Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

I am feeling much better now that I have had a couple of days to sleep in and do some catchup.  Nothing exciting happened today.  At least not during the day.  Work, of course.  Just the usual.  We didn’t go anywhere, do anything, receive any shipments, etc.  I was quite busy in the office most of the day and by the time that I finished up and was able to pop upstairs Dominica was already in a hurry to get out of the door to get to the movies with Katie.  I had forgotten that they were going to movies tonight – even though I had been the one arranging it during the day.

Dominica had bought the tickets online this morning for the eight thirty showing this evening out in Mohegan Lake at the plaza with the Best Buy, Walmart, Old Navy, etc.  It is the theatre that has the Cold Stone Creamery in the front of it where we often go.

I got a chance to talk to Danielle for about half an hour today.  The presidential elections in the Republic of the Congo are today and they are finally free to move about Impfondo again.  So she is back at the hospital with better Internet access and trying to catch up now.  A new update was posted as well.

Katie’s bus ended up being forty-five minutes late and Dominica had to leave without her to be able to make it to the movie.  Katie saw it last night so being a little late for her is not a big deal.  So Dominica left at eight to run over to the theatre and Katie stopped by the house about ten minutes later to pick up her ticket and get directions on how to get over there.  It turns out that they were unable to make connections once Katie got there and they ended up not sitting together.  That sucked but at least there were there together and in spirit.

I stayed home watching Liesl and Oreo.  It has been a while since I was left home alone as the babysitter for an extended period of time.  Oreo, of course, needed to go out moments after Dominica left.  Liesl was in a mostly good mood the whole time that Dominica was gone.  We watched Fireball 500 with Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello and Fabian.  Liesl fell asleep while we were watching that.

Liesl slept in her crib for me for most of the night without any problems at all.  She did really well staying home with her daddy.  Once she was asleep I watched Fabian and Annette sans Frankie in Thunder Alley. I was just a few sentences from the end of the film when Dominica and Katie returned from watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (HP6.)  Dominica liked it but was unhappy with the amount of cutting that they have done with the storyline.  Huge plot pieces are missing and there is only one film left to go.  I will see it when it releases on BluRay probably around Christmas.  I feel no need to see anything in the movie theatre.  I skipped Star Trek so I can pretty much skip everything else.

Katie only stayed for about fifteen minuets.  It was quite late, almost midnight, when she left and she has to get up to go to work tomorrow.  We were off to bed ourselves pretty quickly.  Good progress on SGL updates tonight.  Almost completely caught up for once.

I am practically caught back up on SGL updates.  W00t!  It’s been a tough summer thus far but I think, I hope, that once I get caught up that I will be able to keep the blog up to date.  That is, of course, until I go to Houston in less than two weeks because once I do that there is going to be another week lag that will take me another week to overcome.  So maybe it is hopeless.

Work today.  Nothing to report there.

Dominica felt a little under the weather today so for dinner we ordered in from Forno’s which is always a happy thing.  We were burned out on bikini beach movies and went back to the Gilmore Girls tonight.  We finished season six and are on to season seven now.  The final season.

Dominica has watched all of The Gilmore Girls previously but I never watched most of it the first time around but did see the final two seasons.  Now I am going through the series from beginning to end so that I actually understand what is going on in the final seasons.  I did not realize the first time around that I was watching all of the final two seasons.  Now that I am seeing them officially one right after another I am aware of the fact that I know everything that is happening.

SpiceWorks went down tonight for several hours for new updates to the online system to be posted.  The big change is to the way that points are accumulated in the system which pretty much locks the two of us who are the point leaders and are far ahead of everyone else in the system in our slots as being dramatically ahead of everyone else and now there is no real way for anyone to catch up because there is no way to easily accumulate points like we used to.  I don’t think that people are going to be all that happy about the new system.  Too much change and not in most people’s favours.

The new Harry Potter movie opens tonight.  Katie is going and Dominica is very sad that she does not get to see HP opening tonight.  So Katie promised to take Dominica to the movies tomorrow night after work and I said that I would stay home with Liesl and Oreo so that Dominica could go out.  So tomorrow night I am the baby sitter while the girls go out for a girls night out on the town.

Off to bed somewhat early again.  No real early but a little.  I am still feeling really tired from all of the travel and getting some real sleep is the only thing that really helps.  Although getting caught up on things definitely helps a lot as well and I am really thankful that SGL is finally back on track and that most of my photos have been posted to Flickr as well.  My daily hits on Flickr are way up from before.  I am seeing some quite impressive daily statistics.

Liesl is in her crib again.  Third night in a row.  I guess that she is used to it now.  She does not appear to be having any bad reactions to it.  She is not extra upset or anything.  The one problem is that she seems to bang her head against the wood back rather a bit.  She is used to have all of the sides be soft.