Sheep Guarding Llama

Today begins my short week at the office. Dominica found out on Friday that she is being given Friday as a “holiday” the same as I am. That is awesome. That will help a lot to offset the cost of our mini-vacation. So she doesn’t have to go crazy working through her lunches and staying late every night trying to make up time. It is especially helpful since she is taking some time off on Wednesday afternoon, at least an hour, to go to take her CompTIA A+ exam. So we both have four day work weeks. I am hoping to be able to work from home on Wednesday so that I will get a day with Oreo before he spends the long weekend at day care without seeing us. He will really miss us and he will be really exhausted after all that so we want to make sure that he gets his usual sleep-in-the-sun day. So I will probably only be going into the office three days this week and Thursday is going to be a really early day for me so that I can leave the office by three thirty.

We are already packed for the trip. Dominica did that while studying over the weekend. So we are almost ready to walk out the door as it is. We just have to get dressed after work, get a ride to the airport and off we go. Dominica is exceptionally excited about this trip. She gets really worked up about trips to Walt Disney World. Min did a little looking and discovered that there is a new way to do Mission: Space that does not include the motion-sickness inducing centrifuge which means that we can now do the ride which is one of EPCOT’s biggest attractions. We are really excited about that because it provides a completely new and highly anticipated experience in EPCOT. Mission: Space replaced by former favourite EPCOT attraction – Horizons presented by General Electric. My parents and I rode Horizons three times when we went there in 1987. This is very exciting as on our last trip we really felt that we had exhausted the “attraction” portion of WDW and were very tired of the rides. Having something big and new to go to will really help.

So our new EPCOT stuff to experience include: The Seas (re-opened since our 2005 trip), Spaceship Earth (modified so that I can ride it without becoming ill), The Land (same ride but the human narrator has been replaced with pre-recorded audio) and the Gran Fiesta Tour in Mexico (replaces the aged El Rio del Tiempo.) Outside of EPCOT there is the new Laugh Floor Comedy Club in the Magic Kingdom and a Narnia museum exhibit in Disney Studios. Both are very unlikely to justify trips to those parks though.

We have checked the weather and it is going to be extremely hot while we are in WDW. It will be in the low 90s each day that we are there. That is not what we had been hoping for. We are not well prepared to be spending a weekend in that kind of heat. That is going to add a layer of complication to the weekend. At least we are arriving in the middle of the night so it shouldn’t be too bad at that point.

Today is pretty slow as it is a bank holiday in the UK. So I have very little to do. A nice day to relax and get caught up with some stuff. I actually did get a bit of “catch up” work done and got a chance to get a little breather. Dominica had a really busy day, though, which is not what she needs leading up to her big exam.

Before leaving home this morning I finished reading “DV Filmaking” from O’Reilly Publishing that I started a few weeks ago. I also wrapped up my textbook “A Gift of Fire” by Sara Baase. I skipped most of the book as it didn’t really apply that much to my class. Really it was just an expensive assignment sheet for us. The book was pretty good considering the subject matter but nothing that I feel the need to pour over or keep. I will probably sell it used in the hopes that someone will need it for another class.

I left work at a quarter till six.  Tonight will be nothing but studying for Dominica and I.

Today Dominica was actually up earlier than me. She must have gotten up sometime around seven thirty or maybe a little earlier. Oreo and I were up before eight. For a change I cooked breakfast this morning. I made Dominica’s almost famous scrambled eggs and soyrizo (soy chorizo) dish. It was very good. Sauteed onions and green peppers, some rosemary, olive oil, seven eggs and a whole package of soyrizo. Mmmm. I think that it needs eight eggs though to balance out correctly.

Today is the big homework and study day for the two of us. We both have assignments due today and today is the last weekend day before Dominica has her A+ exam on Wednesday.

Congratulations to Joe Howlett whose daughter was born on Friday.

In ongoing issues with the US Army: Four US Army Soldier are arrested for looting in a Kansas town destroyed by a tornado.

We spent the day working on homework and then Dominica’s A+ stuff. We both had a lot of homework to do today so that took us well into the afternoon. At six thirty I left to run into Manhattan. My friend Helen Highfield from back in Ithaca is starring in The Bride of Olneyville Square and tonight is the only performance that I can make it to at all. Dominica wanted to go and had originally planned on it but with the homework and studying that she has to do there just isn’t any way that she can squeeze it in. So I am stuck going alone.

I had to take NJ Transit into Manhattan instead of the Path because I was heading uptown rather than downtown.  The theatre is up at 340 East 54th Street.  I almost never go up there.  It is a part of town that I don’t know very well.  NJ Transit ended up taking forever.  I got to the train station and watched two Path trains leave while I was waiting.  It took me almost half an hour to catch the train.  That didn’t work out very well.  Then once I got into NY’s Penn Station it took ten or fifteen minutes before I was able to catch the metro up to 53rd and Lexington so I was running really late by the time that I even got off of the trains.  🙁  I came out of the subway and discovered that I was in the station in CitiGroup center which I have barely ever seen in person.

The show, The Bride of Olneyville Square by Edward Allan Baker was quite good.  I really enjoyed the performance which was excellent.  Helen had a very major role and did an amazing job.  I am glad that I went although I did not manage to see Helen after the show – I didn’t have any time to wait around as the show ran until after ten.  With the late night train schedules it was closing in on midnight by the time that I got back to 1180 in Newark.  Dominica was already in bed and I went to bed very quickly.

I thought that I slept in quite a bit this morning but later realized that I had gotten up just after seven! Dominica thought that she had slept in a really long time because I was up for so long before she and Oreo got up but she was up just after eight. Normally on Saturdays we get up and have just enough time to get ready and to run to Food for Life to make it for breakfast. Today we were up, showered and ready to go several hours before they even open for breakfast so we had some time to kill.

After breakfast Dominica spent the day working on her A+ exam.  She did some practice tests off of her practice CDs and then we spent some time with me asking her questions and going through the answers with her.  We broke up the studying with episodes of Good Eats with Alton Brown from the Food Network.

For dinner we just ran over to Food for Life and ate there.  We took along some study material and I kept asking Dominica more questions while we waited for our dinner.

Not much of a Cinco de Mayo party for us.

I had a dream last night that my cell phone, which I use as an alarm clock, was turned off and that I didn’t wake up in time for my early shift. I need to wake up at five in the morning to make it into the office and in the dream I didn’t wake up until eight. That wouldn’t actually happen since Dominica gets up around six thirty. Then I woke up suddenly when I realized that my cell phone actually was turned off (and charging) and that there was not going to be any alarm. Luckily it was just after four so everything was fine. I had another hour to snuggle with Oreo who was laying beside me with his head on my pillow.

Someone sent me this picture today. Now I want to know who can see this picture and not think of Bob Crissman? I mean seriously.

Yesterday it was reported in Slashdot that Google, the company claiming to do “No Evil” has one of the vilest NDA or “Non-Disclosure Agreements” in the industry. Or of any industry. The agreement is so stringent that once you INTERVIEW with Google you may never discuss them again. You cannot even discuss the NDA. You can’t do anything. If you get a job there you can’t put it on your resume or talk, ever, about your job experience or projects that you have worked on. In fact you will be saddled with a big, unexplainable blank on your resume. And the NDA lasts forever. So you can’t talk about it for the rest of your life. No wonder Google is so concerned with hiring good people. They can’t even get good people to interview there since anyone worth their paychecks won’t even consider signing something like that. There is too much at stake. And once you know about the NDA you realize that no one, that is NO ONE EVER, can say anything bad about Google. No wonder they are rated the best place to work. It is a crime to say anything about them that they have not approved. So of course every employee communication is a glowing report – it is filtered by management. One guy interviewing there yesterday posted some details of the NDA before going to the interview. I can’t believe that this guy was so desperate for work to go through with the interview anyway. I used to think that working for Google could be really cool but now I would never even remotely consider it. And NDA like this suggests, and practically proves, that everything that we have ever heard about Google is completely lies.

So far I have been pretty unimpressed with Obama but today he requested that all Presidential debates be licensed under the Creative Commons license which suggests that me just might have more of a clue than I gave him credit for. I still don’t appreciate him attempting to become president based on his race rather than on his platform but at least he has something going for him.

Raymond Chen reports that customers are more honest than employees.

I am leaving the office at three thirty this afternoon but have to work from home some this evening because it is Friday. Dominica worked through her lunch and is leaving work at her normal time. She will be studying tonight as she only has this weekend to get ready for her A+ exam. To add to the stress, the test expires in just a few weeks so she has to get through it very quickly.

We are staying “home” in Newark this weekend. A whole weekend to relax. That’s a nice change.

Yesterday I read one of the best posts ever from Wil Wheaton: The Butterfly Tree. Having gone to a private Christian school from kindergarten through eighth grade I think that this story really hits home.

In ongoing school issues in America: a Chinese student at Clements High School was arrested (but not charged as they had nothing to charge him with) for creating a three dimensional model of his high school. The school is refusing to allow him to return to school and a hammer was taken from his home that he used to fix his bed because, apparently, all people of Asian descent living in America are now potential terrorists. This is a clear case of racial discrimination. If making a model of the school is illegal then the builders would all be arrested for having the blueprints. Fire escape plans would be confiscated. This is a school lashing out against an American student because of hatred. He is not a foreign national living in the US but an American. Apparently more American than the school board who are clearly not acting in the interest or within the laws of our country. It is acts like this that make terrorism so simple to accomplish as hatred fuels terrorism. With so many people like this in positions of authority is it any wonder that Americans are hated globally? Some people, like the Clements High School School Board, do everything that they can to justify the belief that Americans are horrible racist. This is truly sad and disgusting.

In Australia scientists have a new fuel cell concept that is expected to go into production very soon. This new fuel cell technology produces electric energy from brewery waste (a major byproduct in Australia.) The energy is produced by bacteria consuming the sugar and other byproducts left over from the beer making process. This is a great way to make energy because the fuel is waste that we are already producing and everything is environmentally friendly. This isn’t going to power a city by any means but all the supplemental power that we can generate the better. Milwaukee, St. Louis, Utica and Rochester will be glad to hear about this development. Ireland and Germany could become major global energy exporters! 😉

A week of infrastructure fires continues after earlier this week a fuel tanker overturned in the San Francisco Bay area melting an overpass and closing two highways in one of the country’s most congested cities. Today we learn that a homeless man with a cigarette managed to start a two alarm blaze that shut down a train line and brought down the Internet2 link from NYC to Boston.

I got home around four yesterday afternoon and walked over to the post office and did an address change as the house is now sold. Unfortunately it will take a day or two before the address change gets processed which means that my paycheck (which I changed over a month ago but discovered today was not actually changed) is still going to go to that address which is a bit of an issue.

I was home early enough that I managed to relax for almost an hour at the apartment before having to head up to Wallington to pick up Oreo and then meet Dominica. I left the apartment at five and got Oreo from daycare. Then we drove down to Famous Footwear and met Dominica there. The timing was perfect. Oreo and I arrived just five or ten minutes before Dominica did. She put in a long day today making up an hour and a half that she will be taking off next week. At this rate we are very close to getting to take our mini-vacation without taking any time off of work at all between us. It Dominica didn’t have to take her A+ certification exam next week we would make it for sure.

We managed to find me a new pair of sneakers which I need so that I have something to wear in Disney. The shoes that I wear now are, I believe, the same ones that I wore the last time that we were in Disney World. They are doing okay but I should have two pair with me in case one gets wet which often happens down there.

After shopping we went to the Shannon Rose for Irish. We both got fish and chips which is the only reason to go there. This time we knew enough not to sit inside and got a table outside. That was much better. We could actually hear each other and it was much cooler.

After dinner we just came home, watched a little WKRP in Cincinnati and went to bed.

This morning Joel Spolsky talking about some very interesting new elevator technology that is in use at 7 World Trade Center here in NYC. Hopefully this new technology will make elevators more efficient which is a major problem in large high rise buildings today.

Today was a slow morning in the office. I had a chance to start getting caught up on little things that get missed here and there when things get busy. Things have been so busy recently that a lot of stuff was getting missed. I don’t like have gaps in things so I am working on filling stuff in before things get really busy again.

The plan for today was for Dominica to leave Oreo at home so that he could get some rest and for me to leave after working most of the day from the office and work the last bit of the day from home with Oreo. Otherwise Oreo will be totally exhausted and won’t be any fun this weekend. He really needs to only go to daycare for four days a week. Five is just too much for him. Normally I would be home today but because I am covering the early shift this week I am at the office all five days. Next week I am going to come in and work early on Thursday to make things easier for flying out that evening from Newark. It is so nice having a job with flexibility.

Dad got the Mazda 6 back from the shop today. Everything is done with it. Runs great. It is really sad that we have to sell it but it is just so impractical to be paying for another car. It is costing us way too much to keep as a “pleasure” vehicle. The RX7 is supposed to be going into the shop soon. Dad is calling today to get that scheduled. It is going to cost us $225 just to have them look at it (after towing and a new battery get put in) but hopefully it will be back on the road soon and we can actually get some use out of it. I love that car.

After yesterday’s “copyrighted number” issue, today we have found that there is a new crack for the AACS HD-DVD encryption system that they believe cannot be revoked. In fact, those that discovered the crack are so sure that it cannot be stopped that they have divulged the details of their crack.

The Japanese have discovered and documented an illegal copy of Disneyland in Beijing that is run by the Chinese government. Of course, illegal is a loose term in China. The park doesn’t look very good though. It appears to be Disney themed but full of things like ferris-wheels instead of interesting rides.

I went home at a little after noon and spent the afternoon with Oreo.  He is loving today – bright sun for him to sleep in.

Dominica left right at the end of the day but ended up getting stuck in a traffic jam and taking quite a while to get home.  She got home and we went right over to Food for Life for a quick dinner.  We had been hoping that Food for Life would move into 1180 Raymond but we found out that the retail space is almost all leased out now and that there is not anything big enough left for them to go into.

We came home and it was a quiet evening.  Dominica did some studying for her A+ exam that is just a week away.  Less than a week in fact.  I did some light Linux work and some simple FileMaker stuff and then it was off to bed.