Sheep Guarding Llama

Today’s quote comes from something that I was writing for my Current Issues in Information Technology class: “When I have children I hope that they use computers throughout every moment of their childhoods so that they are used to them and adapted to them as much as possible as their adult lives will be filled with computers and they will need to understand them conceptually as well as be able to manipulate common interfaces with ease. Computers are the pencils of today and the alphabet of tomorrow. Wanting to lessen our reliance on those things seems tantamount to wanting to halt progress for the sake of halting knowledge.” This came from a discussion as to whether or not we, as a society, have become too dependent on computers. Which, of course, begs the question of defining when we have become dependent upon any technology such as fire, the alphabet, printing-press, medicine, surgery, automobiles, knives, chairs, beds, etc.

Today is a day of rain. When Dominica and I got up this morning it was absolutely pouring here in Newark and it continued to rain all day long. We are at the center of a major storm system that is just dumping unbelievable amounts of water all over the eastern United States. We have heard that Upstate New York is getting a bit of snow from this storm too but it is a decently warm rain down here.

Today ended up being the second rainiest day in the history of New York City and the rainiest day on record for Central Park.  This is a major noreaster and it is expected to last for another day at least.  The storm system is so large that it stretches from Canada in the Gulf of Mexico but New York is at the center of the heaviest part of the storm so we are getting the most rain.

I spent a lot of the day today playing Dragon Quest VIII and Dominica spent most of the day studying for her Systems Analysis and Design class.  Oreo decided to avoid going outside as much as possible.  He enjoys sunlight a lot more than he enjoys rain.

I had homework due today so I spent several hours working on that as well.  It was a mixed relaxing and work day.  Tomorrow begins my early morning coverage week at the office so I have to get to bed early tonight so that I can be up shortly after five in the morning to get into the office by six thirty.  I enjoy my early morning weeks.  They break up the monotony and let me get home early to enjoy my evenings.

I didn’t end up managing to get to bed early tonight.  I was just heading to bed when a minor emergency sent me out into the rain to make a run over to the Carlton Hotel.  So it was after midnight when I finally climbed, soaked through, into bed.

I heard that this weekend was supposed to be really cold and even possibly snow but this morning when I got out of bed the apartment was warm even without the heater running and the bright sunlight streaming in the living room windows was awesome. I woke up Oreo and told him that there was sunlight and he got up and came out to the living room to join me. His weekend mornings in the sun are one of his favourite things. (That and bright copper kettles of course.)

I had some early morning work to do for the office so I figured that it would just make sense to drag myself out of bed on the early side and get to it. I have had a bit of weekend work recently. All of this overtime will be a big help with all of the college bills and vet bills and car bills that have been hitting us recently. Now that we have to keep the car for at least one additional day we will be spending at least an extra $100 for that. 🙁 It never ends.

This weekend begins the Cherry Blossom Festival at Branch Brook Park here in Newark. The park is currently attempting to raise funds necessary for the planting of 2000 additional cherry trees so that it can regain the title of the largest cherry tree collection (but in the state, country, world – that I don’t know.) It is far larger than Washington, D.C.’s cherry tree collection. The park is also one of the largest urban parks in the nation and was designed by the famous Frederick Law Olmstead of Central Park fame. It is very cool that the subway runs from our building right to the park. We can get there without ever getting into a car or bus or anything but, unfortunately, because Oreo is not allowed to ride the train we will still have to drive there so that he can come along with us. Allowing pets onto public transportation could do a lot to improve the usability of the systems – especially on weekends when most traffic is for pleasure and not for work.

While I was waiting for some work at the office to be completed I did a little shopping on Amazon and picked up a second battery for our Canon Elura 60 MiniDV camcorder and a wall/car charger for it so that I can get a lot more mileage out of the camera. Having only a single battery for a camera of any sort is a real problem. If you want to avoid damaging the battery you have to run it down and then fully recharge it but that means using the camera a lot just to run the battery down so that it can be ready when you finally need to use it. I am going to order more MiniDV cassettes soon as well. The big item that I need now for the camera is some lighting. But that is more expensive and complex so I am not going to be getting that anytime soon, I don’t think.

I put in a couple hours of “office” work before breakfast. Dominica got up around ten thirty and studied a little but I had to work on the phone for a while and she can’t read when I am on the phone. One of the major disadvantages of this small apartment is that anything that one of us does affects the other. Watching DVDs, playing a video game, recording a podcast, editing a video, talking on the phone all requires the other person to stop what they are doing and wait because there is no where to go to get away from the sound. And with all hardwood floors the sound really carries too.

I went back to Amazon and did some additional shopping for some video production books. I know next to nothing about making good videos so I figured some basics would be helpful. O’Reilly, who publishes some of the best technology books on the market, makes a few digital video production books that I wanted to check out so I started with those.

A little before noon we finally got a chance to run over to Food for Life for breakfast. The original plan had been to run up to Ithaca today for Bob Winan’s birthday party but with both of us having homework and me having to work again this weekend we just couldn’t make it happen reasonably. Sorry Bob, we had it on the calendar and everything.

In the afternoon we went out to Branch Brook Park to check out the cherry blossoms that everyone raves about in this city and discovered that there was nothing at all.  We drove all of the way around the park and didn’t see a single cherry blossom.  But we took some time and had a nice walk around the park with Oreo.  He had a wonderful time chasing birds and dogs.  He doesn’t get the opportunity to go to the parks very often other than Military Park so it was quite the treat for him.  We took the Canon Elura 60 along and managed to get a short video taken of the day that I hope to post tonight.  I had been hoping to have gotten a bunch of footage of the cherry blossoms but it was not to be so.  Maybe we will see them later in a few weeks.

After going to the park we went grocery shopping and then went to Applybee’s for dinner.  Then it was back home and time to get back to studying.

The big news here today is yesterday evening’s car crash involving the New Jersey governor. The governor is badly hurt but we are told that his injuries are not life threatening but obviously life altering. He has a really tough year ahead of him, certainly. The governor was not driving at the time of the accident – a state trooper was and they were in a police vehicle, an SUV. (I point this out as it is possible that the governor would not have been hurt had they been using a well-handling car instead of a silly “sport” vehicle designed for soccer moms who don’t care about pollution.) The trooper was not at fault although there is some question as to whether or not the governor was wearing his law required seat belt. No one else in the vehicle was seriously injured.

The Catholic diocese of San Diego is being investigated for attempting to shield money in a bankruptcy hearing in an attempt to keep the money out of the hands of the people that were sexually abused by the church. In the article the author quotes someone as saying that the diocese’s accounting practices were byzantine! I wonder if anyone else gets the humour in this. Maybe the diocese will explain that their practices are Roman and that the Greek Orthodox’s accounting practices would technically be byzantine. It is the juxtaposition of linguistic and religious history humour that makes it so funny. I bet no one else thinks that it is as funny as I do.

In happy news: Evil corporation SCO is facing delisting from NASDAQ as they are not able to keep their stock at one dollar – the minimum allowed for trading under NASDAQ. Once a stock drops this low it is very difficult for it to come back and there is not much that SCO can do, besides starting to actually have a business model that works, that will get its price high enough to keep it afloat.

Not exactly breaking news but Germany is re-entering the space race after being the first into space with the A2 rocket in 1942. Germany has been involved in space exploration via its interest in the European Space Agency but now the nation is looking to return to space alone with an unmanned lunar mission.

I talked to the auto shop handling the BMW repairs today. There was a part supply issue and the car isn’t going to be done until Monday. So I have to extend the rental one more day. That isn’t exactly cheap but what are you going to do. At least there was no surprise damage to the BMW beyond the original estimate so we aren’t getting hit with any surprise charges. We were pretty worried about that.

I got to leave work at a reasonable time for a Saturday – about six thirty.  I was very happy about that.  It was a very busy afternoon but Fridays always are.  Nothing to complain about.  Considering all of the layoffs happening all around us just having a job is something to be thankful for.

I got home and Dominica was not in the mood to go anywhere and had ordered us a pizza from Nino’s in Harrison.  We ate pizza and watched the second DVD of Angel season four.  We are well into the episodes that Dominica has never seen.  I worked on recovering the SGL Podcast.  I discovered last night that all of my archives of the show that I knew about had disappeared and that the only copies of the show were the ones on OurMedia and the Internet Archive.  So I started downloading episodes so that I could store them locally as well.  I am very sad to report that it appears that three episodes are currently lost.  Episodes three, four and five were lost by OurMedia back when they had some serious retention problems and with my copies missing there aren’t any anywhere that I am aware of.  I do have CD and DVD backups at dad’s that just might contain copies of them but I doubt it and there is one computer that I don’t have here that could just possibly contain copies.  But those are long shots.  Most likely those episodes are just gone forever.  Fortunately they are early episodes with just me, no music and I wasn’t very good yet but still I am not happy to have lost them.  At least we have all of the Disney episodes.  Those would be awful to have lost.  But then I decided to check the AudioBlogger archives and all of my audio posts to AudioBlogger – which were many – are now gone.  Recently they claimed that they would be keeping our files up indefinitely but the very first time that I checked so that I could make copies of them the site and all of the files that all of us had there are just gone.  So there is a big chunk of stuff that I will probably never recover.  There was some good stuff there too like the “pick-a-little” girls from The Music Man singing after their performance at York Central with my cousin Sara and all of the “live” updates from Disney World that I did including the really good one from “France” when Dominica and I ran there in the rain.  I am very sad to have lost those.