Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is my last day at home without my family and the only day that I am absolutely, completely alone – except for Oreo, of course.  Brian and Tara made it to Knoxville last night and are attempting to make it up to Philadelphia by late afternoon today.  Dominica and Liesl are planning to leave in the morning to come back to Irving from League City.  And today I am not going into the office but am just working from home so that I can be with Oreo all day.

This morning I decided that Oreo needed some real quality time so I took him out for a very long walk, for about an hour, down Las Colinas Boulevard which has zero traffic on weekends and has a wide “park” running down the middle of it with walking paths on either side.  Oreo thought that that was wonderful.  He had so much fun exploring.  Because the path is so wide it is pretty easy for him to handle even being blind.  The only real danger is fire ants which are pretty much everywhere on that walk.

I’ve gotten very good at digging up fire ant hills the past two weeks.  I can spot them like nobody’s business and grab a nearby stick and get them all dug up which exposes them to predators and makes their hills more obvious to others.

After his very long walk Oreo got a much needed bath.  He is now all clean and soft and ready to see his family again when they get home tomorrow afternoon.

I spent the morning working and cleaning and trying to get as much done as possible before Maggie came over around one in the afternoon to visit.  We hung out for a few hours working on some stuff until her husband got out of work and came over to hang out as well.  We all visited for a while and then went over to Blu Ginger for some late lunch or early dinner.

I really wanted to relax and play Oblivion this evening but even with all of the cleaning that I did I still am unable to located my Oblivion disc for the PS3.  Brian and I are both pretty sure that I had grabbed it before leaving Peekskill but neither of us has any idea where I might have put it.  So very likely it got packed u pinto some box without a label and is now deep, deep into the storage unit.  I have located all of my other video games but not that one.  Pretty crappy.  The one game that I am really interested in playing and it is the only one that I cannot find.  At least it forces me to work instead.

The house is looking pretty good at this point.  Dominica will be happy when she gets home tomorrow.  Even the dishes are done.

Today is our big continuity of business (COB) testing day at the office.  I was scheduled to be in the office at eight this morning so my alarm was set but I got called out a quarter after six anyway.  So I was up and logged in quite early.  I discovered that there was a major issue already and email and other things were not working.  So no way I was going to get to go back to sleep.

I noticed that Brian and Tara were already up and getting ready to depart shortly.  They are going to attempt to get out first thing this morning and on to the road back home hoping to make it as far as Knoxville, Tennessee by this evening which will let them get back up to Philadelphia by a pretty decent time on Sunday evening.

I showered, walked Oreo, made my morning coffee and walked over to the office.  It is cool and humid this morning as we had a pretty big thunderstorm during the night.  I was in the office by seven.  Quite an early day.  Good chance to get things done, though, like possibly catching up on SGL which has fallen horribly behind for which I must apologize.  These last several weeks have been ridiculously busy.

Brian and Tara were on the road shortly after I left the apartment.  Now it is just Oreo and I until Monday when Dominica and Liesl return from Houston.

Today really was the perfect day for me to have to go into the office for the COB test with Dominica and Liesl being out of town.  It might as well be a work day for me other than the fact that Oreo is home alone.

I did some house cleaning yesterday, especially in the kitchen, and got the dishes done so that Dominica will be coming home to a mostly clean house.  Being home alone will give me a lot of opportunity tomorrow to get the house into much better shape.  I would like to have taken some boxes to storage while Brian was still around with the truck because I have no vehicle at all now but there wasn’t any time for that.  So I will just have to make a pile of stuff to be returned to storage and we will have to figure out how to get them back over there in the BMW once it gets back.

My “big project” today was to work on getting SGL caught back up.  Working on a Saturday at my desk gives me extra time to sit down and write stuff.  I’ve been very remiss recently on the site and I am really trying to get that back under control.

Today was the first time that I got to really try out the Claros chat functionality from the office.  It worked this morning and was actually important in allowing me to communicate to the other offices that were part of the COB test since the internal instant messaging system at work doesn’t work (no surprise there) and we have to have complicated work-arounds in order to support basic communication functionality.

Lunch today was pizza from Boston’s.  They have the best pizza that I have found in Texas yet although I hear that Coal Vines in Southlake is really good.  Need to get up there and try it out.

I ran home over lunch and walked Oreo.  It is a bright and sunny day today – quite warm.  Being a Saturday and one of the first really warm ones this year the pool at our apartment building was very busy.  You can hear the people swimming from the street.

I didn’t have much time to spend with Oreo, though.  It was home, walk and straight back to the office where I spent the rest of the day until around seven in the evening when I ran home to walk Oreo again.  Then it was back to the office for another two hours.  It was about nine thirty when I finally got home for the night.  I ended up signing back in from home and working until almost midnight.  Sixteen hours I booked today!  What a long day.  I was very worn out by the end of it.

I am going t obe pretty busy as well tomorrow as we are going to be continuing to have issues from the testing for the next several days.  Poor Oreo is getting very little family time, I’m afraid.  He is quite lonely.  What a long week this has been for him.

I was a bit tired this morning after having worked until three in the morning last night but I feel much better knowing that the web-based chat client that I needed to have working is now in place.  That is going to make life a lot simpler.

Since I was up so late last night and since tomorrow I have to be in the office all day I decided that today was definitely a work from home day.  Oreo needs as much attention as I can give to him as this has been a really tough week for him so spending time with him is my plan for the day.

I started work nice and early this morning and Oreo just curled up in his car seat that I brought into the bedroom so he was just behind me all morning where I could just reach back and pet him periodically without moving away from my desk.  He likes that arrangement.  He is quite enjoying having me be home today.

For lunch, Brian and I ran out to Rockfish to meet up with someone to talk about some “talk to the expert” stuff for a major website.  We were not prepared for how serious or major the project was.  It is sounding like something extremely interesting so we will be following up and hearing more early next week.

After lunch it was back to the apartment for an afternoon of work.  We started talking, Brian and I, and we realized that the only reason that he and Tara were remaining in Texas was so that Brian could go to La Cima with me on Monday to talk to them about membership which doesn’t even have anything to do with him at all because I am getting information to present to my current office.  Brian was just coming along for the ride. Of course, without Brian being around I don’t have a ride to get to La Cima on Monday but I will figure that out at that point.  That is pretty minor in comparison to holding them in Texas for the better part of another week.

So we decided to get everyone together tonight: the other Brian, Daniel and his wife, Maggie and the three of us already at the house.  It was our last chance for everyone to see each other before Brian and Tara returned to Pennsylvania without any solid plans for them to be returning to Texas at any point in particular until late October.

Everyone hung out till seven or so when we all walked over to La Joya for dinner.  It was a gorgeous evening so we just ate outside on the patio.  That worked out really well.

I went to bed early.  It was probably eleven or so when I actually managed to get to bed.  Have to be up early tomorrow and work a very long day so getting sleep tonight is pretty important.

Nothing builds an ego like not having anyone around to tell you when you are being a moron. – Adam Walter

Today Tara is staying home all day with Oreo so he doesn’t have to be alone again.  He has been having a very stressful week with Dominica and Liesl being gone and no one being home with him all day long.  He will be very happy to be able to snuggle with someone all day today.

I was off to the office today.  Work ended up being crazy busy.  It was so busy that I had to skip lunch.  I grabbed a quick bite but just ate at my desk without ever getting a break.  It was very good that Tara was at home with Oreo or I would have had to have run home just to walk him and then run back to work.

I got home at a halfway decent hour and Brian, Tara and I went out to Firehouse Subs for dinner.  I wanted to do something fast as our evenings have been devoured by meetings and dinner plans every night and it is killing my schedule.  I am getting worn out going out every night.  I’m looking forward to just staying home for a little while!

After dinner we walked over to Marble Slab Creamery and got some ice cream for dessert.  Then it was back to the house where we would stay in for the rest of the evening.

Brian spent the evening playing Oblivion, surprise surprise.  He has been playing it a ton recently.  I think that he is further through the game now that I am.  I am quite looking forward to getting to play it again myself although I am not really sure when I will have the time or the opportunity.  At least the Platstation 3 that has my game saved on it is at the house now so there is some chance that I will get to play.  Now I just need to get that hooked up, find some free time, find my copy of Oblivion and then I will be all set.

I spent this evening working on getting an AJAX XMPP client set up and working.  I’ve had this on my docket for way too long and tonight I decided that it just had to be completed.  Too many things lingering for too long.  My first task was finding an XMPP web client that could do what I needed.  There are tons out there, including iJab, that look great but are “JavaScript clients” which is nice and all but are just replacements for installing Spark or Pidgin which isn’t my goal.  I am trying to get XMPP to be usable to people who only have access to HTTPS on port 443 and can’t use the XMPP protocol directly.  I thought that this would be a very easy task but it turns out that almost no one makes this type of tool even though it is insanely obvious.

So after much research I decided to go with Claros Chat which requires a Java Server container like Tomcat.  So I had to start by installing Tomcat and then installing Claros.  Claros was pretty easy to set up and worked quite well.  It also has built in support for Google Talk which is an added bonus.  So now, in theory, I will be much more accessible during the day than I have been for the past several months.  This is going to make life much, much easier.

It was three in the morning when I finally wrapped up and tested everything and was confident heading off to slumber.  Time for Oreo snuggles.  He has been extra snuggly since Dominica and Liesl are not around.  I get all of the puppy snuggles now.  I could hear that Brian was still up playing Oblivion when I went to bed.  He is really addicted to that game.

After work today Brian, Tara and I went over to La Cima with Brian.  Brian had told us that this was his “private club” and we really had no idea what to expect.  I am used to the term “private club” from South Carolina where you pay a lifetime membership (of like $5) and you can drink all night without having to worry about when the bars have to shut down.  Nothing fancy. We were thinking jeans and t-shirts.  Brian had invited us for $1.99 pasta night so that helped move our thinking in that direction.

Just before he arrived to pick us up, Brian called ahead to tell us that we couldn’t wear jeans or t-shirts.  We were pretty shocked.  We had been planning on “dressing down” after work not “dressing up” for dinner.  So we changed and he then picked us up.

Brian’s private business club, as it turned out to be, was La Cima at the top of the tower at Williams’ Square in downtown Las Colinas.  This is the tower whose courtyard has the famous “Mustangs of Las Colinas” statue with several wild horses galloping across some water with fountains beneath each of their feet.  A very cool monument indeed.

We rode the elevator to the twenty-sixth floor to the highest point in Las Colinas and possibly in Irving, Texas.  Not exactly tall for those of us coming from the New York City area.  Dominica and my last apartment was in a thirty-four story building, but in Texas this is rather tall and the view was spectacular.  From the dining room at La Cima there is a panoramic cview from Dallas to the east all the way around to Fort Worth to the west.  It really gives you a feel for the layout of the metroplex.

We had drinks in the lounge before going in to the dining room for dinner and wine flights.  Dinner was great and the wine was excellent.  The atmosphere at La Cima is great.

The idea of a “business club” is something that we don’t have back in New York so this is what was really surprising to Brian, Tara and I since we had never heard of such a thing before.  La Cima is basically a country club without the golf and tennis.  It is a private, members-only club open for breakfast, lunch and dinner six days a week with its own bar and restaurant plus private rooms and amenities.  It is a place, in the heart of the new tech corridor in Irving, for business people to go to escape the office or to treat as a home away from home and to meet up with other business people in a relaxing but very upscale environment.

We had a really nice time at dinner.  Brian Souder and I have a lunch appointment at La Cima on Monday now as well.