June 27, 2015: Fixing the Server

Luciana climbed into bed with me around eight thirty.  Dominica had been up for a little bit already.  It is very overcast today and we are expecting a lot of rain.  The FedEx shipment of computer parts was not expected until noon so I knew that I was going to have a little bit of time to relax this morning.  Liesl was very tired as we were up so late last night, but it was worth getting to beat Broken Age together.

Liesl did not sleep in all that late and by around ten was awake and at ten thirty we were all able to go up to Geneseo to go to the Omega Grill for a late breakfast or early lunch (we all got breakfast except for dad.)

It was before eleven thirty when Danielle texted to say that the parts had arrived.  So we rushed through lunch and I drove dad’s Volvo convertible over to the Ralstons’ straight from there while Dominica went to Peeble’s to return something and they ran some other errands.

Mike and I worked on the server and got it working in a couple of hours.  What a huge relief this was.  We have been really worried about if it was going to recover or not.  It’s been a long few days trying to get this figured out.

Now that the physical server is working again, the real work is in recovering what was on it.  But we are much less stressed than we were before.  A lot more to be done.

June 24, 2015: Jurassic Word at the Drive In

Finally a sunny day in New York.  There has been so much rain that dad has not had a chance to mow the lawn so he spent some time doing that this morning.  Luciana thought that it was great fun running around the house to watch grandpa as he mowed.  It was so adorable when she would run into the office where I was working and stand on her tiptoes to look out the window.  She was so sweet.  I managed to get a really cute picture of her doing it too.

We have been talking about wanting to go to the Silver Lake Drive In to see Jurassic World for a few days but were unsure, especially with everything that has been going on at the office, if we would be able to pull it off or not.  But as work wrapped up today the weather was looking like it was going to cooperate, work was relatively slow and we seemed to have a chance to pull it off.

I did some work to set up to do a server transfer tonight off of the server in Toronto.  But there was too much to do to be able to kick it off before leaving for the evening to go to the drive in.  So it was set up so that I could start it once we returned after the movie.

Around eight thirty we ran out to Perry to go to the drive in.  It has been a while since we were able to go.  We were all very excited.  Dad came out too with his own car.

While Dominica stayed at the car with the girls, dad and I went and picked up dinner.  We got pizza for us and the girls, dad got a sandwich.  Once we were back to the cars, Dominica and I went out in search of popcorn too.

When the movie started, the girls both stayed in the Volvo with dad while Dominica and I stayed in the Acadia.  The movie proved to be pretty intense and Luciana came back over to our car first but was not into it and wanted to go to bed and was pretty upset that she had nowhere to go.  I managed to make her a bed far in the back and she eventually fell back asleep.  Towards the end of the movie Liesl came over too, the movie was too gory and scary for her.  Dad found her huddling under a blanket.

So the movie was not a good one for the girls.  I thought that it would have been, drawing on the history of the first three Jurassic Park movies.  But this one was much more over the top.  So much more violent and very unnecessarily so.

Overall I was not a big fan of the movie.  It wasn’t bad, but it was not as good as it should have been.  It was poorly written, the special effects were not as good as the ones from over twenty years ago – it was, at best, “dialed in.”  This was clearly a lazy movie just relying on its name.  No one bothered to make it have a good story, good action or anything.  It was, at best, very weak.

After the movie we headed back home.  We all needed to get to bed and the second movie was no good for the girls, even if they could have stayed up for it and whatever it was was not something that any of us were interested in either.

As soon as we left the drive in I got an alert on my phone that the server in Toronto had failed.  The very server that Greg and I have been working on for about two months.  The server that I was trying to get off of before going to the movie.

Talk about bad timing.  I figure this is about a 50,000:1 chance in timing assuming that we knew that the server was going to die by now.  Which of course we cannot, so the chances are much less likely than even that.  The timing on this is truly insane.

So I got back to the house, checked out the situation and contacted the datacenter to see what they could do.  We put in an hour or two and determined that nothing could be done.  The server is dead and there is nothing left to do today.

Got to bed pretty late.  Going to be a restless night and a really rough day tomorrow.

June 23, 2015: Celebrating Luciana’s Fourth Birthday

Dominica was the first one up this morning.  After she was up, Luciana got up and sneaked into the room where I was sleeping and climbed into bed where Dominica had been to snuggle.  After a little bit, Liesl got up too, came in and snuggled next to Luciana.  They both fell back asleep there and got another hour or two of sleep, on their own, even after I got up.  They were so adorable.

Today is Tuesday and we are out on the farm in Peoria with dad.  We are having Luciana’s fourth birthday party today.  She had a little party when we were in Spain, just the four of us.  Then last week she had a party in Frankfort.  And today we are having a party at dad’s.  So Luciana has made out pretty well on parties this year.  She might have had to have waited for them but they came in abundance!

Luciana has been anything but patient for this party.  She has been talking about little else since several weeks before we left Spain and to some degree since her birthday in April.

Everyone came over today.  Sharon and Leo, Jeremy and Rachael, Sarah and Steven.  So there were eleven of us for Luciana’s party.  This birthday was Play-doh themed which is what Luciana has been asking for and boy did she get a lot of it.  She was very excited.  She and Liesl (and several adults) played Play-doh all afternoon.

We had a big cookout, that had to be moved indoors because it was raining, with burgers and hot dogs and, of course, a cake.  Luciana had a very nice birthday.

I had to work today, of course, as it is the middle of the week.  After work this evening Liesl and I got down to more Broken Age.  She did great, again, and completed the First Act of it.  The story is great and she really knows how to play it.  She moves through it really quickly.  Much more quickly that I would have.  It is so much fun to watch her play.  And she is so snugly when she plays.  She sits right next to me with my arm around her.  I really wish that we had a good video game setup to take with us when traveling as the gaming is such a good way to spend time together.