Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

I obviously slept in a but this morning. Loopy was still awake when I got up – he too is trying to get ready to adjust his sleep schedule to our work that starts tomorrow. I assembled the new stationary bike that we got and tried it out. It was really cheap but I am happy with it. It seems to be really stable and it would appear to work pretty well. Good value, I think. It does everything that I need. I plan to come up with a way to be able to play video games while I am using it and to watch DVDs because that will make it so much easier to get a decent amount of exercise.

It turns out that Susan brought us her Nordic Track before she left for Miami but I hadn’t realized. So we actually have more or less a full gym now in the house. We have three pieces of excercise equipment. Loopy would really like to get a treadmill and so would I so sooner or later our gym will really be complete. It is neat to have so much stuff right in our own home.

Today is a really short day both in time and in the update. I will try my best to provide updates this week while I am out of town. It will be tough but I will likely have a ton of free time while I am hanging out at the Econolodge in Schenectady with John and Loopy. I did install zSNES (the Super Nintendo emulator) and Nestron (the Nintendo Entertainment System emulator) onto my laptop and I managed to track down Earthbound Zero (Mother 1) – the prequel to my favorite console video game of all time – Earthbound. I am really excited that I will be able to play it this week.

I spent most of my short day today working on getting the X-Terminal system working to show for use in Washington. I am part way there at least. I have all of the software that I need installed and some of it configured and the workstation seems to be all set. It is booting properly, not giving me any error messages and looking out on the network for the Linux image. So, I am getting close I think. I also had to pack today because I will be dilerious in the morning.

Min and I got up this morning and headed straight out to Frankfort to visit her family. It is winter weekend for her brother so he is getting all dressed up and heading off to the school dance (winter weekend is apparently a mix of what I remember as homecoming and the prom.) On the way out of town we stopped by Borders to try exchanging that bad DVD for the new one that they were holding for me. After having two bad experiences in trying to get this problem resolved, I was just waiting for something bad to happen today as well. But, the girl working at the desk who helped me actually did some redeeming for Borders and told me that I would not have to get another copy of the same movie and she happily refunded my money. Then I bought three books there so they made out pretty well. So, I was not nearly so upset after that. We had tons of laundry to do so it was good timing for us to be near a washing machine:) It seems like we washed clothes pretty much all day. We did eight to ten loads, I am sure. We watched a number of movies while we were doing it including Father Goose with Cary Grant, Clambake with Elvia Presley and Toy Soldiers with Sean Astin. We also made a trip out to Walmart and did a little shopping there. We managed to find an awesome deal on a recumbant stationary bicycle so we decided to go ahead and pick it up. It was only $100 which is pretty cheap for excercise equipment. We also found a small stair stepper machine that was all that we needed for only $50 so we picked that up too. It is like having a major portion of a home gym and having only spent $150. Not a bad deal. We do want to get an elliptical machine yet and that won’t be nearly as cheap (we have both used a Gazelle and they totally suck and they can fall over when you get going hard. We found a really nice real one at Dick’s for the same price that we really like that we will probably end up getting eventually.

We went out for dinner with Dominica’s parents at Lotta Burger in Utica which is a funny name but the place is really nice. This is my second time there and I really like it. We stayed out there until 1:30 am and then drove home. I didn’t end up going to bed until 5:00 am which was a bit on the late side. I am trying to get ready for my sleep schedule next week and that is going to be really rough. Especially with three guys splitting a hotel room for four nights.

We didn’t end up having enough to get all of our laundry dried so we have a bunch that we are going to have to dry at the house tomorrow. I did get the stair stepper set up while we were in Frankfort and I tried it out a bit and it seems really nice. I am glad that I got it.

Loopy is planning on staying up all night tonight so that it is easy for him to adjust his schedule tomorrow. He emailed me today to tell me that he had figured out how to start writing his own operating system and managed to get a basic kernel written and to get the GRUB bootloader to load it up and that it ran really well. It doesn’t do much of anything yet but it is there and it really works. For those of you unfamiliar with operating system development, it is one of the hardest things to make. Writing code designed to run your computer is very different from writing code that runs on an operating system that is already there. Imagine trying to work on a computer that does not have anything at all on it. That means NO Windows or DOS or ANYTHING. This is a really big deal that Loopy managed to do this. Most people who work on making their own OSes never make it this far. And this is only day one! Of course, now he is going to be out of town for a week 🙂

It is a good thing that I update this site everyday or I would completely forget what the date is. One week until Valentines Day!

I added stuff to my calendar first thing this morning since I added the Calendar button yesterday. I figured that it might as well be accurate. More work on the Web Server today. But it looks like we are not going to be able to go to DC this afternoon because of the really bad weather that we are expecting to be getting. Southern Pennsylvania started getting hit with a big winter storm early this morning and tons of snow is falling on the 81 corridor. After getting stuck in Hazleton just two weeks ago, we are a little gun shy of driving down there in bad weather. Eric and I got stuck in Scranton last winter. Only that little area have I ever been snowed into while traveling. Winter is starting to wear out its welcome around here. I am looking forward to spring already. I like the cold weather during the night and it makes my computer run better but other than that, I can do without it being this cold. This seems to have been an extra cold winter. Summer is too much but Spring and Autumn are okay for me. I am going to need to do something with my computer so that it doesn’t overheat once the warm weather starts to come. I have a couple of things that I want to try that might make a big difference. I need to re-grease the heatsink with better grease. The current heatsink is on with the factory grease which is never done very well. I may try installing a newer and better CPU fan and heatsink altogether. And I want to get round cable for the inside of the case that will allow for better airflow. Right now, I have the normal flat cables and they block most of the air that would flow through the case and that is definitly not helping anything.

I added SuSE Firewall to the new webserver today. That is step one in securing it. I have done my best to make it secure by default but it takes a lot to protect yourself these days. We once installed a test system in DC and it was hacked within two days. We had only ever logged into it remotely once and that was all it took for someone to grab the root password and take over the system. It is amazing how much people will do just to be able to send out spam mail (that is what seems to always happen when your computer gets hacked.) It isn’t like there is anything of value on these machines. Mostly they are just web servers and you can download all of the info that is on them anyway.

Well, my afternoon appointment got cancelled due to illness so I have ended up having the day mostly free. Maybe I will get that server all ready (but then I won’t be able to take it to DC because of the weather 🙁 Well, at least this will prevent me from delivering it to DC prematurly. Of course we cancel the trip to DC after I already pulled out the new Sue Grafton books on CD that we were going to get to listen to on the way. I was really excited about listening to “N is for Noose” because it is the only one that I have missed so far. You would not believe how much I love listening to those books. Yesterday I finished listening to Scott Adam’s latest Dilbert business book “The Way of the Weasel.” I don’t think that it was as good as some of his older ones like “The Dilbert Principle” or “The Dilbert Future” but it was pretty good. It also isn’t fair because I read those two and only got them on tape later. So they weren’t abridged when I first read them. The only one of the Dilbert books that I have left to read is “The Joy of Work” – which I have but just haven’t gotten around to reading yet.

I took some time and finished working on the computer that Bob put together. The final part came two days ago, the graphics card and I got that installed this afternoon. It was an easy installation and now that computer is all set so it is one more thing that I can get out of my hair. Too many computers around here, I can’t take it. I need more floor space. I think that they are multiplying, I don’t recognize all of them.

Emily stopped by around noon. It was nice to be able to visit, we have had so little time in so long (which is weird because she reads SGL everyday but we never get the chance to talk.) We hung out for about an hour and then Min called from work and we picked her up and went to Friendlys for some lunch. We had a really good time and Min got to play with the baby, which always makes her happy. After lunch, Emily raided the DVD collection and took off to run more errands.

Nate went out to spend the weekend in Perry and Zach is in Tully with his family. Tonight, it was just Bob, Loopy, Min and I – so we all went to the mall for dinner and then we did a little shopping. We went to Dick’s and Min and I tried out some different recumbent stationary bikes. We found one that we really like so we just need to compare it against the similar one at Walmart that we were thinking about before we decide what one we are really interested in. We walked by Borders and we noticed Eric (Eric that teaches with Nate and Bob) was playing with a band there (it is so nice that Borders has a place for live music – as much as Ithaca has live music, it doesn’t tend to have much of that style anywhere.) So Bob stayed there and watched while we did some more shopping. We eventually came back to Borders and Dominica noticed that Borders had the movie that I tried to exchange just a couple of days ago on the shelf and that they hadn’t contacted me about it and, of course, I didn’t have my copy with me because I hadn’t been told that they had got a copy in. So, I wasn’t very happy that they didn’t contact me and that they put the copy that I technically already owned on the shelf for someone else to buy. I brought this to their attention and they explained that Borders didn’t have the common courtesy to have an inventory control system so that they would have any way of knowing if I was waiting for something to come in or if it was really in the store anyway (this has been seen a number of times there with the system saying that they have things that they don’t and that they don’t have things that they do, etc.) So, they are now holding (for only four days, mind you – it isn’t like I already paid for it or anything) the copy that they have at the register so that I can come back and pick it up. We will see what happens when I finally try to pick it up tomorrow. Maybe they will actually give it to me. But there will probably be a hassle.

After shopping at the mall we all headed home and watched the original James Bond flik Dr. No which really isn’t very good but it is a classic anyway. Sean Connery was pretty young there.

I stayed up late last night working on upgrading my SuSE 8.0 computer to 8.1. This, however, could not be completed because 8.1 wouldn’t recognize the old system:( I am hopeful, however, that I will soon be able to load 8.1 onto my screaming fast Promise RAID array because since the last time that I installed Linux, Promise has made the drivers available. So I no longer have to keep Windows on the good drives. I wanted to upgrade to Windows XP Pro anyway and changing partitions would seem to be the perfect time to do that. So I can update the entire machine all at once. It will be like getting a totally new computer. I have been wanting to get more memory as well since I do run out occassionally (512MB just isn’t enough these days.) I am excited to be upgrading the machine but it does mean a lot of work has to be done and I have to wait until I can afford to pick up Windows XP. But at least I have something to look forward to. SuSE 8.1 is supposed to be blazing fast compared to 8.0 and with the faster drives it should really kick some major butt. I can’t wait to try it out.

Emily is coming into town on Friday (tomorrow) and is going to be stopping by to visit. I haven’t seen Emily more than two or three times since she has moved back to New York (I think I saw her AND Craig more when they were living in Colorado!)

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Emily is visiting in the morning. I am spending the afternoon meeting with Steve Lucente, the owner of Lifestyle Propeties, as we discuss homes and offices and stuff for the coming year. Then, after all that, Min and I are driving to DC. It makes for a long day.

Today was another day of working on the web server. I am getting there, really I am. I got a lot done last night and it is going well. I am feeling really good about it. Eric is working on setting up his own test environment for producing PHP pages but he is having less luck than me. I really wish that I had a couple of more days before I had to go to DC so that I could have this machine ready for the trip. I want to get it down three and installed and ready to go. The sooner it is out of this house and in place the sooner it can start doing me some good. Right now, it is in the way! I need more space (lol.)

Dominica did read the update yesterday and caught my joke:) I decided that I was tired of everyone always saying that they don’t look at my calendar or don’t know how to get to it so I decided that I would add a Calendar button to the navigation bar on the right so that everyone can just click there and instantly see what my calendar holds for me. It is mostly accurate. Far from perfect. But it helps give the general impression of where I will be when.

Min hit the hay early (like 9:00!!) but I stayed up late working on that new server. I think it might be ready to go when we head down to DC tomorrow but I don’t like to count my chickens, I have attempted putting it down there before when it wasn’t ready and it just ends up making for extra work. We will see, it all depends on how tomorrow goes. At this point, all of the features that I need are implemented. What I am working on now is locking it down for protection (our DC facility is hit by crackers (mostly script kiddies, thank goodness) hundreds or even thousands of times a day. So security is a must. Loopy has to go to bed early tonight because he actually has a 9:00 am meeting. But he might as well start getting up earlier since we have to be up at 3:00 am on Monday morning and between 6:00 and 7:00 am the rest of the week. Might as well be ready for it. I am going to be going to bed really early on Sunday so nobody call me Sunday night!