Sheep Guarding Llama

I have been so busy since I have been home that I haven’t even had a chance to post the update for the ninth until now. I was just so glad to be home that I didn’t even think about the web site. Right now I am working in DC and will be here all week. I was expecting to be working in Buffalo starting on Friday but that fell through, which I am relieved to hear since I have been so busy. I will be in DC until I attempt to make it to Star Wars with the gang on Friday night in Rochester.

Loop and I went out shopping yesterday and picked up a copy of the video game Dungeon Siege and a copy of SuSE Linux 8.0 Professional. I had already played a demo of Dungeon Siege and loved it so I was excited to be picking it up. Loop actually managed to come across a used copy of it at Electronics Boutique for only $20 and it had a $10 rebate inside. The game is still $50 anywhere that you go. So, I was ecstatic about it. The game is huge. I installed it on Dominica’s computer since hers is a lot faster than mine and it took everything that her machine had to play the game. It could stand to be on a bit faster machine even. But, as is, the game is awesome. I suggest that anyone with a fast machine with Windows 2000 or XP go and try it out. The demo is free and will give you a good taste of the game.

The company finally provided Eric with a laptop so he drove down to Ithaca yesterday to pick it up. He is very excited about it and was playing with it all day at work today. I did have to confiscate his really cool handheld Compaq iPaq, though. But he is much happier with the laptop. The handheld was ok but because of the silliness of both the PalmOS and the Windows CE operating systems, the handhelds just aren’t incredibly useful even though the hardware has so much potential to be. I don’t understand why they haven’t made more of an effort to really make them into tiny computers that are really useful. I think that a lot more people would buy them then. It is just a software issue. Nothing more to manufacture. I suppose that that would take away from the sales of full blown computers.

The coolest thing is, though, that Eric is now able to play Age of Empires 2 from work against me during the day. That could be really dangerous.

I am writing as I am working. I have found the computer that I was supposed to be working with down here after searching for a while and now I am only short a printer. John swears that it is around here somewhere. I am betting that there will be some missing hardware and that we won’t get everything up and running until tomorrow. That is my bet, anyway.

I got SuSE 8.0 installed for Dominica and so far I am awfully impressed with it. Some reviews recently have been kind of down on it but it is a vast improvement over their latest releases. Josh, Loopy and I are all planning on having it up and running soon on our own machines.

I have been neglecting to do my duty by providing entertaining web sites to go to everyday, so Anne came up with one for everyone to try out. This page is an Elven name generator based on the works or J.R.R. Tolkien. I will try to get back on track with our web sites of the day.

I received my refund from Essential Computing the other day for the two bad motherboards that I had gotten from there. I am still waiting for word from CompuVest as to what is happening with the bad processor that I am waiting on. They are supposed to be sending me a new one. I am waiting to see what happens there before I get the parts to finish off building my computer.

The drive down to DC today was really long. Heavy rain and hail the entire way. I can’t believe how bad the weather was. The wind was probably close to 60 mph. Last night it rained so much in Ithaca that there was a creek flowing past the back of the house. I have heard that the water table is back up to normal levels now and that the drought is over. I should hope so, that was a lot of water. And it is still raining now. It figures that today being the first time that I have taken my new car out for a long trip and it hails on it all day. That car is almost nine months old and after driving all day only has 2500 (yes, exactly 2500) miles on it. I kept track today and I am getting 31 mpg.

I am trying to get Dominica and Eric and another friend of mine, John Stephens, to look into Empire State in the fall. Min is thinking about picking up a B.Sc. in Chemistry while Eric is thinking about something along the lines of Civil Engineering and John is going to go for Computer Science.

Ok, it has passed midnight so I am going to call it an SGL day and move on and post. It is going to be a long night.

Happy Mother’s Day!

For a birthday present, Dominica got me tickets to go and see “Into the Woods” on Broadway and we are going today.

We made it to NYC plenty early and went out for dinner and some shopping before the show. I am terrible at dealing with the big in-store crowds in the city. Everyone is so packed in like sardines that it drives me crazy. I did manage to find a nice Tag-Heuer knock off on the street for $30. I know that that is a bit pricey, but I seldomly have the chance to get one and I sure didn’t have the time to head down to Chinatown to get a good deal on one. So I picked it up on Times Square.

We looked around a bit but couldn’t find anyplace that we wanted to eat for the longest time. We finally settled on Sardis, right across from the theatre. The menu had some pretty tempting vegetarian entrees that we wanted to try out. It took Min a little while to figure out that we were in the same restaurant as was seen in “The Muppets Take Manhattan.” Sardis is the restaurant where Kermit the Frog takes Liza Minelli’s (you know, Princess Leia’s mom) picture off of the wall and replaces it with his own. The picture was still there. Our waitress came up to us and pointed out that Vanessa Williams (who was staring as the witch in “Into the Woods” was eating just three tables down from us. It was nice to know that we picked a restaurant that the locals ate at too.

The show was good. Vanessa Williams makes for an interesting witch. Very different from Bernadette Peter’s portrayal. The show was altered a little bit from the original which helped lend itself to the new cast. The addition of a live Milky White really changed the flavor of the show and made it a lot lighter. I think that the show is easier now for children than it was before. It used to be pretty dark. It is still dark but nearly so. The cast was good in general, the children – Jack and Little Red Riding Hood where very good, LRRH was even better than the original. The baker’s wife was very good and Cinderella was good. The baker was flat, though. A couple of the characters we were able to recognize from television. The narrator was very different. Min liked him a lot but I liked the original a lot more.

Today, Dominica and I went out to my parent’s house to celebrate Mother’s Day. The weekend was just going to be too busy so we thought that it would be best to do it today. Dad and I had a chance to get a couple hours worth of work done too.

Ah, how nice it is to actually have a desk and mouse to work with today. I am working out of the DC office all day. Things are going well here this morning and the weather is nice too. I got up a little bit late because John forgot to get me up this morning but I had some extra time built into the schedule anyway. We decided to have some pasta last night around 1:00 am. And we watched the Twilight Zone. I couldn’t belive, I identified a very young Peter Falk playing the part of Fidel Castro.

For you web developers out there, Chami has released the latest build of HTML-Kit 1.0 Beta 3. The last build was Alpha 3. The update went smoothly for me.