I ran out and fueled up the car, put air in the tires and got it all cleaned up while I had some time to kill.  Andrew got to the house and woke up Dominica while I was out.  She didn’t realize that I was out fueling the car.

It was just after seven when we hit the road north.  The weather was awesome today and we made really good time through north Texas and on in to Oklahoma.  The drive up Interstate 35 to Oklahoma City roughly runs along the Amtrak Heartland Flyer train route that I took last week so this is an area that I now know.  Once we got to Oklahoma City, though, everything from there on was new territory to me.  I have only been in Kansas in the southeast corner and not even a mile into the state.

There is little remarkable on the drive through central Oklahoma and Kansas.  The terrain is actually not nearly as flat as I thought that it would be.  There was a decent amount of roll here and there.  I mean, it was flat, but not crazy flat.

The drive went by pretty quickly.  Highway speeds out there in the flat nothingness are quite high.  It actually ended up taking only five hours to get to Wichita including two gas station stops.  Three hundred and fifty miles exactly and thirteen point one gallons of fuel.  The old Mazda is still pulling nearly twenty seven miles to the gallon.  Way better than I would have guessed given the rough shape that it is in.  That car is eleven years old now!

It was about a quarter after twelve when we arrived at the Old Chicago in Wichita.  Bob from Kansas City was already there waiting for us.  There were four of us total making long haul drives in for the event.  We made great time and could not believe that we were up there with plenty of time to spare.  That really worked out well.

The SpiceCorps Wichita meeting ended up going really well.  The venue was a really good choice too.  Good food options (pizza, fish & chips, salads, etc.) and good beer options with a quiet back room where they were willing to turn off the radio so that we could actually talk.  We had a great turnout with eighteen people which, I do believe, is a record for an initial SpiceCorps group.  Very impressive.  It was a good group too with good interaction and a lot of potential.

We hung out, Andrew and I, until the very end when the last people were leaving.  So it was well after four when we finally left Wichita.  We fueled up the Mazda, a single completely full tank just barely gets me from home to the middle of Wichita, and got back on to the Interstate to go back to Texas.

The drive south was completely uneventful.  The Oklahoma sunset was awesome.  Searing orange behind us to the right with the world encircled in flamingo pink.  Not something that you get to experience in New York or Texas.

It was just before ten when we pulled into Carrollton.  Andrew headed back home and I played with Liesl for just a little bit before putting her to bed.  Luciana was already long asleep.

It was a long but ultimately very good and productive day.

I slept in a little but was up around nine.  At a little after ten we drove over to Geneseo to eat at the Omega Grill for breakfast.  Out third time here in two days.

My aunt Sharon and uncle Leo met us at the Omega so that they could see Liesl some more before we head back home this afternoon.

After breakfast we ran over to M&R and picked up the Mazda Protege 5 which is all set now.  Inspected, new rear brakes and the summer performance tires.  Not cheap but we haven’t had a car payment to make on it in years so can’t really complain and it costs practically nothing on our insurance.

Once we got back to dad’s we spent quite a while loading up the two cars.  Dominica and I went through the garage and picked out the bins that were of the highest priority to us so that we would have stuff back at the house that would be most useful to us.  We also grabbed books, CDs and all of the DVDs that we could cram into the nooks and crannies of the cars easily.  More than enough stuff to keep me very, very busy converting media for a month or more without a doubt.  It takes a long time to work through all of this stuff.

I think that it was around two when we finally got on the road out of Pavilion.  We are both driving on this trip.  Dominica driving Liesl and Oreo in the Mazda and me driving the BMW.  We had to split it up that way as it was the only way that we really all fit.

We stopped at the Pilot gas station in Kanona where they have a Subway.  We stopped in and got subs because we were going to be really hungry later on and would end up snacking while on the road if we didn’t.  We also topped off the tanks so that we would avoid needing to stop again for gas.

We drove on to Waverly and decided to stop and visit with Dominica’s family again for an hour or so before continuing on.  Dominica’s cousin Diane and her kids were down at James and Nikki’s house and we were unable to see them on the way up a few days ago so we decided to stop in and see them now.

It was around seven when we got back on the road towards Peekskill.  The drive went well.  I spent most of the time listening to my iPod.  I am still catching up on my podcasts from IT Conversations that I have been missing over the last few months.  I especially enjoy listing to Stack Overflow.

It was just before eleven when we pulled into Peekskill.  We were quite tired by the time that we got home.  We unloaded only what we needed and left the rest of the stuff in the cars until tomorrow.

The note that we left on the front door for UPS is gone so we are hoping that we will have our wine delivered in a day or two.

I was thinking that today was going to be a nice, relaxing day other than the drive home tonight.  No such luck.  I logged into the office just to make sure that everything was okay since it is a Sunday and very few people work on Sunday so things can easily get missed if no one checks in and I discovered that we had quite a few machines down.  Oh boy.

So I started working at noon.  It took a bit of testing before we realized that the commonality between all of the machines that were not working were that they all ran SAN and that they were all involved in receiving one particular patch from the engineering department that updated the kernel.  So, from that, we were able to rather that the chances were that, like they often do, the engineers failed to take into consideration the SAN software stack and had broken it again.  This is a never ending problem that we had with them.

The work ended up just going for hours and hours.  First we had to do a ton of troubleshooting.  That took a few hours because it was not very apparently what had happened.  By the end of the day there were five us working on the problem.

I worked on that issue until after six (yes, for over six hours) and then, after just a few minutes break, was called out to deal with another issue for another team.  I ended up being “at work” from noon until seven.  What an exhausting day.  Things were not even completely done when I left and some work just had to be saved until tomorrow.  Dominica and I really could not wait any longer to get onto the road.  Our plan had been to leave Frankfort between three and four in the afternoon and we completely missed that window.

So it was around seven thirty in the evening when we finally got into the car and drove out of Frankfort.  We are taking the opportunity to go to Scranton and pick up two servers while we are making this trip.  That meant that we got to take the really nice drive south out of Frankfort and skip the highway pretty much altogether.  I love the southerly drive out of Frankfort.  That part of New York is so gorgeous.  It really reminds me of rural England.

We got down to Scranton around a quarter after ten.  Dominica waited in the car with Liesl and Oreo while I went into the datacenter and helped as we unracked two servers, a DL145 G2 and a DL360 G1.  The DL360 G1 is old and going to be going to Castile Christian Academy.  The DL145 G2 is going to be repurposed as a dedicated backup server running Red Hat Linux and the Amanda backup server.

It was a really good thing that we went to Scranton today, even though it was a bit of a pain to do one more thing today.  One of the two machines that is staying in Scranton for a few more weeks had a failed hard drive that I was able to swap out while I was there.  Only took a minute to fix but would have been quite the disaster later on.

Our plan is to be completely done with Scranton in just a few weeks.  Then I will make one last special trip up there to pick up what remains and that will be that.  I will be very happy when that is all over and done.

It takes about two hours to get back to Peekskill from Scranton.  Less than, but almost, two hours.  We had to make one doggy pit stop along the way.  He tried to be fast.

So it was just around one in the morning when we rolled into Peekskill.  We were very glad to be home.  Dominica tried to go right to bed but Liesl’s schedule was all messed up and she was having problems falling asleep.  I went down and checked on the DVD conversion processes running in the basement.  They were still running and had a lot of work left to do.  I guess that I did a good job loading them up before we left.  My main desktop will still be working for another few days before it completes the work that I left for it!

I did some calculations and my desktop would need to run continuously for about four years in order to convert everything that we have!  Four years of non-stop work.  And that is if I was able to keep it running all of that time and able to keep it completely loaded up with prepped work.  This is no small project!  I can’t wait until we have some local server capacity to help offload some of this work.

We tried going to bed at two but Liesl woke right up and was not about to go back to sleep.  Dominica was really frustrated and unhappy so I got up and stayed up with Liesl until almost three when she finally fell asleep.  This weekend has been way too exhausting for me.

It appears that the Arizona Game and Fish Department has conspired to exterminate the last of the American Jaguar population from the country.

It was almost seven when I finally got out onto the road towards Binghamton.  I couldn’t got the “fast” route through Scranton because the highway has been “closed” indefinitely due to extremely inefficient road work that has lasted nearly a year now.  So I drove up the Garden State Parkway (GSP) to US 17 and took that on the slow and winding, but scenic, route through northern New Jersey up through Rockland and Orange counties out to Sullivan and into Binghamton from the east.  It adds roughly forty minutes to the trip compared to the supposed time that it takes to go through Scranton if Interstate 80 was open.

I picked up John Stephens, a.k.a. The Surfing IT Wizard, and we drove up to Ithaca.  It was just after ten when I got to Binghamton and almost eleven when we pulled into Varna on the east side of Ithaca.  Almost four hours of car time!  The GPS was great and took us on some crazy backroads between Owego and Varna which shaved a few miles, minutes and gallons off of the route that I used to know.  I have known a good route through that area for a long time now but this taught both John (an Owego native) and I a few new tricks that even we didn’t know collectively.

This was John’s first ever time riding in a convertible!  Hard to believe.  We left the top down all day as the weather was very nice.  I had hit some severe rain coming through the western Catskills that slowed me down earlier but everything was bright and clear heading north.

We worked for an hour or so kicking off some long running tasks and getting ourselves settled in for a long day then ran up the street to the Nice ‘n’ Easy to pick up some snacks.  We got chips and energy drinks and ordered a pizza and went back to work.

Today was a very productive day and quite a successful one.  We got loads of good work done and didn’t leave Ithaca until well after eight at night.  A very long day but the work had to be done at some point.

I dropped John off around nine at his apartment and then headed to the local McDonald’s to get myself some dinner as it was going to be very late as I headed down the highway.  It was probably nine thirty or so when I got back on to US 17 and started the long, lonely drive home.  I hooked up the iPod that I had thought to take with me and finished listening to Scott Adam’s latest book “Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!” which I recently got from Audible.com.  That kept me awake until I got home around one thirty in the morning.  Boy was I tired.

I got to bed around two.  I have to be “at work” at six thirty tomorrow morning a I am covering the early morning shift just for that one day.  Then Tuesday I have a class that I will be taking in Manhattan up at Madison Square Garden which will make for an interesting change of pace.  I will be in Warren on Wednesday which is, supposedly, my new schedule.

It was an extra short night with a pretty big interruption to walk Oreo in the middle of me trying to sleep.  The one thing that worked out well is that because I was up in the middle of the night with Oreo I was able to get the luggage cart so that it was in the hallway and very easy to load up first thing this morning.

We packed the car as best as we could. We have a decent load of stuff going up to dad’s place this time. This is our first trip back there since Christmas if you can believe that! We packed up all of the CDs and DVDs in the apartment, two humidifiers, the space heater and more. It made a huge dent in our clutter here (and will be barely noticeable in dad’s already packaged garage.)

It’s a pain having to pack the car in a panic in the morning though. It’s times like this that I really wish that I had a garage.  What a difference that would make.

Dominica dropped me off at the Broad Street Train station on her way to take Oreo to daycare. There I caught the train to Summit and the shuttle to Warren like I normally do when working out in New Jersey.

Today is an early market close day so a lot of my usually late night Friday work was able to be done in the middle of the afternoon which was really nice. I was in good shape when Dominica arrived to pick me up a little after six. She had used the GPS to get her from Totowa to Wallington to Warren which worked really well as it routed her around some stuff and took her a different route than she would have taken normally and it saved a bit of time.

It was around six thirty when we left Warren. Traffic wasn’t bad in New Jersey and we only hit a small delay right at the Delaware Water Gap when people were going through the toll booths there.

Normally we avoid the i81 corridor through eastern Pennsylvania as PennDOT has completely destroyed the entire corridor with poor labeling and extended single lane zones around the Scranton Metro which cause massive delays but today it couldn’t be helped. We are delivering two computers up to Apalachin, New York and the i81 corridor is the only easy way from New Jersey to the Binghamton area.

We let the GPS guide us on a faster route through New Jersey. It took us off of i78 and up NJ206 to i80. Not a route that we have taken in a very long time. We stopped along the way to eat at Panera Bread and to pick up some bagels for the morning.

The trip through Scranton ended up adding two to three additional hours to the trip in a construction zone that has been a problem for almost nine months now. It is completely ridiculous. It would have been better to drive back to Newark from Warren then go up to the Hudson Valley and catch NY17 west to Binghamton. Tons of extra miles but it would have saved an hour or more. We will be completely and utterly avoiding eastern Pennsylvania from now on. You just can’t trust PennDOT to do reasonable traffic patterns or warnings. They also don’t provide traffic updates over FM radio for the GPS units so everyone gets stuck in the same traffic jams that could easily have been avoided.

Instead of arriving at a little after nine at John Stephen’s apartment like we had planned it was well after midnight! We were pretty tired and unhappy by the time that we made it through all of that construction traffic. Our long night was turning into a really, really long night.

We only stayed at John’s for a tiny bit. Just enough time to unload the car, load up a computer that he had for me and get a quick tour of his new place. He has only been there for a month or two. We got to meet John’s girlfriend. They are hoping to come down to New Jersey to visit us around mid-July. This is the last summer for folks looking to hang out with us while we live so close to Manhattan.

The rest of the trip from John’s place to dad’s went pretty smoothly and quickly. It was awfully late by the time that we pulled into dad’s driveway. We were quite tired. But at least we were able to deliver the computers tonight and they are not hanging over our heads until Monday evening. That would not be fun. We are going to want to be able to drive right back to Newark on Monday afternoon.

After working I showered and got ready to go to lunch with dad when he got back from teaching Sunday school down at Union Presbyterian Church in Leicester. We drove over to Geneseo and ate lunch at the Omega Grill. On the way over we remarked as to what a fine day it was turning out to be and what perfect driving weather Dominica and I were going to have on our way down to Newark this evening.

We got back from lunch and I had to log in again to the office and do the Sunday afternoon work which isn’t a lot but it does take a little while.

After work my afternoon was spent getting the Mazda PR5 loaded and ready to go back to Newark. We had a lot of stuff at dad’s house that we wanted to take back with us. Dad took apart a lamp / table combination piece of furniture that we have that we really like so that we could bring that down to Newark with us. It perfectly matches our Newark furniture set even though we had original purchased it for the office in Geneseo when we had the house on Hawthorn Circle.

There was a lot of stuff to go into the car.  We are moving quite a load around in this trip.  It is our first trip in a long time with the PR5 and it can carry many times as much as the BMW can.

At four thirty dad ran down to the York Deli (York Landing) and grabbed some cold subs for us for dinner which we ate just before I had to leave to go meet the Toccos in Henrietta to pick up Dominica from them.  While dad was out I had to do some more work for the office but got it done just in time to eat with him when he returned.

After eating it was time to head out.  At this point the weather was still looking okay.  It was ten after five in the evening when I set out from Peoria.

I met the Toccos at the Henrietta exit from the New York State Thruway.  I only beat them to the meeting point by about ten minutes.  Just long enough to get the last bits of the car situated and to read a few pages in “The Crystal Shard”.

It was a little before six when Dominica and Oreo climbed into the Mazda and we headed south on Interstate 390 to head for home and the Toccos climbed back onto the Thruway to continue on towards Frankfort.

We made our first stop on the trip at the gas station that we always use on the south side of Dansville just off of the southern Dansville exit off the highway.  We stocked up on drinks and snacks and topped off the fuel so that we wouldn’t have to worry about it later.

It was between Kanona and Corning on Interstate 390 when we started seeing some bad snow.  We didn’t think too much of it but called dad to see what we should be expecting.  It looked as though the southern route was clear while Interstate 86 / NY 17 was seeing a bit more snow.  So we continued on our intended path down Interstate 99 / US 15 towards Mansfield and then to Williamsport, Pennsylvania.  But even by Gang Mills, New York the weather was getting increasingly bad and by Mansfield, PA we were getting pretty concerned about the driving conditions.

The snow worsened and the road conditions deteriorated continuously all of the way from Kanona, New York until Tannersville, Pennsylvania.  Once we crossed the Delaware Water Gap and came into New Jersey the snow turned back into rain and we were able to drive mostly normal again.  A trip that normally takes just five hours ended up taking us eight and a half hours!  Much of the trip was spent at no more than thirty miles an hour.

Luckily we had Sue Grafton’s “T is for Trespass” along with us and we managed to make it through quite a bit of the book during the trip.

It was about two in the morning when we finally pulled into Newark.  We had to walk Oreo and it took two trips up to the apartment to unload the car.  We were exhausted but unfortunately Oreo had gotten into something along the trip and he had to have a bath before being able to go to bed!  What a night.