Sheep Guarding Llama

Before we find ourselves too far into the month, right away we will announce that our…

JANUARY LLAMA OF THE MONTH IS MATT HOCH

Matt wins our seventh LoTM title for a number of reasons. 1) He has done much to promote the overall readership of our site. 2) He has performed for the last three years at our year end Llama Rama Luau. 3) He first suggested the Llama of the Month competition (although its name has changed since then.)

Last night, Loopy and I convinced Miranda to play a few rounds of Quake III. This is the first that we have really tried playing Quake III after we had had so much fun with Quake II two years ago. A year and a half ago, I played Quake III all the way through on my own and Loopy did more recently but we have never played it against each other. Loopy and I both feel that it is an improvement. Miranda picked it up really quickly too and was kicking butt after just a couple of minutes. Bob played a few rounds and Natalie even played for a couple of minutes and picked it up really quickly too. Canadians must have a knack for running around and shooting people (who knew?)

I got myself up really early this morning. I have been up and running since 4:50 am. I feel like Eric! It is going to be a busy day so I wanted to get started early. There is a blizzard warning in effect for our entire travel area today so I don’t know what the plan is going to be. The trip is about five hours in good weather so it is going to be rough. And that is just Loopy and my trip. The girls have to drive to North Bay and there is heavy snow (or so it looks like from the satellite) all the way up the lakes.

The weather ended up being too bad to travel so we stayed in Ithaca. I had to drive out and pick Dominica up from work because the roads were so bad. I ended up leaving my car at Advion and driving Min’s car home instead. Around eleven in the evening, we had a massive brown out. The power stayed on for two or three hours at least with our lights slowly dimming throughout the evening. Bob, Loop, Min and I panicked and ran around the house unplugging all of the computer and stereo equipment. We were really worried about damage due to the extended period of poor power. All of our computers had been on when the brown out happened.

A big Happy Birthday to Mary Johnston who is probably not reading this page or she had better get a hold of me!

I am working on my new computer today. I installed BeOS Developers Edition 1.1 this morning and am so glad to have BeOS working on one of my machines again. I used to use BeOS R5 on one of my older computers (the one that Nate uses now) when we lived at Sanctuary but I just haven’t had the desk space up until now to have one here. But with this new machine I get to do it again and the new Dev. Ed. is two versions newer than what I last used and so far it is pretty good. I did get too new of a graphics card, though, and it isn’t supported so I need to figure out how I am going to deal with that. But that is only so bad and hopefully it will be supported soon.

SGL does have some good news for the new year. Just two weeks ago we had the chance to speak with our Internet service provider and we have managed to have our access speed increased by more than 25% which should be noticeable by those of you who have fast connections as our page should be loading a bit faster than it used to. We hope that we have the opportunity to increase our speed again in the coming year but an increase again (due to the steps available from our provider) would be a 50% increase in speed but with a pretty hefty price tag. But maybe we will be lucky.

I would like to send out a big hello to Joe Miller and the rest of the Llamas who have been faithful readers of ours from the Horseheads region for quite some time now. Joe was our first ever Llama of the Month (nominated by Matt Hoch) back in February, 2001 – almost two years ago! Matt informed me that Joe and the gang are still reading the site after all this time.

Loopy, Miranda and I went out this evening to see Star Trek: Nemesis (also known as Star Trek X or 10.) We all liked it. It was earth-shattering but it was well done and a bit more emotional than most of the previous incarnations of the beloved series (nothing will compete with the closing of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn.) Min and Nat decided to go see Two Weeks Notice instead which was playing right next door at the same time.

I forgot to yesterday morning, Josh, Joanna, Phil, Kate, Natalie, Min and I went out for an early lunch at the Kapital Korner down on State St. (The State Street Diner was totally packed and we couldn’t get in there for some breakfast so we had to go elsewhere.) I thought that there food was really excellent and I plan to be getting Chinese from there again. Their eggrolls were especially excellent.

The Canadians are expected to be heading home tomorrow. Loopy and I are driving them out to Avon to get Miranda’s car and then Loop and I are heading up to Rochester to work at the hospital center before returning to Ithaca in the evening. It works out well because I needed to get to the bank (I use a Rochester bank still because they have treated me so well for so long.) Hopefully the weather won’t be bad, the roads were horrendous tonight going to and from the movies. I have a headlight out too. Probably shorted out from all of the snow that my car has been burried under this week.

Happy New Year! And welcome to the fourth year of Sheep Guarding Llama! We started in 2000 and here we are in 2003. Whoo-hoo.

As we do every year, we ended last year with a bang in true Llama style with the Llama Rama Luau. We had a good turn out this year and the largest sleep over number that we have ever had. We also had the first people to go from the party to a hotel. Every room in the house had someone sleeping in it and my room had six! Matt performed as he has the last three years and eveyone seemed to have a really good time. The overall level of drunkedness seemed to be a lot lower than usual (nothing will ever top New Years 2000 – wink wink Nate… All in all about 26 people STAYED at the house after the party. It took four car loads to get everyone to breakfast this morning after it was all over. That is definitely a first. We also had a number of Llamas that have never made it down to Ithaca for a Luau before – Eric, Amanda, Phil, Kate and Joanna. Dana made it after having missed last year. We wish that Mary could have made it but no one knows how to get a hold of her (so if she is reading this – email me!)

This morning everyone seemed to be in pretty good shape. Normally there is a high incidence of hang over and exhaustion but I guess, as we get older, we get more reserved and the party doesn’t have the same impace that it used to have. The place wasn’t nearly as trashed as it usually is either. In fact, it looks pretty good already.

I am taking the day to relax, for the most part. Not much happening today so it is a good day to kind of bury my head and hide. Miranda is playing Simpson’s Road Rage on the GameCube because there is a special vehicle that only comes out on New Year’s. I have been playing Max Payne still. I think that that game is a lot of fun. It is so seldom that I go out for that kind of game that it is a really nice diversion. Min is playing Zoo Tycoon on her new monitor in her new snuggle sack. I am putting a little work into the new computer that I have as well. I would like to get that running soon. My main monitor (the 20″ Sampo) appears that it might be dying on me, which sucks. I have never actually had a monitor crap out on me but this one might. I will be turning into Loopy soon! So, I have to be prepared to buy myself a new one. So, if anyone sees a good deal on a 21″ Sony Trinitron Monitor… 🙂

I almost forgot to mention that Natalie helped me bleach my hair on New Year’s Eve so I have very yellow hair now which is quite the departure for me. Everytime I look in the mirror it is a real surprise.

New Year’s Eve 2003. Can you believe another year has gone. And what an eventful year this has been. In fact, I suppose it is time for this year to be over, there has been plenty happening for me. I am ready for a slow year.

I had to get up first thing this morning and head on over to the health services center just down the road to get some blood work done. I have to be tested for all of the regular stuff like diabetes, cholesterol, etc. After getting back from that, I had to head straight out to Batavia to have surgery done on my right foot. I have had a bad plantar’s wart there for well over a year and I have been having it looked at and now we are finally really doing something about it. This morning I am having it cut out finally by my foot doctor. It is the same doctor who operated on my right big toe years ago. The surgery seemed to go okay and my foot was numb for a good bit of the day. There used to be a time when having a pain killer in my system would only last for a short time but it appears that my liver doesn’t process the chemicals nearly as fast as it used to when I was younger. I think my last foot surgery was about seven years ago but it is hard to remember.

I got back to the house a few hours before the party was to begin. Min and Andy were hard at work trying to get the house ready for the party. I helped some but I also had to keep my foot up a bit of the time because it needed to not have pressure on it. There was some cleaning to do and some moving of things into safe locations and lots of food to make. Min made up tons of really good food for the party. She made a veggie tray, a Smore’s station, a really good cheese fondue and meatballs just to mention a few. She did a really good job. It is really unfortunate that she has to go to work tonight. But at least they aren’t making her come into work until after midnight so at least she will get to see a little of the party.

Bob Winans (I mention his name because SGL never comes up on his name searches – ha, ha, Bob, now everyone will be able to find you!) and Lisa arrived early around 6:00 and helped get things ready for the party as well. Bob went and got a bunch of meat products since Min and I don’t have any of our own around here.

The party really got started a little around 7:30. Jen Middleton and Leanne Dodge were the first to arrive (I am mentioning everyone’s full names today so that everyone can do searches on their names and find themselves.) Bob Crissman (Montana Bob) was the next to arrive. Everyone else waited until closer to 9:30 before they started to arrive. So the party was pretty small for a while. Eric and Amanda Millen didn’t make the party because Amanda was feeling pretty sick. Probably from the flu that has been going around recently. Phil Ayers and Kate Ayers (lol, I am getting carried away with this), Nathan Parker and Tammy Englert (Tammy Parker later this year!), Josh Relyea and Joanna Finger and Zach Levi and Susan Spafford all managed to make it so we had a pretty good group. A good group that can all search for themselves on the internet now. Most of them could be found there already but now they can all be found on SGL. Of course, it sometimes takes months before Google goes over us again.

We partied on until 2:00am or so. Then most everyone headed home and the seven of us staying here went off to bed.

Happy New Year’s Eve! Another year has come and gone. Can you believe that it is almost 2003? Of course everyone says that every year and it gets to be a little bit less amazing every time that you hear it and pretty soon it is amazing that it is ONLY 2003. I am sure that you all know what I mean. But it is hard to believe that all of that Y2K crap was THREE years ago. And it is hard to believe that this is the third “Llama Rama Luau” being hyped on SGL. Can you believe that I have sat down and told you all about my life practically every day for the last three years? Pretty weird, I know. But not nearly as weird as the fact that you are all still reading this. But cool! I hope to see everyone tonight. This is our big chance for everyone to all get together – even our Canadians who arrived last night. It looks like the turn-out is going to be excellent this year (but John and Michelle had to cancel on us because Michelle’s sister JUST had her first baby and they are all busy with the new little one so we are very sad that they won’t be making it but we do want to send them all a big congratulations.)

Some of you may have noticed all of the content that suddenly appeared on the site yesterday. I have been out of town for almost three weeks and I am doing what I can to keep everyone up to date with the highlights but I have been pretty much out of touch (and unreachable as many of you have noticed) but I am back now and hopefully will remain so for at least a week. I will be trying hard to keep the site up to date in the coming year (do I hear a resolution coming on?) If you notice a [BACK DATED] on some days, those are days that I have gone back and filled in the info for. So look for those to see things that you might have missed even if you check the site everyday. (Update from June, 2006: The Back Dated tags were removed as they no longer made sense in the context of the site. Basically all updates since a few days before Christmas were written a week later.)

The last couple of days, I have been playing Max Payne on my serious gaming machine and it is pretty cool. Not something that I usually get into (much more of a Josh game) but I am having a good time with it. A nice diversion. The graphics are still amazing. In fact, I almost need a faster machine. How depressing is that. Soon enough I will have one (I hope 🙂 Actually, I have other toys on my agenda first that don’t cost as much as a new top end video gaming machine. I want an IBM PowerPC based Linux and MorphOS machine (I am literally saving my pennies to get one – I hope I can save enough) and I am currently building a new Pentium III machine. I wouldn’t normally go through the hassle of building a PIII machine but I already had all of the parts except the motherboard and the graphics cards and I found an awesome deal on a genuine Intel MoBo and I picked up a GeForce 4 MX card for it so I have a pretty nice set up. Only a 10GB Hard drive for now but 384MB PC133. So, overall, not too shabby. It is going to be my test computer to put all kinds of weird operating systems on just to try them out. I am also going to use it as a dedicated DVD and television machines hooked to the new flat panel monitor in the middle of my three desks as a kind of room entertainment system.

Dominica has been playing her new Game Boy Advance a lot and yesterday she managed to beat (yes, already) Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets. She loves being able to sit in her closet/office and play games on her GBA. Luckily she got a 4 way connector for Christmas and she, Loopy, Bob and I all have GBAs so we can hook them all together to play games. Too bad we don’t have any games that let us do that!

It started raining late last night and it was still raining this morning. Hopefully the temperature won’t drop and freeze the roads before the party. If it stays warm like this, travelling will be really good. Two years ago almost no one was able to make it because the roads were so bad.