Dad came over and we ordered the car and drove up to the IHOP by UMDNJ in Newark.  The crowd wasn’t too bad as we arrived before the bulk of people got out of church and filled the place up.  Sundays at IHOP can get pretty crazy.  Breakfast was very good.  We were quite glad that we had decided to drive up there.  Breakfast in Newark is definitely one of the most lacking services around.  There are almost no options and certainly no good brunch options like we are used to from Ithaca where brunch reigns supreme.

After lunch we drove over to Branch Brook Park with Oreo and walked through the Cherry Blossom Festival.  The weather was slightly colder than yesterday and I think that a lot of people decided to stay indoors as the crowd was pretty light compared to last year.  It was nice for walking though and Oreo had a wonderful time.

We thought ahead to take Flat Stanley with us to get pictures in Newark’s most famous location.  There were several good photo opportunities there.  We didn’t get a lot of time at the park, though, because I was paged out and we had to return to the apartment.  Never any real time that I can get away.

As we were leaving the park Kevin and Pam saw Oreo as they were driving through the park and stopped to chat.  So dad got to meet them as well although we only had a minute as I had to get back home to work.

Dad took a nap in the afternoon and then we just ordered in dinner from Nino’s and relaxed at the apartment.  Dinner was really good.

We showed dad the AppleTV yesterday and today.  He thinks that it looks pretty cool.  We discovered some new cooking and travel video podcasts that we really like too.  We hadn’t played with AppleTV’s built in podcast channel guide before and now we know that there is a huge selection of shows that you can just browse through without being connected to iTunes that really work well.  It’s a lot like having “cable” television as you have tons of channels except it is all on demand so you never wait for anything.

My project today, other than going to work as usual and getting a head start on this week’s homework, is to hit the lower Manhattan hot tourist spots with Flat Stanley. Katie is meeting me at lunch time and our plan is to go to Battery Park and see the World Trade Center memorial and the Statue of Liberty and then to go down Wall Street and see Trinity Church, the New York Stock Exchange, Federal Hall and maybe some spots like Tiffany’s. The Branch Brook Park Cherry Blossom Festival is on in Newark next weekend while dad is in town so maybe we will get a chance to go out there with Oreo and Flat Stan and get some pictures there as well. That is definitely one of the Newark highlights.

I grabbed the Kodak V1253 and Flat Stanley and we were out the door this morning. It is so warm that no jacket is needed, not even a fleece. In fact I rolled up my sleeves before even heading outside. The sun is shining and it is just a perfect day.

On the way out of Eleven80 I ran into Kevin and Pam in the elevator. Pam was just walking out to the car but Kevin was on his way to the PATH so we walked and rode in together until Exchange Place when he switches to catch the other line up to Christopher Street. Having Kevin on the train made it possible to take a quick picture of Flat Stanley riding the subway. I guess technically you are not supposed to take pictures on the subway because the Port Authority police think that terrorists don’t know what the train looks like and that having pictures of it will somehow make targetting it easier. Once again just incompetent law enforcement trying to look like they are accomplishing something by doing something counterproductive because they have no idea what to really do. Instead of making terrorist have a hard time – because if you want a picture of the subway you are just going to get one with a cell phone that everyone is holding on their anyway – they just make the regular passengers feel like criminals just for existing.

The morning flew by and before long it was time to take Stanley out for his walk around the city. Katie and I met up at the head of Wall Street at Trinity Church at the corner of Wall and Broadway. Then from there we came down Wall stopping at the major sites and also getting a picture of Stanley with the NYPD protecting the stock exchange. Then it was down to Battery Park to get pictures of the harbor, the statue, Ellis Island, Governor’s Island, Jersey City, etc. We even got to go up to the twenty-seventh floor of Katie’s office which is right on the harbor and get pictures from up there. It was a very productive picture taking day, and it was a lot of exercise as well. I probably did two or two and a half miles just during lunch. That is in addition to my normal walking of around two miles.

I came across a great picture of the very first Curtis C-42 Commando, a Buffalo built plane that was a major contributor to the American war efforts during World War II. In this picture of the very first Commando off the line it can be see flying over rural Western New York in 1942.

I was pretty tired by the time that I got home. I am not used to doing this much walking in a day and especially not out in the sun which always wears on me. I was on the walk home and my next door neighour walked right past me while I was getting Stanley his knish for dinner so I recruited him (my neighbour) to help with the picture and then we rode the train together. So, for the first time ever, I had someone to talk to on the train in both directions. That just never happens.

Dominica called me while I was on my way home saying that she wanted to have McDonald’s for dinner. So I stopped at the McDonald’s in Newark’s Penn Station and picked up dinner just before arriving home.

We took it easy tonight. Watched a little of the fifth season of The Family Guy and then I did a bunch of photo editing and uploading to Flickr. In the end we had forty-two Flat Stanley pictures today that I thought made the cut for the Flickr set.

We decided to head down to the diner that we like in Elizabeth, NJ for lunch because we both really just needed something different for a change.  We have become so bored with Newark food.  Being vegetarians limits your food selection so much when you have almost nothing but quick lunch places around that it really wears on you.

Dominica took our print out of Flat Stanley from Iuka, Mississippi and we glued him onto cardboard and she coloured him in so that it would be easier to take him around sight-seeing.  The weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow so Stanley is riding in on the train with me to New York City.

We called Ramona and she had just woken up and was ready for food too so the timing was perfect.  We all got ready and then Min, Oreo and I drove over to the Ironbound and picked up Ramona and then drove down to Elizabeth.

It was nice to get lunch someplace different and the weather is pretty nice today too.  We were really needing a change of pace.

Ramona had plans to hang out with some other friends from Eleven80 today so she rode back to there with us after lunch and hung out until she went to visit with them.  While she was over I was stuck working on homework and other stuff – never any real time off.  We did take the Flat Stanley that Dominica coloured this morning and shot some pics of him looking out onto Manhattan from our apartment.  The Nikon D50 with its flash was able to capture both Stanley up close and Manhattan miles away.

My evening was, unfortunately, spent doing nothing but homework.  I spent hours getting ready to hand in my project for the week just to discover that there was some ambiguity in the instructions and that everyone who had handed in already and taken them more literally than they were supposed to and we all had to do the work over again.  So that took my busy night from “quite busy” to “homework panic.”  I ended up doing homework and office work until one in the morning.  I am going to be tired tomorrow.

OSNews has The Ten Most Beautiful Computers.  Good reading.  I don’t totally agree with the list – the Sony PlatStatin 2, Sun PizzaBox and the NextCube are all strange entries, in my opinion, and the Mac Mini’s absence seems strange.  The Mac Mini, I think, should be ranked extra high for being the most mainstream of all of the truly impressively beautiful computers over the years.  Many of the machines on the list are niche like the BeBox, just 1,800 units ever.  But the Mac Mini is a strong seller and I know at least three people who have them personally and I am planning to buy my second quite soon.  And, honestly, if the PlatStation 2 is going to be considered then the AppleTV should be considered as well.  As far as game consoles go, the Nintendo Wii must be the best looking of all of the consoles over the years.

Before this morning I was not acquainted with Flat Stanley.  Apparently I am out of the loop, but that is nothing new. I learned of Flat Stanley from a friend back home in Leicester, New York who needed a favour…

It seems that our Flat Stanley hails from Iuka, Mississippi.  Iuka is located in the very northeastern corner of Mississippi in Tishomingo County where the state borders Alabama and Tennessee.  My friends’ niece lives in Iuka and her class is involved in a Flat Stanley project.  So she sent Flat Stanley to my friends in Leicester hoping that Flat Stanley could visit New York City and see the sights such as the Statue of Liberty.  Unfortunately she did not realize that her family in New York lived so far from the city, about 350 miles, so touring the city with Mr. Stanley was not really an option.  This, as you can imagine, is where I come into the picture.

So this morning Stanley traveled down to Newark to visit me.  The weather is bad for picture taking today, though, and Katie, who will be my co-tour guide in Manhattan, is out of work today.  So we are planning to take Flat Stanley around with us on Monday to get pictures during lunch – with any luck there will actually be sunlight on Monday for us to work with.

Since I work with people from all over the world I decided that this was a perfect opportunity for Flat Stanley to see some exciting places.  Other Flat Stanleys and his relatives have been to many exciting places.  But I thought that it would be really nice if Mr. Stanley from Iuka, Mississippi could visit some neat places. So I made some “calls”.

Stanley’s first stop on his whirlwind tour was Belfast, Northern Ireland thanks to my friends Sean and Niall who jumped right onto the project immediatley.  They got pictures of Flat Stanley at White Star House where the Titanic was built.  They have pictures of Stanley in the windows overlooking the dry dock where the Titanic actually was assembled.   I think that this is probably Stanley’s first trip to this particular location.

I have some more people in Belfast getting involved taking him to other important Northern Irish locations like the Giants’ Causeway and the word is that he is driving down to Dublin, Ireland tomorrow too.  We are starting to get supporters all over the world.  We should have a lot of pictures by early next week.  If you don’t want to have to check back to the web site all the time you can subscribe through RSS: Flat Stanley SGL Flickr Feed.  You can also point your AppleTV to the Flat Stanley set on SheepGuardingLlama on Flickr and AppleTV will connect it as a slideshow.  How cool is that?

More Flat Stanley news over the weekend.  Dominica and I will be showing him around Newark tomorrow.

It is Friday and that makes it my busy day.  My morning was so busy that although I had planned to work from home until nine and then go into the office on Wall Street I didn’t actually manage to leave until one thirty.  It may seem that after seven hours that it wasn’t worth going into the office when the day was just about over but, as this is Friday, the day was not even half way over yet.  So off to the office I went.

I was pretty hungry as I hadn’t had a chance to eat all day so I stopped off at Newark Penn Station and grabbed some pizza from Triponi Pizza.  Then it was on the PATH and into the city.  I felt like reading today so I carried “Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager” which is small and easy to carry on the train.

I wanted to take Flat Stanley into Manhattan with me today but it is extremely overcast and foggy today and Manhattan gets exceptionally dark when there is no sunlight.  There is no scenary out here.  Just fog.  And today is just way too busy for me to take a break to go do anything extra.  So that will have to wait until Monday.

My afternoon was very busy and I was just bouncing from one thing to another as quickly as possible.  I did the regular deployment work until almost seven.  Then I settled in to do the “after hours” work that had to either be done tonight or over the weekend.  I figured best to get a good bulk of stuff done tonight rather than wait until tomorrow or Sunday to be working on it.

I ended up working until well after nine at night making my day come out to fifteen hours.  I was pretty worn out by the end of the day.  I did manage to take care of a large volume of work that would not have been fun to have carried into my weekend though.  Best to get that stuff over and done with before leaving the office.  I really need my weekend time to do homework anyway.

It is good that I stayed in the office anyway, though.  There was deployment work that ended up going until nine and a little around eight someone needed me to physically restart a computer here in the office that I could not have done had I left at a normal time and that would have made it quite hard for them to have worked over the weekend.  So it worked out well.

Ramona wanted to get together this evening but we are pretty tired.  It will be well after ten before I get home and I think that my walk home might be in the rain.  So we are planning on breakfast at Airlie Cafe tomorrow morning.  Flat Stanley can go with us.

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