at the Burger King there. The drive wasn’t bad and we ended up having a really easy time finding Rotterdam Junction and Schenectady International, Inc.. SII is a much larger company than I had imagined. It is a major chemical maker with two big plants in the area and locations all over the world. We arrived a little bit early so we drove around and saw the area for a little bit before reporting to our first training class at 8:00 am. We spent our first two hours at work taking a basic OSHA safety procedures class. It was pretty boring and nothing in the class pertained to us in any way whatsoever – even though we were the only ones there. But is wasn’t all that bad and we were getting paid to take it so that is fine. Around 10:15 we packed up again and left Rotterdam Junction to go over to the main plant in a town that I don’t know the name of just west of Schenectady. On the way there we drove through Schenectady. What a sad little slum town. There is nothing there. It looks to be really poor and dangerous with no redeeming value.

We spent another hour taking a quick tour and talking about what we would be doing for the next while and then we were sent on a 90 minute lunch. The only place to eat anywhere near the plant is the Woodside Cafe inside the plant which is unbelievably overpriced and has practically nothing vegetarian on the menu. I got a weird grilled cheese wrap (one of two veggie items) and a bottles water and it cost me $6.80. After lunch we went back and worked on training for the rest of the afternoon. What we are doing is removing 82 old PCs from Rotterdam and installing brand new Dell workstations with Windows XP Pro on them. After Rotterdam is completed, Loopy, John and I will be moved over to the other plant to help the other team finish over there where they have more than 200 workstations to replace. We were told originally that the job was for one week and that our site was seperate from the other site. But now we have been told that we will probably be here for two to three weeks at least. That is good and bad. It isn’t a lot of fun being out here for any length of time but the money is good and it is nice to have regular work. Three weeks of solid work would be really nice. And the people (both the local Schenectady people and the other three IT contractors) seem really nice and I think that we will have a good time working with them all. Everyone appears to be really laid back and there really isn’t any sort of schedule to keep. The other IT team is all either just out of college or still in college. They are all from SUNY Albany.

After work we retired to the Schenectady Econolodge. We were pretty dissappointed to find out that they were both completely dumpy and that they had lost my reservation for tonight. But that is probably good because we are now staying here on a night to night basis and we can leave anytime. So we probably will. This motel isn’t much better than the Days Inn Rochester Thruway where Loopy and I used to work. It is better than that but not a whole lot. When I first turned on the shower, black sludge came out and then only a trickly of water will come out of the shower head – most of the water continues to just go straight down the drain. It costs $.50 for local phone calls (meaning that using AOL will cost a couple of dollars a day since we will keep getting disconnected and each reconnect will cost a lot. We also noticed that there is no clock in this motel. None. No way to wake yourself up in the morning. Luckily, my parents gave me a travel alarm clock for Christmas and I remember to bring it with me or we would be going out shopping for one of those shortly too.

I forgot to mention, the other day, that the A&W in Cortland has closed. Min and I were driving through town and noticed that it wasn’t open anymore. It looks like there might have been fire inside but it is hard to tell. It is really sad that they are closed because they were one of the last traditional A&W Restaurants left. They were one of the places that used to make me wish that I still ate meat. I hope that they are able to open back up someday.

I am writing today’s update while sitting on the floor of the Econolodge with the laptop on my, err, lap and waiting for Loopy and John to be awake enough to be able to head out in search of some vitals. Pizza is our goal. Hopefully we find something good and cheap. This is a scary town and I don’t want to be out for too long. John and Loopy took naps as soon as we got back from work because they have been exhausted all day.

Min was a good girlfriend yesterday and baked three different types of muffins for us to take on the trip with us! It is nice to have some food with us because we don’t know where things are here and getting snacks is pretty hard. Min got to go out to lunch today with a job candidate from work. They went to the Heights Cafe and Grill. I hear that she had a good time. She said that a really nasty article about her company was written in the Ithaca Journal yesterday. I haven’t had a change to look at it yet but I will when I finally get a chance to get online.

After Loopy and John woke up from their naps, we headed out on the town to see what we could find for some dinner. We happened upon a pizza place called Prima Pizza just a couple of miles right up the street from where we are staying. It turned out to be one of the best pizzas that I have ever had. We really got a sense that the people who were working there really cared about how their pizza was and really wanted us to like it. It was just a plain little pizza place like you would find in any tiny town around New York but the food and the service was really outstanding. I got enough pizza to be able to have some for lunch tomorrow instead of paying so much money for medicore food from the cafe. We will be returning to that restaurant sometime later this week. I highly recommended it (it is on State St.) to anyone coming through the Schenectady area.

We drove around a bit looking for a different hotel but didn’t find much. It looks like we will probably be staying at the Econolodge at least one more night. We will see how we feel about it when we take off from here in the morning. We might decide to just stay here for the week because it will be so much easier.