Sheep Guarding Llama

Today started off with a bit of a panic. Dominica went to work at a quarter to eight and at about half past eight I went down to the desk to pick up my car that had been ordered last night. I asked at the desk if the car had been brought around yet but they didn’t know. So I poked my head out and saw the car parked on the street but the desk didn’t have my keys or know anything about them. After the valet came back we realized that no one knew where my keys were. Uh oh.

The concierge, manager, valets and I spent about an hour searching for the keys. We checked in the car, we looked on the sidewalk, we looked around the valet stand. No sign of them anywhere. Eventually I went over to the Commerce Market and got some breakfast (egg and cheese on a hard roll) and went up to work out of the apartment. Around ten or eleven one of the other residents of the building called from work, in Yonkers, to let us know that he had found some keys in his car. Apparently the valet had dropped them there while shifting cars around this morning. So no transportation for me today.

Prior to the keys being located I had managed to catch dad in Geneseo and had him overnight the spares just in case. I was just about to call AAA when the keys were found. But obviously I wasn’t getting any keys yet today. So I was working from home today.

Big news today: AGDInteractive has finally, after three months, updated their site with more “it’s coming sooner or later” news on their remake of Quest for Glory II. But at least they updated the site. A lot of us watch it almost every day waiting for something to change. (This is a situation where they are TOTALLY missing the RSS feed boat

Dominica got home from work with Oreo. Oreo had a very good day in daycare. He was so excited to be back that he spent the morning barking at all of the dogs apparently telling them about his experiences moving to his new home this past week. It has been a very big week for a little Boston terrier and we figure that he didn’t think that he would ever see his puppy pals again. He was still very wound up when he got home.

I worked late putting in an hour of overtime before Min and I walked over to the Ironbound district to have dinner at the famous Mompou Tapas restaurant there. Everyone has raved about it so we didn’t want to miss it. The walk was very nice and we were really excited to get to explore the Ironbound which is really cool. It must be like stepping into a small town in Portugal.

The food and wine were excellent at Mompou and the atmosphere and service were excellent. Definitely our type of place. We tried three tapas, I had some Portugese red wine and Min got a Cuban mojito and we finished off the evening with a creme brulee sampler. It was awesome. The walk back to our apartment took only fifteen minutes (it took longer the other way because we were not positive where we were going and didn’t go direct) so getting into the heart of the Ironbound district is really fast and easy for us on foot. We will be spending a lot of time there. We saw several places during our walk that we really want to try out.

We slept in this morning and got up to a grey, raining day in Newark. We were only up for a little while when I had to start working. This project that I am on is really under a lot of pressure and I have been working really long hours and over the weekends. I worked for five hours today. Not much of a weekend. I am really looking forward to a break. I was so busy today that we didn’t get a chance to go out for brunch like we had wanted to and Dominica just ran down to Subway and grabbed some subs quickly so that I would at least get something to eat.

Around six this evening I was finally able to leave the apartment and Dominica, Oreo and I drove up to Nutley to do a little shopping. We haven’t been out shopping since we moved to Newark. Living in a city discourages that, I think. In fact, this is the first time that I have had the car brought around except to take it to work. We went up to the big shopping plaza on Route 3 in Nutley and went to the Target there.

Min and I decided that since I was putting in all of this over time that we would take the overtime money from today and put it into rewarding ourselves with Nintendo DS Lite video game handheld consoles. Dominica got a pink one and I got the black onyx one. And we got three games. One that she wanted – Zoo Tycoon, one that I wanted – Lost Magic and one that we could play against each other – Mario Kart DS. We also picked up a couple of basics like a new waste basket that will fit under the kitchen sink and some miscellaneous supplies.

I would have had to return to work but someone from the office was able to cover some stuff for me so Dominica and I were able to go to Chevy’s in Nutley for dinner. We have only managed to go out for Mexican twice since we have been down in New Jersey. They don’t have anything good like Garcia’s in Cortland. At least not that we have found.

We came home and just relaxed a little bit. It was getting late in the day. Dominica worked on her Java homework and that took her an hour or more. Then we played Mario Kart against each other for about an hour before going to bed. We have decided that we really like the new Nintendo DS Lites (NDSLs.) They are attractive, much more portable than earlier Nintendo handhelds, the screens are awesome and the built in wireless is really cool (although it doesn’t support some standard security features and that is a big pain.) Because they are backlit we are able to play them in the dark which is a major advantage over the older Game Boys (the GBA SP’s are backlit but they were too little, too late after all the serious portable players had owned GBA’s for years.) There were so few situations when you could really play the GameBoy’s that it made them not very useful. Not so with the NDSL.

I tried out some older GBA titles on the NDSL and discovered that they look incredible. I had no idea that these games were supposed to look this good. It is hard to believe that they are from an older system. There is a lot of life left in some pretty old games it would seem. I am really looking forward to having a chance to really get some good use out of my GBA game collection. The only caveat on the NDSL is that it does not have a Zilog Z-80 processor so it is not able to play the older GB/GBC titles from the original GameBoy series. Not that we are very likely to play those old games anymore but it would be nice to have one unit that can play everything. The GBA and the GBA SP were backward compatible all the way back to the very first Nintendo handheld. The Nintendo DS is the first Nintendo handheld to not be able to play the original titles. That is a bit disappointing.

As of noon today we will have been in the apartment in Newark for an entire week. It seems like we must have been here much longer than that. It seems strange to think that just six days ago we were in North Brunswick cleaning. I guess it shows what a long week it has been. At least Dominica’s overtime is over and Oreo’s daycare opens again on Monday so they can get back to their normal routines.

Lenovo announced yesterday that they too are recalling their laptops (after Alan Cox’s laptop exploded and called them into question as well) as they were using the bad Sony batteries but were hoping for the best, I guess? So they join Dell, Apple and Toshiba on my list of irresponsible laptop makers who knew that they had the bad Sony batteries and waited for bad things to happen before doing anything about it. And Lenovo, the third largest laptop maker, didn’t bother to do a recall until even evil Sony final broke down and issued a formal, all-out recall. That leaves, at least so far, Acer and HP as the only unscathed major laptop makers in this whole ordeal. Hey, what computer manufacturers is it that I always recommend? I forget. Can someone remind me? 😉

Dominica got up at eight after almost twelve hours in bed. She was really worn out from this week.

At a little before ten we went out with Oreo for his morning walk in the park. We can tell from his general attitude that he enjoys living in Newark so much more than North Brunswick. He gets tons of fresh air here as we almost always have the windows open, he gets loads of sunlight, he has more carpeting to roll around on and he goes for several walks in the park every day. Life is good for little Boston Terriers. And the concierge gives him cookies.

After his walk Min and I went over to Food for Life to get some breakfast. We got the seven mile high breakfast. Each of us. Whoa was that huge. We were so stuffed by the time that we were done. But boy was it good. We are so glad that that place is right next door.

We came back from brunch and Dominica did some homework and I got down to doing office work. The last several weeks have been just incredibly busy and I have barely gotten any time to relax. Around half past two Min and Oreo went into the bedroom and fell asleep. The big brunch made both of us really sleepy but I couldn’t nap because there as too much work to be done.

We got some rain this afternoon. The first rain that we have gotten, at least while we were awake, since moving to Newark.

I spent the day working. I put in seven hours today. Almost a full day. I was pretty tired by the time I wrapped up with work. More to do tomorrow but hopefully not as much as today.

I did manage to finish reading “From Bash to the Z Shell” that I have been working on for some time. I am glad to have completed that.

For some reason I wasn’t really hungry today and decided to skip dinner. I only ate lunch yesterday and then again just brunch today. Dominica had some leftovers from two days ago for dinner.

The fire alarm went off again today. That would be the fifth time since the middle of the week. This time the fire department was there by the time we went downstairs. We would have just stayed in the apartment, obviously it was a false alarm, but Oreo got so excited about getting to go out that we had to take him on his evening walk.

We went out for a walk to grab some supplies around eight but discovered that absolutely everything in downtown Newark shuts down at night and especially on a Saturday night. There was almost nothing open at all. It was weird. We walked down Broad, Market, Halsey and Raymond and found where a lot of stuff is but not where anything was going on. Sad that there is so much business here and none of it open. Even getting food and groceries seemed pretty hard. We did hear about Tops Diner that is supposed to really be something and is open twenty four seven. We are looking forward to trying that out sometime.

We watched Elvise Has Left the Building which we should have known would be bad being a Lion’s Gate Film which is a company that just produces bad B movies but John Corbett was in it so we tried it out. It wasn’t unwatchable and it had a few moments in it but overall it was a poorly written and boring movie and the whole thing was giving away in the synopsis on the DVD cover. And the actors were clearly not interested in the movie and it showed.

I have really been looking forward to today – my first day to work from home in the new apartment. A whole day to just hang out with Oreo and enjoy Newark. Oreo is really looking forward to today too as he doesn’t get left alone today and won’t for a long time since Doggie Paradise reopens on Monday and we will be home with him all weekend. I am also looking forward to getting to eat breakfast in Newark. My plan is to get over to Food for Life if at all possible to get breakfast. I want to try their fish based breakfast meats.

The day started off quite abruptly. At about twenty after five this morning the fire alarm went off. Yes, this is the fourth time that the fire alarm has gone off in fourty eight hours. Dominica and I were the lucky ones. Min normally gets up at a quarter to six so while this was early for her it wasn’t that early and she didn’t need to go back to bed. I am awake at that time normally so it isn’t a big deal for me. Being on the sixteenth floor can have its disadvantages though. They shut down the elevators and most everyone on our floor, in their pajamas, headed down to the street. They were not happy. Especially when they learned that this was the fourth time in two days. We stayed in our apartment and we were definitely the ones who made out on that deal. That early in the morning is awful for just about anyone because almost no one has left for work yet but almost everyone is either sleeping and it disrupts them or is in the process of getting ready for work and this makes them late. And manually going up and down thirty eight sets of stairs like the people on the nineteenth floor had to do could easily end up eating half an hour or more of your morning and that is just for the stairs portion. The elevator was shut down for at least half an hour.

Dominica emailed me from work to let me know that when she left the building around seven the elevators were still not turned back on. Now this could be a bit of a problem. I can only imagine all of the really pissed off people walking out this morning after descending all of that way. Most people need to go in and out once or twice during the morning. Those of us with dogs have to do it a bit. Good thing that Oreo was walked last night and likes to sleep in late or I would be very unhappy going up and down the stairs all morning with the little boy. That is way too much climbing for either of us.

My life would appear to have turned into nothing more than a series of phone conferences. Only two yesterday but well over four hours total between them. Probably closer to five and that is just the conference time. That doesn’t include the hours of regular telephone time that I have each day. I must have come close to six or seven hours on the phone yesterday. That is crazy. Today I have at least three phone conferences lines up before the day even started. I can just sense a long day coming on.

Well I was right about it being a long day. I worked about fourteen hours in total and didn’t have a chance to get breakfast or lunch until two in the afternoon. Oreo had to cross his legs until then before he got a chance to take a walk in the park. He normally doesn’t volunteer to be taken out until around eleven or so but it was still a bit of a wait for him. I was on the phone constantly from half past eight until almost one on back to back conference calls. That made the day very busy while being almost totally unproductive.

Lunch came from Food for Life right next door. They are fast and easy when I am in a hurry since they are so close and all ready know me by name. Boy is that food good. I am really glad that I made it over there to get lunch (Nautical BLT, mac and cheese and some cole slaw) because it turned out to be my only meal of the day. I ran back to the apartment and ate at my desk. What a day.

Oreo was at least happy to have me home with him all day even if it didn’t mean that we got to play very much. He was a very good boy all day and spent the majority of the day sleeping on the futon behind me. Occassionaly he would get up and play with his ball or ask me to through one of his little stuffed squirrels around. But mostly he was very calm.

Dominica got home a little late due to traffic. She rolled in around six. I was on a conference call when she got home and didn’t get to stop work until a while after seven. I had been so busy all day that I had only had one quick meal and hadn’t had a chance to shower yet. So I took a shower while she looked at some menus and tried to decide where she wanted to go for dinner.

By the time that I got out of the shower Dominica and Oreo had gone to bed and were asleep. I came out to the livingroom and discovered that there was a new crisis at the office and worked again for another two hours or more and didn’t get a chance to turn in until close to eleven. What a day. And the plan is that we will be working for a bit of the weekend as well.

I talked to Josh today and his plans have changed. He is coming down here on Wednesday. That is this Wednesday in just five days or so and will be crashing here until Friday. Then he will be flying out on Friday and we will be driving out to head back home once Dominica gets out of work on Friday evening.

Today is Oreo’s final day alone in the apartment. He is getting used to me leaving him at this point but he still doesn’t like it. He knows about when I talk him for his morning walk in the park and he gets very anxious. He has gotten very used to the procedure for getting into the elevator. He walks directly to the back of the elevator and sits down and waits until the doors open again and he knows that he is not allowed to walk around in the elevator. What a good boy he is.

I found an interesting web site that provides an “enhancement” to the VMWare technology for what they call LivePC’s. These are virtual machines that run on your desktop but instead of downloading a complete image this is a heavy compression and streaming technology that allows you start up machines quickly that you have not downloaded previously and also handles automatic updating and caching. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet but it definitely sounds very interesting. You can check out LivePC at the Moka5 website.

Dominica discovered an awesome video on Google Video yesteray: The Evolution of Dance. This is one of the best videos ever and well worth the time to watch. This is especially hilarious to those of us who grew up during the eras of these dances.

Dominica was on a role finding good videos today apparently and also found this great footage of a Texas anchorman being attacked by a lizard. Short but quite funny.

Good news for web developers and anyone working extensively with image formats – as of October 1, 2006 the GIF image format is finally going to be completely patent free and available for unlimited use.

I have been meaning to put this into the dailies for a week or two but haven’t gotten to it. My grandma Miller’s neighbour from when she used to live in Ohio many, many years ago was recently doing some cleaning and discovered an old letter from my grandmother thanking her neighbours for helping her to move. The letter wasn’t dated but we can estimate when it is from because she talks about me graduating from nursery school. “My little Scott graduated from Nursery School. He had a cap, gown and diploma. It was really nice. They even served punch and cake to parents and grandmas!!”

I posted last night before our dinner had actually arrived. It took an hour and a half for our food to get to us but we were expecting that. Unfortunately they didn’t get my sub right – piling it with onions and slathering it in Italian dressing instead of just lettuce and tomatoes with mayo like I like it. I ate it but it just isn’t the same. Once you wait for ninety minutes you hope that the food is amazing. And the bread wasn’t fresh today like it was the other day. The effect was the difference between possibly the best non-toasted sub that I have ever had and a sub I wouldn’t bother to get even if it was delivered quickly. Since we have only ordered from them twice and they messed up the order half the time it isn’t encouraging for us to try them again. The other problem is that Italian dressing is like a self-destruct mechanism built into the sub making it soggy and gross so that it isn’t any good as left-overs. Now every time we go to order subs I will be unlikely to choose Steakhouse 1. They take so long to deliver that you really can’t do anything about it when they mess up the order. So we will see how they do going forward.

I worked a little late tonight not leaving until about seven. But tomorrow I will work from home so it isn’t too bad. Dominica made herself dinner tonight and I ate the leftovers from last night that were not as bad as I thought that they were likely to be.

Oreo finally decided that the hedgehog had to die so he set to tearing it apart tonight pulling every last but of stuffing out of it. What fun he has with that. Now the livingroom is full of hedgehog stuffing. Dominica worked on her Java class homework and I worked on getting more of the bins emptied and put away. We are down to the nitty gritty and it takes a while as I have to find a suitable location for each little thing. We are hoping to be able to go shopping for a small corner shelf thing to put in our entryway this weekend so that we have a place to put the random daily stuff like keys and the dog’s leash. Right now they are going on the counter in the kitchen and that doesn’t help make the place look nice and organized. I did manage to get an entire bin put away. That helps. Pretty much everything left that needs to go somewhere is in a bin and there are just four bins left in total. We figure that one bin will have to remain as the “wires and stuff” bin like we have had for a year now. One bin is returning to New York. That only leaves two bins yet to actually get put away and both of those are primarily books that are waiting for a bigger bookshelf to arrive and then they will be all set. So we are in good shape.