Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica and I did not wake up nearly as early this morning as we had hoped that we would and when we finally did pull ourselves out of bed and realized that we really had to rush out the door to be able to make it to Frankfort on time for Thanksgiving dinner I got paged out to help at the office. What a crazy morning. So I signed in to work from home and did some work to get them sorted out before we could leave. After that we got ready as quickly as possible and rushed out the door.

We tried to grab a quick breakfast in town before leaving but discovered that nothing, not even McDonalds, was open here on Thanksgiving. Which is sort of cool that all of those people were getting to spend the holidays with their families and had plenty of time to travel to do so but it kind of sucks too having the entire city shut down so that those of us who need to travel have no way to get food of any sort. It seems like Thanksgiving day breakfast wouldn’t be too much of a stretch of someone to be serving even if they closed at eleven or something.

Traffic wasn’t bad this morning at all. We got right out of town and onto the highway and were well underway quite quickly. We stopped in Great Bend, Pennsylvania for gas and a quick bite at the Dunkin Donuts there. We figured that restaurants would stay open in Great Bend as it is a pretty major stopping spot on route 81. Clark’s Summit was our original intended destination for breakfast/lunch but it was very busy when we went past there and we decided that it was not worth fighting the crowds there at all.

We made it to Frankfort in good time and it was barely half past one when we showed up. About an hour after our target time but long before we had been worried that we would arrive. My dad had arrived a little while before and was at the house hanging out.

Thanksgiving Dinner was at Dominica’s grandfather’s house in Frankfort as usual. Dinner started at half past two and we hung out there until it was time for me to head out to Rochester. Dad, Dominica and I drove out to Utica to get settled into the Hotel Utica at six thirty. Dad turned in for the night. Dominica just dropped her stuff and made sure that the room was all set and then drove back to Frankfort to spend the night visiting with her family and I hit the road for Rochester.

I got to Nick Tahou’s in Rochester on Lyle Ave. at a quarter to ten or so but a lot of the gang had all ready arrived by that point. We had a decent turn out this year. This is our tenth anniversary of our Nick Tahou’s Thanksgiving Run! Ten years, that is incredible. I can’t believe that it has been that long. Eight people turned out for this year’s get together. A number of people, at least five, were considering coming and didn’t at the last minute. This year we had Nate, Joe, Jeff, the Relyeas, the Ayers and me. Pretty much the core group who started the tradition. I am pretty sure that Nate, Joe, Josh and I have managed to be there all ten years.

Nate and I were the stragglers and didn’t leave Tahou’s until well after midnight. It was a long and tiring drive back to Utica after all of that food and such a long day of driving. It was about three in the morning when I arrived at the hotel and I was asleep in no time.

Work is winding down in preparation for the long holiday weekend. I found out today that I have four days off in a row!

I was reading some history today and realized that my family bought the ColecoVision in December, 1982 just six months or so before the great Video Game Crash of 1983. It didn’t really occur to me at the time, obviously, but the crash really accounted for why we ended up being so unhappy with the system. We bought near the height of the early frenzy when everyone and their brother was getting into video games and then suddenly everyone was going bankrupt left and right and the whole market collapsed taking Coleco with it.

I managed to get a really good deal on Boktai for the GBA today. Boy am I ever the video game bargain hunter. Our collection of RPG and adventure games for the GBA and the Nintendo DS is getting to be more and more complete.

Work was uneventful – much as you would imagine on Thanksgiving Eve. Everyone is trying to get out of the office to get started on their long holiday weekend. By three in the afternoon the office was all but deserted and by the time I left around six I was practically alone.

I got home and discovered that the Samsung DVD player that I had just ordered two days ago from Amazon had all ready arrived (that would be the free, unexpedited delivery service) as well as Dominica’s new Creative Zen Vision M mp3 and video player. She was hoping that it would arrive before we left for the weekend so that is really cool that it made it just in time.

We spent the evening getting ready and packing. We need to be up pretty early in the morning and on the road so that we can make it for Thanksgiving festivities in Frankfort tomorrow.

Last night I got home a little on the late side but was really in the mood for a Wrap it Up at Food for Life (basically an extremely hearty California Fish Taco) so we ran right over there to get a quick dinner.

Our replacement hall table arrived today from Target (they must have overnighted it since Dominica only got her issues there resolved on Friday evening) and we took some time and got that assembled and placed in the hallway. What a difference that is going to make in the apartment! Now the huge hallway isn’t bare and we have a lot more storage space as well. That is something that we desperately needed.

While we were assembling the table we watched a few episodes of The Thin Blue Line with Rowan Atkinson and then called it a night and played a little bit on our Nintendo DSs from bed. Those really turned out to be a good investment. Who would have guessed?

Someone that I work with was telling me about the Samsung DVD-HD860 DVD player today. I did some research and I believe that this is the same unit that Andy has but his is made by Oppo who use a Samsung transport and I think that this is the underlying system that they use in that unit. The Oppo is better but we expect that you get most of the benefits out of the much less expensive Samsung. The big features of this unit are 720p upconversion, HDMI digital output and the ability to directly play Divx/MPEG-4 videos that are burned to CD or DVD. (For people like my father who have full 1080p displays, they will want the more expensive Samsung DVD-HD960 which does full upconversion to 1080p!)

While I was placing the order I also grabbed the original Christmas in Connecticut and a couple Christmas CDs including Bobby Darren and Sarah McLaughlin. It’s that time of year!

This morning was quite busy. I did some work from home and grabbed a quick breakfast at Food for Life before going into the office. Once there the work load for the whole week was dumped on us and I had to work like crazy after yesterday’s total lull. Funny how that happens so dramatically.

I did some looking on YouTube today in between things and managed to find more Coleco Vision videos from back in the day. This is some classic stuff. You can watch the “How to Beat Video Games” videos for games that I had including Smurfs: Rescue from Gargamel’s Castle and Donkey Kong. It is funny that all of the games that they show on this old video series are ones that I owned. Boy does that stuff bring back memories! It is strange to think how much of my childhood must have been spent playing those games. Be sure to watch the Donkey Kong video because they show the Coleco Vision itself a little bit. This one is choppy but you can watch one of the original Coleco Vision commercials.

Tr0d who posted the Coleco Videos on YouTube is also a Llama Song fan! I discovered a video tour of the final day of the Amiga factory in West Chester, Pennsylvania which might be the location where our Amiga 1000 was manufactured.

Oreo had only a half day at daycare today. He went into work with Dominica this morning and she brought him home during her lunch break. She has to run out and do some shopping after work tonight and is not going to be home until late so I am going home a little on the early side from the office so that I can be with Oreo as early as possible and we will hang out until Dominica gets home. Tomorrow night I have to do some shopping on my way home. So Oreo will only be at daycare for two and a half days this week.

I left the office around five and ran straight home to be with Oreo. He had been sleeping all afternoon and didn’t even seem to notice that he had been alone for several hours. I had plenty of work left to do so I signed on and got back to work. In between tasks I did some light cleaning around the apartment. It is amazing how quickly it becomes a mess again, especially when we have been getting things shipped in on a regular basis.

I grabbed a quick bite at Food for Life in between things that I needed to do for work.

Dad emailed me and let me know that The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap arrived for the Game Boy Advance. My collection of top GBA games is nearly complete! I did some hunting on eBay tonight and got a good price on Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones for the GBA as well. I keep hunting for the bargains. Dominica and I have been playing our Nintendo DSs all of the time and are really getting a lot of value out of them.

We managed to get back to the gym tonight and to get some actual exercise in after taking two days off. Our bodies needed the rest. We aren’t use to this grueling exercise schedule.

I had picked up a Subway sub for Dominica before she got home and she ate that and we watched more of The Thing Blue Line before heading off to bed.

Today begins my first real holiday week at a regular job. I am only in the office for three days this week. But there is plenty of driving (and all in the BMW which makes my leg hurt) to make up for it this week. We will be putting only nearly a thousand miles between Thursday and Sunday.

This morning I had to do some work from Newark before I could drive into the office. On my way I had to stop back at the dealership. Last night both headlights on the PR5 went out AGAIN so I had to take the car in for its headlights for the third time since Friday! I ended up spending over two hours getting the car fixed today. I was in a hurry after that so I hit Taco Bell and grabbed a very quick lunch and rushed into the office.

Dad and I were talking today about the old Coleco Vision that my parents got for me for Christmas in 1982. It was the same year that dad got our first VCR. Also for that Christmas I got Legos like I always did as well as the Star Wars miniatures TIE and X-Wing fighters that had a button on the back that when you pressed it would cause the spaceships to “go limp” and fall apart and then would come back together simply by releasing the button.

I found an awesome video on YouTube of “How to Beat Video Games” featuring the ColecoVision classic Cosmic Avenger which was probably my favourite childhood video game. Many an hour I spent playing that game and some serious scores I did score in my day. Dad found the “How to Beat Video Games” video for Zaxxon as well. Isn’t the Internet fun?

I decided that I needed to have a Coleco Vision page on SGL dedicated to my old video game system so I took the time to create one today. You can see a complete list of the games that I had on the system and more. Good stuff. Boy does just thinking about that old Coleco Vision bring back the memories!

The day flew by today. I suspect much of this can be attributed to the fact that I was so busy and had so much that I needed to do today. I had plenty of phone calls that needed to be made but I got a lot of stuff taken care of that needed to be dealt with today. I had to deal with my Motorola Q which was stolen. I shut the service off last night and dealt with the errant accounts this afternoon. Tonight I need to file the police report and tomorrow I need to file the insurance claim. Boy the little things will really keep you busy, won’t they?

I remain, to this day, the only person that I have ever really known to have had the Coleco Vision. One kid that I rode the school bus with when I was very young said that he had one but we weren’t really friends and I never saw it. I don’t even remember his name now. Maybe it was Kevin. Kevin someone or other that lived near Linwood, NY and owned a Coleco Vision. Kevin (I hope that that is your name), if you are reading this, let me know.

I was in the office until after six this evening. I can safely stay late now, I hope, because my headlights are now working again! What a relief.

This week is expected to be extremely slow as there is just about nothing going on at the office. Someone remarked today that it feels like everyone is all ready on vacation. Lots of people are actually out on vacation too. This is a popular week to be taking off. Dominica and I are both working three days down here and then she has two full days off and I have one day off and one work from Utica day.

Oreo is going to stay home tomorrow. Dominica needs extra time to get her hair done after work and doesn’t have enough time to pick Oreo up. He also, we think, needs some extra time to just sleep and taking his middle day off this week will make this week an ideal sleep “catch up” time for him. He has been doing much better when left home alone since we have been in Newark so we are hoping that he will enjoy his day off.

We got up this morning and decided that the Nintendo Wii was so cheap that we would just get one. But we decided to go online and check to make sure that Nintendo was actually making the device, low end as it is, able to connect to modern monitors. Nintendo’s range of websites themselves have been down for several days with no way to get any information from them. But searching around online provided far more disclosure on the machine itself than Nintendo was willing to give anyway and the answer is absolutely not. Nintendo is so ridiculous and out of touch that the Wii doesn’t even have the capability nor does Nintendo make or intend to make any type of adapter that allows it to connect even to VGA let alone digital monitors. Buying a component to VGA adapter is expensive like close to $100 plus you have to buy the component adapter from Nintendo as well. Suddenly it turns out that the Nintendo Wii is pretty expensive. About the same price as the XBox 360 almost once you try to get it to connect to anything modern.

We decided that we really need a television of some sort for our bedroom. So we decided to just get one today. We decided just to get something inexpensive and a little small that we can mount on the wall above our closets. We looked at a number of options and there is nothing that we could find that can handle 1080p so we figured that we will have to settle with a 720p display. We did further research today and discovered that the Sony PS3 is not nearly as powerful as they have been claiming and is having a terrible time handling 1080p rendering and will be limited due to practicality to 720p so since we intend to use the PS3 as the main source for the monitor having it be only a 720p (aka HDTV) isn’t really a limitation. Originally Sony was claiming that the PS3 would have dual 1080p outputs but once the units were being tested they discovered just how wussy the hardware was and it definitly is not on par with modern computers. Dominica and I saw a PS3 in action last night and while it was impressive for a console it was not impressive at all compared even to some very inexpensive and not too recent computers. In fact, now that the PS3 is is only outputting 720p it is still failing to produce output for computers monitors made in the last six or so years. Even playing Quake II on a Pentium II 350 on Windows 98 back in 2000 with nothing but a VooDoo 3 video card did okay on a 1280×1024 display!

We also decided that even though the Nintendo Wii is incredibly unimpressive that we were going to try one anyway just because it was original and cheap. But when we went to the store we discovered, much to our surprise, that the Wii was actually widely sold out and unavailable! We have no idea what is driving so many people to want to get the Wii.

We ended up just getting the Westinghouse 32″ 720p monitor. It is big enough for our bedroom but small enough to still fit. One of the benefits of the monitor is that it has a variety of inputs so that it can even take input from the low end Nintendo Wii if we still decide to get one when Nintendo finally gets that back onto the market.

We also had to run out and grab a cheap DVD player because we had nothing to hook to the monitor except for the computers. One of the best bits is that we are now able use both computers while watching something. We watched the original Disney That Darn Cat with Haley Mills and then Just Friends.