Sheep Guarding Llama

The plan was that today was going to be my work from home day but I got “called in” to the office this morning and worked in the office from half six until ten. At least it got me up and out of bed and moving. The office was super quiet as it always is that early in the morning. But I did end up with a fair amount of work to do during the time that I was there. So the time passed very quickly.

I got home and set up shop and prepared to start working from home. I took care of a few items left over from my commute time and then I took Oreo out for his walk in the park. Dominica took him out earlier but it was quite cold then and he couldn’t stay out for very long. We took a longer walk and he had a grand time.

I went over to Food for Life for lunch. I had wanted to go there for breakfast but the number of things that I needed to do before I could leave to get lunch just kept piling up and breakfast was over by the time that I was able to go. Lunch was quick and then it was back to the apartment. I am always exhausted after having lunch and Oreo had gone in and gotten into Dominica and my bed and was very snuggly so I decided that a nap sounded like a good idea. It was very warm in the apartment even with the windows open for quite a while as Dominica had cranked the heat just before leaving so the place was like a sauna. But at least it doesn’t cost us anything since our heat is free (well, included at least.)

I am quite happy that I managed to get a couple new pics posted to the Flickr feed and I managed to edit and upload a new, eight minute vlog post. It was a busy day.

Today’s post is going to be short. Min and I are out of town tonight and for the rest of the weekend and I need to get things wrapped up and I know that I won’t have an opportunity to post later tonight so I am doing it now. It is currently about fifty minutes before Dominica leaves work to head for home and even in rush hour that should only take her about half an hour since Oreo is all ready here. Once she arrives we just have to pack the car with our weekend bag and we will be leaving for Arnold, Maryland where we will be spending the weekend relaxing on the Chesapeake Bay with the Nicklins. We will be coming home on Sunday evening.

My sinus problem, whether it is allergy related or not I have no idea, is back in force today and I had to get out of bed at four in the morning because I couldn’t breath anymore. So I was up and around the house for several hours this morning before going to work. I showered before Dominica got up today which is pretty rare for us. We went to bed really late last and I only got four hours of sleep.

In all my spare time this morning I managed to do some eBay bidding. I won two items this morning. One is The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap for the Game Boy Advance. I am not a Zelda fan but this game is supposed to be very good and it is the only one of the Zelda series that was created for the GBA platform. So I am interested to try it out. And cheap, used games from eBay are not a big investment. Especially when both Dominica and I play them.

I also won a second processor for one of my servers. Normally not very exciting but this particular server just happens to be the same server that will be hosting SGL once we move the site down to Scranton in a few weeks. I am expecting that the new site will be significantly faster to load for those of you using fast broadband connections.

I did some bill paying today. Oh the job. Actually this month’s bills aren’t so bad compared to normal. It isn’t too bad paying bills as long as you are able to pay them. This month is actually quite exciting as we are anticipating paying off Dominica’s Mazda PR5 loan. We are pretty sure that we are down to the final payment in about four weeks. We don’t officially owe on the car until next year but we want to have it paid off and out of the way. We are focusing on one bill at a time to eliminate as we find the process of actually paying the bills to be such a hassle that reducing the total number really does make our lives a lot easier.

Dominica sent me this picture a few months ago but I just love it and kept forgetting to put in on the site so I am doing it now. It is awesome. This guy tries to do a shot of one of those flaming drinks and spills it down his neck and sets himself on fire and then panics and spits out the alcohol that he had in his mouth which, of course, was also on fire. You have to be awfully cool to be able to handle drinking a drink that is on fire!

I was pretty tired all day today having gotten up so early. I left work a little on the early side, around half five, and actually managed to get home before Oreo and Dominica.

We had a very quiet evening at home. We watched a little That ’70s Show and Dominica worked on her Java homework. Tonight was her last night to do her homework since we are heading to Maryland tomorrow right after work.

I got contacted tonight and need to go into the office for the very early shift tomorrow. That is going to be awful. Tomorrow was going to be my work from home day. So now I have to be up at five in the morning! So I am calling it a night and heading to bed.

Another month almost over. It is amazing how long months take to pass when you are a child and how quickly they fly past when you are an adult. I wonder if this is a product of our age or if it is simply an indication as to how boring childhood is and how much more interesting it is to be an adult? When I was a kid most of my days were spent sitting in an uncomfortable chair in a tiny desk with the air temperature way too warm listening to someone who has no personal interest in what they are teaching telling me about a subject that I am not interested in. This would go on for long hours every day. Then you go home and have to do pointless homework assigned by teachers who assign it just so it looks like they are keeping you busy. This cycle does not produce happy children. Life drags on. But when you are an adult the work is interesting and there is no homework.

Today, however, was a “drag on” kind of day. I can’t believe how slowly the day seemed to pass by. The weather is quite a bit colder than it has been. The last several days definitely took summer quickly into fall and you can feel winter in the air.

Today Dominica managed to do almost all of her Java homework while she was at work! All of her homework for the week which is really awesome. This is a really short week for her to do homework in as we are leaving on Friday evening to go to Maryland for the weekend.

Dominica and I both came up with IHOP as our dinner of choice tonight so we decided to head up to the IHOP near the hospital again. IHOP is a lot less expensive than where we normally eat which is great too. We got the same waitress that we had on Sunday and she remembered us. I guess we have “our” IHOP now.

So Oracle announced today that it was repackaging Red Hat’s Linux (read: “selling” CentOS) and providing their own support for it at less than Red Hat’s price. Of course, Oracle doesn’t have the engineers who actually put the stuff together so one would hope that their inferior service would be cheaper. What a crappy thing to do. This isn’t good for Linux or for Oracle. And, of course, Oracle’s “new” Linux is called Unbreakable Linux. So I went to Oracle’s site today to see what they had to say for themselves and this is all I got…

Error: The servlet produced the following error stack. java.lang.StringIndexOutOfBoundsException: String index out of range: 0
at java.lang.String.charAt(String.java:444)
at oracle.webdb.page.RequestParameters.processParameters(Unknown Source)
at oracle.webdb.page.RequestParameters.(Unknown Source)
at oracle.webdb.page.PageBuilder.parseRequestBody(Unknown Source)
at oracle.webdb.page.PageBuilder.process(Unknown Source)
at oracle.webdb.page.Main.doRequest(Unknown Source)
at oracle.webdb.page.ParallelServlet.doGet(Unknown Source)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:740)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:853)
etc…

Yup, that’s right. Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux web site was broken on its first day! Now it might be the Linux servers that are broken or it might be Oracle’s database or maybe their application server. In any case, if Oracle can’t fix it for themselves there is no way they know how to service this stuff for customers in disparate environments! And it is their very first day. How could they let it go down so soon? This is twice that Larry Elison has brought out his “unbreakable” products just to have them taken right down. If there is one thing that Oracle knows how to do it is how to paint a target on their seats.

Dominica and I worked on her Java homework and some other programming and then watched a bit of That ’70s Show before going to bed. We didn’t end up getting to bed until midnight!