Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is it.  The very last day that the Ralston family will be living in North America.  It is really hard to believe that tomorrow they will be “gone”.  It is not very common these days to ever really need to say goodbye to someone.  Our world is one of constant communications and, in all likelihood, their disconnection from the rest of the world will be a temporary one.  Proliferation of Internet access is happening globally at an astouding pace and it is unlikely that they will be completely isolated for more than a few years before some form of digital communications will reach them such as reliable cell phone service or some form of regular Internet access.

I had to get up and work today which was not fun but covering on a Sunday followed by a holiday is a pretty easy task.  There was hardly anything going on today.

Art and Danielle spent the bulk of the day moving luggage around, weighing luggage and trying to make sure that they had whatever they could get and were leaving behind anything that they could live without.  By the end they had fourteen 50+ pound luggage items in addition to their carryon items.  It is a lot of stuff.  Over 800 total pounds of luggage that they need to get from New York to Impfondo.

Overall today was pretty relaxing.  Dominica and I were pretty much just sitting around the living room all day while the Ralstons attempting to get everything ready.  Boy is there a lot to do.  It is probably a very good thing that they had a lot of work to do today or else they would be getting quite nervous just sitting around thinking about tomorrow.

We did get a lot of time to visit throughout the day.  Evening came very quickly, though.  Must faster than we would have anticipated.  I worked from my laptop in the living room as much as possible which turned out to be quite a bit of the day.

Before going to bed, Art, Danielle, Dominica and I sat down and played Munchkin Cthulhu for a few hours.  It was our one chance to really relax before tomorrow.  It wasn’t the best game for them as I got an early lead and was ahead for the entire game.  Art knocked me out of several levels a few times (the goal is to reach level ten first) so that I had to generate about four or five more levels than anyone else (which is a lot for a game that only goes to ten) but, in a rather amazing set of circumstances, for a final move Art tried to block me with a massive three level loss play at the last second but failed to actually stop me and caused me to win suddenly going from a level of seven to ten all in one round while amassing EIGHT treasures all in the same move.  It was crazy.  A rather decisive win if I have ever seen one.

It was around one in the morning when we all finally headed off to bed.  I don’t think that Art and Danielle are going to get very much sleep tonight.

It is supposed to be a holiday weekend.  A nice, long three day chance to relax.  I, of course, do not get the weekend off at all.  I have a lot of work to do this morning basically in a panic and I have to work tomorrow as well.  At least on Monday I am actually off of work.

I was really exhausted when I went to bed last night having gotten no sleep at all the night before.  Last night I managed to sleep a bit.  Dominica got up to take care of Liesl so that I could sleep.  I ended up sleeping from roughly midnight until six thirty this morning when Liesl was so upset that there was just no way for me to sleep any longer.  I tried to sleep but at seven thirty I realized that there was far too much to do this morning and that there was no way for me to get any additional sleep tonight.

The air conditioning worked great.  No problems as far as I can tell.  I am sure that it really helped with getting sleep last night.

I got to my desk at eight and started working.  We have to pick up the cargo van from Enterprise in Peekskill, which is just around the corner, at ten.  From there we are supposed to go on to breakfast with everyone, including Deb and Lisa.  There was no way for me to be able to go to breakfast with everyone, though, that was really out of the question.  Way too much work assigned to me for me to be able to do anything like that.

I worked solid until almost exactly ten when Art and I had to run out the door to get out to Enterprise to pick up the cargo van.  That was quick and easy taking no more than fifteen minutes if that.  I had Art added as a driver so he was able to drive down to the Peekskill Inn and get Deb and Lisa there while I ran back to the house to continue working.

It worked out well having me run back to the house because with the extra time of luggage being relocated, extra driving, people visiting, et cetera I had until almost noon to keep working and ended up being able to complete enough of my work that I was able to join everyone for brunch.  We ended up going to Grandma’a Famous Pies for lunch so had I missed it I would have been very upset.  I love eating there.

Brunch was really nice.  I got the bagel and lox platter which sounds small but is actually a rather significant meal with a mound of cured salmon.  It was awesome.  The massive tomato slices were some of the best ever.  Everyone really enjoyed their food.  Then everyone got pie.  Yummy pie from the massive pie menu.  Very good.  Not like “home” though.

Dominica has decided that I need to start baking again as I am one of the few successors to my grandmother’s pie making and the only successor to my mother’s (as far as I know – no other pie making protege lurking around.)  My mother and grandmother come from a long line of Dutch and Pennsylvania Dutch pie makers.  It has been almost two decades since I have made my mother’s pies so I will need some practice, but Dominica wants me to be able to teach Liesl how to make them.  Especially apple, rhubard, rhubard custard and strawberry rhubard.

After lunch, Deb and Lisa said their goodbyes, which was rather emotional – Michael may not see his grandmother again until he is about sixteen – and then they headed out for the Bear Mountain Parkway to head back towards Rochester.  Then Dominica, Liesl, Oreo and I went back home and the Ralstons went to the Beach Shopping Center to go to GameStop to see if there was anything to pick up to keep them occupied during their really, really long flight from New York to Morocco to the Congo on Monday.

We all relaxed and visited for the afternoon.  One of the few moments of downtime that the Ralstons will get before the flight.  Then, this evening, we had dinner – the last tilapia meal for a very long time for them – that Danielle cooked.  For dessert we drove out to Cold Stone Creamery which they had never had before.  The first Cold Stone has only just opened in Rochester.  They were pretty impressed.  Boy are they going to miss ice cream in Impfondo!

Then we made a trip to Walmart for some last minute supplies.  From there Art and Dominica went back to the house while Danielle, Michael and I went to Panera Bread to pick up bagels for tomorrow morning.  Because we went so late they were 50% off which makes breakfast very cheap.

We hung out for a little while this evening but it was around then when we got back to the house and everyone was pretty much asleep by midnight or so.  I am hopeful that tonight may actually be a chance for me to get some sleep finally.  While we were hanging out this evening I managed to get a bit of work done on our Elastix installation.  That is coming along well.   I am really excited to get that working soon.  One more major task to knock out and get out of the way.  I am slowly making progress.  After this the Amanda backup server is the next major task.

Tomorrow we have no real plans.  Art and Danielle have a lot of luggage shuffling to do to make sure that everything is ready for the flight.  Then we will back up the cargo van so that nothing is lingering until Monday.

I didn’t get a ton of sleep last night but it can’t be helped.  Today is a really warm day.  The sun is out in force and it is above eighty degrees today.  Tomorrow is supposed to be ninety but that, in theory, will only last for one day.  Looks like tomorrow we will finally have a chance to try out our air conditioning.  Fingers crossed.

Work was not too bad today.  Slowly getting caught up on everything.  This is the busiest period that I can remember.  Crazy busy, in general. 

Liesl has been teething but for the last few days it appears to have stopped.  She was getting Tylenol once or twice per day.  It has been days now since she has had any at all.  Very strange.  She has been much happier but is still very much teething on anything that she can get into her mouth.

I have been selected to be on an expert panel for backup solutions.  It will be a live webcast on May 29th in the morning.  Should be just under an hour.  I am excited.  This should be fun.  My first ever expert’s panel.  I will provide more information when I have it.  I guess that we will be taking backup horror stories and going around the panel discussing what we would do in that situation to get the company backing up in the best way to meet their needs.

Found out today that I most definitely need to box up the DL185 and ship it back to HP.  A huge pain in the butt, but I cannot complain.  Because of the mix up I am getting another $250 knocked off of the price.  So worth a bit of a pain, in my opinion.

The Ralstons are coming to Peekskill tomorrow.  Hard to believe that they are already down to their final weekend in North America!  They are expecting to arrive at our place around ten in the evening tomorrow.  They will be here until they fly out to Morocco on Monday afternoon.

My new desktop shipped from HP today.  Oh the excitement.  I have not had a new desktop in years.  So long, in fact, that I still work on a single-core machine, if you can believe that.  Madness, I know.

This evening Dominica and I both really felt like getting out of the house.  I worked until seven thirty or a little later and then we decided to run out for ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery in Yorktown Heights.  It was after eight when we finally got into the car so we were in a bit of a rush since everything in the lower Hudson closes super early around nine – even restaurants.  Very strange.

Ice cream at Cold Stone was awesome as always.  They have been having marshmallow ice cream there recently which is just awesome.  I got the peanut butter cup thing that they do but with marshmallow instead of chocolate ice cream and it was really amazing.  Dominica was very disappointed that they did not have any bananas for her usual banana split-like ice cream so she tried the cheesecake thing that they do.  It was good but not nearly as good as her usual.

After our decadent ice cream outing (yes, ice cream before dinner) we ran across the parking lot to Panera Bread (yes, “Bread Bread”) and got sandwiches.  We managed to just squeak in and were the last customers served for the evening.  Liesl was getting pretty sleepy at the restaurant.  We figured that we would come home and that she would be done for the night.

We came back to the house.  Liesl woke herself up and wanted to play for about an hour.  So she hung out with me on the recliner while I worked from my laptop.  We watched an episode and a half of The Gilmore Girls before deciding to turn in for the night.  Liesl kept herself up until eleven which is really late for her.  She tends to go to bed between eight thirty and nine thirty.  Dominica and I managed to go to bed at eleven thirty which is pretty good for us.  It is very warm tonight.  Going to be hard to get any good sleep.

The media loves to glorify IT when times are good and scold it when times are bad. We are the whipping boy and the poster child, heroes and villains.

Today is the first meeting of SpiceCorp NY’s Manhattan Branch.  So that means that I need to leave the office on the early side today so that I can catch the train down to Manhattan to make the 6:30 meetings.  This is our second meeting of SpiceCorp NY but the first one in Manhattan.

It was a busy day because I had to complete as much as possible before four thirty.  That left me rushing for pretty much the entire day.  Too much to get done before the end of the day.

My article on Datamation is one of the headliners again today.  Three days in a row.  Awesome!

I was very discouraged to discover that the HP DL185 G5 that we had received was not the correct configuration and that we would need to get a new server sent out and will need to return this one.  Just more “stuff” that needs my constant attention.  Nothing is ever simple.

It is a warm day today.  Not at all what I need on the day that I need to go into the city.  I am always so hot whenever I am doing anything around Manhattan.  I can go for long walks in the hot sun up in the country but once I am in the city the heat just kills me.

Today is important for another reason.  Today is the very last day of our Scranton datacenter.  We have been using Scranton for years now and I have gotten used to driving in and out of Scranton to visit the datacenter.  Going out to Scranton late at night has become one of the few remnants of my old life of being the “on the road” It professional.  Scranton was an important mark along the highway between Ithaca and Washington D.C. as well as between New Jersey and Upstate New York.  I even worked in Scranton itself for Wegmans a few times.  But since 2005 the datacenter has been my only real reason to ever be in Scranton or along the i81 corridor at all.  Now that is going away as well.  It is truly the end of an era for me.  As of tonight everything in Scranton will have been transferred to Toronto.  In a week or two I will be making a final trip to Scranton to pick up all of the remaining equipment to bring back with me or, mostly, just to donate.

I tried to wrap up with work and make it to the Metro North train from Peekskill to Grand Central at twenty after four but that just wasn’t possible.  So I had to grad the train at eighteen after five which was cutting it really close.  It worked out well because I really did need more time at home to get ready and to get more work done before leaving and the early train would have been too early.  The meeting is right on Union Square so it is very easy to get there from the GCT.

The train ride down was very nice and I really appreciated the opportunity to read in my book for a while.  I am busy reading my latest Pragmatic Programmers title.  Always a joy.  It is so seldom that I now have time to just sit and read for an hour with nothing else about which to worry that it was positively fun.

I was only ten or fifteen minutes late when I got to the office on Union Square for the SpiceCorp NY meeting.  We ended up having an awesome turn out.  More people than I had anticipated coming.  We had a total of eleven after three people had cancelled.  Eight of those who came were not also at the NJ Branch meeting a few weeks ago so it was really exciting to have several new people there.

The discussion was really good tonight.  It was a really good group and we covered a lot of good stuff.  Well worth the time coming out.  Got to meet a lot of good people.  These meetings, I think, are going to continue to be a lot of fun and to be really valuable to everyone who attends.

After the meeting, Katie and I went out for fish on Union Square.  We had a really nice dinner.  It is not very often that I get a chance to eat out in the city anymore.  It was a nice change of pace.  Dominica knew that I was going to be really late.  Once I am taking the time to go into the city it is not worth rushing back at all.  Best to just make use of the time while there.

Dinner was great.  Katie had to run early to catch her last train.  I took my chances with not knowing the schedule and went for a later train.  We do not ride the same train but we do ride the same line.

I ended up getting the next train after Katie which was not too bad at all.  I was in Peekskill around twelve thirty and up to the house about one in the morning.  It takes a while to walk from the train, up the hill to the house.  It is a good thirty to forty-five minute walk if you are trying not to get completely sweaty.  It is a rather steep hill to be climbing with a backpack in business attire.

I worked for about half an hour and then headed to bed.  Dominica had stayed up waiting for me to get home reading on her new Kindle.

The shutdown of Scranton went smoothly tonight.  It is officially all done.  SGL readers, the regular ones at least, are aware that SGL moved out of Scranton some time ago and performance jumper measureably when we did.  Toronto is so much faster and more responsive.  It is a major load off of my mind no longer needing to worry about all of the problems that we have had with Scranton.  Now I just need to drive up there and pick up the remaining equipment.  My Netgear router there managed to go for the entire life of the deployment without ever needing to be rebooted a single time.  How is that for impressive?