Sheep Guarding Llama

The past two weeks have really been blurring together for me. I am having a really hard time figuring out what day it even is. And even during the day I have a hard time figuring out what time of day it is. I am really looking forward to my “work from home” day tomorrow and not having to start quite so early. Normally I really enjoy starting early but when I get stuck working late anyway it looses some of the charm.

I slept in until five this morning and it would figure that for the first time all week the valet actually had my car on time.

The morning was nice and quiet in the office. Nothing much ever seems to happen when I am on early (knock on proverbial wood) which makes it quite nice. Today I didn’t even get a single phone call which is more quiet than usual.

Dominica got an awesome link today of a man in Australia who was half swallowed by a great white shark, headfirst and was in the shark for two minutes before he managed to jab the shark hard enough in the eye to convince it to loosen its grasp and wriggle free. The shark bit him again in the head but he still got away with just lacerations and a broken nose! This guy really kept his wits about him and thought through what he needed to do. Even worse was that his son was in a small boat just above him (they were in just three feet of water) watching the whole thing take place. After he escape the jaws his son and some friends pulled him into the boat.

I like Wil Wheaton’s Sunrise Blog Post from a few days ago. Everyone should read it.

For the first time this week things actually slowed down towards the end of the day which was awesome. I was actually able to stand up and move around a little bit and visit with some of the people in my office whom I have barely had a chance to talk to for days. Things slowed down enough that I was actually able to pack up and leave the office “on time” at half past three this afternoon. What a great way to lead into my “work from home” day. Now I am much happier. I have a rather long “to do” list to start off my time at home with but I am so much more productive when I am home that I feel pretty good about it.

I was home by four which was great. The world’s first baby rhino from artificial insemination was born today at the Budapest Zoo and she is SO cute! There was also a major breakthrough in genetically altered chickens that can lay “drug” eggs. This is an amazing breakthrough for the pharmaceutical industry (or for its competition) but could, in theory, be used for all sorts of illegal substances as well and could herald an era of very difficult to regulate drugs.

I check in with AGD Interactive for the first time in forever and they finally posted at least a blog entry as to the status of the Quest for Glory II remake that they have been working on for several years now. It is looking as though the game won’t be available until sometime next year (it was originally scheduled for January, 2004!) but as long as they keep us updated on the progress that isn’t so bad. It is the months on end of nothing but silence that is the real killer. I check back with them daily for months to see if progress is being made and then, eventually, I decide that they have been run over by a bus and give up on the site. Then every so often they surprise me with an update.

I did some looking around and discovered a group that is working on a remake of King’s Quest IV. Now this I am really excited about as I have completed the first three games in the series and playing them in remakes is fun just to see how well the games have been remade and to relive past adventures. But King’s Quest IV is the first game of the series that I have never played and I am really excited to get a cool remake into my grubby little hands so that I can play through it. I have played King’s Quest V and VI back on Windows 95 as far as the games would go before they crashed so I at least have an idea of what those games are like. But KQ4 is the one that I have wanted to play the most. I really want to complete them in order but I don’t want to go back and play the original KQ4. It is a lot longer than any of the original three games but the graphics were only marginally better and the sound was the same. So a remake of KQ4 offers the biggest challenge to someone recreating it but it also offers the greatest reward to potential players. KQV and KQ6 were both done in an updated style that is close to what is being done with a lot of these recent remakes so remakes of them make little sense in comparison to the first four of the series. In a way the original games are just being brought into line with the later titles although the remakes are generally outshining them quite considerably with better graphics, audio and voice actors being added in as well in many cases.

We haven’t managed to go far afield for dinner so far this week so we decided to go to IHOP tonight. Normally we try to go up to the Udipi Cafe on Wednesday nights for Dosa and Chat night but neither of us was that hungry nor did either of us want to drive that far and be away from the apartment for so long. So we chose IHOP since it is close and fast. I do still have work that needs to be done tonight but it isn’t that much so it is more or less an easy night for me. While we were at IHOP there was a car fire in the parking lot and the fire department and the police had to respond and at least four television news vans showed up. Big news here in Newark.

After dinner my first order of business was to get the Ralstons’ missionary weblog up and running. You can check out their site at LaborersForTheHarvest.com.  They are running on WordPress 2.1 which just released and which is a nice update to 2.0 that I am currently running.

Dominica and I watched the rest of The Gummi Bears while I worked this evening.  It is sad that Disney only made forty-seven episodes of this show over a course of three seasons.

We stayed up a little later than we have been tonight.  Since I don’t have to be up so early tomorrow I can stay up a little later.  I ended up staying up until half past eleven.  Dominica went to bed with Oreo around ten.

I have been waking up throughout the night the last several nights – most likely from the combination of stress and oversleeping – and I decided to just get up at half past four this morning. That is actually a good time for me to get up because it lets me get ready for work rather leisurely. It ended up being a good thing that I was up as I was paged out before I was even able to leave the house.

I was looking up some airline and flight information today and was amazed to find that it is cheaper and much faster to fly to New Delhi, India than it is to fly to some destinations in Argentina and only barely farther than going to Uruguay! It is really amazing how far South American destinations are from the US. It is also pretty amazing how far north we are in the US. Flying from Miami instead of Newark would be completely different, obviously. But still, Peru which is as far west as South America goes is still east of us here!

Dominica found this great historical tidbit: Today Tulsa, OK is digging up a fifty year old car. No one knows why the city of Tulsa decided to pull a bizarre stunt like this or what they thought the point would be. This had to cost them a fortune when they first did it and now it is just a novelty. That money could have been invested somewhere or something useful could have been done with it. Just think, someone on that city council looked at that car and said, “Well we COULD use this money to give twenty thousand meals to the city’s homeless OR we could bury this car and look like idiots!” And we all know which way that decision went.

Two new books came in the mail last night: “No Fluff Just Stuff Anthology 2006” and “Software Fortresses”. I am looking forward to reading them soon. I am really enjoying having discovered Amazon and eBay for used books. Technology books are great used because serious technologists, in general, take really good care of their books.

I got a chance to play around a little with a product called FreeNAS today. FreeNAS is a FreeBSD based software package for building your own Network Attached Storage device. I am playing around with the idea of building one to have in Newark as a place to back up all of my files to. This is especially interesting as I have previously purchased hard drives that would be perfect for this that are not currently being used. This would make good use of them very quickly and inexpensively. Too bad I don’t have any free time with which to work on projects like this these days.  FreeNAS looks to be really cool and I think that it is going to be really nice once I get a chance to put some time into it.  It has a lot of really important (and obvious) features lacking from low-end NAS products that you usually can buy like NFS, AFS, Union and other file sharing systems.  NFS is the option that is most obviously lacking from similar products elsewhere.

I went to lunch at Baja Fresh with the guys today.  I was not all that impressed with Baja Fresh.  The food was okay but nothing special at all but extremely overpriced.  It was like $12 for two tiny tacos, some bland rice and a little helping of pinto beans and a medium soda.  This would have been $4 at Taco Bell which may seem like an unfair comparison but I enjoy the food at Taco Bell more.

I had hoped to be able to head for home around three thirty but got stuck until just after four.  Traffic was light as it is at this time of day and I got home early enough to be able to lie down for half an hour and get a little rest.  I didn’t nap, just laid down for a little bit.  It helped though.

I only got a little rest before I had to work again.  I had about half an hour of work that had to be done after I got home but I had to wait around until after six thirty before they were ready for me to do it which helped contribute to a long day.

Dominica and I both felt like going to IHOP tonight but since I had to work so late the cars were both taken to the garage by the time that I was available to go anywhere so we decided against that.  We just ordered in some Eli’s Pizza and took it easy.  We finished watching the second season of Diff’rent Strokes and moved on to the fifth season of Monarch of the Glen which dad tells us is the worst season that they have but it leads up to his favourite season so there is something to look forward to.

Once again it was an early night for us but not as early as it has been the last several nights.  We went to bed a little after ten.  Oreo is loving this new “longer night” schedule.

Today begins another early morning week for me. I am covering the early shift for someone in my office but I am still off on Thursday (working from home.) I ordered my car last night so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it this morning. But, of course, when I got down to the lobby the concierge said that he had been telling the valet repeatedly that I needed my car but that he had not gone to get it yet. It was after six thirty by the time that I finally had my car and they were supposed to have gone to get it no later than a quarter to six. I guarantee that my whole week will be like this.

I got into the office and it isn’t as cold today as it has been. The office was quiet and nothing really happened all morning. I got the chance to listen to a very long conversation between someone in my office from another department and Comcast with whom he would appear to be severally displeased. Apparently they have been wildly charging him and refuse to refund his money and won’t do anything for him unless he prints paper bank statements and takes them to the local Comcast office. And apparently when he asked to speak to a manager they just handed him to someone else on the helpdesk and tried to tell him that even the top manager at Comcast doesn’t have his own phone extension. Then they told him that they would do research and call him back and tried to get off of the phone without getting his phone number. It was all exactly what I have always heard about Comcast. They are one seriously crappy company. I have never had a single person say anything good about Comcast except for the fact that they don’t change their dynamic IP address very often (not exactly glowing praise.) They are the most expensive cable service company I have ever seen prices from, they offer the lowest range of services, their techs have a bad reputation and their customer service is abysmal. After listening to this guy’s conversation I am tempted to order more services from CableVision just to spite Comcast is some ethereal “my cable company is better than your cable company” sort of way.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I managed to finished reading “Practical File System Design: With the Be File System“. For those interested in reading this book which is now out of print you can find your own complete copy online in PDF form. Dominic Giampaolo who wrote the book used to work on BeOS and is now working at Apple. The book was rather dry even for a fan of file systems like me but it was a good read and is considered to be a seminal work on the subject.

We got Ralstons their missionary domain name today: LaborersForTheHarvest.com. I am not providing a link because there is no web site yet. That will be coming in the near future. As soon as I have some free time to be able to work on it.

I left for home just a little after four this afternoon.  I was so busy at the office today that I didn’t even realize how late it was until after I should have already gone home.  Traffic was really light because I was heading home so early.  I got home in no time at all.

I did just a tiny bit of work from home tonight.  There is still tons to be done but it appears to be slowing slightly although I already know that I am going to be working this coming weekend quite a bit.  We had been hoping to be going to Geneseo this weekend but that will have to wait for another week.

Dominica got home and we went out to Food for Life for dinner.  She had a really long day and was completely beat by the time that she got home.  After dinner we came home and just watched some Diff’rent Strokes and went to bed early.  I read a little before falling asleep and Dominica played some Final Fantasy II.

It is Sunday. We slept in until what seemed late this morning but I was up before eight and Dominica was up not that long after me. Oreo wanted to sleep longer but he needed to be taken for a walk in the park first thing this morning so we were up and moving pretty quickly. Dominica took Oreo to the park while I ran down to the McDonald’s on Broad Street to pick up some breakfast. We had been hoping to have gotten breakfast from the breakfast truck that parks at the park but he was not there this morning and Subway is closed on Sunday mornings.

Shortly after breakfast one of the guys that works in our building stopped by with his two kids and their computer so that we could take a look at it and see if we could get the sound card working. As always, the drivers for the sound card were not installed at all so the system didn’t even know that there was a sound card. It is amazing how often this happens to people. No one thinks of their sound card as being a “cool” part of their computer system so they just ignore it and then it doesn’t function and they don’t know why. They were also missing video drivers so the hardware acceleration was completely disabled. Apparently the shop that built this computer for them never did any installation on it at all. It took about twenty minutes to get the computer all set up and to diagnose it and get drivers downloaded for it. But just before I was able to wrap up with it he was paged and had to leave to deal with something in the building.

We ended up hanging out with the kids and watching The Gummi Bears for about three hours. We were supposed to meet Zach and Susan over in Harrison between eleven thirty and noon but instead we were trying to figure out how to get out of the apartment a bit after noon! It was not the morning that we had been expecting. Fortunately they were really polite kids and were “happy” to just hang on the futon with Oreo and watch cartoons that were clearly very old to them and quite weird. (The Gummi Bears ran from 1985 – 1987 on the Saturday morning cartoons.)

We got to Harrison around a quarter to one and picked up Zach and Susan and told them of our morning adventures. Then we drove to “downtown” Harrison and ate at Five Grain Rice Chinese restaurant that opened there recently. We had a nice time hanging out. The restaurant is new, open for about two or three months, and is an interesting blend of restaurant styles. Dominica and I enjoyed our food and will probably eat there again. The crabmeat and cheese Rangoons were awesome. Zach and Susan were less impressed with their meals. The restaurant hails itself as Asian fusion (doesn’t everyone these days) but was really just a Cantonese restaurant which is what I thought that it was when we went in there so I think that had a lot to do with why I was so happy with the food. Different expectations. I got the fish and tofu casserole and it was quite good. The fried fish was excellent.

After lunch we all walked over to the Italian bakery right on the corner there and got some baked goods for dessert. Dominica and said as we drove to pick Zach and Susan up that she had wanted to try out that bakery and it was Susan who decided that she wanted to go there after lunch so we thought that it was funny that they both wanted to go to the same place without talking to each other about it.

Zach’s car was broken into in Brooklyn on Friday night. He had been staying with a friend there and when he came out in the morning he discovered that his passenger windows had been smashed in and some stuff had been stolen out of his car. Financially the loss wasn’t too high but the real tragedy was that Zach’s school bag was taken from the car which has no value to anyone except for him so it ended up being a really big loss for his but very little gain for the person who broke into the car. Zach had to spend this morning constructing a cardboard window cover to keep the frigid air from freezing him as he drives back to Baltimore this afternoon.

I had more work to do this afternoon but not too much.  I put in about two hours and called it a day although I had to keep on top of my email and whatnot to make sure that I was not needed.  Hopefully this will die down in another week or so.  Dominica and I know that we can’t travel back to Geneseo this coming weekend because I will be working overtime over that weekend as well.  But maybe the weekend after that.  It is harder to get back home than you would think!

Dominica cooked an egg scramble for dinner and at around seven we settled down and just watched a movie.  I finally got to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest which has been one of my “must see” movies now for well over half a year and I just have not managed to get to see it.  It was good.  Not as good as the first movie and clearly a “middle movie” that has all of the set up and plot building with the climaxes that we expect to see in the third movie.  But it was very entertaining.

The movie was long and after it was done it was time for bed.  I have to be up at five tomorrow morning to start the early shift which I am working all week.  I ordered my car for six before going to bed so that I would not have to worry about ordering it in the morning.

I slept in until what felt like very late but was actually just half past eight. Boy am I getting old. Although that was a very long night for me considering how early I went to bed last night. Dominica slept for about another hour later than I did and, of course, Oreo laid in the bed as long as he could get away with. He is one lazy dog.

I did a little work this morning and then we went over to Food for Life for breakfast at eleven thirty. Breakfast took a very long time and we didn’t get back to the apartment until after one! It is a bright and sunny day, crisp and clear, but the wind is up and it makes the mid-twenties feel very cold indeed. Walking outside is almost painful.

It is so windy today that we are seeing debris from the street soaring over our apartment windows and flying as high as twenty stories above the city streets from whence it came. At one point a newpaper almost plastered itself against our living room window. When you are used to the view being unobscured for months at a time the sudden presence of something so large and obaque can be quite surprising. The paper as large birds soaring past the side of the building when seen from one’s peripheral vision.

After lunch we did some panic cleaning as we had a thermostat issue and our friend from maintenance was coming up to take a look at it. The place was a mess from a week of overtime and no chance to do anything domestic. It helps to have people come over at least once a week to keep us on our toes. We are very much looking forward to having all of these servers moved out to Scranton. Having them here is such a problem. We just don’t have the space for this.

The email system Zimbra went to version 4.5 this week and I spent some time this weekend building a demo Zimbra system to demonstrate the new version.  It took quite a bit of effort but I was finally able to get Zimbra 4.5 functioning on CentOS 4.4.  I am very hopeful that Zimbra is going to be a massive update for our email system.

Dominica and I went back to Food for Life for dinner tonight.  They are closed on Sundays and during the week it is difficult for us to get there so we have to get our fix in on Saturdays.

It was early to bed again for us tonight.  I have been working so much that I have to sleep quite a bit extra to make up for it.