Sheep Guarding Llama

Wednesday. Today begins the twenties. One hundred years ago today, the Roaring Twenties began, kicking off nearly a century of iconic “decades” like the world had never seen. Before 1920, the decades preceding it had mostly run together. The 1890s, the 1900s, the 1910s had been largest the same, one after another. The 1910s were punctuated by the Great War, but the culture and world in general was little changed until the war was over and the dust had settled. But the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, up through the pop eras ending in the 80s were all so iconic, each decade standing out as completely unique from the decades preceding or following. The 1990s were so bland and ran so completely together with the 2000s that it seems to have ended.

I got up, made coffee, and got straight into working on Windows 7 to Windows 10 migrations. These next two weeks are like the last minutes leading up to midnight for Y2K for those old enough to remember that. Windows 7, the most iconic desktop operating system of the era, goes fully out of support two weeks from today. But much more importantly, the free upgrades that Microsoft has built into the licensing scheme expire for Windows 7 in two weeks. So absolutely everyone who has put off upgrading has to do it very, very quickly.

I was just going to help out doing migrations today, I have loads of other work to do, but our head migration engineer, who is the only person who was scheduled to work today, had his in laws get into a car accident, so I took over the primary migrations from him. So my slow day became quite busy. Good thing that I was around.

I ended up at my desk the entire day. A very, very long day. Again. This is the story of my week. There is just too much to do and literally not enough hours in the day.

So of interest, 2020 means that Sheep Guarding Llama has been being written for twenty years! Now that is something to think about. It’s mind boggling to think that I’ve been writing this for that long. That these past couple of years have been hard to keep up with it is not so surprising when you think about just how long I have been going without major issues!

Paul went out and did some grocery shopping early in the day. And this evening he went out to shoot pool. It is probably pretty lonely around the house with me working this much. It is essentially like I am not even here. This is just a ridiculous amount of work and I am easily on the phone for nearly eight hours a day!

Rachel texted me around half past midnight to see if I wanted to watch a movie or something. She said she’d be right over. I waited a few hours, but she had fallen asleep. Worked out as I had so much work to do anyway.

I ended up working until four o’clock in the morning. But I knocked out some big project items that really needed to be done. So I am happy. And I feel good. It is four and I am not feeling exhausted or anything.

Dominica is all packed up. She and the girls are driving back up to Dallas tomorrow morning after rush hour. So they are hoping to leave around nine in the morning. That would put them back here just before two. I an hopeful that she will run in and pick up some Carl’s Jr on her way back.

The Oculus Rift S down in Houston ended up being in continuous use from when I set it up until it was packed up to go into the van tonight. And the plan is to set it up in the living room once it gets here because everyone wants to use it so much. It is definitely the hit of Christmas. I have a feeling that it will stay in regular use for a long time. We put in a lot of time researching this to make sure that this is something that we felt that the kids (and the rest of us) would really want to use for a long time.

Tuesday. The end of the decade. A big day, you only get a change of decade a few times in any life. I don’t really remember celebrating heralding in the 80s or the 90s or even the 10s. The only big one that I remember at all is the millennium change from 1999 to 2000 and only because of the Y2K thing, and the huge party that we through at the house.

This year (decade), no party for me. I’m sure a lot of people are making a big deal about it, but at 43 it really doesn’t make the slightest difference for me. I have to work today, I have to work tomorrow. That there is a date change tonight is background noise. In fact, no one I know are doing anything. Not even Rachel or Forest who are traditional party animals. Paula just hung out with her cousin. Dominica went to bed hours before the “ball dropped.”

Today was just a normal start of work. I slept in a while, very tired from last night, and then just worked a “normal” long day. Lots and lots of management tasks today.

After a long day of work, no night off for me and no party. It is just Paul & I hanging out at home with Mia tonight. No plans. I did light work after seven once I was done sitting at my desk and we put on some documentaries on television. For dinner I just made myself two veggie chicken patty sandwiches.

We watched a show about Colombia. Then we watched Paul Hollywood driving around Europe. I had a hankering for ice cream a little before ten, so Paul and I ran to Sonic and got ice cream and cheese sticks.

Paul went to bed before eleven. I stayed up till a little after midnight and finished the three part Netflix miniseries on cars of Europe that I was watching.

That was my night. I said Happy New Year over Snapchat and WhatsApp and Telegram and what have you to everyone and it was off to bed for me. About as low key as it could reasonably be.

Monday. Such a busy work day. This was one of those days when I get to my desk and I never, ever managed to get up at all. I never got to walk around, talk to anyone, go anywhere, even eat. It wasn’t bad, just so intense. There is so much to get done today and so many employees and clients that need me that I just never got a chance to get my head above water.

I worked non-stop from the moment that I woke up until around one thirty. Yes one thirty in the morning. With Dominica and the kids not here, I pretty much have to use every available moment to just work and work and work to get things out of the way.

Really late tonight, Rachel and her brother Paul came over to hang out, have some beer, watch The Mandalorian, and get some food. It was really super late when they came over. We hung out for a little while, then ran out to first Jack in the Box on Josey, but discovered that their line was not moving at all. We eventually gave up on Jack in the Box and went to Whataburger instead. We got way too much food. Rachel bought me dinner, which was two egg and cheese biscuits on the jalapeno bread. She also got cinnabon and onion rings for us to share. She and Paul got tons of food.

So that was my only meal for the entire day. Not a single bite of food otherwise. That makes the Whataburger food not so incredibly bad. The egg and cheese biscuits are 425 calories each, for 850 total. The onion rings are 450, but I only had half if that for 225. So that is 1075 of that food, plus the dessert. Their dessert is not on their menu, so really hard to figure out. If it is the same as Taco Bell’s similar item, and I expect that it might even be identical, then it’s a whopping 620 calories. For a grand daily total of 1695 plus a couple beers. So about 2,000. High, but not tragic.

We came home and thankfully I was able to talk them out of watching The Mandalorian which, after having seen some the other night, I really don’t enjoy watching. Paul kept saying that it was good, but he also had no interesting in seeing it again, which kind of says more about what he thinks of it than just saying that he liked it. Instead we watched the first episode of The Witcher which is my new favourite show. Everyone really liked it. One episode was enough, though. Paul was falling asleep. And Rachel is supposed to drive him down to Austin first thing in the morning so they need to get to bed so that they can get up and travel all day.

So nearly four in the morning when I finally got off to sleep. I got a ton of work done, though. I was able to keep running into the office while Rachel and Paul were here to keep migration projects moving along. So even my down time was pretty productive.

So at the end of the day, I’m feeling that every aspect of the Star Wars franchise has been so awful, even to the point of being offensive and mocking, I no longer have any interest in any of it. I’m done, I’m out. The original trilogy was so great, before it got “tweaked”. But everything that has come since then has been just terrible. Terribly written, terribly filmed, terribly acted. No redeeming qualities. And it just gets worse and worse and makes me upset and there is no reason for me to ever have to look at any of it again, I just to just accept that they’ve ruined that part of my childhood and move on because the more that I try to find a way to like it, the more upset I get and it’s just a crappy movie franchise that I don’t enjoy anymore, so who cares. Now, of course, stupid baby yoda is everywhere and every time I see that dumb puppet I like Star Wars even less.

Sunday. I started the day working for a few hours. Then, later in the day, Paul and I did some watching of documentaries together.

We watched some shows on extreme travel in Venezuela by Indigo Traveler. Paul doesn’t normally watch these YouTube shows with me, but he got into this one. We also watched a Netflix show on the Andes.

After our shows, I got back to work and worked a full day from mid-afternoon until around one in the morning. Just solid work. I am quite tired.

This evening Rachel came over and brought Taco Bell for dinner. She came over late and tried to get Taco Bueno on the well over, she got there fifteen minutes before they were supposed to close, but they were already turning people away. Taco Bell ran out of a some ingredients and were not able to do any of the food that I had requested, but she was able to get me something vegetarian at least.

She came over and put in some laundry and we watched three episodes of Disney’s The Mandalorian. I didn’t really like it the first time through, but it was okay. Seeing it now for a second time and I can honestly say that the show it terrible, poorly made, and just not good.

Saturday. Warm enough that the windows stayed open today. The day started with a light rain and it varied between light and moderate pretty much all day until the mid-evening. It is pretty quiet here with just Paul, Mia, and me.

This morning was a bit of work, couple of hours. Then Paul and I put on some TV and watched for several hours. We watched the movie The Lost City of Z which is a documentary, more or less, about early twentieth century exploration of the Amazon jungle.

We watched a few episodes of Fantasy Island which we found on Crackle. I’ve not seen that in a while. But you can only watch so much of that at one time. It really is a one episode at a time kind of show.

Paul ran out and did some shopping this evening.

I had to work intermittently here and there, but mostly I got to relax until around seven this evening when it was back to my desk for real work.

I worked until about two in the morning, then headed off to bed. Loads of good work done tonight, though.