Sheep Guarding Llama

I was talking to Natalie today (our Canadian Blonde) and she informed me that SGL has become quite the sensation in the Toronto area. Apparently there are quite a few Canadians logging in to see what is going on here in Ithaca. There is, unfortunately, very little exciting news coming out of Ithaca today. The weather has been bad – the winds are hitting as high as 50 mph (80 kph for the Canadians) coming from the west off of Lake Erie and driving ice onto Western NY. Luckily we have only been hit with the wind but it is still bad. It is actually hard to sleep at night from all of the noise.

Loopy and I and John Stephens (who works with us from time to time) have managed to scrounge up an entire week of work next week out near Amsterdam, NY (that is in the Greater Albany area.) That is forty hours of work each on a decent sized PC Migration project (people are starting to know who we are apparently.) This is the biggest block of PC Tech work that we have come across so far. And the money is looking to be good as well, so we are really excited. Loopy has been getting down to the wire and is starting to think about non-IT positions to hold him until something IT related comes up. This will be enough money to let him hold off for 2-4 weeks at least. And John will be excited as well since he works at Lockheed-Martin in Owego where layoffs are coming down quickly and everyone’s jobs are short lived. We are going to have to get a hotel room in Amsterdam for four days because it is just too far to drive each day. It is just over three hours in each direction for Loopy and I and closer to four hours for John. So, Loopy and I will be away all next week. Nate and Bob are packing up and heading off to New York City for the week to go to a conference next week. They are staying with Ryan (whom many of you know from New Year’s pictures over the years.) So it is just going to be Dominica and Zach at home all week. Min will probably be able to finish playing Kingdom Hearts with so much time to herself. Min and I are planning on leaving for Annapolis on Friday. There is a party on Saturday that we are trying to make it to. We will have to be back early on Sunday, though, because I have to be up around 3:00 am to be able to hit the road in time to make it to that job out in Amsterdam (it is actually Rotterdam Junction.)

Loopy got tons done on his video game last night and today he is focussing on an update to the Waste Watcher web site. He originally did the work on that site back in April of 2000 so the site is looking a bit dated and it really needed touched up. We are hoping to start getting some business for doing web site design (I need no introduction as a web designer to those of you who read SGL everyday 🙂 Loopy has done web site design in the past for Niagara Telecom and Nicklin Associates with the Waste Watcher and for Lifestyle Properties with their homepage (which can be linked to from the button on the left.) My main sites include SGL and Ithaca Portal (also linked to from the left.) Loopy and I do very different types of web design. He is more of a designer and I focus on code compliance and client side technology. We are more of a team than independant designers. I got my start in code compliance working for Oil Navigator back in 2000. I became really interested in code compliance there and had an opportunity to learn a lot. (Update in June, 2006: The web site for Oil Navigator was finally taken down. Most likely the ownership of the domain expired.)

Eric was nice enough to forward me the funniest email that I have seen in a long time and it is already posted over in our Funnies section. Take a look at The Best Headlines of 2002 . I was laughing out load sitting at my desk while I was reading it. It is not often that that happens.

Min came home from work and she, Loopy and I went out to the State St. Diner for some food. We are all out of money but Min has a credit card and we all missed being able to go out to eat so we splurged. It tasted really good.

Since today seems to be the day of links in the dalies I am going to add one that is totally irrelevant to anything, whatsoever. My aunt sent me this link today and it is pretty dumb but it is still pretty cute. Go and see what the FBI is up to now. Like I said, it is a silly link but you will get a kick out of it. Also, for all of you vegetarians out there (I know that we have quite a few in our readership) – Min and I have discovered the most amazing meat substitute ever. It is called Mycoprotein and it has been popular in Europe for years but it has only just come to the states and you can now buy it at Wegmans (and other fine grocery store chains.) It is sold in the US under the brand name of Quorn and you can find it in the frozen health foods section. It is totally delicious. You must all try the chicken cutlets and the ground beef substitutes. It is really nice for use veggies to have something with protein without resorting to soy products all of the time. You can see all of their products on their web site.

Well, there might not have been very much news today but there sure is plenty to write about, isn’t there? Min put her name in for a drawing at work hoping to win a used computer. They apparently have a number of them that they are getting rid of and she might win one of them in a drawing. There are old PCs and Macintoshs available. Strange as it may sound, I think that a Mac would be more useful to us since we already have a large collection of PCs around the house (I have four on my desk right now!) I have never owned a semi-modern Macintosh and it would be interested to learn how to use it. It would be really cool if she got one that was new enough to be able to load OSX on it but I am sure that that will never happen. More than likely, I will be trying to make a dual-boot Mac OS 8 / PPC Linux machine out of it. Hopefully it will be a PowerPC machine and not an ancient Motorola 68K machine (can you believe some people still own those?)

I did more work on the new server today. Lots of work (you guys probably don’t believe that this much work can go into preparing a machine, do you?) Today I pulled the current operating system (SuSE Linux 8.0) off of it and installed the newest version (8.1.) This was my first real install of 8.1 so I had a lot of learning to do. Luckily, I have worked extensively with SuSE since 6.4 and know their products really well. Loopy and I started working with SuSE back in the days of IBM in Endicott in the winter of 2000/2001 when SGL was an infant website (lol, now we are considered ancient in the blog world.) Many a book on blogging has been written by a person with tons less experience at it than I have. How terrible is that. Anyway, the install took a long time but I have it completed and I am now redoing all of the work that I did earlier this week (this was intentional, those were all trial installs, these will be the real deal.) The machine inches its way towards deployment in DC. We will all be very excited when it finally goes up. There will be lots of announcements about it here! If anyone would like to try out SuSE 8.1 to see if it would be right for them, I have a Live CD Eval version of it that I would be happy to let anyone borrow. This CD boots just like it is doing the install but instead of installing, it runs right off of the CD. This allows you to see how easy the install would be and see how well it will run on your computer. You can also get a feel for how gorgeous the desktop environment of KDE really is compared to those silly Windows XP systems and how easy and fast it is to install. The Live Eval CD is a great idea. You can even use it as your regular system if you don’t feel like owning a hard drive! (No, I’m not kidding.) The Live CD has a great office suite built right onto it. I dropped the Live CD off with Nate so that he could try it out. I would like to get the opinions of some people who have never used Linux before on how they like this version, how easy it is to use and how it compares to OSes that they have used. We are planning on rolling out SuSE 8.1 in our DC office soon making it the standard for our entire company.

This is a random thought but I had it so here it is. Anyone who is serious about working long hours at a computer needs to have a workstation light that is easy on the eyes. I have two Eclipse workstation lights (commonly known as geek lights) that really making working at the computer a lot easier. You can take a look at them at Think Geek. I have the light in this picture on my main computer and the older style on my server that sits behind me. The entire wall behind my desk is lit by them and it is really awesome. They are so adjustable in useful ways. If you are looking for cheap ways to make your computer tons more enjoyable – 1.) Get yourself a Logitech Optical Mouse for under $20US at Walmart and B.) Get an Eclipse Workstation light. You will love working on your computer again and for only $50US total. (Yes, I am well aware that I said 1 and then B, it is an inside joke that our Llama of the Month had better get!)

I am still doing a lot of reading (and I am sure that I will be doing even more next week as I have four nights in a hotel with no money to spend in a boring little town.) I am hoping to have three or four books finished before the weekend. Min is reading “The Dilbert Principle” now and has joined Dogbert’s New Ruling Class (in case Dogbert succeedes in taking over the world she will not become a slave this way.)

Ok, I am not trying to go for a record for long updates here so I am going to go to bed and call it a night. Today’s update is almost 10KB and that is enough for anyone in one day.

I did a little work on the site last night so there are some more pages that are now validated and looking a little smoother. I can’t wait until the new server is in and we can have all of this stuff totally automated. That will make my life so much easier!

So yesterday I decided that I was finally going to hook up the HP Deskjet 722 printer that I have had for years and years and have never used. Two weeks ago I went out and bought some ink for it. Today I set it up and then I realized that I had to idea where I have a printer cable or the power supply for it. So now it is sitting on my desk staring at me mockingly.

I spent some time shopping around on Amazon last night (after the whole Borders affair…) and am beginning to realize that I own SO many books that it is actually hard to find things that I really want that I don’t already have. There is a lot of stuff that I don’t have, but most of the stuff that I should own, I already do. Which is good – but I like to buy books. Amazon’s DVD suggestion system insists that I need to buy Amelie. I will probably buy it soon. Everyone says that it is really, really good. As Time Goes By Series 5 is out next week and Red Dwarf releases later this month (on my birthday – hint hint.) And don’t forget that My Big Fat Greek Wedding is out a week from today too! Lots of awesome stuff. February is a great month for DVDs.

Dominica was very excited when she discovered that she was the Llama of the Month. She has the site set as her default web page on her web browser at work. Min came home for lunch today but made me drive her back because she thought that the roads would be bad later. Loopy had to run some errands this afternoon so he went out and picked her up from work. Miranda managed to call moments after he drove away. Timing is everything.

The wind is ridiculous here today. It is so loud that it is hard to get anything done. It isn’t too cold though. At least the temps are warmer than they have been. The blinds have been blowing wildly around my room all day. It was hard to sleep last night, I kept waking up from all of the noise.

I am still working hard on getting the new web server ready to go to DC. I have learned tons about Apache2 and PHP and today I am learning how to update and install OpenSSL so that we can run encryption on the web server. I am learning new tasks on the new machine one at a time. The new server should be able to compress HTML files on the fly which will help to speed up downloads, especially for those who are looking at the pages over dial-up. Compressing the files so that they are smaller will really help with pages like SGL that are just loaded with text.

Min spent the evening playing Kingdom Hearts and I spent most of the night playing Dark Age of Camelot and getting SSL installed on my new server (SSL is up and working now. I am learning lots.) I also spent a lot of time surfing and looking at new technologies. Nate came home early from school because he wasn’t feeling well and spent most of the evening sleeping. Bob and Zach played racketball and Loopy continued to work on his game which is really coming along well. He has gotten tons done on it and it should be playable very soon.

THE FEBRUARY LLAMA OF THE MONTH IS DOMINICA TOCCO!!

Min wins our ninth LotM competition because she has done so much to stear new Ithacans to IthacaPortal.com which has managed to garner 65 web page requests a day – which still isn’t a lot but it is a start. The site is really starting to mature and with the new server going online very, very soon there will be many new enhancements coming down the line in the near future – much like there will be for SGL.

The work week starts again. Well, it is another month and time to look at the web site statistics for all of our web sites (Niagara Telecom and Ithaca Portal have twenty managed web sites that we host.) The statistics for SGL show huge growth for the month of January – even with the dailies being posted so late for much of the month, we managed to grow from an average of 65 pages served per day to 75 pages served per day! That is a 15% increase in just one month. We are also serving out, on average, an additional .7 MB more each day. Total, SGL uploads close to .2 GB every month. That is a lot of Scott Ramblings!

I attempted to return that movie to Borders this evening. That was an adventure. I started by going to the check out counter but no one was there. So I went to the Service desk and the guy that was there just left without so much as looking at me or acknowledging my existance in any way. Then I went and got into the other line at the service desk and when the person got done showing someone around the store she informed me that I had to take the movie to the counter to get it returned. So she sent me to the other counter (the one by the entrance that was closing instead of the one that was staying open – silly me) and the person working there informed me that I could only exchange the movie for a copy of the same movie – which of course the store didn’t have and in fact had -1 one of (of course – the person BEFORE me had bought the last copy.) Then he told me that only the service desk could order the replacement. So I returned to service where they gave me a hard time about coming back and why didn’t the front desk take care of it and then finally decided to order me the movie. Now, I have to take the one that doesn’t work home and hang on to it for 2 – 6 weeks until the other one comes in and I can go and exchange it. All of this is, of course, illegal since they sold me a defective piece of merchandise and refused to do anything about it. This is the second time that I have had a really bad customer service issue at Borders. You would think that I would have learned my lesson from the last time that I went to the one in Eastgate in Victor but no, I kept going back. I guess I will definitely not be buying DVDs there anymore, though. I don’t get a discount on them so they are super expensive and if they are defective – I’m just screwed. Amazon would have been able to get me the original disc in a day for the same price I got it at Borders or less and I could have returned it and gotten my money back the same day. Not six weeks later. Lesson learned. If I get burned by Borders a third time, we will know who the idiot is. All because I am lazy and want a movie the same day and don’t want to have to wait for it to ship to me.

Dominica is still playing Kingdom Hearts. She has put in about eight hours on that game. She rushed home from work to be able to play it. She says that on average it takes 40-50 hours of playing to be able to complete the game. She should have it done in a week or two. We are talking about getting some excercise equipment (who us – we don’t need that) and setting up a TV and some video games so that we can play and excercise at the same time. Loopy has a Game Cube and a few games and we have a Playstation and a Nintendo 64. We might have to come up with something else to make it really interesting (no, don’t even talk to me about the XBox!) We might buy a new monitor for my main computer and move my 20″ monitor to the excercise room to use instead of a television and then be able to play computer games on it (which are generally much more exciting anyway.)

Happy Anniversary to Arti and Danielle Ralston! This is nine years!

Min and I slept in this morning till after 10:00am. I have been doing a ton of reading the last three days and have finished two books and am half way through a third. I am teaching myself everything there is to know about making dynamic web pages using Apache2, PHP and MySQL. It is all very exciting. I also did some work on a computer for Bob, fixed Josh’s computer and have been continuing to play Dark Age of Camelot. DAoC is getting to be more exciting. I have learned most of the important parts of the interface and am now able to do things easily enough that it is starting to be enjoyable to play. It takes a bit to be able to find all of the different settings and commands that you need in the game and it doesn’t have built in support for Anti-Aliasing so you have to force that on manually. Once I did that, the game REALLY looked good. I think that I have just enough processing power between the CPU and the graphics card that I am able to have the AA cranked up and have the game still run ok. I am on level 6, now, which is about the point when you are supposed to be able to really start doing things in the game. So, I will keep you all posted. I still have to send away for the free hint book and atlas that come with the game. It should be a bit easier once I have some materieal to look things up in. For now, I keep exploring and ending up going places where I really shouldn’t have been going and getting my but kicked before I even knew what was going on. But I am learning.

Most of the day I just worked on learning more about PHP. It was a lazy day and I needed it. Min hooked up the PS2 that she borrowed from Phil and Kate and has been playing Kingdom Hearts (Final Fantasy with Disney characters in it.) She played it for four hours this evening. Loopy and I watched the second French and Saunders DVD. But, the DVD is bad and we were only able to watch half of it. Luckily, it wasn’t very good and I have the receipt so I am going to take it back and get something a bit more interesting. After that disc died, Loopy and I watched the bonus material on the Goldmember disc. There was a lot of stuff on there but all it really showed was that the people making the movie were as stupid as the movie made them appear that they must be. The entire cast was completely unable to do intelligent interviews at all. Everyone raved about the dumbest parts of the movie – just going on and on about it. It is no wonder that this was the worst of the three movies if these were the people working on it. They really shouldn’t have done the extra footage – it just made them all look worse than they already did.

I went to write the update today and I noticed that we had half of December still kicking around on the main page here and it had already been in the archives as well. So I got rid of that so the page takes a little less time to load now. Somebody should have told me, I meant to do that a long time ago. I moved early January while I was at it to clean things up a little. Boy do we have a ton of stuff in the archives. It must take people hours who are reading through that stuff.

Nate called this morning and woke me up with the news that the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry over Dallas, Texas. I was five when the Columbia first went into service in 1981 and I remember getting up really early before kindergarten to watch the first shuttle lunch on the news. It was very special to me as a small child. That was the beginning of the new era for the US in Space. Prior to the shuttles, we had done very little since the Apollo missions and space exploration had not been very exciting since the moon missions of the late 1960’s. The Columbia has always been something special to me – and now it and its crew are gone.

Josh and Joanna are still here this morning. We watched the news for about an hour this morning before showering and heading out to Stella’s for some brunch. We had a good time at Stella’s, the food is always incredible, but Josh wasn’t feeling very well so we ended up coming back to the house instead of going out wine tasting. Josh took a nap for a couple of hours and then he and Joanna headed back to Rochester. At least we think that we managed to get Josh’s computer fixed before he left. Hopefully he will be able to use it now for the games that he bought it for.

I spent most of the evening working on teaching myself PHP and MySQL. I have been learning quite a bit and my Multimedia DataBase (i.e. movie and CD listings) is coming along really well and I hope to have it fully online very soon. It is online right now but it is still in the test stages so I am not releasing the address for it yet. Maybe in a week or so, I will have it done enough for you to check out. I am very proud of the work that I have been doing, I have been learning tons about making web based applications.

Loopy is still out of work but is hopefully about a position in Rochester. He has been putting in tons of work on a couple of video game projects. He has gotten an amazing amount of work done (since he rarely has to leave the house) and has been learning tons and tons about how to program video games. His main project right now is making a Metroid clone for the Game Boy Advance. He has already written a game for the Game Boy Color.