Sheep Guarding Llama

Well, we managed to spend a little bit of time out on the Seneca Wine Trail today. We only managed to hit about four wineries but we had a good time and it took us all day. We started off at Bloomer Creek and had an early lunch there. It was very nice, they had some nice tee shirts there too so I stocked up on those. Altogether, I think that we bought about 2.5 cases of wine. One entire case is the Champagne for New Years. We got some really good stuff. The weather was really nice this morning, it got a little bit dark and dreary towards the end of the day but overall, it was a great day to be out on the trail.

Tomorrow is one of the last practices before Josh, Nate, Joe and I head off to march in Toronto. We all play in a marching band and Toronto is our biggest show of the year. I think that this is the band’s ninth time marching this show. So we will be marching outside tomorrow in Caledonia.

I attempted to plant my first hydroponic plants today. Three orange bell pepper plants. I am starting them from seeds so we will see how well this works. Maybe tomorrow I can get the next six planted. I am trying a couple different things to see if I can figure out how to do this. Hopefully this will work, I really like orange bell peppers. The orange bell pepper was developed right here in Ithaca at Cornell, you know.

My friend Sara discovered that the Datil Do-It Sauces that we love so much are actually available through your friendly neighborhood Wal-Mart! I am very excited about that. Now I can really stock up. She found them at the Wal-Mart in Big Flats just off i86.

Loopy is working on his first video game to send into development studios as a demo. He has made a couple of things before like a PC game called Looptris that was essentially Tetris and Space eVaders which was a Space Invaders style game that actually ran on the Game Boy and Game Boy Color. Bob, Josh and I have Game Boy Colors and Loopy has the Game Boy Advance. I am still impressed by how well these systems fair compared to all the crap that is always coming out on the regular console systems. I will get a GBA when more stuff comes out for it. For now, my GBC is great and I have really cool stuff on it like Deja Vu I & II, Dragon Warrior I & II, Shadowgate and Tetris. How cool is that? I am a big time lover of the old adventure games from the late 1980’s and I think that it would be the coolest thing ever if games like the Bard’s Tale, King’s Quest, Tass Times in Tone Town and The Faery Tale Adventure were ported to the GBA. I would run out and buy them all. Deja Vu was one of my all time favorite games on the Amiga back when that was my main computer in 1987. I had a pirated copy back then but I eventually bought a real copy for the Amiga and one for the GBC. So, they got their money from me!

Josh and Dana decided to leave early because they are poopy heads. We were in the middle of watching Shrek (which you must see if you have not seen it yet) and they didn’t even finish it. Speaking of movies… the Llama house went out and saw Monsters Inc. last night here in Ithaca. That was a really good movie. Everyone really liked it. The computer animation was right up there with Shrek and Final Fantasy. FF is still the best that I have seen, though. There are moments when you might mistake it for real film! I also had the chance recently to see Memento. Phil has been trying to get me to see it forever. I can’t tell you anything about it but I suggest that you run right out and rent it because it totally rocks.

Other news includes Loopy and I deciding to be vegetarians five days a week to try to make our diets a little bit healthier. Loopy has been doing pretty well at it. I have decided to switch to at least six days a week and I have been doing pretty well at not eating meat at all. I thought that I was going to get cravings like I have gotten in the past but I have been eating a lot of soy and I have not been getting the cravings. So I am very happy. It has been for more than a month now since we started. Loopy’s sister Dana is also vegetarian as is Dominica’s roomate Sara. Dominica is eating an almost meat free diet in support of everybody. I will have a real challenge next week, though, as I am in DC and South Carolina and they do not support vegetarians very well there.

I bought my first Harry Potter book today. I guess I am going to give it a try. I am still skeptical. So, I will let you know what I think when I am done with it.

Ok, for any of you that have actually taken the time to read through our archives are painfully aware of my theories on sleeping. As you know, I sleep on the floor in as cold of an environment as I can get to reasonably. Well, I have discovered another really cool thing that I can do. Because I am sleeping on the floor and I keep my room cold, I normally have my heat registers closed or covered. Well, one of these registers got part way uncovered but only by part of my bed. The heat vent ended up filling my bed with warm air and making for the neatest sleep heater yet. The bottom half of the bed was toasty warm while the room was cold and the top of the bed was cool. It works really well. You have to set it up just right or you end up blocking off the vent altogether.

Ok, I think that that is enough of an update for today. Check in with us tomorrow and see what Llama excitement is happening! Also, I am expecting to be doing another hardware upgrade (a fairly big one) to our main web server in DC while I am down there next week. You may notice another performance increase on our site. Maybe not, but it isn’t costing us very much to do the upgrade so we are taking advantage of it. – Scott

So, the other day I was in Rochester checking out this hydroponics store called Harvest Moon. They had a cool hydroponics starter set that I wanted so I picked it up and now I am looking into growing some chili peppers in my bedroom. I think that that will be really cool. If anyone knows anything about growing peppers, let me know.

The weather out here in Ithaca has been wonderful the last two days. Indian Summer is upon us for sure. Speaking of Indian Summer, maybe we should all watch that movie this week. I love that movie. Look for Sam Ramie as the dock boy.

Josh and Dana should be arriving out here this evening. They are coming up to go out wine touring with Dominica and I again. This will be Dominica and my third time out on the wine trail, Josh’s second and the first time for Dana. None of us have ventured out to the Seneca Trail before, though. We have only done Cayuga in the past.

Today is my big productive day! I have managed to get all kinds of things accomplished today. No one way home to stop me from being productive all day long. Also notice that I archived August. Only October and November are here on the active page.

I would like to mention that I believe that during this month, SheepGuardingLlama will celebrate its first year!! We started around this time last year, we remember this because we first used the site to post directions to our then new house (not the one that we are in now) for our New Year’s Eve party. We did not archive the original site, not until we had obtained a following in Elmira Heights and Horseheads did we start to keep the site up to date all of the time. So, we are now one year old. Go Llamas, Go Llama, its your Birthday… – Scott

Well, we got the new scanner up and running today so we have pictures for everyone. The first one is of Loopy, Josh and I standing in front of a Cat Diesel Tractor in Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. The agricultural exhibits at Disney are always some of their best. Cat sponsors one of the displays of outdoor gardening at Disneyland that we went and saw. They also have exhibits on wine making, tortilla baking and sour-dough bread making.

Today’s entry is rather short as I don’t have very much time. I do want to mention, though, that Loopy, Dominica and I have taken to eating almost totally vegetarian diets. I am feeling much better now as it has been about a month since we started and I am noticing a difference already.

Josh and Dana are expected to be coming down to visit us again tomorrow. On Saturday, we are hoping to be able to take some time to tour some of the wineries on the east short of Seneca Lake. We will also be investigating some of the real estate that is available out in that area.

We didn’t get any trick-or-treaters last evening. What a gyp! I thought that we would at least get a couple. I guess we aren’t cool enough to have people beg candy from us. Oh well, what are you going to do.

Maybe Josh will read this and start writing something. He said that he wanted to but hasn’t written anything yet. So, everybody email him and bug him to get moving on it. – Scott

Happy Halloween everyone! Did everyone dress up as a Llama this year? Wouldn’t have that have been cool? I think so. Well, it is almost 5 am as I write this so you will have to forgive me if I start to run a little bit long tonight and I may not end up making any sense. Today was an exciting day in the Llama house as Loopy and I received our new Hewlett-Packard 1200n LaserJet printer complete with JetDirect 175 printer server. We are very excited. It is a really nice laser printer that we have located on a new printer utility table in the upstairs hallway (I will get a pic on here eventually) between my and Nate’s rooms. Having a laser printer will be nice as it saves money in the long run and it is nice to no longer have to go into Nate’s room to get print outs off of the networked printer that was always in there. Now we have two networked printers and another one that will be online soon. We are out of control. But the printer looks very nice in the hallway, we are very happy with it. And it prints quickly too! In addition to getting the new printer, I also picked up a new HP 3400Cse scanner at a bargain too! We have been operating without a working scanner since we only have a bargain one and when we upgraded to Windows 2000, it didn’t work anymore. So it is nice to have one again. And this one is a bit nicer than the old one anyway. So maybe some old pics from around this place will start to find their way onto the web site once I get this thing up and running!

So, I am having even more car problems now. It never ends. Now I have an electrical short in my Buick that causes one of the circuits to short out every time that I hit a large bump or turn sharply to the left. And it isn’t just any circuit either. Nope. It is the circuit that controls the voltage meter and so when this circuit shorts, the warning beeper starts going off. And just stays going off. Let me tell you, I have learned how to install a fuse while driving!

Happy November everyone. This will be our first full month in our new house! Pics of the house soon, I swear! Hey, speaking of pictures, I was supposed to get pics from a lot of people who took them at the last New Year’s Party and no one has sent me any. I need them sent to me so that I can post them up to the site!

I am still playing Ago of Empires II. I have added the Conquerors expansion pack now so I have more variety. I am oh so addicted. Is anyone out there in Llama land playing AoE2 yet? I need someone to play online with!! I just can’t stop playing.

Next week, I am going to be out of town. Business trip to Washington and Anderson, SC. Hopefully we will have figured out why Josh’s computer does not work by then and we will be able to have him doing the updates for us since I am not able to do them from there.

For all of our Linux fans… SuSE 7.3 is out and on the shelves. Go get it! Speaking of SuSE Linux, has anyone noticed that we now have Llama mail?!? How cool is that? I know that I mentioned it a few days ago but it is pretty cool, I figured that it was worth mentioning again. Also, don’t forget to plan on being here at the Llama house for New Year’s Eve as always. Matt Hoch has promised to perform for us again and Loopy will be, as always, hysterical. Details about the party should be available here as always, also.

Anyone looking for July’s updates can look for them in the archives, I am actually keeping up with moving things there more or less.

Well, Dana didn’t make it out to visit us this week until this weekend so it ended up being a very hectic weekend. There were many trips to places like Rochester and Utica. Josh made it down to visit this weekend too and so did Dominica’s sorority sister Amanda. Also, if you see Josh, ask to see his new dragon tattoo on his shoulder. He and Amanda got new tattoos at Crazy Joe’s in Avon on Saturday. Getting the tattoos ended up being a whole day task as they got there at 2pm without an appointment and waited until 10:30pm before they were able to leave. So that was longer than a normal work day!

I have discovered a new video game that I really love. I never thought that I would get into this game but I have and I recommend that anyone with a Windows machine kicking around to give it a try. Age of Empires II. This game is very entertaining and I am completely addicted now. Don’t pick it up until you are ready to really play it because you won’t want to put it down. My only Windows 2000 machine (my PIII 667 with 256MB) is in my ” office ” and so I have to hide in there to play!