Sheep Guarding Llama

Liesl awful forehead bruise is much, much better today and you can barely see it at all now.

My main project for today was working on the VoIP system.  I am testing out a new softphone client for Windows called Zoiper which I have never used before.  Setting up Zoiper proved to be really simple and worked immediately.  We have had some problems getting some other SIP clients to work properly for whatever reason.  Zoiper has an attractive interface for the most part as well and pretty plain so you aren’t getting all caught up looking for features that you do not probably need.

Getting the VoIP system up and running is great.  That has been hanging over my head on my very, very long “to do” list for forever.  I am slowly working my way through it although there is so much to do that I don’t feel like I have any time to prepare for really important things like my trip to Germany which is coming up really, really soon or for our pending move to Austin which isn’t nearly as soon but is coming down the pike nonetheless.

Today was another really busy phone day, coincidentally, although most of the day I was just talking on the normal Vonage line.  Today might be the record for phone time.  Just hours and hours and hours of being on the phone.

That’s about all of the news for today.  Been way too busy to generate anything else interesting to tell anyone.

It’s Monday.  Mostly I have to say that so that I can figure out what day it is myself.  I tend to lose track of the day these days.  It is still wet today so even though it is pretty cool outside we are running the air conditioning after last night’s centipede incident.  Not taking any chances here.

I did get a chance to get some decent sleep last night so I am doing okay.

Today was very busy again.  I am feeling like the telephone has been permanently attached to my head.  For the last week or maybe two I have been on for just hours and hours a day.  Maybe more than eight hours.  We have three rechargeable handsets for our main house phone system and I cycle through almost all of them every day taking them from fully charged to completely dead all in a single day.  I have to be very careful to always keep two of them charging while a third is in use or we risk having no phones with any charge by later in the day.

Today I finished reading “The Digital Photography Book Volume 3”.  I have recently completed the first two volumes, all by Scott Kelby.

The entire evening tonight was taken up with Andy and I working on some web site design and strategies.  We spent quite a bit of time looking at stock photos and trying to make creative decisions.

After all of the tons of work that I have been doing I tried very hard to set today aside as time to spend with Liesl.  We have really been missing each other a lot this week.

We slept in a bit this morning – the only real chance to get real sleep all week.  That felt great.

The day was spent pretty much just relaxing.  We camped out in the living room and visited as a family.  The weather is nice and we have the air conditioning turned off and are enjoying fresh air for a change.

It was a cool, bright day during the day and then the rain came in the evening.  It was really nice to get some time to relax and do nothing.

Liesl’s forehead bruise is much improved today.  There is no missing it though.  It is several days old now and still quite bad but improving day by day.  It definitely does not bother her at all.  But it makes her look so sad.

We had a minor adventure this evening when Dominica discovered that a centipede had entered the house and climbed up on to her while she was sitting in the love seat in the living room!  Right in the middle of the only populated room in the entire house this centipede decided to not just hang out but to actually aggressively go after Dominica!  People who have not dealt extensively with centipedes really do not understand just how aggressive they are and how much they will actually go after people if they are not moving quickly enough.

Dominica freaked out, of course, and got the centipede, luckily a small one, onto a bright spot of fabric where we were able to see it.  We moved the love seat, shook the centipede onto a hard surface and were able to kill it without further incident.  Not happy about that though.  We did not want to deal with any more centipedes after living in North Brunswick.  Shudders.

Nothing really to report today.  Just a nice day spending time with the family.  We had Domino’s for dinner.  We tried their hot sandwiches which were really good.

I was seriously exhausted this morning when the phone rang around nine thirty.  Just four hours of sleep.  It has been like this much of the week.  I need a nice, relaxing night where I do nothing all evening and get to sleep in really late the next morning.

John, the surfing IT wizard, and I got right to work first thing this morning.  He started at eight and I joined him online a little later.  We have a very busy project day today and no time to waste.

The final piece of my new camera rig arrived today – the 72mm Tiffen UV filter that I need in order to protect my new lens.  Now I can really start using everything.  I am very excited.

I got pretty much no time at all to see Dominica or Liesl all day.  I was locked away in the basement attempting to be productive.  I did get just a tiny chance to run up and take a few pictures with the camera today.  I’m going to be lucky if I have any time to test this camera and equipment out before I need to take it to Europe!  That trip is coming up fast and I need to start getting ready.  Not this weekend though.  Just way too busy.

After dinner this evening Liesl was so tired that she actually fell asleep right in her high chair in the dining room!  She has never done that before.  Dominica came running to get me to help her with the new camera so that we could get a picture of her.  Liesl slept right through me taking three pictures of her, two of them with the flash on.

The weather broke and we got some serious rain today.  I did not have a chance to enjoy it but it was there.  It is much cooler out than it has been recently.  We get tired of the heat pretty quickly.

John and I ended up working all day.  The entire day.  It was exhausting.  I knew that we were going to have a lot to do today but was not really expecting it to be this much.  I am always surprised by how much work there is to do on the weekend.

It was around midnight when I was finally able to wrap up.  The entire day was spent in the basement.  And I had thought that maybe I would have some time to relax today. Ha.

People argue the most adamently when they are most convinced that they are wrong.

Another crazily busy day.  No spare time whatsoever.

The hot streak finally broke today.  It was raining from before I woke up this morning and on all day. It was great.  We finally got a chance to shut off the air conditioning and open up all of the windows and get some fresh air into the house for a change.  It is the quietest that the house has been in months with the A/C and blower off and the servers all moved into the utility room.

Today most all of my new camera gear arrived.  The camera itself, the Nikon D90, arrived yesterday.  Today the new 18-200mm lens arrived along with the 16GB SHDC memory card and the Nikon GPS unit that attaches right on to the camera itself.  The only thing that I need before I really start using this thing is the 72mm Tiffen UV filter which should be here soon.  I am very excited to be able to get started testing out this new camera.  Not today, though, there just is not enough time to do that.

It was a very busy day and, once again, Liesl and I got almost no time at all to see each other.  We are both very sad.  I am very hopeful that I will get a lot of time with her this weekend because I was able to get so much work done today.

I decided to hit the office work for tomorrow this evening.  So I ended up working extremely late for the office but eliminated almost everything that I would normally have to do tomorrow.

Liesl ended up going to bed before I was able to find my way up from the basement.  I decided that since I did not get a chance to spend the evening with her that I would just end up working instead.  Liesl went to bed around nine thirty.  Dominica and Oreo turned in at about eleven thirty.  It turned out to be closer to five thirty in the morning when I finally got a chance to head off to bed.  I did get quite a bit accomplished, though, both work-related as well as a massive number of CDs converted.  The entire stack of CDs that dad shipped down the last time that he came is just about done.