Sheep Guarding Llama

It is Thursday.  Originally we had planned to be back to Peekskill by yesterday at the latest.  I guess not.  We are really dreading all of the packing and cleaning and decision making that has to happen as soon as we are back in Peekskill so we are avoiding it as much as possible.

First thing this morning I got up early and did some work so that we would be able to drive over to Geneseo and get breakfast at the Omega Grill right away.  That worked out pretty well.  Dad had his early morning breakfast club meeting over there and had gone over at seven thirty.  I was up then and able to go but Liesl was still asleep so we had to wait for her to wake up.  Dad’s group was over just as Liesl woke up so Dominica and I ran over and met dad there.  He had second breakfast while we ate our first.

After breakfast Dominica and I swung into Tim Horton’s in Geneseo to pick up some delicious Canadian blended coffee.  Then it was back to dad’s so that I could get back to work.  It was a busy work day for me so very little to update here.

This evening I did an update of a remote access server from OpenSuse 11.1 to OpenSuse 11.2.  What is really cool about this new version is that it is the first version that allows you to do a “live, hot update” of one in-place OS version to another.  That makes it really nice so you don’t need to go do a completely fresh install.  The update using the command line zypper utility worked flawlessly and the only thing that I had to do manually was install the FreeNX package that we use.  Once I did that we had everything back and working great in no time.

We decided that we were getting a lot of work done at dad’s house and that it would make sense for us to stay just a little bit longer. So we are not going back to Peekskill until tomorrow evening.  We are spending our time going through the stuff that we have packed away at dad’s and decided what should be kept and what should not.  This move to Texas is our serious opportunity to thin out our possessions as much as possible and only take those things that really matter.  Having to move things so far and to do so going to a temporary apartment before having a house again (if we ever really do get to have a house again) makes it so much of a pain to move things that we are far more willing to just give things up than we were previously.

I spent the day working.  Today at noon I had a webinar from Red Hat on Red Hat Clustering technologies that was pretty interesting.  I have never really worked with clustering too much.  I have some at work but it is never a focus of what we do.  I am thinking that I need to build a cluster or two to have running all of the time so that I can get a bit more soup to nuts experience on them.  That would probably be valuable, although in this day and age of failover virtualization systems clustering is rapidly losing its core market.

Aunt Sharon and Uncle Leo came over today to see Liesl in the early afternoon.  I was still on the call when they came over.  I did not, as usual, get much time to visit with anyone as I was stuck working.  We were originally talking about going somewhere for lunch today but because of my schedule we decided that it would make more sense to just order pizza from Davis’ Farm Market in Pavilion and eat at the house.  That saves time and makes it far more easy for the family to visit.

This evening, at around seven thirty when Liesl woke up from a long nap, Dominica, Liesl and I ran over to Livonia to visit with the Millens.  It has been forever since we have seen them.  It has been about two years since Dominica saw them and about three years since I have seen them.  They have had two children born since the last time that I saw them!

We stayed for about three hours and had coffee and ate Eric’s peanut butter blast cookies.  It was great to get to see them and Liesl had a great time playing with the kids.  Liesl and Elijah are almost exactly the same age, Liesl being younger but about six weeks.  Liesl was very excited as she never has children to play with and when she does they are almost never her age except for Landen.

We got back to dad’s around eleven. Time for some more work and then eventually off to bed.  We are still sleeping with Dominica and Liesl in the guest bedroom and Oreo and I sleeping in the television room, or den, on a futon mattress laying on the floor which is surprisingly comfortable.

We were all quite thankful to wake up in New York this morning.  No more flying for a while.  It is very nice to be back and not having any vacation activities needing any of our attention.

I do have one big project today, that is a failed hard drive on a server here that needs to be replaced lickety split.  I found that the drive had failed on Friday while we were in Florida but there was nothing that could be done from there.  So I did all of the appropriate backups and did everything that I could to prepare for a complete failure and ordered another drive to be overnighted, which means that it arrived yesterday, so that today the drive could be replaced.

I am also back to my normal work schedule today so I am doing everything that I can to get caught up on anything that is pending or lingering from while I was out of town.  I was working the whole time but it is impossible to remain as focused and efficient when doing that and, at the very least, my email management has gotten sloppy and I am very much backed up on all of my email accounts.  So anyone who is waiting on emails from me, I have not likely forgotten you and will be getting back to you throughout this week as I start to get caught back up.

My Aunt Sharon and Uncle Leo came up today to spend some time with Liesl.  No one got to visit with me as I was stuck working, a lot.  But that is expected.

This evening was spent working on the failed hard drive.  It was a software RAID set that failed which means quite a bit more manual work to get everything back and ready for action. There is a lot of good learning to be done in times of failure like this so I actually had Dominica go through the software portion of the swapping process so she did that and then it was up to be to do the physical hardware change.

The server is actually mounted to a ceiling mount which is a little hard to deal with when you need to open it up and swap in and out drives.  Especially when they are not hot swap drives.  So I had to power the machine down, open it up, climb a ladder and do all of the swapping with my arm extended and being pretty much unable to see what I was doing.

To make matter worse, I swapped the wrong drive at first.  Argh.  There is no visible indicator on this type of box so it is just a chance that you take.  Not fun.  Once I got the drive physically replaced and checked out we were able to begin the rebuilding process.  I had Dominica do this piece as well, which only takes a few minuets.  Then it was time to wait.

The drive rebuild process took many hours and I was not able to start up all of the downed processes and systems to do a check out until around two in the morning.  I am sleepy but I am happy knowing that the drive has been replaced and there is nothing further to worry about from that machine.  That failed drive has been hanging over my head for five days now and that is not the kind of thing that you want to be worrying about.  So I am much happier now.

Our plan is to be packed up and on the road back to Peekskill tomorrow evening after work.  We are really dreading getting back to Peekskill.  Once we are there there is just so much work that we need to do 🙁

This is it, our final day in Walt Disney World for 2009.  Dominica’s parents were off in the wee hours of the morning leaving only Dominica, Liesl and I here in Florida waiting for our flight late this afternoon.

This morning we had to pack up, get ready and get out of the hotel room.  This was extra challenging since I need to work today and need to do so from the hotel.  So I was on the laptop all morning getting as much work done as I could knowing that I was going to be knocked offline as soon as we checked out of the hotel because they don’t use wireless here but Ethernet only.

I worked until the last possible second and then we were out of the hotel and off for lunch.  We had been toying with a couple of ideas for food.  Dominica went down and talked to the concierge and the concierge desk told us that the bus ride to the Animal Kingdom Lodge was really quick and that we could just walk in and eat at Sanaa.  We were very excited to learn that Sanaa would be an option.  Sanaa is the new addition to the restaurant selection over at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and if it is anything like Boma and Jiko (and Tusker House in the Animal Kingdom park itself) then the food would be awesome.  We had been really disappointed that we were not going to get to eat at Sanaa when we had made the initial Disney plans so this is a huge win for us.  It really worked out well because no one else would have the least interest in coming over here to eat.

So we hopped on the bus and over to the AKL we went.  Sanaa is not in the main resort but is located in the new Disney vacation club structure at the AKL so the whole area was brand new and totally new to us.

The Sanaa restaurant was beautiful.  Great theming and it has its own savanna separate from the savanna that you can view from Boma and Jiko.  The food is Indian prepared in a South African style.  A neat idea.  Indian – South African Fusion.  Dominica went for a trio of traditional Indian dishes and I went for the sustainable fish which was an arctic char served in a fish broth.  We also got a naan sampler.  Dominica liked her food and loved the bread but did not find it so good as to be truly excited.  My arctic char, however, was simply amazing.  This fish had to be the best meal that I had in Disney this entire trip without a doubt.  If I could eat two of any one meal, this would be the meal.  Just absolutely delicious.  It was extra special as it was a unique dish that you cannot get readily anywhere else.  Arctic char is pretty rare on its own and the preparation was quite unique.  Just a great experience.  We got dessert as well.  Dominica getting the trio dessert sampler and me going for the unique orange-ginger cake with passion fruit kulfi which was really good too.

After lunch we returned to the resort to be completely ready for our return voyage home.  We had some time to kill so shopped a little in the hotel shop and then sat outside and enjoyed the weather a little.  It was not long before the Magical Express picked us up to take us to Orlando International Airport so that we could catch our flight back to Buffalo.  We flew down on JetBlue and are returning on Southwest.

Our flight took off at six thirty.  Delayed just five minutes, no real concern.  The flight back to Buffalo was uneventful.  Liesl was, thankfully, completely tired still and fell asleep literally as we left the runway and did not wake up until we were on the final descent into Buffalo.  It could not have gone any better.  I held her pretty much the entire time as she was asleep in my arms at the beginning and we dared not move her.  So it was a bit of a boring flight since we could not talk and I could not read or do anything but I got a chance to just zone out and snuggle my baby.

We landed in Buffalo, picked up our luggage and dad was right there with Oreo ready to pick us up.  Oreo was very, very excited to see us (or smell us or whatever as he is pretty much deaf and blind at this point) and Liesl was very excited to see her grandpa who was very thankful to get to see a baby who had been sleeping most of the day and was now very happy.

I drove us back from Buffalo to dad’s house in Peoria, New York.  We stopped at McDonald’s near the airport to get dinner to eat as we drove.  It would have been about a quarter to eleven when we arrived back at dad’s.  We were very ready for bed.  We just set up Dominica and Liesl in the guest bedroom and Oreo and I took the floor by the fireplace in the television den and we were off to sleep in no time.  We are very thankful to be back in New York and are not looking forward to the impending panic of packing, selling and apartment hunting that needs to be done in the next three weeks.  Our target for Texas is three weeks from today.  Three weeks.  Twenty one days.  That is very little time considering we were in Florida this morning and are still hundreds of miles from our home and have not yet even begun thinking about what we are going to do about moving to Dallas.  Ugh.  We are not looking forward to the next few weeks in any way whatsoever.  This is going to be very, very rough indeed.

At the very least, though, we have officially survived Disney 2009.  Ten people times ten days equals one hundred Disney people day equivalents of stress.

This morning Liesl appears to be doing a bit better.  She got some sleep last night and is at least not getting sick on us over and over again.  So perhaps she is on the road to recovery.  It is a work day (Sunday) for me so we are just relaxing in the hotel room while I work as much as possible.  Dominica went out and did laundry for a while trying to get our clothes and Liesl’s stuff cleaned up a bit.  Liesl fell asleep on the hotel bed behind where I was sitting and spent a few hours sleeping snuggled against my back.

Liesl ended up sleeping until three in the afternoon.  She really needed the time to rest and heal.  She was much more herself, and very hungry, when she finally woke up.

Once Liesl was awake, we rallied the troops and were off to EPCOT.  We met up with the Toccos in the UK.  Dominica and I had gotten there early and had gotten a fish and chips to split.  We originally had had dinner reservations at Kouzina’s tonight, being the new Kat Kora restaurant that replaced Spoodles on the Disney Boardwalk.  But our dining plan has us left with tons of snacks and counter service meals that must be used up today before midnight (because most of them belong to Dominica’s parents and they switched rooms today so their meals are going to expire while technically our own do not expire until tomorrow night) so we are skipping the reservation and just grazing through EPCOT’s World Showcase instead.  I really am not heartbroken.  I had always wanted to try Spoodles but having a “celebrity” restaurant is just a huge turnoff to me.  I have a natural aversion to things that feel gimmicky or heavily marketed and so restaurants that are famous for their owners and not for their food not only don’t sell me on their products but make me want to avoid them completely.  It is like those Apple commercials for this Macs with the stoner kid telling you how all the cool kids have Macs.  It just makes me feel like I would be embarrassed to own a Mac regardless of whether I think they are good or not.  Apple would sell more stuff to me if they just stopped all the hype.

From the UK we walked over to France and went to the pastry shop and got some pastries to split.  We sat in almost the same seats that Dominica and I sat at in the rain in 2005 on our first Disney trip together.

Then we walked through the World Showcase stopping in Morocco so that Dominica’s parents could see what an awesome area it is.  There is definitely nothing in the World Showcase that compares to Morocco, they did such an amazing job there.

We continued around the World Showcase but could not find anything that everyone wanted to eat so we decided to head on down to The Land and get food in the cafeteria area there.  It was a bit of a hike.  Dominica’s feet have been killer her for days.  These long Disney trips really take a toll on her.  She can never find shows that are really comfortable for her for the large amounts of walking that have to be done here.

We were able to get some different food at the Sunshine Seasons food court.  Nothing really stood out as being totally amazing but I found a tofu noodle bowl that was completely different from the one in Tomorrowland but was still quite good – but not nearly as good as the amazing one that I had over there several days ago.

After we ate, Dominica’s dad and I took Liesl on Living with the Land, which as all of my readers know is my all time favourite Disney ride.  It is pretty much not updated at all this year from our trip a year and a half ago, which is a disappointment but the ride is still good.  I really like Living with the Land because it has all of the best bits of what Disney does – awesome dark ride mechanics, dramatic water and artistry in a darkride and interesting educational stuff – without the things that they consistently get wrong – loud noises, pointless weird made up theming, action that doesn’t relate to the ride, etc.  It is extra cool because it mixes the best dark ride work that Disney has done with a revolving restaurant and then real, live labs.  It just has everything.

Dominica’s parents left EPCOT ahead of us to go back to the hotel.  This is their last night in the hotel and they need to be up really, really early, like around three thirty, to catch their Disney Magical Express that will take them to the airport so that they can fly home.  So if they do not get to bed really early they will not be able to get up in the morning.  We do not fly out until late afternoon so we get some time in Disney yet tomorrow.

We decided not to stay in EPCOT, though, after seeing the long line for Spaceship Earth which was the only ride that I was really interested in doing yet.  So we just headed back ourselves.

Before going back to our own hotel room we walked down to the Toccos’ new room to get or drop something off – I don’t remember exactly what the errand was.  Up until now we had only seen the Calypso area of the All Star Music which is the two hotel buildings directly against the main building surrounding the guitar pool.  Dominica’s parents are spending tonight in a room in Broadway which is a good walk back away from the main building.  So we got a chance to walk through most of the resort and to check out the theming.  The theming back in Jazz and Broadway was way cooler than up where we were but the walk is so far that it does not justify it at all unless you are driving everywhere and use your car rather than going through the bus stop all of the time which is out front.

Then it was off to an early bed for us.  We are very tired.  This week has worn us out.