Sheep Guarding Llama

We are back home and this morning I am back to work as usual.  It is definitely nice to be sitting at my desk again with my own chair and my large monitors and the multiple displays.  Working from home is always the easiest place to work.

We have a full house this morning.  Nine people plus Oreo!  This is the most that we have ever slept here, I believe.

I was up and “off” to work right away.  Today was a busy day for everyone so there was no sleeping in and lounging about for the rest of the household either.  They got up and got ready to go and then went out for breakfast and then over to Harriman so that Joe and Brittany could pick up the new BMW 335i at noon.  They are picking up the car and then driving it straight back up to Frankfort because the car dealer is sending another driver along with them to help facilitate some of the paperwork.  It is amazing what these places will do to make a sale!

After the car was picked up, the girls (and Garrett) went to the outlet mall to do some shopping.  So they were gone pretty much all day.  It was a very exhausting day for them.

After they got back, Dominica and Francesca set to assembling baby gates around the house.  Garrett is walking, almost running, everywhere that he goes and Liesl is rapidly becoming mobile.  She is not quite mobile yet but she is definitely on her way quickly.  She is not crawling but does the tummy quiggle across the floor pulling herself forward with her hands.  She makes decent progress.

They had some logistical problems but eventually got the first baby gate up which is a lattice swing gate that separates the kitchen and entry way from the living room and dining room.

This evening they all went out and picked up ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery in Yorktown Heights and brought it back to eat at the house.  When they went out to get the ice cream they left me at home with Liesl, Garrett and Oreo all by myself!  A dangerous move indeed.

Oreo is very, very glad to be home.  He has been stressed and exhausted.  All he wants to do is to sleep.

Today I finally got a chance to get some of the photos off of the Nikon and Kodak cameras and to get some of them edited and uploaded to Flickr.  So you can see pictures of Liesl taken over the last few months now.  It has been really difficult to get pictures taken care of properly even since my desktop died a few months ago.  It wasn’t safe to have the pictures stored on my desktop as it was unreliable and I didn’t have all of the storage and software that I needed to do anything.  I am slowly getting things back together now.  The most important thing is that I am running Mozy Home Unlimited so that I am backing up all of my original images through them which makes me a lot more confident that I will not lose them.  Now I have local copies, copies on Flickr and on Mozy.

We are in Frankfort, New York again today.  Today we are here for Joe’s graduation party.  I had to get up this morning and get right to work as I am not working my entire shift like I normally do because of the graduation party this afternoon.

I worked until almost a quarter till one then we drove out to the Kitlas in Utica for the party.  We rode out with Francesca in her truck with all of us holding huge trays of miniature cheesecakes and cake balls (cake that has been mixed with frosting, rolled into balls and coated in chocolate or other glaze.)  We arrived at the restaurant just as dad pulled in after driving out from Pavilion.  So perfect timing for him.

It was a really good turn out for the party.  The party went from around one until four.  Just as the party was wrapping up Joe got called by our BMW dealer in Orange County and found out that he was going to be able to pick up the 2007 BMW 335i that he has been trying to get – the same one that we test drove the last time that they were down.  So our plans are changing and he needs to come down to Peekskill tonight so that he can pick up the car tomorrow.

Then it was back to the Tocco’s.  Dominica and I packed up and left very shortly after having left the party.  We have been away from our home for the past nine days and are definitely looking forward to being at home again.

Francesca and her kids as well as Joe and Brittany have been talking about coming down to visit in Peekskill for a little bit so everyone is driving down with us tonight.  Joe and Brittany road with Oreo and I in the X3 while Dominica road along with Francesca and family in Francesca’s Toyota.  That was there was someone in each vehicle that knew the way.

The drive back down to Peekskill went well.  Nothing really to write about.  Slight traffic around Albany but that was about it.  It was just a little after nine when we pulled into the parking lot.  It was definitely nice to see the house again.  I have found that when you own a house you miss it a lot more than you do if you are renting a place.  There is something magic about returning to a property that you actually own.  I always felt that way when we would go back to the house in Geneseo after we had been away for a while.  It was so neat to walk into your own house when you had gotten used to not having had it.

I was very pleased to discover that the long running h.264 compression job that I had left running while we were away ran almost flawlessly and that over a week of continuous compression had been completed.  That was a very useful use of the time that we were away.

We were all quite hungry and wanted to order in from Forno’s but they closed just as we got home so that was not an option.  So we phoned in an order to New City Diner and then Joe and I drove out there to pick up dinner.  They ended up giving us some free extra desserts while we were there – just small samples of some of their pies.

We got back to the house and discovered that every single meal was wrong – mostly just by a little bit.  My meal was completely wrong.  Brittany’s was almost completely wrong.  Joe’s was slightly wrong.  Most of us were missing all of our sides.  Dominica and Francesca both got ice cream-based meals in which the ice cream was forgotten.  It was a disaster.  Seven wrong meals.  Francesca called to complain and they just hung up on her after telling her that either we could drive down there and pick up some pickles or else tough.  They claimed that since they charged us only for the food that we received that they were under no obligation to do anything else – even though they charged us, in most cases, for food that we had not ordered – not simply less overall food.  They were really rotten about it.  Brittany then called and yelled at them for a bit.

Nothing will come of the mix up, of course, except that Dominica will never let me eat there again.  So much for one of our staples restaurants in town and our one all night place to eat.  This is going to be a real problem now.

The food issue really put a damper on the evening.  Very crappy introduction to Peekskill.

There is a lot to be done today so even though it is a Saturday I had to be up on the early side so that I could get right to work around eight.  I worked pretty steadily all morning trying to get as much done for the office as possible before I had to leave for the day.  It was a very busy morning.

Tony had to cancel for the SpiceCorps meeting today which, in a way, worked out well for me because it gave me an extra half an hour before as well as after the meeting.

I left dad’s at a little after eleven and drove up to Gates to the Tim Horton’s near to the Tinsletown Movie Theatre next to i490.  Three guys were there ahead of me and I was right on time.  They were easy to pick out as SpiceWorks-type IT guys 😉  There is no hiding us, I guess.

We had a really good meeting.  Ended up having eight people show up which is not bad at all for an IT SMB manager peer group in Rochester on a Saturday!  I was very happy with the turnout and the group that we had.  I am really looking forward to our next event which will be in Syracuse sometime probably around August.

The meeting lasted about two hours.  Very good discussions.  These meetings are definitely valuable as an SMB IT Manager and IT Professional resource to meet up with people having similar issues and concerns.  Really nice to connect with other people dealing with problems on the same scale.

The meeting wrapped up a little after two.  From there I grabbed another coffee and drove back to dad’s house.

I worked from around three to five at dad’s wrapping up some stuff that needed to be done.  Then the X3 was packed and Oreo and I got on to the road to go back to Frankfort.  Dad is coming out tomorrow too but just for the graduation party.  He will not be staying for too long.

On the drive I continued listening to “The Great Bridge” through which I am making really good progress. I am on the second half of the book now.

I did some light work this evening and that was about it.  I forgot my SafeWord card that lets me access work so I didn’t do anything for the office tonight but called dad to have him read me off my key prior to him leaving tomorrow since I need remote access so that I can do my Sunday shift.

This evening the family sat around watching Princess Protection Agency on the Disney Channel and then, after the movie, we watched several episodes of shows like Wizards of Waverly Place.  WoWP is actually really good which is rare for the Disney Channel after they’ve become famous for making stuff like Hannah Montana.

It was around one in the morning when everyone finally got off to bed.

I was really exhausted when I got up early this morning.  Almost no sleep last night.  I don’t even know when I am going to have a chance to do some catchup on my sleep either.  Not today and not this weekend.  I’ve got a lot of work to do before I get any chances to sleep.

I got right to work.  No chance for dad and I to go out to breakfast this morning.  Originally, when I had first planned to come out to dad’s place today, I was not aware that I was going to be working the early shift

I worked hard all morning and then around one I was able to sneak away and dad and I drove over to Geneseo to get lunch at the Omega Grill.  We both got the special of the day which was coconut shrimp.

It was warm out but there was a little cloud cover.  Oreo has been so nervous this week that we decided to take him along and to eat quickly.  It was fine.  A little warm but he didn’t even bother moving out of his snuggly car seat so he couldn’t have been very warm for very long.

After lunch it was straight back to work until almost seven in the evening.  At a quarter after six, my aunt Sharon and uncle Leo came up from Leicester.  Once I was done with work the four of us drove out to Pavilion to get a Friday night fish fry at BW’s at the Davis’ golf course on Perry Road.  I have never eaten there before and after my elementary school classmate, Larry Brown, from Pavilion Baptist School worked there for years as the manager I managed to finally get out there just several weeks after he left to go elsewhere.  The food was really good and we all quite enjoyed it.  I suspect that there will be many more BW’s fish fries in our future.

After dinner, Sharon and Leo went home and I did a little more work.  Then dad and I decided to watch a movie.  He has an AppleTV and rents movies on it because it is so quick and easy to do so.  Really a nice system for individual movie rentals (Netflix is far better for heavy movie renters, AppleTV is great for more casual renters.)  We spent about an hour trying to figure out what to watch and then, when we finally decided on something, we went to rent it and got a warning that we would be unable to view the rental because our system did not support HDCP which is a consumer rights removal system that the movie industry has pushed through to remove fair use rights from its customers.  How this is legal I have no idea.

To make a long story not quite as long as it might have been, here is what happened.  It turns out that Apple just pushed out a new firmware update to the AppleTV that caused it to start enforcing HDCP.  That is why dad never saw this before.  It also turns out that his HDCP monitor has a bad connector – the only connector that accepts 1080p video – and was causing the failure, but a second connector that only takes up to 1080i worked.  It took about half an hour just to switch the connectors in, what we though was, a futile attempt to test the second connector.  Both connectors were listed in the manual as accepting HDCP.  So our very first ever experience with this crippling technology (that’s its actually purpose – to cripple your content) was for it to completely fail and to almost make several very expensive purchases worthless through a very minor and unexplained glitch.

We had tried to start watching the movie at nine thirty but it was after ten thirty when we finally got the AppleTV working again (easy interface, ha, who is Apple kidding – an hour just to figure out the DRM software!!)  We opened up dad’s bottle of Talisker scotch and both had some and watched Inkheart with Brendan Fraser.  It was a light, childrens’ action adventure film with a big budget.  Fun and easy to enjoy.

It was way too late by the time that the movie was over.  Way past midnight.  It was around one in the morning by the time that Oreo and I finally managed to get into bed.  Tomorrow morning I don’t have to be up quite as early but I still need to be up by around seven or so so that I can finish up all of the work that I need to do before eleven when I have to be on the road to drive up to Rochester to go to SpiceCorps Upstate New York’s first even meeting.  Tony was supposed to car pool with me tomorrow but he cancelled this evening so I do not need to drive out to Avon before the meeting which is saving me at least half an hour.

I was pretty tired when I got up to do the early shift at six thirty this morning.  I do like the early morning productivity that I get doing this, though.  It is so much easier to keep up with everything all throughout the day.

Today is my last day with Liesl until Saturday evening 🙁  I had a lot of work to do today too so I did not have a lot of time to spend with her.  She did not nap today either and so was really upset much of the day.

Most of the day was really hot.  We’ve been having blown fuses in the house all week.  The main circuit in the house is overloaded because of the hot weather.  There are two air conditioners, the microwave, the computer, the main lights and the big upstairs fan all on a single circuit.  For some reason that one circuit is connected all over the house so that the biggest power-draw items in the kitchen, dining room, living room and upstairs bedroom are all connected together.  While the television and stereo in the living room, the other upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms are not on that circuit.  So the circuits are not in “regions” in the house but seem to be randomly assigned to individual outlets all over the house.  Because of that all of the major items in the house with the big motors, condensors or whatever are drawing from the same circuit.

During the day when everything is running the circuit breaker flips every several hours.  It seems to be around twice per day during the daytime when the kitchen air conditioner and the microwave are potentially in use although it often trips without any obvious trigger – most likely an air conditioner condensor kicking on from a thermostat.  There are several new appliances in the kitchen, any one or more of which may also be on this same circuit, which may have increased the regular draw on it causing the circuit to start flipping now really often compared to previously, but that is just a hypothesis.

I walked over to Big Willy’s to get myself some pizza before leaving this evening.  Probably my last chance to get their pizza for a month or so.  Hard to say.  I “stock up” when I am in town.

This morning the thunderstorms hit Toronto and were at dad’s place in Pavilion by early afternoon.  It was late afternoon when they came to Frankfort.  We were really thankful for the cooler air.  It was very much a relief.

When the rain finally came to Frankfort it was a nice, slow, warm rain.  Emily and I stood outside on the porch for a while holding Liesl watching the rain and distant lightning to the northwest.  It was nice to have some downtime to just spend enjoying time with Liesl in the rain.

When Emily went back inside Liesl and I went for a walk out in the rain.  This is her first time ever actually going out into the rain.  Dominica seems to think that water falling onto Liesl’s head isn’t good for her, but Liesl loved it.  It was a light and warm rain and the house has been so warm that she liked having the chance to cool off a little.  I carried her around and we looked at puddles and just enjoyed the nice weather.  I think that she is going to be a rain junky like her father and my father before me.

I worked in Frankfort until Liesl fell asleep which was around eight.  I didn’t want to leave while she was still awake as I won’t be seeing her at all tomorrow.  As soon as she went to bed I was out the door and on the road toward dad’s place.

The drive went fine.  No rain, no traffic.  I listened to a bit of “The Great Bridge” while I drove.  Great book.

I arrived at dad’s house around a quarter after eleven.  We stayed up talking until around two in the morning.  Tomorrow is going to be a rough day since I need to be up at six thirty! Oreo was very excited to be at his grandpa’s house with carpeting.  He just rolled and rolled around on the floor.  Clearly he was really itchy and unable to do anything about it this whole week being on hardwood and being around so much grass.  His allergies are really acting up and we have run out of his allergy medication for the time being!  That will be a top priority upon returning to Peekskill.

Oreo and I slept down in the basement on the futon mattress on the floor.