Sheep Guarding Llama

Well, for those of you who have been following the site, you will noticed that I have fallen a bit behind recently. I have been really busy, I have to apologize. It is even worse than I thought that it would be because I wrote the Dec. 3 and 4 updates but never got them posted to the site so they are going up now. I will try to fill in the missing days in between tomorrow or Friday.

Bad ice storm today. All of the schools in the area had to close. The guys came home early today. Dominica had Loopy and I drive out to pick her up from work because the roads were so bad. We ended up just grabbing some McDonald’s for dinner since we were out there.

Not much news for today. Just working at home all day. The radio station is still up and running. I even had a chance to listen to it while I was down in Maryland a few days ago and it sounds really good from remote locations. I guess it is time to get some real content to put up there.

Cleaning and organizing have been the main topics yesterday and today. I took all three of the computers in my room down and moved them around. That was quite the undertaking. Now I am trying to get the last bits of things in the room put away so that all of the desk space is clear. I love clear desktops. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy it makes me. And how much more productive! I am getting so much more work done. Dominica is too. She really likes being able to make a mess in her own space and not have me get on her case about it.

Loopy and I both worked contract jobs today and they were entertaining, as usual, out of shear incompetance. First, Loopy’s job was in Rochester. They called him to ask him to work late last night and didn’t feel like sending him the job info until this morning. That would have been fine but they are in Austin, TX in a different time zone and took neither that nor Loopy’s travel time into account and barely managed to get the info to him before he had to leave. Then, it turns out that they had him go up a day early so the site wasn’t ready for him. They didn’t have anyone there to meet him at all and someone had to come in specifically for it. Then it turned out that the site didn’t have the expected network connection or cables and was unable to provide Loopy with anything to do expect take computers out of boxes and set them on the desk. Which he did. And that took three hours because the job was at the airport and scanning in and out took forever. Then my job at Senator Schumer’s office in Binghamton was equally exciting. First, none of the docs matched what I was doing. Second, the entire install was scheduled to take only two hours. But, I needed one single password to be able to finish the installation. I finish in one hour. But had to sit there waiting for someone in Wahington to get me the password – which they never did. I got paid four hours for a one hour job and didn’t even get to finish. Oh well, it wasn’t my money (but it is now.) This is pretty typical for these kinds of jobs.

Monday again. My project today is to completely rearrange the room. We have finally decided that it doesn’t work having Min’s computer on the main desk because she has a tendency to make a mess and even though it isn’t my mess it keeps me from being able to work and causes stress. So, as much as I love my closet office, she is moving her computer into the closet and I am getting the main desk all to myself. Now I have the ability to work at two computers and set up a laptop all within access from a single chair. That makes life a lot easier. It also makes the room a lot quieter since the room is colder than the closet and I no longer have to run my computer with the case open and a fan blowing into it. On top of that the computer is in a much more quiet location now and everything is just so much more peaceful. It will take a few days to get everything sorted out but already the room is really taking a turn for the better. So much junk is being thrown away or stored in a more logical way. It is really doing me a lot of good to have the room so neat. Now I just have to get some office supplies from OfficeMax to really do something with this room. I need some of those InBox / OutBox things to get totally organized. But I am getting there.

It hasn’t really been a very eventful week. Today Eric came over and we worked on his new laptop all day long and didn’t get very far. It is quite the undertaking to get this thing working. It is a total POS Sony Vaio (don’t ever buy a Sony) and it is totally worthless.

Another snowy day in Ithaca. I actually got ahold of Salisa, my friend from Singapore, who is getting married on December 22. I haven’t gotten to speak to her in a few months now – she has been all busy with the wedding plans and her new job at Hewlett-Packard and Compaq.

Eric is coming over tomorrow to do some work here. He has a new laptop that we need to get Windows 2000 and SuSE Linux installed on. He has been waiting for so long to get this laptop that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He is also getting one of our old Celeron 333 machines that will have Linux on it.