Sheep Guarding Llama – Page 828 – Scott Alan Miller

July 14, 2008: Returning from Watkins Glen

Thankfully it did not rain last night or if it did it was extremely little. We actually got pretty decent sleep once we were all able to fall asleep. We didn’t get up until after eight.

We were delighted to discover that the sun was out and that the dew was rapidly burning off of the grass. This was a Godsend as we desperately needed to lay out just about everything that we had brought with us in order to dry it out before we could pack it to go back with us. If we didn’t get everything dry this morning then we had to unpack everything at Dominica’s parents’ house, set the tent and everything back up, let it dry and then have her family pack it back up when it was all done. That would have taken hours out of our afternoon which we did not have any of which to spare.

There wasn’t really any time to spare this morning and we spent every moment that we had available to us drying and packing the camping gear. We let Madeline and Emily sleep as long as they could but for Emily that wasn’t long at all and for Madeline it was only until around nine. The girls really had nothing to do this morning and we very, very bored. We felt really bad but there was nothing that we could do to entertain them as we had to spend all of our time getting the camp packed. They did spend a little time taking turns playing Cooking Mama on Dominica’s Nintendo DS, but that only killed so much time.

Somehow the car-top carrier actually got dry and we were able to pack everything into the car. It was amazing that Dominica was able to figure out how to get everything back into the car. I could never have packed the car like that. Not having Oreo with us did make things quite a bit easier as we were able to use the space in the back seat that he had been using on the way down.

It was a quarter till one when we were finally able to check out and pull out of the campground. Almost five hours of packing! But we can’t complain as everything was dry (except for the towels) and everything was put away and packed into the car. What a relief it was to have that all done.

After checking out we played a round of miniature golf for the girls as they had been so patient all morning with nothing to do. Dominica was only able to play a couple of holes, though, as she started getting light headed from bending over so much trying to play so she had to stop. Being pregnant is tough.

After the girls finished their game we drove on down to the town of Watkins Glen and stopped a the Burger King there to get a quick lunch. We got to try out their new apple fries which are apples cut into the shape of french fries that come with a caramel sauce for dipping. It is a great idea. Far healthier than French fries and quite tasty. I never liked Burger King’s French fries anyway so this is a great alternative for me that makes me far more likely to want to eat at Burger King.

After lunch we crossed the parking lot and we all got ice cream (or gellato for Dominica) from the ice cream shop that was located right there. Then it was time to really get on the road. So around two in the afternoon we finally set off for Frankfort.

This time the drive went well and we made good time through Ithaca, Cortland and Syracuse and up to Utica and Frankfort. We arrived in Frankfort just in time for dinner so we hung around for just a little while and had the picnic at the Tocco’s that had originally been planned for yesterday before the rain made that pretty much impossible.

While we were there with the BMW 330Ci parked in the police station / municipal parking lot directly next to Dominica’s parents’ house another completely identical BMW pulled in and parked nose to nose with Dominica’s car. We have never seen another BMW in Frankfort let alone a completely identical model with the same year, color, model and options and then to have them parked nose to nose on a Monday evening! I ran out and took some pictures just to prove that it happened and ended up being outside at just the right time to see the other owner and to get to talk to him for a little bit about the car. He does not live in Frankfort, as you can imagine.

We got the Chrysler 300M unpacked and packed up the BMW and were back on the road between six and seven in the evening. The drive back down to Newark went well and we arrived at the apartment at Eleven80 before midnight. We were completely exhausted by the time that we got home but still had to unload the car and walk Oreo. Then Dominica went straight to bed but I was so wired from driving and walking the dog that I didn’t fall asleep until two in the morning.

July 13, 2008: Rain at the Glen

It rained pretty much all night. We were pretty damp by morning and there was a bit of pooled water in the tent. The porch area was really a mess. Dominica and I were really glad that I we had panicked and managed to close all of the windows and to move what we could into the middle of the porch area. We were in pretty rough shape as it was but it would have been so much worse.

We were all up around a quarter to seven this morning. It isn’t always easy to sleep in when you are camping. When camping you really get the feel for just how “shifted” normal life is from daylight hours. The average person, at least here in the US, stays up long after the sun has gone down and does not get up until long after it has come up, but when camping you tend to go to bed right as the sun goes down and get up pretty much when it rises. It shifts your schedule very quickly.

We got up and got dressed and spent some time trying to get the tent into as good of shape as we could muster given our limited supplies, space and experience. Then, at eight, it was time to head to the “mess hall” for our buffet breakfast. It is all you can eat eggs, pancakes, French toast, sausage, bacon, toast, bagels, muffins, English muffins, etc. We were looking forward to a hearty breakfast after having mostly beans for dinner.

From the time that we woke up until after breakfast the rain held off. It was quite warm and sunny which gave us a critical reprieve to get some repairs done on the tent although it was not possible to get anything really drying at all as the humidity was still in the ninteties. It was just hot and muggy but at least we were able to shift things around and mop up some of the standing water. That helped.

It was far too hot for Oreo to be left in the car and we were afraid to leave the campsite unattended even if Oreo could have been left there on his own. So Dominica and Oreo stayed behind in the tent and slept for a few hours while I took the girls back to the swimming pool so that they could swim some more. The pool is really great and the girls just love it. We couldn’t have gotten a better pool for them. It is big and spacious but not so big as to be dangerous and not so many people using it as to be a problem. It is three feet deep in the shallow end and five feet deep in the deep end so it is pretty safe that way as well.

I took the girls to swim at twenty after nine but discovered that the pool didn’t open until ten. So we walked back to the camp and told Dominica but then decided that we would just hang out at the pool and wait for it to open as it was all muddy at the tent. It started to rain this morning just after breakfast, sometime between eight thirty and nine in the morning. So we were already wet just from the walking and the girls were getting pretty muddy as everything was dirt and had been wet all night.

The girls swam from ten o’clock in the morning, when the pool opened, until about noon when it was time for us to get ready to meet the Doty/Tocco clan at Watkins Glen State Park – just a few minutes away from the KOA where we were staying. The swimming was very important as the girls were pretty bored after all of the time spent setting up the camp, cooking dinner, dealing with the rain, long drive to get to Watkins Glen, etc.

Just as we were finishing our swim Dominica instant messaged me from the tent to tell us that the rain was coming down pretty hard and that the tent was leaking pretty badly. So we raced bask to help out. There was only so much to do, though, and the tent just got rather damp.

Around noonish, I don’t remember the exact time, we drove down to Watkins Glen State Park at the south entrance to meet up with Dominica’s family who were meeting us there for a picnic. It went from raining steady to really pouring once we got to the picnic area. It seem to really start just as we arrived.

It only took a minute of the heavy rain and the flooding parking lot before everyone decided that eating outside was a lost cause and that other options would have to be investigated. We could not use the picnic pavilion at the park because it was already reserved. So we gave up on Watkins Glen State Park and drove down to the Seneca lakefront park near downtown Watkins Glen and looked for a picnic area there that we could use, but there was no such luck. We took just seconds too long in getting there and the last picnic pavilion was taken just as we arrived.

Dominica and I had seen a family restaurant in town right on route 14 that had looked nice so we talked everyone in to eating there. So lunch was at Savard’s Family Restaurant. It was sad because so much effort was put into the picnic and now we weren’t even able to all sit together as a family because there were about fourteen of us and we had to be split between tables. The food was good and we had a nice time but it wasn’t the big “get together” that we had hoped to have been able to have had.

The original plan was for the girls and whatever adults were interested to go swimming in the Watkins Glen State Park Olympic sized pool but because of the rain most everyone decided that they didn’t want to do that and the girls were indifferent as they could just go back to the campground to swim in their indoor, heated pool.

We did decide that it was just too warm and too wet to have Oreo with us so we let him go back to Frankfort ahead of us with Dominica’s parents. It was very sad to send him away as he really, really loves camping but it has been a lot of work trying to take care of him and with the rain we really can’t handle anything extra.

We decided that I should do some swimming which, since Oreo returned home, is an option because Dominica can be the “lifeguard” on duty instead of me. At least one adult has to be “on deck” at all times so I haven’t even had the option of swimming until now. So we hit the Watkins Glen Super Walmart and picked up some additional towels and two swimsuits for me (they were on sale, just $7.50!)

We went back to the KOA and surveyed the damage. Surprisingly, even in the crazy rain and wind that we had while we were away the tent was really no worse off than it was before we left. Pheww, what a relief.

We all changed and headed for the pool. It was around four in the afternoon when the girls finally got into the pool to start swimming again. I got in right away as well and this is probably by first time swimming since Dominica and I belonged to the YMCA in Ithaca in 2002! I ended up swimming with the girls for almost three solid hours. I got out for a little while and Dominica swam for a bit but she can’t throw the girls around and do fun pool games, being pregnant, so they were pretty bored with her in the pool. We practically had the pool to ourselves all evening. There were other people using it but not very many.

The girls started to get tired, and hungry, around eight. They got in at least three and a half hours of pool time which was awesome. It really wore them, and me, out. I was pretty sore by the time that I was getting out of the pool.

We went to the campground office and ordered some pizzas for dinner. After last night we had decided that we are taking the easy route for food today. No cooking at all. They had actually stopped making pizza early because they didn’t have enough people but we made boo-boo kitty faces and the owner came over and cooked pizzas for us. We got some ice cream while we waited. Under more normal conditions we could have had pizza delivered to the tent site which would be really cool.

We ate out pizza, it was around nine or nine thirty, at the picnic table at our campsite. The camp was extremely quiet tonight. There is almost no one staying at the KOA as it is a Sunday night and most people left this morning. Last night there were loud parties going on and it bothered a lot of people. Tonight it was all but silent.

After dinner I made an attempt at starting a campfire but had no luck. It wasn’t exactly a serious attempt but more a chance to burn all of our paper product trash as kindling and a feeble attempt at drying out our water-logged fire wood that sat out all last night and all day today.

Our camp neighbours, who live in New Jersey but are originally from Belfast, took pity on us and brought us dry firewood and a firestarter thing that fired the whole thing right up. They didn’t want to see the girls go without s’mores on their first time camping in New York!

The fire got going in no time and I tended to that while Dominica worked to dry the tent using our towels and to get it sleepable for tonight. By late evening the rain had stopped and we were starting to make headway on the tent. It was much cooler tonight too – Min and I had to break out our sleeping bag for the first time.

Around ten we cooked s’mores. Well, I cooked s’mores. The girls really weren’t too interested in getting down and roasting marshmallows and Dominica sure wasn’t going to be bending down to cook them being five months pregnant. The s’mores turned out pretty well, I think. We are very thankful for friendly camping neighbours and their supplies.

We got the girls off to bed between ten thirty and eleven at night. Dominica started working on getting everyone ready for bed back at nine when we had finished eating. She did so much work tonight! She and I were not able to finally turn in until a bit after midnight which was awful as we were just completely exhausted by that point.

Just before going to bed, while doing some work on packing things into the car, we discovered that the car-top carrier had somehow taken on water and had a gallon or two of water trapped in its lining! What a disaster.

We did the best that we could to position the car-top carrier in such a way that it would drain during the night in the hopes that we could salvage it in the morning. Because the water was trapped in the liner we had no way to open the carrier to drain it let alone dry it. Tomorrow is going to be interesting.

Dominica and I were so stressed that after going to bed we had a really hard time falling asleep. Everything went so poorly and there is so much more work to do tomorrow – especially with everything being wet and the car-top carrier possibly being useless – that we felt completely overwhelmed. We were very worried that we just would not be able to get the site packed up. We are supposed to be checked out by noon. Then we have to drive to Frankfort with the girls and drop them off. Then we unload all of this stuff, again, and load up the BMW that is at Min’s parents’ house. Get Oreo and then drive back to Newark. It is going to be such a long day.

Around one in the morning Dominica and I heard a sound outside of the tent. We have the porch area wide open (but screened) so I could see out into the night to some extent. We had a white garbage bag out by the road that would be picked up in the morning. The KOA has garbage collection each morning and you just sit your trash out by the “road” just like you do at your house. I looked carefully and noticed that the bag was moving away from us.

I told Dominica “Our trash appears to be leaving!” So she grabbed the Colemand LED flashlight and her glasses. She got ready with her glasses looking out the door and I turne the flashlight onto the garbage bag. It turns out that we had a skunk looking for the left over pizza!

We were very fortunate that the skunk didn’t rip the bag all apart and make a huge mess. It just made a tiny hole, probably ate more than it could handle for the night, and left us.

July 12, 2008: Camping in Watkins Glen

It was around one in the morning when Dominica and I pulled into Frankfort. We got to sleep as quickly as we could but it was still a pretty late night. We were really exhausted by the time that we arrived. I was starting to have problems driving because it had been such a long day (and week.)

We slept in a bit this morning in the hopes of being rested for our trip. But we were awake far earlier than we had hoped and only had a moderately long night. Not enough to catch up on anything – just enough to hold our ground.

Getting the car packed was a major ordeal. Fortunately Dominica’s father did the bulk of the packing. We are borrowing her parents’ Chrysler 300M with their Thule roof top carrier to fit all of the camping supplies. It is an incredible amount of stuff. Far more than I had thought that we were going to be taking for two nights of camping.

We didn’t think that we needed to be in a hurry today so we took our time and relaxed a bit. It was around one, I think, when we left Frankfort. A normal trip from Frankfort to Watkins Glen takes less than three hours so we were expecting to arrived before six. That seemed like it would be plenty of time.

We ended up getting stuck in completely stopped traffic on interstate 81 south of Syracuse. Traffic was really awful and we sat there for an extremely long time without really moving. All movement appeared to be coming from traffic compressing and not from people getting through. Dominica, being pregnant, really needed to get to a restroom and this was causing a bit of a panic.

We decided that jumping off of 81 a the first available exit was the only move that made any sense. So we exited at Preble and went south on 281 towards Cortland. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out any better. After about two miles we ended up in an “as far as the eye can see” line of cars that were not really moving either. We sat there for a very long time before getting a chance to take a random side road.

We ate at the first restaurant that we were able to find, which ended up being a pizza place in Homer. Finally Dominica was able to use a restroom. It was a completely emergency at this point. I have never seen traffic stop like this out in the country on two mostly unrelated roads like this before. It was very strange.

It was so hot today, well into the nineties, that while we ate the car had to be left running with the air conditioning on full blast with blankets in the windows just to keep Oreo cool enough. We had to sit so that we could watch the car all through lunch. At least we had a chance to get some food while we were stuck.

While we were eating it suddenly began to downpour. Oreo’s blanket was keeping the sun off of him and instantly became soaked. First traffic issues and then our first big rain and something that we needed for the trip getting wet. We should have guessed that things were going to be rough at this point. At least we had the A/C running and didn’t have any windows open as we normally would have done or the entire interior of the car would have been drenched. It was a lot of rain that came down.

By the time that we were done eating, we had lost just short of two hours because of traffic delays! Our moderately late day had become extremely late. We hurried on to Watkins Glen making as good of time as possible. We never did definitely find out what either delay was. Both were quite strange.

It was around six thirty when we arrived at the KOA in Watkins Glen, if I remember correctly. It was quite late considering that we needed to set up the camp site after arriving. We got checked in and drove out to our camp site, E103. It was one of the last sites left as the campground is, I believe, full tonight.

It took us a while to get the tent set up. Because we arrived so late we had the “all thats left” campsite that didn’t have any large grassy space on which to put the tent. We made due with using some rocky space under the porch area and getting as much as we could onto the grass. I destroyed several of our yellow, plastic Coleman tent stakes trying to secure the tent to rocky ground. I beat the mallet so hard that it was starting to come apart.

It was incredibly hot and I was just burning up by the time that we finally got the tent errected. Madeline and Emily were definitely bored out of their minds after the unexpectedly long car ride and then sitting for an hour or so as we tried to put the camp site together.

We were quite obviously extremely novice at camp-setup and our E104 site neighbours stopped by to see if we were going to be alright and offered some assistance in getting the site put together, but we managed, more or less, on our own. It took a long time and we were really exhausted by the end, but we did it ourselves.

There was a lot of “little things” that needed to be done to get the camp site really ready so Dominica got to work on that with Oreo sleeping in the tent on the air mattresses while I took Madeline and Emily to the indoor pool to go swimming. Swimming was really the only fun activity for them all day. It was a lot of travel and work for just an hour or two of swimming. I didn’t swim but just sat on the side as a lifeguard. We swam until it was time for the pool to close at nine.

The girls and I stopped at the campground store and got ice cream for ourselves and Dominica and delivered it back to the camp site. Dominica did a ton of setup work while we were gone and now it was very dark. She cooked us franks and beans for dinner which was very tough as she had all kinds of problems using the camp stove. She and I settled for just beans as cooking veggie dogs too was deemed to be far too much effort. We were completely exhausted already.

Dominica washed up the dished and I made an attempt to start a fire but nothing would start. We weren’t planning on a fire tonight but thought that we would at least try. It was so hot, though, that having a fire was not ideal.

It was around ten when we all got to bed. We were exhausted and very hot. I was covered in sweat from it being so hot all evening. We were very glad that we had the ceiling and window fans for the tent. It made all of the difference.

While are day was pretty rough, we were very impressed with the KOA campground (kampground.) Everything was clean and nice and there are a lot of ammenities. Quite impressive. It really is a little like a resort.

The rain started around eleven. We knew that rain was expected tomorrow but were not expecting to get any tonight. This is not what we had wanted.

Dominica and I both got up and quickly “battened down the hatches” to seal up the tent. We did okay for the first while but it rained all night getting pretty heavy in the middle of the night. Eventually we started getting leaks and water starting collecting. We had to deal with that a bit during the night. The beds stayed dry mostly but the floor was a mess. Lots to deal with tomorrow 🙁

We had been really hopeful that we would at least have no rain tonight. Now our whole weekend is going to be driven by the rain.

July 11, 2008: Baby Shower Madness

Today’s Music: Life in a Northern Town by Sunset Boulevard

My early morning support was canceled for this morning so I got to sleep in and relax for a little bit. My boss decided that I was completely overworked this week and that I needed yesterday and today off from the extra hours but we couldn’t find someone to cover for me yesterday.

This morning I loaded up the iPod with tons of awesome 80s music to keep Min and I awake as we drive up to her parents’ house in Frankfort. Hopefully traffic won’t be bad tonight. It is not a holiday weekend so we are hopeful that it won’t be bad at all.

Dominica went into the office today thinking that she and the rest of the office were surprising her coworker on her last day before maturnity leave with a baby shower just to discover that they had all conspired against her to throw her a surprise baby shower as well! So they had a double baby shower today and we received our very first baby presents. They also have two cakes!

For lunch some of the guys went to Financier Patisserie down on Stone. We sat out in the cafe and enjoyed the gorgeous weather. The humidity that has been killing us has lifted for the most part and it is pretty nice outside. I sure hope that it is nice for the weekend of camping. It does not seem very likely.

The current weather projections for the weekend in Watkins Glen are that it will be quite hot tomorrow – a high of ninety-one degrees and pretty much straight sun. Sunday we are looking at thunderstorms and hot with a high of eighty-five. Then not so bad on Monday although we will be pretty tired of the weather by Monday, I’m sure. As it is, last weekend was the first time – ever – that I have managed to go camping without it raining. I love rain but not when I am in a tent and the humidity and heat and through the roof and everything that you are sleeping on is damp and you keep tracking mud and water into the tent no matter what you do. Just imagine what a problem it is going to be having Oreo sleeping with us when his feet get all muddy.

Water is also going to cause problems with our electricals. We are going to have to be very careful having the CPAP plugged in all night long. I really hope that we manage to avoid the rain! My track record does not indicate that we will.

I left Wall Street at six in the evening. I’m posting as I walk out to be sure that this goes up before Monday. I don’t know how much access that I will have over the weekend. The plan is that I will be online all weekend but we have no idea before we get there.

AppleTV Architecture

If you spend any time reading Apple’s literature you will discover that they have an intended architecture for their AppleTV devices. I was surprised to learn that Apple’s idealized concept for their media device was so completely different from how I had envisioned its use.

Apple sees the AppleTV as a centralized media consumption device. Obviously the AppleTV is targetted for tech-savvy home users and, from what I have seen from Apple’s officialy advertising, they expect a multi-computer home to have iTunes running on several computers (in bedrooms, home office, etc.) and a single AppleTV unit places in the home’s “media center” location attached to a large screen display and surround sound audio system. Under this design the AppleTV is the media consumer interface to all of the home’s computing resources.

I am sure that for many potential AppleTV customers, especially those already very much entrenched in the ubiquitious use of Apple’s iTunes, that this model may make sense. A family of four could have a Mac or a PC located in the parents’ bedroom, in each of the children’s bedrooms each running iTunes and containing the individual users’ personal audio and video files. Then a single AppleTV device placed in the living room or den and hooked to a big screen LCD high-definition television display and a surround sound audio system could be used for serious viewing or family time and the individual computers could be used for personal viewing or listening.

This model makes a lot of sense, especially in a home where all users have computers available to them and each person is likely to want to maintain their own repository of media. In many cases I believe that this may not be the optimum approach. This “centralized AppleTV – decentralized media” approach leaves much to be desired by my reasoning for the average media consuming family.

My proposed architecture is based on the theory of “decentralized AppleTVs – centralized media.” I feel that more often it will be a better use of resources to have many AppleTVs located throughout the home wherever media consumption is desired. For example, having an AppleTV in each bedroom and in the living room and/or den. Then, to support the AppleTV units, one single Mac or PC computer running iTunes would be used as a centralized “media server” so that all files are managed from a single location. This gives each AppleTV throughout the home access to the entire family media archives very simply.

Of course you can use Mac desktops running FrontRow to replace specific instances of the AppleTV. This can allow for mixing and matching additional functionality as needed without disrupting the base home media architecture. This system allows every room to use movies and music through a dedicated “entertainment” machine while the desktop computers, if they exist, can be used solely for computing and will not have to share resources – most notably screen real estate – with video content.

Storage of media under Apple’s proposed architure requires each computer user to choose, store and protect their own media. This means that each computer must be treated as a valuable resource and required dramatically more long term media management. It also means that there is a likelihood of media duplication throughout the house. If every family member wants to be able to watch Disney’s The Little Mermaid when they are going to bed at night then each computer has to have its own copy of the movie. It only takes a handful of movies before this causes significant storage bloat.

Under my proposed architure you can simply use the “media server’s” internal disk for media storage, or if you grow beyond that point you can install a larger drive or just attach external hard drives. If you have serious storage needs then you can back the iTunes application with an external storage system such as a NAS device. Consumer grade NAS devices start under $1,000 and it is not financially unreasonable to move to custom server-based storage solutions which can easily hit 14TB today and will scale far beyond this in the near future. (For reference, a typical new desktop machine today holds around .16TB with the largest drives being just 1TB – so 14TB is a significant amount of storage.)

Possibly the biggest advantage of having centralized media storage is that backups are very, very simple. There is no bloat as there are not multiple copies of the same files floating around in different locations, and backups are only necessary from the media store (either the local drive, the external drives or the NAS device.)

In a previous article I discussed using the AppleTV as a means of controlling content being made available to children. Apple’s architecture does not really take this advantage of their own system into account, but under my architecture children can safely have an AppleTV installed into their bedrooms with them having unlimited access to it without any worries that they will be able to access unintended content using it.