Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning I got up and travelled to Rochester. Eric and I are attempting to get our webcam set up there for a show in Harlem. Unfortunately, the webcam is junk and didn’t end up working at all. Luckily, there is a back up cam in Washington that was used instead. I haven’t heard how the show went yet, though. So maybe it didn’t matter anyway.

Eric and I did lunch at Jay’s like we often do and then we test drove the new 2003 Mazda 6! What a nice car. We both really liked it. It was fully loaded – with the plastic still on the seats. It has almost a hundred hourse more than the PR5 that I am driving now so it really roared. I am thinking about trading in my PR5 on one when the next model year comes out. The 3.0 litre engine that they have in the 6 is a brand new engine and I might consider buying a car in its first model year but only if it has a tried and true engine. In this case, I will just have to curb my appetite for new cars and wait it out.

The other day, I picked up some new books on CD and today I listened to Scott Adam’s “Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel.” I am on the final disc already and should complete the book in the very near future. Eric and I stopped by Borders today and I managed to finally find the final Sue Grafton Alphabet Murder novel that I have been looking for for so long. “N is for Noose” is finally mine. I have three left to listen to before I am totally caught up with Ms. Grafton and I will have to patiently wait out her writing of the nine final books. Luckily, I have sixteen hours of her material to listen to before I have nothing left. Eric bought his first programming book today so we will see if we are able to make a programmer out of him. He got a book on PHP so maybe he will be designing really cool web applications in no time!

It is hump day. I have little to report today except that Min and I went to the Tower Club Restaurant at Ithaca College for lunch today. We tried to go yesterday but our schedules just didn’t allow it. We have wanted to go for a long time but it just never works out. The Tower Club is only open for two hours a day and it takes a little while to be able to get a meal there so it isn’t the best place to run off to, especially when you are coming from across town. The meal was excellent and the view was spectacular. I am going to have to eat there more often. I love being able to eat and to look down on the city. It is so neat. Too bad that parking is such a headache up there.

Dominica is reading “What Color Is My Parachute?” Very exciting stuff. I am mostly just reading Dilbert books (the comic ones) and some books on the Apache web server. I have been making really good progress recently through a number of books.

Natalie called this evening as she road the bus through town on her way to the Big Apple. She thought that it was pretty funny that she was pretty much coming right by the house while riding a bus from Toronto to New York. It is pretty funny that a route so long would wind up coming right past the house.

My first real day working at home again. Yesterday was a short day and I needed to relax a bit. Eric and I are really pushing to get the Waste Watcher working at 100% in DC so that is taking up most of our time and dad is working on some things that just aren’t working so that is happening too.

I have lots of little things to get done this week. One is to get the Linux/Apache web server that I have been working on installed and ready to head down to DC. Now that the KVM is in place and wires are ready, we are ready to start installing some cool new stuff and I am really excited. I really enjoy working with Linux and I can’t wait to get more Unix equipment installed. More fun for me! SGL will be hosted on the new Linux server as soon as it is in place. In fact, there are some exciting changes coming as soon as it moves over too. I have a plan to manage the site more efficiently allowing for faster changes keeping all of the seperate pages similar.

Min and I watched the Bourne Identity on DVD this evening. I saw it in the theatre but she hadn’t seen it before. I think that it is one of the best action films done in the last year or so. It is in DTS too and it really rocked on the surround sound system.

Min and I got up this morning and hit the road to get back to New York. There is nothing like getting stranded along the long PA Rt. 81 stretch. Eric knows all about that. We managed to get back to Ithaca just after noon. Min headed on into work. I was glad to be back to New York. I have been away for more than a week and it is nice to be home.

I got Dark Age of Camelot installed on my computer (after taking it apart and getting the sound card working again.) It took me a while to figure out how the game worked but the game is looking pretty interesting and the graphics are pretty good. In fact, the game needs a really screaming computer just to be able to run well. I will keep everyone informed as to how it is once I get into it a little bit more.

Loopy, Min and I went to dinner at the State St. Diner and then we went and got some new movies and books on CD. We got Spirit and Goldmember. On Audio CD we got the last two Sue Grafton novels (“P” and “Q”) – I still have not managed to track down “N”. I also got Scott Adams latest Dilbert business book “The Way of the Weasel.”

After we got back to the house, Loopy got back to work on the video games and job hunting that he has been doing and Min and I got back to watching the britcom “A Fine Romance” that we have been working on. We are most of the way through the first season.

Travel day. Min and I got up and started packing first thing this morning. We watched some television before we hit the road. We ended up not leaving until around 5:30 in the afternoon after I had gotten some work done. We raced to get to Best Buy before it closed so that I could pick up the Dark Age of Camelot and its expansion pack. It is one of those new MUD style massive multiplayer games. I have been interested in getting into one for a while and I heard that this one was pretty good. So, I finally broke down and decided to give one a try. I will keep you up to date on how it is.

We made it about half way through Pennsylvania when the snow started to come down really heavily and soon travelling was practically impossible. We slowed down to under thirty miles an hour from Harrisburg and north and finally I decided that I couldn’t take anymore around Hazleton and we managed to find a hotel in West Hazleton where we could get off of the road. This is the second time that I have gotten stranded along 81 right in that area.