December 17, 2001

Yes, yes, I am delinquent again with updates for the site. Not as bad as I have been in the past, however. I was very busy working in DC last week and going to Nate & Bob’s Middle School’s Presentation of “Once Upon A Mattress.” Last night was the last of the six shows and it was excellent. I managed to make it to three of the shows this year. Bob, unfortunately, had to miss last night’s show because he has the flu and was unable to sit through the show. Dominica threw her back out on Friday morning and has been unable to move pretty much since then. Friday and Saturday were terrible but by Saturday night she was at least able to sit in a chair and watch movies to help pass the time.

I am working in Rochester today so I am making another attempt at collecting the RX-7 from Canandaigua. We will see if this manages to happen today. It would be nice to finally have that car dealt with and away for the winter. But at least I will get to drive it around today – “MLUVNIT!”

Not much else exciting going on around here. The show, the sickness and my working out of town have kept everyone pretty much occupied. At least Anne has been adding some content to the site to keep things interesting. I still have not had any time to add the Bio button or page to the site. Soon, soon, I promise.

Don’t forget that this weekend is the Lord of the Rings I: Fellowship of the Ring. Opens Friday, I believe. Some of the Llamas are heading to Binghamton to see it on Friday night. I will have to wait and see if I can go because I am having my four wisdom teeth removed (yes, Leanne, I know) on Thursday and I might not be able to make it.

If anyone out there is using Instant Messengers from Yahoo!, AOL, or MSN, then drop me a line. You can reach me at scottalanmiller on Yahoo!, itsallaboutscott on AOL or [email protected] on MSN. I am using a new messenger called Trillian now and it really rocks. Yahoo! Messenger was my main service but the newest version broke on Windows 2000 so I had to stop using it except when I was on my Linux box (once again, software designed for Windows that only runs on Linux) but Ken pointed me to www.Trillian.cc where you can download a free messenger that handles AIM, Yahoo!, IRC, ICQ and MSN for you all at once and it is really cool. So I suggest that you all go and download it and talk to me. Don’t talk to me forever though, I have work to do. If everyone is interested, we could put up a Llama IM page where you could go to get address of Llamas that you know.

Speaking of things running on Linux and not Windows… The Sims is one of the most popular games of the year, however, it was designed only to run on the old Windows 95/98/ME series (which Microsoft no longer makes and will never support again) and does not work (says so right on the box) with the supported and current Windows 2000, XP and .NET Operating Systems. But the funniest thing is that the Linux community has gotten The Sims to run on Mandrake Linux using the WineX libraries. So, it is official, Linux can run some Windows programs better than Microsoft can. If you want to try out Linux and the Sims, you can buy it online at www.transgaming.com or you can pick it up at a lot of stores in the area like Best Buy. Look for Mandrake Linux 8.1 Gaming Edition. Mandrake is far from my favorite version of Linux (Yeah, SuSE 7.3 rocks!) but it is the only version running the Sims right now so if you want that, that is the only way to go.

Nate, Tim, Loopy and I actually went out to the garage last night and played Christmas Carols on our brass instruments. Tim plays tuba and trombone, I play trombone, Loopy and Nate play trumpet.

Ok, I have to get to Rochester so I will talk to you all later.

December 8, 2001

Last night was the opening night of Nate and Bob’s musical at Boynton Middle School. They are doing “Once Upon A Mattress.” The show was great last night. Dominica and I saw the show last night. Loopy and I are going to the show tonight. Tim is playing tuba in the pit too.

Flag of BelgiumThere is another Anne update posted today. That is update number eight. I think that she might be writing more content going on to the site than I am. If you think that I have long updates then you should read her’s.

Bob has finally caught the Age of Empire’s 2 bug and is loading it up onto his computer today. We will see how long it is before he gets addicted to it too. Loopy has been working on additional taunts to add to the game so it is even more hilarious now!

November content has been moved over to the archives. This page is nice and fast to load now. Christmas is coming soon, only 2 ½ weeks to go. Hope you all have been shopping.

December 6, 2001

Thumb people. That is the theme of the day. Loopy has been hard at work making Thumb people out of the Llamas. Thumb Llamas I guess is more appropriate. If any of you have ever seen one of the Thumb movies like Thumb Wars: The Phantom Cuticle then you know what I am talking about. The weather is still way too warm here. You could almost wear shorts again today. In fact, I saw someone at the mall wearing short this afternoon.

December 5, 2001

Another exciting Llama day. Commodore 64 emulation was popular again today. Barbie and Below the Root are the popular games. Loopy bought a used Sega Dreamcast today. It only cost him $40. So now we have two Game Boy Colors, one Game Boy Advance (but I have one on my Christmas list too), one Atari 2600, two Playstations, one Nintendo 64, one Super NES and one Nintendo Game Cube. That is pretty amazing considering we almost never play console video games in the house.

Flag of BelgiumI did a bit of work on the new Bios section of the site today. Hopefully we will have a link to the Bios section here sometime within a week (maybe before I have to go down to DC.) In the meantime, you can check out the work in progress on Anne Koplinka-Loehr’s Bio page. She tells me that she will be sending me pictures from Belgium very soon so everyone can see where she is. Anne is one of our most faithful readers and she also got her first entry into the Funny Stuff section entered just yesterday.

The weather is unbelievably warm for a December in New York. Pretty much no one is needing to wear a coat yet. Has anyone watched their copy of White Christmas yet? I am betting on there being no snow for Christmas but probably a bit for New Year’s as there always is.

December 4, 2001

I have a DVD player working in my bedroom now so we can say “Goodbye!” to any productivity that I might have had previously 🙂 Maybe now, with a player in my room, I can finally watch all of those DVDs that Josh and Phil have been lending to me. They have been piling up on my shelf. I never have the time to go sit in the den and watch a movie so this should help. I already watched one movie in here which is as much as I have watched movies in the house since we moved in!

The good news of the weekend is that I finally have possession of my Mazda PR5! It is so nice to finally have my new car. Of course, I only have it until today. Today I have to drive the new PR5 back to Rochester to put it into storage for the winter. My old Buick runs fine to get my through the winter and then I can bring out the new Mazda once the snow has melted. It is going to be rough giving up my baby so soon though. The RX-7 is done in the shop although they weren’t able to fix any of the things that they broke the last time that it was in there. Never, ever use Ontario Mazda and Honda. What a horrible dealership. They refused to sell me a car and broke my RX-7. I am terribly unimpressed.

Opera 6 is now available for a free download. Opera and Mozilla are the best ways to look at Sheep Guarding Llama. Please help us so NO to Microsoft browsing technology. Well over three million downloads of Opera have taken place from one of their American mirrors alone. This is amazing considering Opera is a Finnish Norwegian company. I would also like to commend our own, local Rochester Gas & Electric (RG&E) for providing one of the free FTP servers for Opera.

Kelley’s Heroes had our last parade on Saturday afternoon. It was a little cold but not too bad. We had snow and ice last year for the same parade so we were happy. No more marching until next season now.

Not much other news for three days without a Llama update. Look for our news Bios section coming soon.

[Editor’s note from 2007: In 2007 dad went back to his archive of video and converted the parade video from this weekend to Xvid and I posted it to OurMedia to make it available.  You can now get video information about that video from SGL’s 2001 Christmas in Caledonia Parade with Kelley’s Heroes page.  The video also includes a little footage of the PR5 immediately after it was picked up from the showroom.]