Sheep Guarding Llama

It’s Friday.  It’s a Friday going in to a three day Labor Day weekend so today is pretty slow at work.  It’s great.  Not only is today a relatively slow day but I actually have the weekend basically off – I am still doing some work tomorrow and covering on Sunday and unable to travel on Monday because I am the on-call for the team but that’s okay because there is going to be hardly any work this weekend and then on Tuesday I get to hop on a plane and leave North America behind for a week!

After a full day of work Dominica and I ordered in some Italian for dinner and relaxed for a little bit while I worked on and off throughout the night as I often do on Fridays.  While we watched The Suite Life with Zak and Cody via Netflix I did some work on finding a hotel in Osnabruck, Germany which I desperately need for my upcoming trip.

It took several hours of looking but I finally came up with a hotel that appears to meet my needs as best as anything can when I am booking in a country in which I have never been before and only have a vague idea of what I am going to be doing on this trip.  I found a place that seemed modern and nice, has Internet access and is not going to break the bank.  In fact the price really turned out to be quite great.

So I am all set for the days that I am staying in Germany now.  Now I am only in need of a single night hotel for my final night in Amsterdam.  That and I need to figure out exactly what I have to do with trains to get from the Amsterdam airport to the train station and then out to Osnabruck’s train station and then to the hotel.

I am really amazed by how inexpensively this trip is turning out to be.  The flights are $535 round trip after taxes and fees and the hotel is just $360 for the week.  That’s about $900 and all I need is one more hotel night.  So the “trip infrastructure” is going to be roughly $1,000 USD which is pretty amazing for six full days in some of the most expensive countries around (Germany and The Netherlands.)  Just need to pay for trains and food beyond that.

I was somewhat surprised that there appears to be nothing going on while I am there around the two thousandth anniversary of the Battle of Teutoburger Wald.  Given the importance globally of this battle it seems strange to me that there just seems to be nothing going on.  I’m not aware of a single event being planned.  I guess I will find out when I get there.

This whole week is pretty much just going to be some super short and sweet updates.  I have been way too busy to have anything interesting happen.  I’ve been working quite a bit and when not working trying to spend every spare moment with Liesl.  I am going to be missing time with her for an entire week coming up so I am trying to get as much time with her as possible.

I worked quite steadily all day.  Dominica did some cleaning when she had some spare time.  We have dinner plans with Katie tonight.  We have been trying to get together for an Indian dinner for a week or so and are finally managing to get together tonight.

Katie caught the six fifteen train out of Grand Central.  That put her in Peekskill about ten after seven.  Having her come straight up to Peekskill after work works out really well timing wise for all of us.  I picked her up at the station then swung back through to grab Dominica and Liesl before going down to the Beach Shopping Center to go to Ruchi’s.

Dinner at Ruchi’s was good as always.  We got the appetizer sampler and a dosa to split.  Then we all got curry for dinner.

After dinner we were all very much in the mood for ice cream so we went to Cold Stone in Yorktown Heights.  Yummy.  I’m loving their banana pudding special flavour for the peanut butter cup thing that they do.  Katie got one of their ice cream cupcakes as she is a cupcake fanatic and was interested in trying these out.

We hung out at the house for maybe forty-five minutes after dessert before Katie and I left to drive her back home down to Nyack.  It’s not a bad drive at night and I have never seen her apartment before so I got a quick tour and got to see Dudley for a minute.

It was bedtime by the time that I got back home to Peekskill.  Dominica had already gone to bed by the time that I got back.

Wednesday, wow, where is this week going?  I am not even noticing the days fly by.  There has just been so much work that the week has blended into one really long day.  Today was so busy that I didn’t even Tweet today.  So today’s post is quick and simple.  Too busy – will catch up with everyone tomorrow.

I worked until two in the morning again tonight.  Going to be tired again tomorrow.

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.