Sheep Guarding Llama

I was not tired at all last night and only slept restlessly.  I got up at two thirty this morning figuring that it would be far better to actually get to work and get things done rather than laying in bed awake thinking about all of the things that I could be doing if I was actually awake.  I am on the early shift anyway this morning so I was only getting up three and a half hours earlier than I should have been.  Knowing that I had to be up early was probably what made me unable to sleep anyway.

It was a very, very productive morning.  I really appreciate these mornings when I get up super-early and just hit the work first thing.  I started by culling my email down to the bare essentials.  That always makes me feel better.  I feel buried if the email backs up and then I can never get on top of things.  I got a ton of media stuff moved around and my DVD conversion process was kept flowing which can take a lot of manual work at times.  I got SGL posted and Twittered a bit.  A couple cups of coffee and paid some bills.  A lot of really good work done and out of the way.

It turned out to be a really good thing that I got up so early and went straight to work.  Today turned out to be a really, really busy day.  By being up so early I was able to turn a really busy day that would have buried me in work into an opportunity to get caught up and really be productive.

Our newspaper arrived today!  Oh wait.  No it didn’t.  Actually they delivered the Monday paper but still did not deliver the weekend paper.  We do not subscribe to the Monday paper, of course, so I have no idea what that was about.  Still no contact from the newspapers customer service or any other department.  No idea if we will ever get a newspaper from them.

Today’s big news is that Liesl, all by herself when we were not looking, pulled herself up onto a box in the living room so that she could stand there!  Already pulling herself up, it is crazy.  She is getting so big and strong.  She is very much into standing now.

My new Tamrac photo backpack arrived today.  It is much better designed than the Tamrac camera case that I have from fifteen years ago.  This one is much easier to carry and while being only marginally bigger than the old one can hold almost twice as much camera gear.  Far more useful for me.   I was really hoping that I would be able to take the new bag to Texas with me so that I could take pictures this coming weekend of the drive and of Austin since I will be so many places that I have never been before.  The flights to Austin and back to New York make it quite impractical to have any additional luggage with me so that is not going to happen.  I am going to be traveling very, very light.

I wrote most of today’s update and then, when I clicked to post it my session timed out and the day’s update was lost.  So here I am writing everything again.  I am not too happy about that.  It is hard enough keeping up with the blog as it is and remembering what I said the first time and not forgetting things because I think that I already said it is not easy.

After working for sixteen hours for the office I was exhausted.  Dominica needed to do some quick shopping for Liesl supplies at Walmart so we decided to just go out and make an evening of it.

We went to Applebee’s for dinner remembering them having really good salmon and several items that we liked.  There is an Applebee’s in the Walmart plaza so that was easy.  We got there and to our chagrin we realized that they have worked to remove just about everything remotely vegetarian friendly from the menu.  There still is a little bit of fish but very little and nothing that we were too excited about.  If you are a vegetarian who does not eat fish there is not a single entree to be had on their menu.  So much for eating there in the future.  We made do this evening only because we were already seated and already had drinks before we looked at the reduced size menus and before we asked if they even had veggie burgers and were told that they did not.  When I worked for Wegmans in 2005 I ate at Applebee’s a few times and they had several good menu items for me back then.  Apparently they have decided that serving potential vegetarian customers just does not make sense for them.  🙁

After eating we went to Walmart and did our shopping.  That only took about ten or fifteen minutes.  Very quick trip.  Dessert was, of course, from Cold Stone Creamery which is also in the same plaza as Walmart and Applebee’s making it very convenient.  Liesl was getting fussy before we even got our ice cream, though, so we ate in a rush and got her back home as quickly as we could as it was time for her to be getting off to bed.

I worked for about an hour to wrap things up for the day then went to bed around ten thirty or maybe a little earlier.  I was pretty tired by that point.  I am very glad that I am not working the early shift tomorrow.  I am working it again on Thursday which we hope fits into our weekend plans.  We do not have our plans together yet for this coming weekend.  We may be leaving Peekskill to go to Ithaca and/or Frankfort as early as Thursday or, potentially, just meeting Francesca on the road on Saturday.  All of our weekend travel plans changed this week suddenly and some of the are still in the air so we have no idea what is going to happen.

For a Sunday work was actually rather busy today.  Much more than I usually get on a Sunday.  I sure hope that this is not indicative of what is going to happen next week when I need to be able to coordinate working while traveling on Sunday.

This is the second week that our newspaper subscription has not arrived.  Dominica wanted to get a subscription to the local Westchester Gannet newspaper, the “Journal News”, which I was against but I see it as supporting a worthless, environmentally unfriendly waste of hot air.  Gannet newspapers are pathetic and give the concept of journalism a black eye – they are nothing more than an outlet for press releases and other free or pay to play content.  It really irks me that we have no means of getting our Sunday coupons without buying the newspaper and wasting all of that paper for no reason.  We would never consider reading that tripe and yet we have to pay for it as if the writing in the paper actually matters just to save some money.  So, a few weeks ago, after doing tons of research and discovering that there just was no other way to get our local, weekly circular coupons we decided that it would be okay to subscribe to the newspaper just to get them.

Last week our paper did not come even though they charged us for the subscription and the newspaper website says that the paper should be coming as we are marked as having paid.  Dominica tried to contact the paper during the week but their website was down most of the week and their customer service line does not take messages.  She tried several times and finally managed to get through on the website but no one ever responded to her.

So today, as expected, our paper did not come again.  Dominica went through all of the channels yet again to report another week without a paper but, of course, customer service was closed and they don’t take phone messages.  The website was down.  No method of contacting the paper on their busiest day of the week.

To make the situation even more pathetic, just this month Westchester Magazine ran an article on the Journal News talking about how the paper is failing due to a lack of interest in its archaic medium, a new generation of readers who are not acquainted with the newspaper, etc.  They talk about how this paper is, like so many others in the country, struggling to stay afloat with a dwindling subscriber base.  Yet, here we see that the paper isn’t even remotely interested in delivering us the paper when they’ve managed to get someone willing to accept it – even if grudgingly.

So Dominica wrote a scathing email to the president and the publisher of the paper but we expect that they don’t have working email or, if they do, that they are not competent enough to know how to read it.  That appears to be the problem at this, and I suspect, many newspapers in the United States.  They are staffed by people who have failed to keep up with the world or obtain basic high school graduation requirements and are stuck working in a world of print and bottom of the barrel journalism built from a base of press releases and, if the budget allows, regurgitated wire news.

I can’t wait until the newspapers finally die and free us from their decaying hulk and force simple things like the weekly coupons to become electronic rather than making us generate loads of landfill just to keep down the cost of groceries.  We would happily – very happily – pay for our coupons to be sent to us in some other way.  The amount of money that the coupon printers are willing to throw away in order to prop up the newspaper industry is staggering.  We would easily pay a dollar a week for the coupons.  It would take only a first class stamp to send them to us in the most expensive form possible and dramatically less in bulk mail or however they could work it out.  That would give them a profit of fifty to seventy cents per customer more than they are getting now and currently they get nothing from their distribution channel so this is a lot of profit from doing pretty much nothing.

I worked a long day today and Dominica took Liesl out to go shopping at the grocery store.  She had to buy the paper there, again, so that we would have the coupons.

After work was done we hung out for a while and Dominica did some work on some Linux systems and Xen hypervisors.  Very good learning experience stuff.

We watched Bedtime Stories which is the “new” Disney and Adam Sandler film.  It wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad.  Definitely a kids movie and it did not really grab me at all.  We had it on BD from Netflix so can’t complain about the cost.  Definitely not a movie that I plan to buy although I have a feeling that there are going to be a lot of movies that we buy soon because they are movies that Liesl will like.  Fortunately we already have a massive children’s film collection so we don’t have to worry about much content other than the really young age stuff like The Wiggles which we are starting to buy now.  We already own every Disney animated movie ever and most other important animated films, lots of family friendly stuff and Disney classics.

Oreo spent the evening snuggling with me on the recliner.  This is his new thing.  A few weeks ago he started doing this every night when we would relax in the living room and now it has become a routine.  He hops up on the chair once early in the evening to do an inspection to make sure that there is a space for him and that his blanket is ready and then he comes back fifteen minute to half an hour later and snuggles with me in the chair and stays there until we go to bed.  It is very sweet.

After Bedtime Stories we watched an episode of Keeping Up Appearances which is one of those classic shows that you can just watch over and over again and it never really gets old.  Dominica went to bed after just one episode but I was not tired yet so I stayed awake for one more.  It was probably a quarter till eleven when I went to bed.

As of today I am completely, one hundred percent caught up with all of the images that I have to upload to Flickr.  Over four thousand pictures hosted there now.

Tomorrow morning I am working the early shift at the office so have to be up around six in the morning.  I am only doing that shift one day this week.

I slept in nice and late today.  I did not get up until nine which is awesome since we went to bed around eleven or maybe even earlier!  Dominica and Liesl were up before me and Oreo was up long before them.  He likes to move into Liesl’s room when the sun comes out and he sleeps on his dog bed in there.  We have all of the doors open upstairs all of the time to facilitate hearing Liesl from the other room and also to make it easier for the air conditioning to keep up with the upstairs.  It has a hard time making it really cool up there.

I went right down to the basement to get straight to work.  There is a lot of work for me to do this morning and I need to get right to it.

Tons of work today.  A really long Saturday of upgrades and patching. I ended up working into the afternoon which was much later than I had originally planned. A really busy Saturday.

Once I was done with work we ran out to Pastel’s for a late lunch.  We were late enough that we were practically the only people in the restaurant.  It was nice to get out of the house for lunch.  Liesl likes visiting with new people.

The weather is much nicer today.  Still quite warm and sunny but not so unbearable as it has been for the last week.  A nice change.

Dominica did a lot of work cleaning around the house today.  Mostly she worked on stuff in the upstairs and some in the basement.  Now that her course at the University of Illinois is over she has a lot more energy than she had previously.

I put in a lot of work getting the last of my unedited photos edited and ready to upload to Flickr.  I have another big batch almost ready to go that I expect to get uploaded tomorrow morning.  I think that this will put me over the four thousand photo mark on Flickr.  My collection has been viewed over two hundred thousand times thus far!

I discovered, thanks to Andy, that I could switch to shooting in Nikon RAW format (aka NEF) to get much higher quality from my images.  I did not used to do this back when I first got my camera due to a number of limitations in shooting that way but now I can still do all of my photo editing in Picasa and get much better results so I have switched.  Now I definitely need a larger SD card for my camera as it can only hold about sixty images in NEF format because they are really large.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I spoke to Verizon and managed to finally get my BlackBerry Tour ordered and everything arranged.  Just $49 for my new phone with my standard plan renewal which I do anyway.  I get a new phone every year with them and every year I forget.  By the time that I call again I am way past being eligible for a new phone so I get one every time that I call.  The new Tour should arrive on Wednesday, they think, which will give me Thursday and Friday, we hope, to test it out while we are out of town before I have to rely upon it during the drive to Houston.

We are changing our Houston plans now so next week has become a lot more difficult.  Instead of Francesca and the kids coming down to our place in the middle we are going to go up to Frankfort and stay there.  Most likely on Thursday and staying until Saturday morning when Francesca and I will set off for the drive to Houston.  Dominica will stay at her parents’ house until Sunday and then go back to Peekskill on Sunday night.  My dad is going to go down to Peekskill on Monday.  I will return from Houston, by way of Austin, on Wednesday.  I am really hoping that I can convince Francesca to take the western “I70” route because instead of driving through places that I have been before almost the entire trip will be new to me which, in turn, will keep me much more awake than will driving places that I have been before.

It was nice out this evening and we had our main work for the day completed so at around eight we all went out for a walk around the complex.  It was a nice temperature but the humidity was still something fierce.  Probably no more than seventy-two degrees out but muggy as could be.  We discovered that there was a live concert going on up at the lifestyle center.  We have no idea what that is about.  Perhaps our homeowners association sponsors a summer concert series.  That would be pretty neat.  We never pay attention to these things, but obviously we should.

After our walk Dominica cooked dinner – pan fried tilapia – and I worked for a little longer.  Then we ate dinner and watched the ending of The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow which was a seriously awful film.  It is truly amazing what they would put up with in the 1950s for cinema!  We only had maybe twenty minutes left in the film.

Then we watched Center Stage which, strangely, Dominica has never seen even though we have had it for a very long time.  Likely from before when she and I started dating.  It is a ballet dancing film – right up her alley, which is why I was so surprised that she had never seen it.  It is a pretty good film.

It was late when we finished the movie but neither of us were tired at all. Very strange.  Liesl had gone to bed at normal time so we should have been off to bed but just did not feel like it.  So we put in Charlie’s Angels and watched that.  I have not seen that movie in a very long time.  It is a decade old which really makes me feel old.  I still have that feeling like it is a relatively new movie.  Not new by any stretch but a decade old just doesn’t seem possible.

It is Friday and a very busy work day for me.  I got up on the early side and was working almost an hour before normal and still there was much to be done.  Nothing in particular making this a really busy day just a lot of little things all coming together.

It has been really warm here the last few days with crazy humidity.  We’ve had short, surprise thunderstorms in the middle of the day without any warning.  One moment it is bright and sunny and very, very hot and the next it is pouring rain with thunder and lightning.  Then back to the sun and the heat again.  The air conditioning is having problems keeping up with how warm it is and with the humidity so high we are really feeling it in the middle of the day when it is at its warmest.  The living room especially gets warm as it has so much exposed glass and no window dressings yet.  One more thing with which we really need to deal.

Dominica spent the day checking in periodically with her online courses at the University of Illinois to see if her work had been graded yet or not.  It took all day before she finally got her answer around eight in the evening – all of her work was accepted and her program is now complete!  She is pretty excited but definitely not as excited as I am.  Dominica now has a certificate in Linux/UNIX Systems Administration from the University of Illinois’ O’Reilly School of Technology.

Dominica’s next challenge on deck is to get her CompTIA Security+ certificate for which she has just begun studying.  We are hoping that with the addition of the Security+ that has first degree from Empire State College will also be completed all in one fell swoop.  That will put her into a really good position to be prepared to job hunt as soon as we decide that it is time for her to be working again.

My new book Understanding Exposure came today from Amazon.  Who knows when I will have any time in which I can read.

I had to work quite late today.  It was after eight when I was finally able to come upstairs and hang out with Dominica and Liesl.  We watched Ride the Wild Surf with Fabian, Barbara Eden and Shelly Fabares.  It was really good for a 1960s surfing movie.  Much better than the Frankie and Annette movies.  This wasn’t completely silly but was actually a movie about surf culture at the time as opposed to a movie about beach bums.

I just wanted the evening to be easy so we ordered in dinner from Forno’s.  Penne a la Vodka and fried calamari for us.  Not exactly healthy but easy and delicious.

We started watching The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow but after going about halfway through one of the slowest films ever we both decided that it would be better to just get off to bed rather than to stay up just to finish watching that movie.

Tomorrow morning I have quite a lot of work to do with system upgrades and Linux patching.

It’s official.  I have caught up with Sheep Guarding Llama.  I don’t think that this has happened for at least a month now!

I had a new book arrive from Amazon today: The Photographer’s Eye. Andy has been doing so much photography lately and talking to me about it that I have been really excited to be out taking pictures myself.  I ordered a new Tamrac backpack today as well.  My old Tamrac bag has been too small for my camera system for years but I have always made do with it.  My old bag I got in the early ’90s and it was great – just too small for me.  I have more lenses now and plan to have even more in the future.  I have four right now and although I do have a consolidation plan I also hope to get a really nice super wide-angle lens as well eventually.  One thing that I really love about digital photography is the lack of a need to carry any colored filters, star effects, diffusion filters, etc.  Any effects or filtering like that can be done in post production.  I just have my standard UV filters and circular polarizer as that is optical and must be done at the time of the picture taking.  So I carry fewer items but the ones that I do carry are larger.

We also had some new videos and music arrive today.  Liesl’s second “The Wiggles” CD came which she will enjoy listening to when we are driving.  Also two “The Wiggles” DVD came today including one of their 2008 releases and their brand new one that just released this week: The Wiggles Go Bananas. Liesl will be very, very excited to have a new Wiggles DVD to watch.  Dominica and I also just got the 1960s classic Ride the Wild Surf with Fabian, Barbara Eden (from I Dream of Jeanie fame) and Shelley Fabares (famous from Coach to our generation.) along with the double DVD pack of The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini and The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow from 1959 – both of which are sure to be awful.

The day was a regular work day.  Nothing exciting.  Nothing to report.  The week has really flow by.  I cannot believe how quickly the week has gone by.  Today is Thursday.  I honestly thought that it was Tuesday for most of the day.  This week has really been a blur.

This evening, when I wrapped up with work, we sat down and watched The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini.  We can’t help but laugh that audiences in the late 1960s actually went to the movie theatres to watch this stuff.  Amazing.  The movie was truly horrendous but surely must have been the inspiration for the Scooby-Doo cartoon show that would debut just three years later in 1969.  Some of the characters are just way too close and the whole movie plays, as many people have mentioned before me, like a dogless Scooby-Doo adventure.  Seriously weird stuff.

After the movie, after Liesl had gone to bed, instead of watching something else Dominica set about working on her UNIX Administration class for the University of Illinois.  She is down to the very final segment and really wanted to finish it tonight.  She worked on it this afternoon for about an hour or so but had not been able to have gotten very far because Liesl did not stay asleep for very long and I had a lot of work to do and was unable to watch her for any length of time.

Do Dominica worked for an hour or more while I ready my new book, The Photographer’s Eye, and at around ten this evening, she managed to submit all of the final work for her class!  We are assuming that some of it will be returned and have to be done again.  That always happens because the requirements are really vague but that is just how they do it there.  You submit, they send it back for adjustments, then you submit again.  But all of the real work is done and we just need to wait for them to tell us what, if anything, needs to be changed.  Having this coursework done is a major relief.  Really significant.  This is a four course series that ends in a really big UNIX Administration certificate that will be a major feather in Dominica’s cap when she is in the job market again.  It should, in theory, also make a really big impact on how much more she needs to do on her degree program at the State University of New York Empire State College.

It was a really early night for us.  Off to bed at a quarter after ten.  We were both really tired and just wanted to get some sleep.  I went right to bed but Dominica stayed up for quite a while reading on her Kindle.