Sheep Guarding Llama

Not much to post about today. Extremely uneventful day. I went to work in the morning. Worked a normalish day. Busy but not excessively so. I am still on the earlier than normal shift so my days are running earlier than usual.

I got some of my RIT Java homework done today. That isn’t very exciting.

I did discover what happens to those mail in rebates that you send in (at least to Fry’s.)  It is obvious why they choose the expensive “by mail” paper-based processing route instead of the cheap online automated route – it’s all about the ability to hide the evidence.  And they still screwed it up!

I got home and spent the evening working on the SunFire V100 which is having all kinds of issues booting from its CD. It did it last week but now I can’t get it to attempt it. So I spent the entire evening working on that issue.

We ordered in Chinese from Golden City and watched Heroes. Dominica did a bit of laundry this evening but was so distracted by the show that at one point she ran an entire load without remembering the detergent.

I woke up at three this morning and didn’t feel well. I got back in bed a little before four but wasn’t able to really sleep and just use the time for puppy snuggles. I have to get up around five to get into the office so it wasn’t that long before I would have to be up anyway.

Today was mostly uneventful. Busy but not abnormally so. I had an insanely busy afternoon working on one issue from one thirty until four thirty when it was time to go home. On the way home I stopped at the gas station by work and put air in the tires of the PR5. It was running a little low.

I started using RSSOwl today for reading my RSS and Atom feeds. I read a lot of feeds and it makes life a lot easier. I was using an add-on to Firefox for a while but that was cumbersome and difficult to use. Having a dedicated reader makes a lot more sense for me.

Freedom is mine!

I got home around five – a good hour before Dominica got home. I visited at the front desk for a little while, picked up the mail and the package that had arrived and then went up to the apartment. The HP Vectra that I had won on eBay for the school in Castile arrived today. It is nothing special but it was a really good price.
I found an extremely interesting blog post about islands on lakes on islands and lakes on islands in lakes from Google Sightseeing.

For dinner Dominica and I had arranged to go over to Food for Life. We were both in the mood for it. Min got home just after six and came up to the apartment, dropped off Oreo and then we started walking over for dinner.

On our way over to dinner at FFL we ran into one of our neighbours that we had hung out with in Toronto. She said that she and her husband might join us at FFL if he got home in time. So we went on ahead to the restaurant and got a table. Just as we ordered we saw another neighbour from our building walking by so I ran out and grabbed him and he joined us for dinner. Within minutes our first neighbour’s husband was walking by and we managed to grab him from the restaurant as well. So, in the end, Dominica and my walk to dinner resulted in five of us having dinner together! It was a lot of fun.

As it turns out, our waiter tonight is the younger brother or the first waiter that Dominica and I ever had at FFL just about one year ago.  We were his first ever table as a waiter and he was our first waiter at FFL.  Today was his brother’s first day and although I doubt that we were his first table we were at least customers on his first day.

After dinner we watched two episodes of Heroes.  I talked to Andy tonight and he said that he had watched the first episode of Heroes tonight as well!  I stayed up late tonight working on the SunFire V100.  I have made a lot of progress on it but don’t quite have it working well enough yet.

We have a completed photo set from Montreal now available of Flickr. Not a lot of pictures though.

Today both Dominica and I return to university for the fall semester. As if we weren’t busy enough!

I forgot to mention yesterday that on the drive home I finished “reading” Simon Winchester’s book “A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906“. The book was excellent just like Winchester’s previous title of which I have read several and Dominica has recently begun to enjoy as well.
I got up around five this morning and got ready for work. I am on the early shift this week which means that I have to be up and moving about half an hour earlier than normal which doesn’t sound like a lot but it is already pretty early in the morning for me as it is.

The day itself was pretty uneventful. Nothing really special to report. It was a slow day as I expect most of this week is going to be but there was the obligatory backup of work from the three day weekend to keep me busy even though it was pretty slow overall.

I left work at four thirty after a ten hour day and drove home in light traffic. I found a kid (probably around twenty) stuck on the side of the road with a broken down car. Right on i78 an insanely busy highway. I gave him a lift to work. He said that he had been stuck on the side of the highway for one and a half to two hours without anyone being willing to stop and help him. He didn’t have a cell phone and no one even called the police for him nor did the police pass by in all that time! Now ask me why I don’t like Northern Jersey!

At six this evening I had my very first “Java for Programmers” class online at RIT. This class actually had an “online lecture” and moved very quickly. I am happy with the pace that they are showing in this first class. I am also quite excited that the class is using a highly respected text which also happens to be one that I already own – “Head First Java” from O’Reilly.

Dominica got home at seven after going grocery shopping after work and getting us stocked up on supplies. We ordered in Italian from Nino’s and once my class was over we watched a few episodes of Heroes before going to bed.

Dominica’s Academic Planning class officially starts today but I don’t think that she did anything with it today.  It is not a traditional class so her interaction with the school is pretty minimal.

Happy Labor Day Everybody.

I got up this morning at nine thirty and decided to take a walk through downtown Montreal while Oreo and Dominica slept for a while longer. I went south-east on the av du Parc until it turned into Bleury which I walked the length of and then Rue St. Pierre until it reached the river. Then I went north on the Rue de la Commune Ouest to Boulevard St. Laurent which I took back to the Rue Sherbrooke Ouest and back to the Quality Hotel. All together the walk took one hour.

My hour long walk through downtown Montreal was awesome. The entire weekend Dominica and I never ventured very far from our hotel as we didn’t know the city and didn’t have any definite plans we just took things easy which was a lot of fun but we didn’t get to see nearly as much of the city as we would have liked. During my walk I went through a slice of the big business and commercial district and then into the old part of the city, built by the French, near the waterfront. We really wish that we had a lot more time to explore Montreal and to see what all it has to offer. We hope to be back really soon.

It was eleven when I got back to the hotel and I was quite warm as the sun had come out and the city was heating up. We took Oreo for his morning walk, it was a bit of an emergency, and then Dominica started packing up the hotel room while I showered and got dressed. We checked out just after noon, put Oreo and our luggage into the car in the garage then Dominica and I ran to Werby’s for a late breakfast. Their breakfast was really good and a good price too. Dominica got a smoked salmon omelet that was really good.

It was around two or just a little earlier when we hit the road out of Montreal. Dominica was sad that she had missed so much cool stuff on my morning walk (although she was not sad about all of the walking that she had missed – several kilometers) and she wanted to drive through a lot of it so we drove down along much of the path that I had walked so that she could see it. Now she is even more anxious to return to Montreal as there is just so much great stuff to see.

The drive to the border went quickly and there was almost no traffic at all. We barely saw a vehicle on the road. We stopped at a Quebec souvenir stand just before the border to get a few things to bring back and at the gas station next door to fuel up before going into the northern New York wilderness. Canadian gas is insanely expensive at around four dollars a gallon! It cost me $53 to fill up the PR5’s little gas tank that wasn’t even empty!

The big surprise came when we reached customs at the US border. Even though there had been no traffic at all we found that there was an insane backup at the border. We ended up waiting there for two and a quarter hours! It was hot and sunny too. Dominica was getting sick as the air conditioning in the little old Mazda (it has 101,200 miles on it at this point) just couldn’t keep the car cool with two people and a little black dog in it with all of that glass being pounded with sunlight. And there was no breeze most of the time so the air conditioning was the only option. To keep Oreo cool I was taking bottled water and rubbing it into his ears so that they would keep him cooler. He didn’t really like that but it did the trick. He was warm but fine. We were really fortunate that we had bought ice teas and ice cream just minutes before getting stuck in this traffic back at the gas station just one mile before.

Strangely, when we actually made it up to the customs official working at the border he was very friendly, efficient and let us through with no hassle whatsoever. We were having a hard time figuring out where the delays were coming from if the customs officials were working like this. This was one of the fastest, friendliest US border crossings ever. Totally not what we were expecting. Now, to be sure, we had both of our passports in hand and ready, we are both New York residents (the local state at the border which makes things easier) and we had all of Oreo’s paperwork for International travel ready and in hand. We were as prepared as we could be. We had a normal car with New York plates too. Everything was right for an easy border crossing.

After getting across the border we drove for maybe twenty minutes it seems and stopped in Peru, New York at the McDonald’s to get our lunch.  They were pretty busy and, I am guessing, in for a really busy afternoon.  We ate, walked Oreo and got back on to i87 South (sud in French!) towards Albany.

With the exception of the border crossing (and it is a pretty big exception) there trip went extremely quickly and even on Labor Day there was hardly any traffic at all even as we approached New York City.  We made great time.  We stopped at Ramapo and grabbed a quick bite to eat at our rest stop there and then drove on down to Newark.

It was around ten in the evening when we arrived back at 1180 Raymond Boulevard in Newark.  That means that it took us approximately eight hours from Montreal to Newark.  With two food stops and a 2.25 hour stop at the border that means that the south bound drive time was probably a little bit less than the trip on Friday night.  Very good time indeed.

We unpacked the Mazda, walked Oreo and went straight off to bed.  I am working the early shift tomorrow and need to get some sleep.  Dominica is back to work as well.  Vacation is over.  Also, both of us begin college classes tomorrow too!

Oreo got me up at eight this morning meaning that I only got about four hours of sleep. I am going to be pretty sleepy today.

After Oreo’s walk I set out to the patisserie across the street to get some breakfast pastries and then to the Second Cup on the corner for some coffee. Second Cup has a large outdoor patio area where Oreo is allowed to hang out. So Dominica brought him over from the Quality Hotel and we sat outside enjoying the beautiful morning on the av du Parc in the heart of Montreal.

Dominica was tempted by the lure of fresh quiche from the patisserie so she sent me back over to pick up some tomato, leek, basil and goat cheese quiche that they also heated up for us which we then took back to the hotel to eat. That was our breakfast.

Oreo is limping a bit from what appears to be paw pain. We think that his constant pulling at his leash has caused him to develop raw paw pads so we are minimizing his walking today as much as possible. It is a bright and sunny day and he is very happy lounging in the plentiful sun spots in our hotel room at the Quality Hotel.

Dominica and I are both exhausted today and are taking it extremely easy. We have no plans and it is Sunday so there is very little to do in town today anyway. Our plan was to just lounge as much as possible.

I wasn’t hungry around lunch time so I skipped lunch but Dominica went down to the Werby’s in the hotel and got a big banana crepe. We had several short walks with Oreo throughout the day and watched some television. No naps though.

For dinner, around six, we headed up the street just a little ways to try Thai Express which seems to be popular around here. I wish that I had taken this pic but this is one that I had to find on Flickr. This is the take out containers from the Thai Express. I did some searching to find their website but to no avail.

The good at Thai Express was quite good. The price was good and the quantities were huge. It was a ton of food. We definitely wish that we had one of these back home.

After dinner we came back to the hotel. We thought about going out and exploring the Montreal Underground but discovered that it is closed today because it is Sunday and it might not be open tomorrow because of the holiday. So since we were tired and since my left heel is killing me – we have no idea what is wrong with it but for about two months now the pain has been pretty bad – we decided to just stay in and watch some television and then to go to bed early.

Tomorrow the plan is to leave Monteal around noonish to head back south towards New Jersey. I am hoping that we might get a chance to stop in Plattsburgh for a little bit as I have never stopped there as far as I can remember and I would like to see the port on Lake Champlain.