May 1, 2002

Another month here at Sheep Guarding Llama. I went to Empire State today to sign up for my classes starting on the 20th. Dominica was able to go watch some TV on the couch today for about one hour. She is really hoping that she will be able to fly to Houston in two days. It is a good thing that we got a flight that leaves late in the day – it gives her almost another day to get better.

Flag of BelgiumAnne Update number sixteen went up today. I even got the chance to IM with her a little bit today. It is hard to catch her with the time difference and the blocking of her IM and all.

I finished reading Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban late last night. I stayed up just to finish it. That was definitely the best book so far. I couldn’t put it down. I can’t wait to read the last book. It isn’t out in paperback for a while so I might get it on CD for now and listen to all 13 hours of it while I am in the car. I can’t believe how addicted to these books I have become. I am currently working on some David Eddings stuff – the Belgariad. That is pretty good too.

As I project, I think that I am going to start builing a full blown, in house, Llama movie collection digital library. That way, we can look up what movies we have off of a central database server. What a cool idea. I need something like that to work on to keep me focused. Right now, all of the movies are on a spreadsheet that we update by hand everytime there is a new movie added or someone watches one (yes, we keep track of how many times each movie has been watched!) Currently, there are 474 movies on Laserdisc and DVD. Those movies have been watched approximately 1080 times. We also track the cost of purchasing the movies. This allows us to determine whether or not the collection is cost effective. If it becomes cheaper to rent movies, then we have to reconsider how the movies are purchased. Currently, we are maintaining the collection right at the cost of renting. We are hovering between $5.60 and $5.90 for every time that we watch a movie. This movie goes up and down drastically around when we have a big buying spree or someone is sick and stays home and watched a lot of movies.

The current movies reigning as the most watched are Bulletproof and Raiders of the Sun at ten times each and both on Laserdisc. This, however, does not reflect the total number of times that Thumb Wars has been watched since there are seven copies of it in the house. The next most watched movies at nine times each are Aladdin and Happy Gilmore on Laserdisc and My Blue Heaven on DVD. Chasing Amy has been watched eight times and is also on Laserdisc. Muppet Treasure Island, Liar, Liar and Jurassic Park are all on Laserdisc and have been viewed seven times along with The Truman Show on DVD. That rounds out our most popular movies. As you can see, even though a lot of our most popular movies (recently) are now on DVD, the biggest ones are still the old standby Laserdiscs which really says a lot for the movies because they are a lot more of an effort to watch, especially since everyone has a DVD player in their room and we have a lot of people who borrow the DVDs while there are only two LD players in the house and Josh is the only person who could borrow any and he never does since he used to live with us and has seen them all already.

Since we also track how much the movies cost, I can tell you that Dragon Fire, Shooting Elizabet, Raiders of the Sun and Muppet Treasure Island were our best buys of all time – each coming in at costing less than $1.00 per time watched. That is something considering three of those movies where unhead ofs when they were purchased. You will notice, however, that most of those make the WHAT! movie list. That list does a lot to help promote a movie around the house.

I finally managed to track down Mary this evening. She is now back living in Geneseo and about to start her new job at Pioneer Credit in Perry (yeah, none of us can completely escape – can we?) This makes two friends of mine who work for Pioneer Credit! How weird. Mary and Jocelyn have broken up – so Mary is officially single now. So all of you who have been waiting the last couple years for your chance, here it is. Mary has also shaved her head – I think that I will call her, Mini Me.

April 30, 2002

Josh is here today. We were hoping to be able to play some golf but we are out of luck. Josh has to get down to Binghamton by 4 o’clock to help teach his marching students so we couldn’t wait for the weather to clear up.

I managed to pick up a bunch more parts for my new computer today. I got the last hard drive I need, the DVD drive and the CD writer. I am pretty close now. Only a few more pieces. I also sent back the stuff that was bad. Hopefully I will be getting full money back on those three parts.

Dominica and Miranda watched the last six episodes of the Sakura Diaries, they are the first two to finish the series. Nate made it through Episode 7 and Bob and I made it through Episode 8. Nate even looked for some more Sakura stuff at the mall.

April 29, 2002

Josh came down this evening, he is in here the hopes of us being able to play a round of golf tomorrow. The weather isn’t looking like it is going to be good, though.

We watched some movies today. The Sakura Diaries has become the most popular show in the house. Only Loopy isn’t addicted to it. Tim, Nate, Bob, Dominica, Miranda, Josh and I are all hooked. It is really interesting. Josh, Nate, Miranda, Bob and I watched Run Lola, Run. Everyone seemed to think that it was pretty good. Josh, Miranda and I watched Fallen Angels but I fell asleep.

April 28, 2002

Boy is it nice to be home. A whole week of living in hotel rooms can really wear on you. I forgot to mention previously that I was able to get a copy of Thumbtanic and Eric and I watched it two nights ago. Everyone has really been looking forward to seeing it. From a first viewing, it isn’t as good as the other two. Dominica and I watched it last night and I think that it is a little bit better than I thought that it was the first time but it still moves too slowly compared to Thumb Wars.

Dominica is unable to walk today. She has been watching movies all day. Tomorrow she will be going into Cortland Memorial Hospital for her first MRI.

It is finally raining here in Ithaca. That wonderful early spring rain that only falls once or twice a year. This is my favorite weather of all. I got the opportunity to actually and sit and read by the window today. I have already read about half of the third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner of Azkaban. So far, it is really good. Min says that it is the best of the HP books and so far I think that she is right. This book is quite a bit longer than the previous two books. I will be through this one in now time but then I will have to wait until July for the fourth book to release in soft cover. I would be happy to buy the book in hard cover but I hate having to deal with big, bulky hard cover books. Plus it wouldn’t match my other three HP books.

April 27, 2002

Finally, after a week away from home, Eric and I are heading home today. What a long and busy week it has been.

Next week, on Friday, Dominica and I are heading out to Houston, TX to visit her sister. This will be my first time to the Texas region. I am hoping to have a chance to meet a friend of mine who lives in Mexico as well while I am there. We are going for five days. I hope that they get a cold spell while we are there. I am not designed well for this hot weather. It should be fun, though. I expect that we will be going to the zoo (I LOVE the zoo) and I am able to bring my laptop with me – so I can continue to work as usual. Plus, it will give me some time to start preparing for the classes that I am planning on taking this semester. I am hoping to be able to schedule a full time work load this summer at Empire State (www.esc.edu.)

I forget to mention previously that Nate has his new 2001 Black Ford Explorer Sport, now. He got it this week while I have been away. Hopefully, this one won’t burn up on him. He might be driving it home to show to his family today. I might be picking him up there. I don’t really know what is going on.

Dominica threw her back out yesterday, so she is laid up again for the time being. And of all times, she had to through it out on her very last day of work at her old job. She is having an MRI done on Monday.

Eric got completely trashed last night, it was really hilarious. You can thank Rob and JJ at Island Jim’s for setting him up all night. This was Eric’s first trip to Island Jim’s to see where we all hang out here in DC. Now he is officially one of the crew. On the way home we stopped by Borders and picked up some books. I got a new book on Java programming and Eric got one on HTML and XHTML. Can you believe that Eric actually bought a book – and a computer book at that. Isn’t this world a crazy place?

Right now, Eric is playing video games on John’s amazing video game machine (Athlon XP 1900+, Soyo Dragon+, GeFroce3 Ti 500.) John has a full 3D setup like Loopy’s so Eric is playing games like Deus Ex in that. Eric managed to pick up a copy of Deus Ex this weekend for only $4.00. Quite the deal. I am such a bad influence. Eric also played Giants: Citizen Kubota (or whatever it is called) and Castle Wolfenstein. Giants was in full 3D and Eric thought that it was pretty good. Good enough that he might even buy himself a copy. That is pretty surprising since we had expected it to be so bad. I am mentioning this now because I want to tell Loopy and I expect that I will forget. Eric also thought that Castle Wolfenstein was really awesome.

John is in the process of closing on a house here in the Chesapeake Bay region. We will see what happens there. We have all been trying to get houses and I know how hard it is. I am planning on talking to the bank this week about getting a mortgage so that I can get a house. But I may end up staying right where I am. Boy, would it be nice to know what is happening. (And before it is too late at that.) Maybe I will be moving down here in the autumn. Just another factor in the never ending quest for “Where are we going to live next year?”

Can you believe that there are three days of updates left to go this month? This is the first time that we ever had to archive the previous month halfway through the current month. We almost need to archive part of this month now! I am awaiting a new update from Anne before posting. The one that I got was blank. So, Anne, if you are reading this – have your dad send me a new copy.

Eric and I are now sitting in the airport. We have fifty minutes until the flight takes off. We have already gone through the check in and terminal security process. We are waiting at our gate now. We will have to go through the personal search yet before we get on the plane. How do I know this? Because we always get searched. Once, when I was flying to San Diego, I did not have to get searched. That is the only time that I have not been searched. Considering how much I fly, that is pretty bad. Eric gets searched every time too. So did Josh and Loopy when they flew. It is pretty consistent.

Congratulations to JJ in DC who is graduating from Catholic University of America in two weeks. Also, congratulations to Miranda who graduated from her college in the last few days. It is very depressing to have everyone graduating a few weeks before I start back at school.

Our flight just got delayed. Only by a little bit, they expect. The plane is not here yet and we are expected to leave shortly.