Sheep Guarding Llama

This is it.  The travling begins tonight.  It is going to be a very, very long week for me.  I did manage to sleep in a little today which will be really important over the next several days.  Can’t risk being tired from here on in.

There was a lot of work to do today.  Everything has to be ready for the week.  The big task of the day was setting up my new BlackBerry Tour mobile phone to replace my BlackBerry 8830 WorldPhone which I have been using since a week or so before Dominica and I went to the UK in late 2007.

The new phone is, thus far, quite awesome.  The most exciting new feature is that Verizon has finally decided to unlock the GPS features of the phone so that we Verizon users can now do all of that cool location-aware stuff that the iPhone users have been doing for a while now.  My goal is to have the phone set up so that it can track our progress as we travel from Frankfort, New York to League City, Texas over the weekend.  We will see if I can get that figured out in time for the trip.  I have very limited time to play with this new phone.  Luckily I at least have Twitter updates working.

Dominica spent the day packing.  There is a lot of prep to do and little chance to go back and get things later.  It is a very strategic trip as I need a lot of equipment to be away from home for so long but I also have to be able to travel very light because of the flights back to New York.  I will have just one carry-on, which is my CPAP bag, and my one suitcase with my laptop in it.  I hate having to fly like that but it is what I have to do.

Work ended up going a lot later tonight than we had hoped.  It was well after eight this evening when we were finally able to do the final car packing and shut down everything in the house.  It ended up being after nine when we were actually on the road from Peekskill to Frankfort.  And thus the drive begins.

We stopped at McDonald’s on the New York Thruway south of Albany to pick up our dinner.  Fillet-o-fish sandwiches as usual.  Liesl did really well sleeping the entire trip.  We was only awake for a few minutes the entire way.

It was almost one in the morning when we finally arrived in Frankfort.  I walked Oreo and Dominica got Liesl to bed and our “bedroom” set up so that we could get to sleep.  It was probably one thirty or possible two before we actually were able to get to bed.  The first three hours or driving are now complete.  Tomorrow we will be in Frankfort all day. The real driving begins early Saturday morning.

It is another crazy day in the world o’ Scott.  Today is my last full day at home for an entire week.  That is worrisome.  I always get stressed out when I am going to be traveling for any length of time because there is always so much to do and so many things to forget before leaving and then you are stuck away from home without the things that you need.

I got almost no sleep again last night.  Went to bed around midnight or a little later and was up by four in the morning because I couldn’t sleep.  So, again, I just went down to the office to get to work since I was already up so early.  If you can’t sleep you might as well be productive.

My BlackBerry Tour arrived from dad’s house today via UPS overnight.  I managed to get the box opened but did not really have any time to do anything else with the phone other than to look at it quickly.  It looks quite nice and I am hopeful that it will work well for me on this trip.  Just one more component that really can’t “fail” on me without causing a serious problem.

I worked all day.  It was quite busy.  I did get a little time in the afternoon to hang out with Dominica.  This is the last that we will really see each other for a week.  Liesl slept most of the day so we did not get to hang out very much.

I was really exhausted by evening and went to bed around midnight.  I really need to catch up on sleep before the crazy drive begins.  I am hoping that Francesca will agree to take the western route through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma rather than the middle route through Kentucky, Tennenness and Arkansas.  The middle route is one that I know all except for a portion after Nashville.  It wouldn’t be bad as I would love to see Memphis and Little Rock and to drive through that region but so much of the drive would be “repeat” for me.  But the western route is almost completely new to me the moment that we are out of Columbus, Ohio.  I have been to Cincinati but this route will take us, instead, through Dayton and then into parts of Indiana and Illinois to which I have never been even though I have been to both states multiple times previously.

The real excitement is driving all the way east to west through Missouri, which I have never see at all, including crossing the Mississippi in famous St. Louis on i70.   Then driving north to south across Oklahoma which I also have never seen.  I will enjoy the trip a lot more being so much farther from landscape with which I am so familiar.  I tend to fall asleep when driving over the same roads again and again but I also tend to be very, very awake when travling to new places.  When I first drove from Ohio to Alabama it was all new and I could have just driven forever taking in all the new sites as I went.  Hopefully this trip will be like that.

I got some serious sleep last night and feel pretty good today.  I got up and got right to work.  Even though I did a lot of catchup yesterday things have been really busy for some reason and I am not exactly ahead – just not horribly behind like I would have been had I not worked so much yesterday.

Liesl is advancing quickly with her new found standing prowess.  Today she stood herself up when Dominica was not in the room and took the PS3 remote and turned on her DVD.  Dominica was in the kitchen and suddenly heard the DVD start playing and ran out to find Liesl guiltily standing at the couch with the remote.  She is definitely quite dangerous now.

Two new photography books arrived today.  My two book box set of “Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography” Volumes 1 and 2.  They are really good from what I have read so far and I have Volume 3 on my wish list and I plan to get it when it releases which, I think, will be pretty soon.

My day was crazy busy.  I had no idea that it was going to explode and that I was going to be just running from task to task as quickly as I could for most of the day.  It ended up being pretty exhausting just trying to keep up with everything.  It was all that I could do to get enough done so that I was able to run out the door at a quarter after six in the evening to get down to White Plains so that I could meet with someone from IBM.

This was my first trip ever to White Plains, New York.  It is a really well known small city and it is roughly the center, both physically and culturally, of Westchester.  It is a really cool place and I got to see the new Ritz-Carlton Towers in downtown that are only half filled right now.  Condos there are as much as eight million dollars in US funds!  Crazy.  They have amazing NYC views while being in small town Westchester.

My dinner with IBM went really well.  We had a great discussion and I think that we both came away with a lot of value.  Very much worth our time to get together.  We have some action items and I am looking forward to seeing where the relationship will go.

It was about ten thirty when I got back to Peekskill.  I was pretty tired since I had so little sleep yesterday so went to bed pretty much right away.  Probably before eleven thirty.

My new BlackBerry Tour arrived today… except that it arrived at dad’s house instead of mine.  Oops.  So dad is overnighting it to Peekskill so that I can have it to test out before the weekend as I desperately need it for my trip to Houston and I need time to make sure that it works and get all of the necessary accessories for it before leaving.

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.