SGL updated to the latest WordPress code today. Should not impact anyone using the site. Upgrade went smooth, as always. Most of the updates are in the management interface.
June 19, 2009: Heading to Frankfort
I didn’t get to bed until three thiry last night. But I got a lot of stuff done so it was not so bad. I think that I need to make this a Thursday night routine. Spending the time on Thursday to get way ahead on my emails and miscellaneous tasks makes me massively more productive on Friday and throughout the week. It gives me enough momentum to keep my email under control all through the weekend (which is pretty easy since the volume goes way down) and then I slowly lose ground during the week until Thursday night and I can catch up again. But I don’t end up getting completely bogged down in “email thrashing” as I call it if I do this to keep it under control.
I slept in some this morning but not too badly. I got enough sleep so I am not concerned about being tired all day. I can start later on Fridays. Nothing happens in the morning and I always have to work later than other days so it is a good match. Makes staying up late on Thursdays make more sense too.
It was a busy day of working for me and Dominica was busy spending the day cleaning (mostly kitchen stuff since we will be away for a week and a half) and packing. Lot’s of packing to do for four (Oreo takes as much stuff as a human would take) to get everything that we will need for such a long trip as well as making it all fit into the X3.
I put in a lot of time today ripping DVDs as quickly as possible so that we would have a full load of DVDs to ship back to put into storage. It has only been two weeks since the last shipment went but I did not want to waste the trip. So I just ripped them as quickly as I could using both the laptop and the desktop until both machines hard drives were completely full.
My plan is to have the dc5850 run all week while we are gone. I am hoping that I managed to load it up with enough content that it will be able to compress videos for the entire time that we are gone and will finish up just before we return home. Although, of course, Microsoft will likely release some patch that will cause it to reboot midweek. That would be really crappy. This was a lot of work to get this all ready. If it works it will mean not losing all of that time for compression. It takes so much time to do this that I really do not want to give up a week and a half of computational time while we are away. And when I am not using that computer it can do the work even faster so this is the best time to not lose.
Dominica went out around noon to get her hair cut which she has not done in a while. She was really unhappy with her last haircut. It was her first one in Peekskill and she had tried the local chain place instead of going to a real salon and decided not to go that route again. Today she found a salon that she really likes and so will be returning there. Really close and convenient too (and not a chain) so that will work well for her. Nice to support the local businesses.
My book from Amazon, “Ruby by Example” that I ordered the day before yesterday arrived today. I had ordered it on accident forgetting that we would be out of town and I was concerned about it arriving while we would be gone. Especially with all of the rain we have been getting having it sitting outside would not be good. But it came earlier than expected so all is good. It also gave me a chance to let UPS know that we would be gone for a little while. It is really handy having everything delivered via UPS so that they really know us. Our delivery guy knows us so well that he always has a treat ready for Oreo and he looks in the front door to see if Liesl is sleeping or not to know whether he should ring the doorbell or just knock quietly (because Oreo does not bark if he just knocks.)
I worked until seven and then we started really packing the car. Dominica had everything staged and ready to go out but the plastic bin with the DVDs for storage was not ready until the very last second and then I had to pack it additionally with SpiceCorp swag that I am taking to the Upstate New York SpiceCorp meeting next Saturday in Rochester.
We were on the road around eight. The trip was pretty uneventful. We stopped at a McDonald’s on the Thruway south of Albany for our dinner at around ten. It was just before midnight when we pulled into Frankfort.
Francesca and crew (Madeline, Emily, Garrett, Joe and Brit) had arrived in Frankfort just forty-five minutes or so ahead of us. They were pretty much asleep when we arrived. Francesca was just barely awake and held Liesl for a few minutes and then went right to sleep. We had to unpack the car and get everything set up upstairs before we could get to bed. Tomorrow is Stephanie and Josh’s wedding at three. I am working in the morning starting at eight and attempting to wrap up in time to make it to the wedding.
June 18, 2009: Ramona Leaves Us
I got up around eight this morning. Ramona got up and joined us around nine but was on the phone earlier. Liesl got up with me and came down to the basement to hang out while I worked as has become pretty common for us. She just loves hanging out with me while I work and I really enjoy getting to spend that early morning time with her because she is somach zehnder modulator happy first thing in the morning. Happy and content to just sit on my lap and hang out.
Ramona poked her head into the basement and said good morning. Things were slow so Liesl and I went upstairs and hung out for a while. Liesl had a great morning playing on Ramona’s bed. She was in a really great mood. It was nice that Liesl and Ramona got quite a bit of good bonding time this week as they will not see each other for a really long time now. Probably around eleven months, I would guess.
Oreo came in and discovered that a bed was set up for him in Liesl’s room and that it already had blankets on it so he curled up and went back to sleep. He is so happy when we have a bed set up in there.
Dominica got up around ten or so and then came in to hang out with us. Then I went back to work so that I would be caught up and able to go to lunch with everyone when lunch time rolled around.
In addition to normal work, I was able to build several new servers today. That went really well.
At noon I was able to go up and join the girls. Ramona was surfing the web on her laptop getting her flights booked to China – she leaves in early July. Dominica was reading on her Kindle.
It was about half past noon when we got out the door. We decided to go to Grandma’s for lunch as it was on Crompond on Ramona’s way out of town towards Maine. It was an awesome lunch. I got the bagel and lox platter again as it was so good last time. Amazing tomatoes. I don’t know what they do to get such good tomatoes but they are just delicious. Ramona was very excited about the pie selection. We all got pie for dessert. Ramona got two pieces but her eyes were bigger than her stomach and she took a good portion of her meal and most of one piece of pie to go to eat on the drive north.
It was around two when we said our goodbyes to Ramona. It is sad that we will not see her for so long. A whole year on the other side of the world. Although, really, when you think about it, we have a lot of friends who live pretty close that we easily go that long without seeing so it really is not that bad. Several people reading SGL right now will probably note that we have not seen them in a year or possibly a few. It sounds like a really long time but when you get into your thirties, like me, it is easy to have a few years fly by and have only spoken via email, FaceBook, SGL or phone.
It was back to work for me as soon as we returned to the house. It was a busy afternoon and I was working hard until seven. Then I came upstairs to be with Liesl until she went to bed. I was so full from lunch that I just skipped dinner entirely tonight. I had a snack of rice crackers and spice tunafish salad later on but that was all.
Liesl went to bed around eight thirty. Then it was back down to the basement to work for me. I put in another hour or two. Then Dominica buckled down and got started on her Perl scripting and programming class and I hung out upstairs so that I could help her with it. It was really late when she started and we were both pretty frustrated with how tired we were. She went to bed a little before midnight and, like always, I returned to the basement to get back to work.
I really wanted to get caught up on SGL tonight in addition to completing some important tasks for the office and getting my email mailbox cleared down so that I could work in the morning. That is a task that can only be done at night or on the weekend. So I stayed up taking care of those things until well after two thirty in the morning.
Tomorrow Dominica is getting her hair done at a new salon that she is going to try. Then in the afternoon we have to pick up my suit and the drycleaning in Yorktown Heights. Dominica will spend much of the day packing. As soon as my office work is done tomorrow we are hoping in the car and driving up to Frankfort. Saturday is Dominica’s cousin Stephanie’s wedding. I am scheduled to work Saturday morning at eight. It is going to be a long day without a lot of sleep the night before.
Also on Saturday, Francesca and the girls along with Joe and Brit are going to be arriving from Texas just in time to make it to the wedding. They are going to be exhausted. So we are going to spend the week visiting with them. Later in the week I am going to go to dad’s house for a few days as I have SpiceCorp Upstate New York next Saturday in Rochester. It is going to be a busy week.
June 17, 2009: Ramona Does a Final Visit
Getting out of bed was a little tough this morning, but I was still very happy that I had taken the time to play Oblivion for a while last night. It will likely be quite a while before I get to play it again and sometimes you just have to have some nice, relaxing downtime or you just go crazy.
We did as much house cleaning as possible this morning before Ramona arrived. She got up to our place about half past noon. She had a long drive up from Pennsylvania. This is her last time visiting us before she moves to China in a few weeks. She is going to Shanghai for the summer and then moving far into the interior, near the Mongolian border, to teach English for the year. She will have Internet access from there and a phone so we will hear from her regularly but it will be a year before she returns to the US.
As soon as Ramona arrived we packed up and headed out to Pastel’s for some lunch. Liesl was a little unsure of whether or not she remembered Ramona as it has been quite a while since they have seen each other but they were best friends again in no time.
Lunch was nice and I was able to “work” via BlackBerry for a while so that we could hang out there and relax a little bit.
When we got back from lunch our new DVD collection of bikini beach movies, starring Frankie and Annette, had just arrived from Amazon. We were all excited to watch them tonight after work.
I didn’t have to work too late tonight. I was done around seven, I think. Then we ordered in dinner from Forno’s and put in Beach Party, the first of the Frankie and Annette beach movies. This one was from 1963.
It’s amazing how cheesy and ‘b’ movie movies from the sixties can be! That was really something to watch. It was funny in a total trainwreck sort of way. A few beers are a definitely must-have when watching these movies. It’s incredible to think that these were well known movies of the time. Today they would definitely be direct to DVD movies that no one would even realize were released.
While watching the movie Dominica commented on how incredibly weird it is that that movie was made just fifteen years before she was born. Watching it feels like looking into a distant, disconnected past. But really it was only barely before we were born. Only thirteen years before I was born. The last movie that Frankie and Annette did together released when I was about twelve!
After that we watched Bikini Beach which was even worse than the original. This one was from 1964. They were turning these movies out at break-neck pace. They did multiple movies in 1965. They definitely did not take very long to film. Talk about low budget.
Dominica went to bed around eleven thirty and Ramona around midnight. Dominica was still reading when I got to bed, though, at one thirty and I could hear Ramona was still on the phone in her room. I had wanted to get some work completed before turning in. Never enough time in the day.
Tomorrow Ramona is leaving us in the early afternoon, right after lunch, to drive up to Maine for the weekend to go camping in the never-ending rain.
June 16, 2009: Finally a Video Game Day
Liesl seems to be back to her old self today. Her tooth is in and she likes to play with it with her tongue. If you try to look at them she hides them. She is very funny.
Today was quite busy again. And the rain has returned after having just a single day off.
Dominica and I decided to go out and get some lunch today. So we went out to Pastel’s and got omelets. They were yummy. Liesl sat in a high chair at the table beside me and clearly had a look about her like she felt that she was being a big girl and was very proud to be sitting at the table instead of sitting in her car seat. She was very happy all through the meal and was very engaging with everyone who passed by.
After lunch we ran out to Yorktown Heights to hit Clemente Cleaners to drop off our dry cleaning and to talk to their tailor about my newest suit. The sleeves on my suit are far too long. The tailor thinks that she can have my suit fixed by Friday which is important because I need it for the wedding this weekend. I am having the sleeves fixed, a button moved and buttons added to my suit pants so that I can use suspenders instead of a belt. Nothing from Casual XL Male has suspenders buttons in it which is really frustrating that a shop dedicated to larger sized men doesn’t accommodate the most obvious things that they would need.
Back to work once the errands were done. Oreo and I stayed home while Dominica and Liesl went back to head to the post office, Kohl’s and some other shopping. She had a bit of shopping that she had wanted to do so that worked out well.
The new drives for the Proliant DL185 G5 arrived today and I had a chance to finally get that server built and tested out. I had thought that those drives would not be arriving until the end of the week and that I might not have enough time to get the server put together before we had to leave for the weekend so this was a real blessing.
I had a lot of work to do today and ended up working solidly until eleven thirty at night. Normally I like to be in bed by ten thirty but there was just far too much to do. I have been really wanting to play a video game for days and have not had the chance at all. So tonight I decided that I was just going to do it anyway. So at eleven thirty I popped in Oblivion on the PS3 and started playing.
Dominica stayed up with me and read a book on her Amazon Kindle while I played Oblivion. I had a really good time. I really missed having this downtime. I played for four hours!
When I started playing I found that my last saved game was from February 4th!! Four and a half months since I have been able to play anything at all. Crazy.
In my four hours I managed to complete one entire new quest that was triggered right as I started playing (Lifting the Vale) which was pretty fun and I also completed one quest that had begun just before I had last saved the game (Spies). I also raised my character from level five to level seven. It was very good progress for one night of gaming. Too bad I won’t get a chance to play again for a really long time.
It was three thirty in the morning when we finally headed up to bed. Ramona is coming down to visit us tomorrow sometime in the morning. She is expecting to arrive around noon or so.