Sheep Guarding Llama

Well, it has been a pretty busy week and I have had to take a break from writing for a few days. I am back, however. Do not expect an update again until Monday because Josh, Nate, Joe and I are going to be in Toronto playing in the Santa Claus parade so I will be indisposed.

The weather is great here, in Ithaca, today. The sun is shining and there is a light breeze. Today is the big day that Harry Potter: Episode I releases in theatres. I already have my tickets for the 10:40pm showing at the Hoyt’s 8 at Pyramid Mall. Got them just after noon. This should be really good. I told you all that I was reading the first book in the series last week. Well, I managed to finish it (it doesn’t take all that long to read, really.) It was pretty good. It is fun to read. I am looking forward to reading the next books. I already own the first three books. Last week I had quite a bit of time to read so I also managed to read Issac Asimov’s “Foundation and Empire” and “Second Foundation”. Let me tell you, even if you aren’t a science fiction fan, you should try reading the Foundation series. They are really amazing books. You will never expect anything that happens. I really suggest reading them. I should also note that Dominica has been playing the new Harry Potter PC video game over the last week and is now addicted to it!

Yesterday, I took Phil to Soundworks in Rochester for the first time. It was his first exposure to a real high end audio shop. He walked away with a whole new theatre system! We got him set up with an Integra receiver and a full B&W speaker system. He is pretty happy. Everyone will be happy to know that the audiophiles have converted another one! (Resistance is futile!) I am hoping to be able to do some serious upgrading to my system pretty soon. I am going to trade in my Paradigm Studio Reference 80’s for some smaller B&W’s that make more sense for the places that I live in.

So the RX-7 is FINALLY out of the shop again. It has been sitting at the old house for the last two months waiting for someone to look at it. Nate, Bob and Loopy pushed it about three miles down to Varna where we got it into the shop. It is running now and is heading for Rochester to be winterized tomorrow. That will be the end of it until next year. I am still waiting on word about my 2002 PR5, I am hoping that it comes in soon. My Buick is on its last leg. A fuse blows all of the time so I have to drive with a beeping sound and no gauges. That is quite annoying.

Don’t forget that this week is Thanksgiving! Turkey day on Thursday. For all of you, who know who you are, the annual gang Thanksgiving dinner at Nick Tahou’s is still on. I am going to be in Ohio early that morning but will be driving straight to Rochester to meet everyone.

I am putting in some time working on the new look of Sheep Guarding Llama. I am doing the design in a program called the GIMP on Linux. I have never really worked with graphics before, and I have never really worked with this program at all. So, this is proving to be both a challenge and an educational experience. For anyone who wants to try out the GIMP, it is free and available on many platforms including UNIX, Linux and Windows. You can get your own free copy at www.GIMP.org. So far, I like it. But it is quite hard to use. So you will probably have to spend some serious time getting the hang of it. It was driving me crazy for a while. I am going to be looking for some feedback on how everyone likes the site once I start getting the changes up. Hopefully I can get something posted tonight.

In internet news today, Netscape Navigator has announced version 4.79 and Opera (Josh and my favorite browser) is beta testing version 6.0.

Not a lot of new news up here. I would like to point out (as Kim pointed out to me) that November is Sleep Comfortably Month and as anyone who reads this site regularly knows, I take my comfortable sleeping very seriously.

Ok, so I am back from South Carolina. It was nice to be in a place that hasn’t seen any snow yet! It was also nice to be in a place where gas is only $.97!!! No, I am not kidding. Gas is incredibly cheap down there. We are really missing out up here in the cold north.

This is a short update today. Just letting everyone know that I am back safely and that I will be doing a more thorough update tomorrow. We had a number of visitors to our house today and I had little time to spend on the site.

Loopy’s video game is almost complete. It is very cool that we have a video game made right here in our house. Maybe we can convince him to let us download the game from our site so that all of you with DOS systems will be able to play it. Maybe we can even have a high score record thing or something.

Ok, it is bedtime for me and we all know how seriously I take that. – Scott

Well, today is going to be a short update compared to normal. I am writing this as I prepare to depart for the south where I will be all week. I have the car partially packed already and I am, overall, pretty set to go. I wish that I was able to stay at home all week but duty calls:) I was hoping that Josh was going to prepare an update for you this morning but he has neglected to do so. So you will have to do without his updates until the weekend when I am able to put them up on the site again.

I discovered some new products this week. In my quest to become a vegetarian, I have found (or more appropriately, been introduced to) Soy and Rice Milk. I never thought that these would be good but the actually are! I am very impressed with the tastiness of these products. I have not tried them plain but in chocolate and vanilla flavors, they are really excellent. I also found a new breath mint – Listerine Pocket Paks. These things are weird. They are like little scotch tape dispensers that dispense this strange breath mint tape stuff that dissolves in your mouth. Very, very weird.

I have been trying to do a little bit everyday to update the look at the site. If the site is a little bit inconsistent, bare with me.

Today was the first sticking snows of winter. I awoke this morning to a white and brown world. I love the first snow fall. It isn’t the white snow like January. It is a dirty snow. A melting snow of Autumn that has a magic all its own. A sign of change. A brisk breeze blowing through my open window that is cleaner than it has been for nine months. The first snow of winter always makes me want to stare out the window forever, watching the melting snow trip from the bare trees onto the muddy ground. Then to curl up with a good book. Not just any book, but an adventure with a moral. Books like Watership Down or Little Women. This is the perfect weather for that. This weather also makes me very productive. I never want to fall back asleep or just be lazy. I want to do things and go places before the hibernation of winter really sets in. This is the last chance to really do everything. To go outside, to take a walk. After this, now that Indian Summer has passed, all there is, is to hide inside until Spring appears.

So, I scheduled a consultation to see about having all of my wisdom teeth removed. In three weeks they will let me know what they can do. Fun. I want to have them all out by the end of December. That way I can start the new year without them, and then I can look into having some nasal surgery done as well. I don’t sleep at night very well because it is so bad. I want to have it drilled out so that I get more air through my nose.

Ok, here is one of my favorite pictures of me (there aren’t very many) this one is taken at my parents house when I was about 19 or 20. I am wearing my letterman jacket from high school. York Central High swim team, Varsity Letter and two sectional championships while I was on the team. A whole lot more while Josh and Phil were on it. Anyway, I took this one myself on Kodak T-Max 100 B&ampW film. I really like that it is a self portrait. I used my Nikon 5005 SLR. This is back from the days when I used to work as a cover and sports photographer for the Livingston County News back in Geneseo, NY.

I had a lot of fun taking photographs but it just didn’t pay very well. Let me tell you, though, it is pretty exciting the first time that you find one of your photos on the cover of the newspaper. Even if it is just the local paper. I worked for them while I was a senior in high school.

Here is a picture of Loopy’s little sister Dana who was up last weekend to hang out with us. She was up this weekend too, I guess. She has become quite the member of the gang. Here is a week old picture of her in our kitchen.

Here is one last picture of Loopy, Josh and I in San Diego. This is the three of us standing in front of the Pacific Ocean. This was the first (and only, so far) time that any of us had seen the western coast. I liked having this picture huge here so here we are:) Loopy seems a little surprised that he got his picture taken.

Ok, I think that this may be enough to leave you all with. I hope that my massive update and new pics will keep everyone happy while I am away in South Carolina. Look for new pictures soon. Now that we have a scanner and a digital camera, we are going to be out of control. I would also like to mention that our main page now takes well over six minutes to load for anyone using a 28.8 modem. Wow is that a lot of content. Imagine what this will be like when it all gets moved over to the archives! Talk to you all soon. Later – Scott

We had band practice in Caledonia today. That made for a lot of driving! I wish that things were closer. That would make my life a lot easier. Josh has official had his job moved to Victor so he nows works forty minutes closer to us than he did before. That will make life a bit easier for him traveling down here. Now he just has to find someplace to live in this direction. Josh has also, finally, submitted his first daily update to us so that will be included today as well.

Not much exciting to report on today, it was busy but very little happened. There is no growth in my pepper plants yet. I bought a basil plant that was still alive from Wegmans and we will see if it is able to survive in my hydroponic garden unit. Cross your fingers.

Tomorrow, I am going to be heading down to Washington, DC and then to South Carolina for the week so we are going to be short on updates since I am unable to post them to the site even if Josh and I are able to write them. I am pretty much computer-less while I am down there so don’t be worried if nothing gets posted for a week. Maybe Josh will keep writing updates while I am down there so that we will have a week of them to update the site with when I finally get back. I am going to have a lot of free time on my hands while I am in SC, I think, so maybe I will get a chance to read some of the Harry Potter that everyone is always wanting me to read. And maybe I can finish that Asimov novel that I have been reading as well. I hope so, it would be nice to have a break for a change. Something totally non-stressful.

I did get a chance, today, to do a little bit of updating on the site. Notice that we now have a Letters to the Editor directory page. Also notice that there are very few letters. That is because our audience is incredibly lazy! So write to me!

I heard, today, about another site visitor who spent some serious time learning all about the Llamas from our site. We get quite a few people doing that, I have noticed. I always suspect that we have very few people coming to the site but in reality, I keep running into people who have been checking it out on a regular basis. I am very happy. (I was told, however, that our pictures from the New Year’s Party, last year, are pretty boring. So if any of you are holding out on pictures from that, send them to me.) – Scott

Josh: Hey Llamas, this will be a first for me. I’m writing this on Sunday, so if Scott doesn’t put this up right away you’ll know. We still haven’t figured out why my machine can’t directly update the page automatically. So we do this the hard way. I first write everything down. Then e-mail it to Scott. He then puts it for up for everyone to read.

Everyone knows that I recently got a tattoo. If anyone out there is thinking about it think long and hard. It’s like having a fork poked in your body (wherever your having the tattoo) over and over again. The straight lines aren’t to bad, but anything that curls feels really painful (almost like ripping your skin open w/ a blunt instrument.)

We Llama’s, I gotta go for today but ill try and keep things as up to date as Scottly possible.

TTYL [:-)]