Sheep Guarding Llama

We didn’t really have anything planned for today.  We sort of sprung our trip home on dad at the last minute and today is just a normal work Friday and I do not have it off or anything so it’s just business as usual.  This is one of those days when I really appreciate having a complete workstation set up at dad’s house on my own desk so that it is that much easier to just sit down and work all day without really being in the way that much.

I got pretty little sleep last night and was up and at my desk by eight this morning.  Four hours of sleep maximum after a long day and a very long evening of driving.  Dad was up at six this morning so he had even less sleep.  Liesl got up with me and spent an entire hour sitting on my lap in the office watching me work and pounding on a keyboard of her own set up beside me.  Today was the first day that she began playing with a mouse as well.  She grabs it with both hands and moves it around her desk just like her daddy.  She is so adorable.  We have so much fun just hanging out together.

At nine Liesl decided that she needed more direct attention than I could give her while working so she went back down with Dominica where she napped for a while before they both got up.

Dad was out at a long breakfast until around ten thirty or so.  I did not get very much time to visit today as it is Friday and that is my busy day.  So dad and Dominica hung out for much of the day and played with Liesl.

Work was crazily busy today so I really did not get a chance to do much of anything.  For lunch dad ran out to Davis’ Pizza and picked up lunch for Dominica and I.  Our regular Davis’ Pizza that we get every time that we are home.

This evening my aunt Sharon and uncle Leo came over to see Liesl, but they were a little on the late side being able to come over and Liesl had decided to go to bed very, very early.  I think that it might have been as early as six when she decided that it was time for sleep.  Very unusual for our little party girl.  They stayed for a few hours but eventually gave up and are planning to return tomorrow.

Dinner was the Friday night fish fry from the Copa Lounge near home.  In all the years that I lived there I have never gotten food from there before.  It was only recently that I even learned that you could get food from there.  Now that I think about it it may easily be the closest restaurant to dad’s house if you don’t count the gas station in Greggsville and “the barn” and even then I am not sure.

We all turned in very early tonight.  We were all exhausted all day and were in desperate need of some serious sleep.  It was before eleven when we all got off to bed.  I have been sleeping in the television room downstairs with Oreo while Dominica and Liesl sleep in the guest bedroom.  It just makes it easier for us to really get some sleep.  Oreo does not like us being separated, though.

Today is a big, busy day.  I was pretty tired this morning since it was a short night.  Work was busy today but I decided to put several things on hold because I just don’t have enough time to deal with them today.  I did managed to get the new DL185 G5 checked out.  It is looking awesome.  I can’t wait to get the remaining parts and to be able to start really working with it.  That will be really great.  This server is going to make my life a lot easier (in theory.)

I was hoping to have been able to have wrapped up work by five thirty but that just didn’t happen.  I ended up being stuck at the desk until after six twenty.  Dominica had packed the X3 during the day so we were ready to go as soon as my work was done.

We grabbed gas and horribly stale donuts from the Dunkin Donuts (which we are not going to do again) and hit the road, for the final time, towards Scranton.

It is about a two hour drive from Peekskill to Scranton.  That part went well.  We arrived in Scranton as the sun was getting low.  Just after eight thirty.  More or less on time according to our original plans.  I had told the data centre that we would be arriving between eight and eight thirty so we are just sneaking in under our original plans.

The dr-racking process at Scranton went well.  I was quite relieved by how smoothly it all went.  I was worried that we would have some rail difficulties and not be able to get everything out quickly.  It was probably no more than half an hour there before the two remaining servers, the router and the switch were loaded into the car.  I worked in the data centre with the onsite tech getting everything removed from the rack while Dominica worked on getting the rear of the X3 reorganized so that we could fit everything in.

From Scranton we drove up to Clark Summit.  Dominica and I both came up with the idea of getting dinner at Waffle House.  I was like “do you know what we should do” and she was like “get dinner at Waffle House”; so that is totally what we did.

This was Liesl’s very first trip to a Waffle House.  Dinner was awesome.  We both got waffles and eggs.  Delicious.  And very convenient.  Few things are as convenient as eating in Clark Summit, PA.  If ever there was a town designed for travelers, this is it.  Hotels, restaurants, easy access to several highways, on the way to everywhere and grocery stores all in a row.  Very, very handy.

It was just ten after eleven when we pulled in to Apalachin, New York to stop in to see John “The Surfing IT Wizard” Stephens.  We stayed there for roughly an hour.  We spent most of that time looking at SpiceWorks as I got him logged in and showed him what he could do with the software and with the community.  We almost never get to see each other so it was nice to get a little time to visit.  I got to meet Lilly, his new cat, who is adorable and very sweet.  And John got to meet Liesl for the first time.

From Apalachin it was straight on to Peoria.  Several more hours of driving putting us at dad’s house around two thirty in the morning!  What a long night.  Dad was still up waiting for us too.  So no one was getting any sleep tonight really.  It was after three when I finally got into bed.  I have to be up tomorrow at normal time so no serious sleep for me.  I am going to be really exhausted tomorrow.

We didn’t technically make it to dad’s house on his birthday but we were still awake from him birthday so it kind of counts.

Today is our last full day in Peekskill until Monday.  This weekend we are traveling to my dad’s house for a few days then on to Dominica’s parents’ house.  We are coming home to Peekskill on Sunday night.  Lot’s of driving to be done this weekend

Today was an all work day.  The replacement HP Proliant DL185 G5 arrived today.  That was a relief.  Been looking for that to come for a while.  I didn’t get a chance to unbox it today or to do anything with it so that needs to be done tomorrow.  I can’t actually start the real work on the server yet as not all of the parts have arrived for it yet.  I have additional drive trays on order which I expect any day and need to order the first of the 1.5TB drives to go into it.

I am going to see how long I can get away with only having the one additional pair of drives because I really want to load it up with 2TB or larger drives as those are due out later this month from Seagate in a low power consumption “green” configuration.  I am going to be using two 80GB drives that I have “laying around” for the time being to increase throughput potential.  Since I already own the drives I might as well being getting use out of them.  Come to think of it… I might have four 250GB drives which I have forgotten about somewhere at dad’s house.  I need to investigate that!!  If I do they have been there for years.  Three years or more.

I worked all day.  Nothing new there.  Pretty uneventful day.  Katie wanted to come over later this week to visit but we are leaving immediately after work tomorrow so that will not be an option.  So she came over after work tonight arriving at our place around eight this evening.

Our first order of business was to go out and take a rather quick drive around downtown Peekskill so that Katie could get an idea of what type of apartments were available or options and how the town was layed out especially in relation to the train station which she would be using to commute to and from the office in Manhattan.  That took about twenty minutes to half an hour.  Definitely some interesting apartment possibilities within a nice walk of our place and of the train station.  That would be handy to have her living so close.

Shortly after we got back to the house the Italian take away that we had ordered from Forno’s before leaving arrived.  Yum.  We ate dinner and watched several episodes of the second season of Father Ted which Katie loves.  Many, or possibly all, of these second season episodes were new to her so she has some awesome stuff yet to watch!  Father Ted is definitely one of the greatest television shows ever made.

Katie left around eleven.  Then I had some additional work to do and ended up working late into the night.  Not a lot of sleep to be had tonight, unfortunately.

Wow am I ever behind on SGL this week.  It is a rather busy week and I am just having a terrible time keeping up with everything.  It’s not a horrible week.  I am getting sleep for the most part.

It’s Tuesday and this week has been full of work.  Good work.  I’m very happy about all of the work that we have this week.  Work means stability so no complaints.

This afternoon Dominica took Liesl and they went out to hit the post office to do some mailings and then went dress shopping.  We have a lot of “dress up” type events coming up in the very near future so the both need some new outfits, I guess.

I’ve been on the phone for a significant portion of this week.  One cool thing that I got to do today was a half-hour demo of LogMeIn’s IT Reach product which is very cool.  I am quite impressed with their product and its features.  Looking to use that in a few places.  I am already using LogMeIn’s Free service quite a bit and have been learning more about what I can do with it and what all it can do.  Very cool company.

Short posts all week this week.  Sorry, just nothing that interesting to report and I am far too far behind to provide much else 🙁

I got a much better night’s sleep last night although I am pretty sure that I have a mild sinus infection.  Everything tastes funny for one thing.  I don’t feel sick so it cannot be very bad.

Today I learned about Google’s rather interesting new Wave technology that they are positing will potentially replace email, forums, microblogging and other communications tools.  Hype?  Maybe, watch the video and judge for yourself.  Definitely a simple yet powerful concept.  Can anyone say Chandler?  Or am I the only person who has seen this tried before?

Dominica and I spent the morning working on her degree planning for Empire State College.  It turns out, much to Dominica’s delight, that her Associates Degree is actually completed, more or less.  She was thinking that she had a lot of work left to do for it and in reality she has no additional classes that she needs to take and only needs to complete the very last bit of the class she is currently taking from the University of Illinois and then complete the CompTIA Security+ certificate and, if our calculations are correct, she will be done.

We worked out most of the details for her second bachelor’s degree as well and that is better than she had expected.  She has not made a long term decision about the bachelor’s program but at least she has most of a degree plan made for it now and can make decisions based on a solid concept of what the workload and time frame would be to complete it.

Our new, free-standing pantry arrived today.  The shipping box that the company used was not up to the task of protecting the pantry in shipment and almost all of the pieces of the unit were ruined by the time that they arrived at our house.  So Dominica had to get on the phone to get replacement pieces sent out because there were so many damaged pieces that the online RMA process couldn’t handle the workorder!

Now instead of having an awesome new pantry in which to store all of the mess that has spread all over the kitchen we have a bunch of parts to a pantry taking up even more of our valuable space in the dining room.  So while we thought that we would be improving on the mess we have made it worse.  And the replacement parts are not expected for one to two weeks.  So this is going to be an ongoing mess for a while.

This weekend we are going to be traveling.  We were not sure about our schedules before so we were unable to make any commitments.  Now we know that we are going to be going to Frankfort for Sam Bono III’s baptism on Sunday.  So our plan is that on Thursday after work we are going to drive to Scranton where we will pick up the last remaining equipment there, then drive to Binghamton and see John really quickly and drop off some stuff for him then drive on to dad’s house – where we might just make it in time to see him on his birthday.

I will be working from dad’s house on Friday and Saturday.  Then Saturday afternoon we will drive out to Frankfort and spend the night there.  I have to work Sunday so will work in the morning and then go to the baptism and return and work for a while.  Then when work is over we will drive back down to Peekskill.  It is a lot of driving this weekend but at least it is a “long” weekend of being out of town doing something different.