Sheep Guarding Llama

I remember when Fridays were nice because it meant the weekend was here. Now I am starting to dread them because I have so much work to do on the weekends. I have a another Java project due tomorrow night that will keep me hopping all night tonight as well as all day tomorrow. And, in addition, I am the primary “on call” for the office this weekend which means a fair amount of work to be done tomorrow and a lot to be done on Sunday. I am going to be exhausted getting back to the office on Monday.

In this picture I am pretty sure that Pam and Ryan and laughing at you for taking the time to read SGL. I find that very amusing.

I stopped by Cafe Airlie on my way in this morning and got my usual egg and cheese with pepper on a hardroll. Then I walked into Newark Penn Station. There was hardly anyone on the train this morning. I couldn’t believe how empty it was.

Dominica and I decided that I need a tiny MP3 player to have when I am commuting back and forth to Manhattan. Now that I am not driving my MP3 player concerns are very different than before. Now space and weight is at a premium and the third generation iPod Nano can hold 8GB of books and podcasts and can play tiny videos. Perfect for riding on the train. My other players are too bulky for commuting on foot. Having things in my pockets doesn’t work all that well. We are thinking about getting me a messenger bag as well so that I have a place to store my books and BlackBerry and everything else that I carry back and forth every day.

Today HP is celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the VMS Operating System.

Today was very busy and I barely had time to do anything this morning. I had requests coming in so quickly that I was beginning to “task thrash” from being forced to mulitask over too many items. My job is largely event-driven and tasks will often preempt each other which can cause productivity to plummet if it happens too much. Today was one of those days.

By lunch I was really looking forward to having a few minutes off so I walked up to Borders and picked up the Llama book – “Learning Perl” – for Dominica who has been needing it. On the way back to the office I stopped at “Hot Soup” and picked up some lobster bisque for my lunch. I need a pick me up to keep me humming along today.

Since it is a Friday and I am stuck at work late Dominica decided that she would stop by the Best Buy near where she works to see if they have the new Mac Mini in stock loaded with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard.) Our plan is to get one of those and attach it to the wireless keyboard and mouse that we got from Andy and use it in our bedroom hooked to the 32″ 720p television screen. It won’t be the best resolution but it should work well and will be perfect for watching Internet shows. And it will allow us to surf the web and check email from bed.

Last Saturday I ran through the upgrade of my Palm Treo 700p that I have from Verizon. The old software on the machine was incredibly buggy and I could never get the Treo to work at all. One of the sad things about the unit was that its battery was only lasting me about twenty-four hours which meant it was a constant struggle to keep the unit charged and working. Since I did the upgrade on Saturday the unit has been on and still has a bit of battery left to it. A whole week almost and it is still chugging! It is amazing what a difference software can make for something like this. I don’t have it all working like it was before but maybe I can look at that this weekend. But I am very happy about the battery improvement. It went from being the worst performing unit that I have owned in a very long time to one of the best ever.

Dominica found someone at work who is interested in buying our “old” Mac Mini. It isn’t that old but it is lacking a few critical feature that Dominica and I need in a unit like that. Namely wireless since we want to have that unit in our bedroom which is a thin wall away from our wireless access point but a very long distance for a while to travel since we can’t run our own wires through the apartment walls.

Min hit Best Buy but discovered that they are not selling the Mac Mini in stores but only online through the Apple Store.  I had originally avoided buying the Mini through this channel because I wanted to be able to verify that the latest operating system would be loaded onto it.  Originally they were not disclosing the OS version on Apple’s page but now they are advertising that they are shipping with OS X 10.5 so I guess that it is safe to order from there now.  I think that I will wait until after Dominica and I return from the UK as I will have no spare time at all between now and then.

My evening at the office was very busy but it didn’t go nearly as late as I thought that it might have.  I was working like crazy from about three until a quarter after six but then everything just dropped off and people began leaving the office.  So I got to head for home at a reasonable time.

Tonight will be mostly relaxing and prepping for my big homework day tomorrow.  Tomorrow I will be hunkered down in the apartment doing nothing but Java all day.  Dominica is thinking that she is going to go out shopping at the Lane Bryant weekend sale.  That will give me some quiet time at home to work on the homework.  I had been hoping to have at least gotten a chance to have looked at it today but no such luck.

November is already here but if you walk outside you would never know it. Today is so warm that a jacket is only barely a recommendation and definitely optional. I took Oreo out for his morning walk and couldn’t believe that it was past mid-September. And it wasn’t even all that bright today either.

Oreo and I slept in this morning as it is my work from home day and I don’t have to travel anywhere (or even take a shower before work.) We really needed the chance to catch up on some sleep.

This morning Eleven80 took down most of the scaffolding that was located on the Raymond Boulevard side of the building. When I took Oreo out for a walk in Military Park we were surprised to be greeted by the sky and open air instead of the scaffolding looming overhead. We have been here for over a year and have gotten used to having the scaffolding in place. We had forgotten that someday it would be gone. What a difference it makes. The building is much more attractive now.

Dominica’s new Apple iPod Nano came today. It is very pink. She is excited. We are thinking about getting a new iPod Nano for me too for when I am commuting. But not a pink one.

We ordered in Italian from Nino’s tonight and I got stuck working until almost ten in the evening.  Min went grocery shopping on her way home so she got home late and found me in a conference call still for about half an hour yet.  It was a very late night for me.

We finished watching the second season of Family Ties and went to bed early.  We are all very exhausted.  We didn’t even get a chance to fire up the iPod yet.

We were really exhausted this morning trying to get up and go to work after the all evening Halloween party at Eleven80 last night. Oreo won his doggie costume contest last night and he has another one at daycare today. So he is all psyched up and ready.

Oreo ended up winning best overall costume at Doggie Paradise today.  He worked really hard for it.  He has won a lot of doggie goodies this week.

I am working in Warren, NJ today so I had to get up and go up to Tribeca to catch the shuttle. I got up at five and got in as quickly as I could but just missed the first shuttle of the day. Or at least I believe that I did. Perhaps the one that I got at eight was actually the first shuttle. I have heard rumors about the bad ride that you can get depending on which shuttle you end up with. Well today I got the bad one.

The bumps on the road were so hard that it literally knocked the wind out of me over and over again. I felt like I was going to pass out. There was a smell of fuel on the bus too so if you got a chance to take a deep breath it burned. The bus was hitting the ground so hard that I could see as much as a half inch of light between the window and the window frame when the side of the bus flexed. You could easily lose a finger in there.

I was exhausted and ill when I got out to Warren. That was not a good way to start the day.

Luckily for me this evening the shuttle to Tribeca was running very late but the shuttle to Summit was there. I have been wanting to try the Summit shuttle but since I didn’t know how to get it I never took the chance on it. But I had plenty of time to talk to the driver and learn how it works so I took a chance on it and that ended up being both a much more comfortable ride and a far faster one. From Summit I can just catch the NJ Transit in to Newark’s Broad Street station and walk home from there. It was seven when I got home.

For dinner tonight we had leftovers from Dominica’s International Food Day at her office. She had BBQ Tofu that she had made and some delicious pirogies that one of her coworkers had made. It was a really delicious dinner but there wasn’t enough of it.

My Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 PC1 pocket computer arrived in the post today. Dominica even thought that this one was pretty cool.

The Flickr site now has the Pictures from the Eleven80 Halloween Party 2007. The Nikon D50 DSLR with the big SB-600 speedlight really turned out some amazing shots. You would never know that the party was held in a room lit almost exclusively by black lights. I can see the people so much more clearly in the pictures that I could when I was there.

I was quite exhausted when I pulled myself out of bed this morning. I definitely did not want to be awake. I was very pleased to discover, however, that my Palm Treo 700p – that I updated on Saturday afternoon to the newest firmware revision – still had more than fifty percent of its battery life even though I unplugged it Saturday night or Sunday morning. Before the update the phone was lucky to last through a single twenty-four hour period without the battery giving out.

There are a number of pictures online (I am not sure for how long) from Eric and Fara’s wedding that Dominica and I went to out on Long Island a couple of weeks ago.

Oreo got to have a half-breakfast this morning. We will see how he does today and if he is feeling better up until lunch then he will get a half-lunch as well. He needs to have enough energy for his Halloween party at Eleven80 tonight. He is going as Harry Potter (that is, “Hairy” Potter) in a custom costume that Dominica’s mom made for him. Dominica is going to go as Hermione and I am dressing up as Hagrid. Hopefully we will be able to get a lot of pictures.

Today was rather busy at the office. I didn’t get a chance to run out for lunch until one thirty. I ran up Wall St. and grabbed a large Boston Clam Chowder soup from the “Hot Soup” truck parked in front of Thomas Pink at 63 Wall across from the Deutsche Bank building (60 Wall.) I ate at my desk as usual. All alone. I had a very busy day, though, and appreciated the chance to just read the news and catch up for a few minutes.

I had to work a little late again today but couldn’t stay very late because of the party tonight. I rushed home skipping a stop at Borders that Dominica is wanting me to make to pick up the “Llama” book on Perl for her.

I got home to Eleven80 in Newark just minutes ahead of Dominica and Oreo. It was a little after six and the big Eleven80 Halloween party starts at six thirty so we had to rush to get the three of us ready and into costume in time. It ended up taking us until almost seven before we were able to get down to the Eleven80 bowling alley.

We were really surprised by the number of people (and dogs) who turned out for the party. The bowling alley was packed. There was a lot of food and drinks supplied too. It was very nice. The Cogswell staff really put a lot of effort into decorating the place. There were servers with hors d’œuvre like mini cheeseburgers and mozzarella triangles and tons of cheese platters and cookies and pizza and more.

There was a pumpkin carving contest and a lot of really amazing pumpkins. A human costume contest as well as a dog costume contest. Oreo, of course, won in his adorable Harry “Hairy” Potter costume. He had a really good time at the party playing with people and dogs. There were several dogs there like Latte, Mr. Bill, Riley, Sophie, Luna and Oreo. Luna, Pam and Kevin’s dog, came in second place as the vampire dog (a canampire.) Pam also came in second in the human costume competition.

After the party a few of us stayed in the lounge watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown from 1966. That show seemed strangely old and yet seemed totally normal when I was young. Now I can really see the age of it. I probably first saw it around 1982 or 1983 which it was just sixteen years old. The world portrayed in the show was very similar to the one of my youth. But today the show is very dated.

After watching Charlie Brown we went up to Ryan’s apartment and played Chu-Chu Rocket on the Sega Dreamcast for about an hour before everyone headed off to bed. Dominica had decided to forgo the Dreamcast fun and spent the hour cooking BBQ Tofu and Polenta for her International Food Day at work tomorrow. What is incredibly funny is that Dominica bought Chu Chu Rocket for our Dreamcast several years ago and we have never gotten around to playing it! So this was my very first time playing the game but it wasn’t my copy.

I had two cameras with me at the party and at least the pictures from the Nikon D50 turned out great. I will try to get some posted for everyone tomorrow night.

If having a busy weekend wasn’t enough to wear me out my night was cut short with Oreo needing to make two emergency middle-of-the-night walks. My night was less than five hours long as it was and cutting it up with two trips around the block made it pretty much non-existent. I am so tired today that all of my joints hurt. I thought about trying to sleep in and then come in late but I would not have had enough time to get another sleep cycle in and I am going to appreciate being able to go home at normal time instead of staying late.

Work was tough today just because I was dragging pretty hard all day.  Luckily I had quite a bit of work to do and being so busy kept me awake.  I actually got stuck working late there was so much to do which is unusual for a Monday.

Dominica’s day was horrible and she is very unhappy with the situation at work.  Unfortunately it is nothing that we can discuss here.  She wasn’t even able to talk to me during the day but had to stay bottled up until she got home in the evening.

I got home to find that my two new Samsung 204b LCD monitors had arrived.  The Samsung 204b is a 20.1″ 1600×1200 LCD.  Now, having three of them, my desktop space is hugemungous.  I have the two monitors on the left hooked to my OpenSuse 10.3 desktop (HP dx5150) and the monitor on the right is hooked to my Windows XP Pro desktop (another HP dx5150.)  Once I get it all set up I am going to be able to toggle the center screen between Linux and Windows and eventually the right monitor between Windows and Solaris.

Dominica had to run some errands after work and didn’t get home until almost seven in the evening.  She was very depressed.  Oreo is quite unhappy as well as he got a tummy-ache yesterday and wasn’t allowed to eat all day.  So he is extremely hungry.  And since eating is his favourite activity he is extra sad.

My main Linux desktop died the other day (hard drive corruption) and so today I focused on getting it rebuilt.  I decided that since OpenSuse 10.3 64bit had had to many little issues with drivers and things that I would attempt switching down to the 32bit version to see if that would improve things.  One of my biggest concerns with the 64bit version is that Spark doesn’t work and that is a major problem for me.

It took most of the evening but I eventually got OpenSuse reinstalled and set up to work with the dual monitors.  Boy is that cool.  I use dual monitors at work and I sometimes use a laptop with a second monitor at home but this is the first time that I have ever used two monitors of this size and resolution together.  This is going to make me much more productive right away.

We ordered dinner from Food for Life and I walked next door to pick it up.  Min didn’t feel like going out anywhere and I had a lot of work that needed to be addressed so that worked out well.

Dominica spent the evening working on our costumes for tomorrow night’s Eleven80 Halloween party.  I can’t say yet what we are going to be because it is a surprise.  Mostly because Oreo is in the costume contest and we don’t want to tip our hat just yet.  There should be pictures by tomorrow.  If I remember I will take the Nikon D50 down with me and get some pics with it.  It has the good flash so it is by far the best option indoors.

We watched some of That 70s Show and then it was time for bed.  Dominica managed to get to bed about an hour or more before I did.  I never get enough time to make up for lost sleep once I start down that road.  Just not enough time in the day.