Sheep Guarding Llama

Today began with another busy morning that didn’t allow me the chance to get into the office. What a week this is going to be. I ended up having to work at home until just after noon. Then Dominica and I went to the Omega to grab a quick lunch before I drove into the office and she went to the laundromat to take care of the piles of laundry that we have.

Just like yesterday the morning was so busy that I could barely make it out the door and then, by the time I finally get to the office, nothing is happening and I have lots of spare time. Argh. I finished reading “Embracing Insanity: Open Source Software Development” which is one of those books that I have been in the middle of for two years or maybe more. I am trying to eliminate as many of those situations as possible. I have been on a reading kick recently and I hope that it sticks for a while as I have a lot of stuff to get through.

Today and yesterday have been very dark and drizzly. Almost no sunlight at all. Good thing or the little sleep that I have been getting would be a lot worse than it has been.

Only two more days before another crazy weekend begins. Boy am I glad that I have next Monday “off” or I would never get a chance to get caught up on anything. On Friday morning Dominica is driving to Big Flats just west of Elmira and meeting dad there in the afternoon to transfer Oreo to him to watch until Sunday. Then she is returning to Ithaca to check into our room at the Statler Hotel at Cornell. I am driving up to Ithaca after work in what is bound to be terrible rush hour traffic since it is holiday traffic exiting New York City. Ugh. Our plan is to just relax on Friday night. We probably won’t have a chance to see anyone as most everyone is busy with the wedding. So we are just going to relax. (Well, Dominica will relax. I am driving in bad traffic so it might take me all night to get there.)

Then Saturday morning will, hopefully, be a chance to just relax and enjoy Ithaca. Dominica and I haven’t had a chance to just relax and do nothing in particular in Ithaca in years. That will be nice. The wedding is in the afternoon so we have the morning to enjoy town.

Miranda is coming down to visit this weekend and is able to make it to the wedding. So she and Andy have a room at the Statler on Saturday night as well. I think that we are all planning on doing brunch at the hotel on Sunday before we have to head up to Rochester. Dominica and I are working for TMobile on Sunday in Rochester before going to pick up Oreo and probably meet dad for dinner.

Monday has been reserved for a day of mostly work. I am not sure what work that that will be yet but there is so much that needs to be done that I am not concerned about being able to keep myself busy. I would be really happy if we were able to go down to the school in Castile and get some work done down there as school is starting and there is so much that needs to be done. If we don’t work there this weekend I am not sure when we will get anything done. I also need to do additional packing in Geneseo whenever possible so that will continue as well.

Since we have been unable to sell the Mazda PR5 and since it is really tough to sell since it has two brand new sets of really good tires (that obviously we don’t want to just give away) we have decided that we are going to drop off my Mazda 6 and drive the PR5 through the winter and then try to sell it in the spring next year after we get some miles on those tires. That will save the 6 from a lot of extra miles running back and forth to Geneseo and then once winter hits we will garage the BMW and Dominica will drive the PR5 while I drive the 6. It is a big pain and not as good as if we managed to actually sell the PR5 but at least it will make it so that we don’t feel that we need to get as much money for it and it will be easier to sell in the spring and it will preserve the other two cars a bit.

Andy had an interview yesterday and got the job the same day. He is now back working for a large company that he and I worked for many years ago but he is staying in Rochester. It is a long term contract so this should, in theory, add some stability to his life – although we had long term contracts at the same place many years ago and that didn’t pan out so well. But in a major change of pace he managed to get two consecutive contracts through the same consultancy! This is completely unheard of outside of Manhattan. Consulting companies so frequently think of themselves as nothing but staffing firms that they often don’t view their current consultants to be any more a part of their family than professionals that they are currently interviewing for the first time. So that was very encouraging to hear. He starts work a week from today!

We did receive back our uncashed checks from the attempt to get the condominium in Lebanon. That is a relief that it was so easy to back out of the whole project. The ease with which we were able to cancel will make me much more likely to work with them again in the future if we are ever in a situation where we don’t need to sell a house ahead of time. For now, though, renting seems to be a good option for the next year or so. We don’t know the area well enough to make really good decisions about where to buy and the market seems to be in a state of flux and we need to wait for it to settle down. The housing market can only go up so much before no one can afford to own a home anymore. People always say that housing just goes up and up but at some point there has to be a collapse as eventually there just aren’t any people left to buy houses. And with prices being the way that they are down here it is hard to believe that there is anyone able to buy a home here.

I discovered an awesome website today that helps system administrators do custom Linux builds. I am very excited to give this site a try: InstaLinux.

This week has been crazy so far and is likely to continue. I was stuck in the office until late again this evening. It was almost seven before I had a chance to leave. I decided to post early so that I could stay up and work late tonight without worrying about posting the daily. I will catch up with everyone tomorrow.

Beaming myself out…

I worked from midnight to two in the morning today before going to bed. I was up fairly early this morning and had to keep working on the same project. I ended up being so busy that I wasn’t able to go into the office until early afternoon. That gave Dominica and I an opportunity to get lunch together at the Omega Diner.

Work was fairly busy this afternoon but nothing like this morning. Most work seems to be done in the morning. By afternoon I think everyone is sluggish from lunch and just lets things go until the next morning.

Dominica did some apartment hunting today (in order to avoid doing her homework) and found a really promising apartment in Edgewater, New Jersey that she really wanted to go look at. I got out of work a little after seven and drove down to the apartment in North Brunswick to pick up Dominica. Oreo was not happy with that arrangement after not having seen me all day. Dominica had managed to have made contact with the renter and they thought that we could probably go see the place tonight. So we drove on up to the Hudson River Waterfront and found our way up to Edgewater.

It was after nine when we managed to see the place. Dominica really likes it. It is a penthouse floor twelve hundred square foot apartment, very well appointed with a balcony view of the midtown skyline (that’s Manhattan’s midtown.) It is directly on the Hudson and has its own private riverwalk. The really big deal about the place is two included garage spaces! But it is expensive and far to the north for us so commuting to Warren will be tough but commuting to Manhattan would be very, very easy.

We grabbed a late dinner at the Omega and then went home. I had to do a little work before going to bed so it was after one in the morning before I finally got the change to turn in. I was very tired by the time I was finally lying down to go to bed.

We slept in this morning after having stayed up watching movies until very late last night. Oreo and Dexter are so snuggly – each competing to be the snuggliest – that it is hard to get out of bed. I stayed in bed awake for hours. Dominica didn’t wake up until almost noon.

We got ready to leave casually and drove out to Herkimer and had a late lunch with Dominica’s parents at Denny’s before we hit the road. It was 4:05 when we pulled out of Herkimer and we were confident that we would be able to be home before 9:00. Boy were we in for a surprise.

Traffic moved okay until we reached Albany. From the US90 to US87 interchange all the way to the US287 bypass at the New Jersey border we were stuck in crawling traffic. That was roughly 120 miles of backup. And after finally making it all that way it turned out that the traffic jam was caused by the toll boothes!

The instant we were onto US287 we were able to travel quickly again. We drove down to Warren and picked up my car from the office and then headed for hom.

The drive last night went well. We were out of Warren in great time and were on the road so much earlier than we are used to. We took the backroads shortcut straight north out of Warren to get to US 287 as quickly as possible and then took US 287 right up to the New York Thruway. We had great weather and traffic almost the entire way and were able to meet Dominica’s parents and brother in Herkimer for dinner.

It was nice that we were able to get out of New Jersey so early that we actually had time to hang out on Friday evening. Dominica only got Friday night to see Joe before he left for college so that was important.

Friday night was pretty much just relaxing. Oreo and Dexter had a good time getting to play. They miss each other when they are apart even if they spent their whole time together competing for attention.

Dominica’s parents left early in the morning to take Joe out to Albany so Min and I were on our own until the middle of the afternoon. They got home and we all took a ride out to New Hartford in the BMW with the top down even though it was quite chilly and went to Stone Cold Creamery for some ice cream (mmmm… bubble gum with rainbow sprinkles!), the pet store, Barnes and Nobles, Best Buy and then off to dinner at the Castlewood in Utica. I picked up a book at B&N that Andy has been reading recently and said that it was really good “The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide to Subverion”.

At Best Buy I managed to get a number of good movie deals like the newly released Poseidon that Dominica has really been wanting to see, the American Pie trilogy which really isn’t very good but it is so much a part of the culture for people our age that it just seemed like something that we should own, Major League II which is awesome and came with the really weak Major League III: Back to the Minors but at least it was free, Jackie Chan’s New Police Story and lastly, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. New Police Story is actually the fifth movie in the Police Story series. The most popular movies of the series here in the states are PS III and IV which are generally knows as Supercop and First Strike respectively. I have never seen either of the original PS movies nor any of the Michelle Yeoh spin off series (Supercop II, etc.)

After shopping and dinner we returned to the Tocco residence and plunked down to watch Poseidon. I have never seen the original Poseidon Adventure so I have no way to compare this movie to that one but both Dominica and her dad made a big deal about this version’s lack of character development. As it was the movie was entertaining but nothing special. The action was okay, the characters were okay, the plot was okay. As always with these movies I was disappointed that no one cared at all about any sort of accuracy. And, as always, if they don’t care enough to put real effort into a movie that costs this much then why should I care?

Dominica’s dad went to bed her mother having left part way through the movie finding it less than engaging and we went on to watch American Wedding which was even worse than American Pie 2 which was pretty bad. After the movie we still were not tired so we went on and watched Anchorman which was somewhat funny but only barely. Everyone had raved about that movie but it just didn’t cut it.

As always seems to happen when I am scheduled to work the early shift at the office – I woke up at 3:00 in the morning. Today I had some weird pain in my stomach and had to get out of bed. I am fine now but it got me moving quite a bit earlier than I had wanted to. I ended up starting working from home at 3:45 and put it a busy morning up until 5:45. Two hours before even leaving the house. Not too shabby.

I got to the office at 6:30 to officially start my day. I actually like these early mornings. I seem to be able to get a lot done and I feel better about my day. The best part is, of course, that I then get to leave early.

I have managed to get a lot done this week. I forgot to mention the other day that I scrambled to complete a bunch of HP classes that I have been taking this “semester” and this week I completed: “Microsoft Access 2003: Introduction”, ” Security for IT Professionals”, “Design Your Own Business Documents” and “Microsoft Windows Server 2003: Administering.” It was a busy semester. I also finished reading Joel Spolsky’s “The Best Software Writing I”. Now I am attempting to finish the book “Embracing Insanity” which I started a long time ago and never made it all of the way through.

MSNBC reported that Pluto Is No Longer A Planet. In some ways this is sad as now we only have eight planets and all of that stuff that we learned since we were kids is wrong. But Pluto has a wacky orbit compared to the planets and that should have been tipping everyone off. Of course in this article they state the reason why Pluto was demoted using the new criteria for determining what is and isn’t a planet: “A planet1 is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.” MSNBC then goes on to state that the reason why Pluto was rejected as being a planet for failing to clear the path around its orbit because it crosses orbits with Neptune. Um, did no one read that sentence? Later in the article MSNBC goes into depth about the much more heated debate as astronomers point out that earth, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, etc. all of uncleared orbits making them not planets either. It turns out that the voting on Pluto’s status was a farce with only a select handful of astronomers (who elected these people anyway) voting and 9,500 astronomers at the conference being shunned. It sounds like the scientific nature of the current astronomic field is being called into question here. If they can’t handle English definitions then how can they practice science? Clearly the astronomers involved in the voting and the subsequent application of the decision do not have the necessary astronomic backgrounds to complete a standard middle school introduction to the Solar system!

My day was very busy up until lunch time. Then things cooled down a lot which I really appreciated. It is nice to have things kind of taper off at the end of the week. I was scheduled to do some work later this evening but someone on my team covered that for me so that I would be able to leave early and get on the road towards Frankfort.

Dominica got onto the road coming from North Brunswick at 1:30 this afternoon. Not too bad. She is picking me up at work. We are leaving my car here at the office. It is awesome having a “gated” office where I can just leave my car if I need to and I managed to park right in front of the entrance so it is extra safe. We are taking the BMW to Frankfort this weekend and then Dominica will take me to work on Monday morning.

We are hoping to be able to arrive in Frankfort by dinner time. Close to 6:30. We will see. We are going to attempt taking the New York State Thruway almost the entire way. Part of the way will be roads that I have never taken before so that should help to make it more interesting.

I am going to go ahead and post today’s daily from the office so that it doesn’t get neglected over the weekend. I will have my laptop but will probably be out of touch most of the weekend. We will be back to New Jersey on Sunday afternoon, though, because I have work that needs my attention starting at midnight.

Today I had my first actual failure of WordPress. I attempted to post today’s update and instead of posting it just logged out and lost my changes. That wasn’t very cool. But fortunately I was able to just go “back” in my browser and everything was still saved in the browser so it was okay.