Sheep Guarding Llama

It was a totally uneventful morning. Nothing to report. At all. Nada.

Today was a busy day – but what day isn’t. But today wasn’t panic busy it was just workload busy. Lots to be done so I just spent the day plodding along getting stuff done.

Scott Adams in The Dilbert Blog had a good quote today that I am stealing and posting here: You can introduce some doubt into your life and still keep your religious faith, morality, and all of the social and psychological benefits you always enjoyed. Faith would be meaningless without a pinch of doubt to give it context. In particular, it would be helpful to doubt that your religious leaders know the mind of God. A little bit of doubt can be a healthy thing.

I worked like crazy all day long and we pretty tired by the time that the end of the day rolled around. I left a little after six. Traffic wasn’t bad. I got home and Min met me downstairs and we went right over to Subway. You know that you are well known in town when you walk into the Subway and instantly the manager is like “where have you been?”

I decided to relax again tonight and continued on my quest to complete Dragon Quest VIII. This is one of those rare video games that I do not grow weary of and actually continuously want to keep playing to get to the end and find out what all is going on in this fantasy world. I have a pretty good guess as to the overarching story but there are a lot of characters and interactions involved. One of the things that I love about this game is that I never feel “stumped” as if I just can’t get to the next section. The game’s challenges are just enough to keep me interested while not making it so difficult and obtuse that I get bored or annoyed and give up on it. So far DQ8 continues to be the best console RPG that I have ever played. This is one great game.

I had some work that I had to do tonight but it was pretty minor. We were off to bed early.

I slept in as long as I could this morning but I had to be logged in and working by eight in the morning. Oreo did not stay in bed at all. He has so much pent-up energy – he is totally ready to get back to daycare. He has had four days off so he is about to explode with puppy power.

I had such a busy morning that I didn’t even get a chance to leave the house until after noon! I ran over to Food for Life and grabbed a sandwich since it was already so late. I figure that I earned it. Then it was time to hop into the Pontiac G6 rental and head off to the office.

Today, or recently – I am too lazy to check – Scott Adams argues that the United States does not have a government. He is probably right. Scott also has a good essay on “Is Copyright Violation Stealing?” I have often said that you can tell a real musician (or artist, or writer, etc.) from a wanna-be based on their opinions over copyright. A real musician (or artist, or writer, etc.) wants to either get paid for what they do OR wants to know that what they did was for the common good and can choose to give away their work for free. In either case it is a drive to create more, good stuff. The Creative Commons has become popular because so many musicians, artists, writers, etc. WANT to give their stuff away but they don’t want to be seen as big evil companies that the revolutionaries can steal from! They want to be seen as being awesome people giving stuff away for the common good.

I read the book “Reading Lolita in Tehran” and in that book the author makes a really awesome point about fundamentalist Muslims living in Iran. She talks about how many Iranian women, wanting to show their dedication to their religion, used to chose to wear the burka because it was a statement of faith. Just by wearing the burka they were telling people that they were dedicated to what they believed in and it wasn’t just something that they did easily or, as we often say in the US, something that they do “on Sundays.” But once the extremist Islamic regime took over and forced all women to wear the full burka in public at all times that statement was stolen from those who valued it most. Instead of wearing the burka being a statement of faith to Allah it is now a statement of subservience to the state. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with politics and fear. Who was hurt more – the women who wear the burka who wish that they didn’t have to or the women who wear what they always wear but now wear it with shame instead of pride?

The point is that the choice is the critical factor. If you chose to give away what you write it might be because you think that it is so important that it is more important to let people read it than to make money off of it. Being able to make that choice is critical. If there is no motivation for a writer to write, an actor to act, a singer to sing, a dancer to dance, an artist to… art then who loses out? The artist or the observer?

I found out today that on Saturday cartoonist Johnny Hart – Broome County’s favourite son – died of a stroke while drawing.

I worked a little late, until about half past six, and then headed for home. I got home and Dominica and I ran right over to Food for Life for dinner. I got the Cuban tonight which I almost never get. It has been probably five months at least since I had one.

I spent the evening playing Dragon Quest VIII. I needed a break. I got about two hours in which is amazing for me – especially on a weeknight. Dominica watched some Dancing with the Stars (ABC is available online – no requirement for having cable or an antennae – they are really thinking clearly) and then watching me play DQ8 and did a little studying for her A+ test that she absolutely has to take in the next few weeks ready or not.

I had to get up and continue working this morning. Not nearly as much work as I did yesterday but still – I was looking forward to having at least a little downtime this weekend. I worked for a few hours and then we headed over to Dominica’s grandpa’s house for Easter dinner.

We were not able to visit for very long at all. It was starting to snow and we have a lot of errands that have to be run tonight. So we were on the road at a very reasonable time.

We got to Newark and got to the apartment, picked up the BMW and made a run down to Iselin to get the car repaired. It is scheduled for tomorrow and tonight is our only chance to drop it off. We got that taken care of and then drove up to Newark Liberty International Airport where we had managed to get a reservation at National Car Rental for a Chevy Cobalt for me to drive this week while Dominica drives her Mazda PR5.

We were just in time for me to get the car. They closed at ten and we got there at nine forty-five! What a busy evening. Dominica circled the airport while I road the AirTrain to get to the car rental area. Newark Airport is gigantic and one of the most confusing airports ever to drive around. It is totally nuts. (NVTS!)

National gave me a free upgrade to a Pontiac G6 and sent me on my way. I have the car for the whole week and don’t have to return it until Sunday night. We have no idea how long the BMW is going to take so we figured that we needed to be safe. And since we are probably traveling this coming weekend we figured that we might as well take advantage of the rate on the rental and put some miles on it instead of on the Mazda. At least get something for our money.

I was impressed with the Pontiac. It doesn’t handle well which is to be expected from a mushy American car but it is comfortable and stylish inside even if it is an ugly, sad jellybean from the outside. It is decent to drive and quite impressive for an American car. It has a lot of power. That was very surprising. But new cars often do.

I got back to the apartment and picked up Dominica who had gotten back ten or fifteen minutes ahead of me and we drove up to IHOP for a quick dinner. I figured that that would be faster than trying to figure anything else out. We hate and were back home before eleven.

Dominica went to bed but I stayed up for several hours working on my class at RIT. I have my regular weekly work to do and a paper due tonight. To I was up until after three in the morning working on all of that. What a weekend it has been.

We arrived in Frankfort around midnight last night.  The drive really isn’t all that long and now that we live in Newark and know how to escape to the north via US 280 and the Garden State Parkway we are able to make great time to the north.  As always we were wide awake by the time that we arrived and Dominica is addicted to having television to watch so we stayed up until well after three watching whatever was on.

I wanted to sleep in this morning but I didn’t get to.  I had to be up before ten so that I could work on a project at the office.  It was supposed to be a small project but it ended up taking all day.  I didn’t get a chance to do anything all day but work.  Even when everyone went out to Denny’s for dinner I got stuck at home babysitting the process and working on miscellaneous projects since I was already on the clock.  The upside is that I did manage to get a lot done and it was a very productive weekend.  The downside is that I didn’t get to relax at all.

We did manage to squeeze in Casino Royale and Stranger Than Fiction today.  Casino Royale is, in my opinion, one of the best James Bond films ever made and it is really great to see them going back to the original and starting the series over again.  It was really needed.  A fresh approach to the whole Bond story.  Stranger Than Fiction was okay, I guess, but I thought that it was really weak and quite boring.  Once again proving that if they have to stoop to using Dustin Hoffman that it would just be better to avoid the movie altogether.  I don’t think that I have found any actor except for Jack Nicholson that make me so unhappy just to see them on camera.

I ended up working until the wee hours of the morning before getting to go to bed.  There is more work to be done tomorrow so I can’t stay up too late working tonight.  What a weekend.

It’s my day off. Whatever that means. Oreo and I got to sleep in late today. It was cold in the bedroom and so he was very snuggly and wouldn’t let me get up until a quarter to nine. That is the latest that I have slept in on a weekday in a very long time. It was nice.

My goal for the day was to play a lot of Dragon Quest VIII. I got started nice and early after checking my mail and making sure that no one needed me by the time that I had pulled myself out of bed. My allergies flared up horribly today. It was one of the worst allergy days that I have ever had. It was awful.

I managed to play several hours of DQ8 today. Oreo laid by my side or on the futon beside me all day. It was a nice day interrupted only by my allergies. It was really nice to get to relax for once. I really enjoyed my day. I did have to do just a little bit of work today but it wasn’t too much.

Dominica got home and I was pretty much ready to go head out for Frankfort but work needed me to hang around for a while. Min and I were ready to head out the door by minutes after six but we got stuck in Newark for a long time. We got stuck for so long that we popped in Bosom Buddies and Dominica made dinner. So much for leaving early.

It wasn’t until after a quarter after eight that we were finally able to get on the road. Over two hours of just sitting around waiting for the go ahead on five minutes of work. So much for arriving in Frankfort early. We were all set to be there by ten!