Sheep Guarding Llama

In order to truly think outside the box one must cease to think about the box.

I ended up staying up until two in the morning last night working on some IPSec VPN links that were down and doing some basic desktop maintenance. Nothing exciting but I didn’t get to bed at a very reasonable time. Although when I did go to bed I couldn’t fall asleep for a while as I wasn’t very tired yet. I guess that is what happens when you sleep all day.

I slept in until ten this morning which didn’t quite give me eight hours of sleep so I can only feel so bad about it. Today is Dominica’s big homework day so I am planning on keepin myself entertained doing miscellaneous work at my desk. It is so much more pleasent to work at my commercial quality Bush desk (made in Jamestown, New York for quality.) Bush furniture is not quite as sturdy as the stuff that we have at my daytime office but it is more comfortable, has a much better work surface (the specled kind that works so well with an optical mouse) and can stand alone on the floor instead of having to be built into a cubical system. Bush is the best home office furniture that I have ever found.

Our living room is now completely full to the point that it is difficult to walk around. Adding two very large desks to the room displaced everything that we had in here previously and now there is no space at all. We can’t wait until we are able to take a carload or two of stuff out of here. Over the next several weeks we will be moving a ton of stuff out. But until then the space is impossible to work in. We are very hopeful that at least one desk will be leaving here today. Just moving the one out will make a huge impact. Right now we can’t get to the lamp or the HVAC unit at all and Oreo can barely get to the futon where he is attempting to spend the morning laying in the sun and hanging out with us as we work at our desks. It is nice that the futon is now positioned to make it a perfect spot for Oreo when we are working. He is right next to us, in the sun, in the “office area” instead of having to be over in the “living room area” where he couldn’t really be with us. We are very happy with the new room layout.

Today is both my cousin Monica’s eighteenth birthday as well as my official college graduation ceremony for Empire State College at Riverside Convention Center in Rochester, New York. Obviously I am not going to graduation – I skipped my graduation ceremony for my associates degree from Monroe Community College as well. I would have skipped my high school graduation had my parents let me. But still, it is strange to think of there being a graduation ceremony for me graduating from college after all these years.

Dominica spent the day working on her homework and doing laundry. I had a number of projects to work on and kept myself quite busy. One of my projects for the day update SGL to WordPress 2.2. I also added WordPress Statistics to the site so that I can find out more about who is coming to the site. I also started using Google Analytics for one of my other sites so that I can learn about that service.

At six Dominica and I went to dinner over at Food for Life. I finally convinced Dominica to decide on what she wanted ahead of time and to call over so that we could eat quickly. It took less than half an hour to go over, sit, eat, pay and return to 1180. That is like record time for the two of us. I get food and get back in fifteen to twenty minutes all the time on my own.

At seven thirty we went down to the lounge for a birthday party that was scheduled for seven but we were the first people there (at all except for the caterer) so we came back up and hung out with Oreo a little longer before going back down at eight. It was a really nice party and we got to meet a lot of people that we didn’t know. We stayed until around eleven which was as late as we felt we could leave Oreo by himself in the apartment. We were there just late enough to get birthday cake before leaving.

It was straight to bed for us when we arrived back home.

Weight Lost So Far: 14.5lbs

Today is my work from home day so I get to spend the day with Oreo. Considering how late we were out last night it was a really good thing that today was my day at home. Oreo and I slept in late and I discovered that my remote access to the office was not working this morning. This worked out perfectly as I was feeling pretty crappy. So Oreo and I went back to bed and I napped with my BlackBerry on my pillow checking in every half an hour or so to make sure that everything was okay and that no one needed me. A little later in the day my remote access came back on and I was able to work as usual. By afternoon I was feeling fine. The extra rest did the trick.

A friend from York pointed me to a nice site from the US Geological Survey mapping the world’s plate tectonics. Interesting stuff.

Even though I got started late today I ended up working until around seven in the evening so it all works out.  I did a bit of work around the house too even given that it was a short day.  I did dishes and cleaned in the kitchen and around the house and I built Dominica’s new desk and got that installed too.  It is a bit bigger than we had anticipated because it is curved instead of flat on the side that goes against the wall and that causes it to come out into the room about three inches more than we had expected.

Domincia took the night off from doing her homework and just watched some Father Ted after going grocery shopping on her way home from work.  She has a busy weekend ahead of her.  But with her new desk it will be a lot easier for her to get work done.

Weight Lost So Far: No Weigh In Today

All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can’t get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. — IBM maintenance manual (1925)

I got up at six thirty and hit the gym for forty-five minutes. I am starting to get into this routine and it isn’t too weird anymore. I can feel myself getting stronger and doing longer times in the gym isn’t a big deal anymore.

It was a fairly normal day at the office. The boss took a bunch of us out to lunch which was pretty cool. Other than that nothing exciting to report.

I got home minutes ahead of Min and just as we were preparing to go up to the apartment we ran into a number of friends from 1180 heading over to the Theater Square Grill which was having their Grand Opening invitational event for the locals to go hang out and enjoy free food, drinks, dancing, etc. We had totally forgotten about the event but had been intending to go. Dominica is very behind on her homework and really needed to get some of it done but weekday evenings are very tough for that – by the time that you get into whatever project you are trying to do it is time to go to the gym and get off to bed. So we talked about it and she decided that it would be better to go to the event.

Dominica ate dinner before going over to the Theater Square Grill – that took about an hour. So it was around seven thirty when we got over to the restaurant. We hung out there until closing time. We had a really good time visiting with our neighbours that we almost never get to see. It is weird for me living in a building with so many people. Hundreds of people live in the same building. It is a weird concept for us country folk.

After we left the grill we all decided that we would go back to 1180 and hang out for a while. Having a lounge in the building is awesome at times like these. We just headed to the second floor and chilled for several hours in the lounge which is very comfortable. We all changed into pajamas and we brought down a few bottles of wine. It was a lot of fun. Dominica went to bed around eleven thirty. The rest of us stayed until almost two. It was a rather late night.

So by the end of the day I had managed, without any planning, to eat for free all day! Cool.

Weight Lost So Far: 11lbs

We don’t know Oreo’s birthday or even how old he is but we decided that his birthday would be in late May to celebrate the day that we first got him. As he is a lover of birthday parties we couldn’t possibly let him go without having one at daycare. So today is his birthday party day. He is going to have so much fun. We have had Oreo for two years now.

Dominica assembled the desk that we brought down last night and it is ready to replace my current desk. Unfortunately my computer was in use all night doing downloads of CentOS 5 so we were unable to shut it off in order to put the desk into place. So that will have to wait until tonight. But at least the desk is ready to go. I haven’t had a real work surface for a whole year! Dominica’s new desk should arrive in a few days too so I won’t be the only one with a good desk.

We watched some of the American version of The Office. People kept telling me that the American version was better than the British version and that just because I thought that the British version was crap that I would still like the American. Nope. The American version is like a word for word, but poorly delivered, clone of the original show. It was crap in England and it sure isn’t good in Scranton. The American version might be better if they were compared side by side but since the British version was at least original and the American version is just a pale copy I can’t say that the American version is any better.

I went down to the gym and worked out for over an hour while watching Así es la Vida in Spanish. It was a good workout which was important since I missed my workout yesterday morning. After working out I was unable to sleep and ended up staying up for a few hours before going to bed.

I woke up on my own this morning after just four hours of sleep. I was out of bed by six thirty and off to the gym. My feet were hurting this morning so I only ended up doing forty-five minutes which was probably best because I needed to get out the door and off to the office.

My schedule got changed this week and instead of working from home tomorrow, on Thursday, I am going to be in the office tomorrow and I will be working from home on Friday instead. Chris is coming out from Long Island tomorrow and we are going to do lunch. Chris is my weight loss coach.

Oreo had an awesome time at his birthday party today. As the special birthday dog he got to sit on the birthday chair and get special treats. He even made a dive for his birthday cake and managed to get his nose it the icing before they got it away from him so there is a really cute picture of him with icing all over his nose. After they brought him down off of the birthday chair he lept right back up deciding that he wanted to stay in the special chair.

The birthday party favours from his party are really cute and we got a really nice “refrigerator collage” from the party that we put right onto the fridge. There are a ton of really cute pics of our boy. He was still wired and very happy when he got home. And he really enjoyed his new birthday binky which is a musical cow toy.

Dominica cooked her own dinner tonight and I ran over to Food for Life to get mine.  I had managed to get the desk that we brought down from Pavilion set up and in place before Dominica got home.  Boy is it nice.  I forget how great it is to have a nice work surface.  Dominica’s new desk is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow too.  The apartment is going to be pretty packed until we manage to ship the two desks that we were using previously back up to dad’s.

We watched Music & Lyrics this evening which we are borrowing from dad.  I also spent the evening working on my first Ruby program.  I didn’t get very far but that is because I am trying something pretty tricky right off the bat – connecting to and reading email from a production IMAP server using IMAPS/TLS which is where it seems to be having problems.  But I am really impressed with how easy it was to get a lot done quickly with Ruby.

I went to the gym before going to bed and put in another hour.  It was a good workout.

Weight Lost So Far: Approximately 11lbs, no weight in today.

I got up this morning and went down to the health club to get back into the swing of things after having a rough exercise weekend. Dominica and I cheated quite a bit on our diets and skipped exercising yesterday so we are quite behind. I was looking forward to getting back into it this morning and working off the extra weekend food but I was only in the gym for a little over five minutes before Dominica popped in to let me know that her car’s battery was dead again and that she needed to take my car and that I needed to deal with the dead battery. So much for my morning workout.

I was back in the apartment for about ten minutes before Dominica called to let me know that the valet manager had charged Min’s battery using her own car and that Min had managed to head off to work in the BMW. The battery was dead, as we had expected, because the car’s roof and not been closed completely when it was parked on Friday. This happens because Min has been letting the valets drive the car with the top down and just having them put it up with they are done but a couple of times now it has happened over a weekend that the roof is left only most of the way up and the car just sets off all kinds of lights and alarms to get them to close it but they leave it and the alarms drain the battery. So we can’t do that anymore. But at least it really wasn’t a hassle this morning any more than me missing my workout.

I am told that we are having another fire drill tomorrow – amazingly not on a day when either Oreo or I are intending to be in the apartment for once. But the big news is that this is supposed to be the final fire drill. After this one they will be sending out an official notice saying that the fire alarm testing is complete. So we will see what happens but it is a huge relief that we are moving into the next phase of the fire alarm situation.

Dominica discovered that we can order our office furniture online and that it has free shipping from Office Max! We are very excited about that. We need at least one more piece than we currently own so we will definitely be placing an order soon – hopefully today. We also discovered that the nice stuff that we buy from Bush is currently on sale for 20% off which is really cool as this stuff isn’t cheap! Free shipping on big furniture items is a really big deal and 20% off is huge. We think that we will probably buy a new office piece instead of shipping the big corner piece from dad’s house because it will cost more in gas and wear & tear on the car to bring up the existing piece than it would cost to buy a new piece and have it delivered for free (and guess which one is better for the economy and the environment and provides us with an extra piece of office furniture!) And that way I still have a nice full desk set up at dad’s – where I already have a full workstation in place with my older HP D325 desktop running Windows XP Pro. That is the small form factor machine that used to be Jeremy’s that I bought from him about a year ago to have as a spare Windows workstation. That ended up working out pretty well.

China has discovered that their head of the Food and Drug Safety department has been taking bribes to allow dangerous foods and drugs to enter the Chinese and foreign marketplaces. Apparently his crimes were pretty significant resulting or being related to tens of thousands of Chinese deaths, hundreds of thousands if not millions of animals deaths and strained trade relations between China and many trading partners primarily in North and Central America. China has found the former head of their equivalent of the FDA to be guilty and that his crimes are so serious that he has been sentenced to death. It is very good to see China taking this situation as seriously as they are as this is a very critical situation globally. It is encouraging to see China being willing to be so definitive about the situation. Oreo is glad to see justice being delivered after his own life hung so precariously in the balance.

Today passed by pretty quickly. Before I even knew it it was after four in the afternoon. Not a lot of work going on but enough to keep me working. Tonight Dominica and I get to put together the desk that we just brought down from Pavilion which is going to make such a difference in our little apartment. I am going to be able to actually use my computer effectively again. It has been painful working on a tiny glass and metal desk that wobbles and doesn’t work at all with my optical mouse (LEDs don’t reflect well off of glass.) Next time that we return to Pavilion we will be bringing one or two of our small desks back for dad to sell or give away. The one is already spoken for by Jeremy. Maybe Sara will want the other now that she has her own apartment and needs stuff to fill it with.

The end of the day slowed down significantly so I decided to head for Newark a little before five thirty.

Weight Lost So Far: 11lbs