I was back in bed but had not quite fallen asleep when I was paged out from the office. Had I just fallen asleep it would have been much worse. As it was I was still coherent and able to function, more or less. So up I got again and out to the living room I went to fire up the VPN and log into the office network.

I ended up being awake and out of bed from four until almost five thirty in the morning. It was so long and by the end I was so awake that I started considering whether or not I should just get out of bed and stay up through the morning, but I have been so far behind on sleep all week that that didn’t seem like a good idea no matter how practical it might have been under other circumstances.

I ended up sleeping until noon. I really needed the sleep and felt much better after that. Between going to bed late and the late night interruption I figure that I got just over ten hours of sleep which is really awesome for me. Dominica and Oreo were up about two hours before me.

Today is Dominica’s crazy homework day. Her class officially ended on Friday at midnight but her professor is letting her use the weekend to complete her homework. I think that a lot of people in the class are using the weekend to submit “late” before Monday’s cutoff. So on Friday night she completed everything except the final project and yesterday she worked as much as she could to get some more of the project done. Min was pretty under the weather yesterday. She is on some anti-biotics that are really knocking her out and she was barely functional yesterday. So today she is skipping them so that she can get her work done before midnight.

After I was up and showered we ordered in some food from Nino’s, a breakfast pizza, and watched some of The Love Boat while we ate. Then we harnessed up the dog and went for a long walk through Military Park and Washington Park and up to Riverfront Stadium to take pictures that Dominica needs for her project. That was quite and undertaking and we were all pretty worn out by the time that we got back. We were probably gone for well over an hour. Oreo had a great time and was very excited to get to visit Washington Park which he has never been to before. He has never walked past Military Park to the north. So it was all new smells for him to discover.

Dominica and I settled in in the living room and the rest of the day was spent working on homework. Not a fun day. Today is the last day of paperwork for my class and fifty-percent of my grade is based on the work that I hand in tonight. Dominica will be extremely relieved tomorrow when she knows that her class is finally over. She should sleep well tonight. This class has really been a problem for her and, while interesting, it isn’t a class that really teaches her core IT principles so it isn’t really adding to her ability to get better work in the future. So it is pretty frustrating even though, under other circumstances, it would at least be an interesting class.

Tomorrow I am working out of Warren so I have to be up quite early in the morning and ready before Dominica gets up so that I can hitch a ride with her up to the Broad Street Train Station. That saves me a ton of time in the morning and helps keep me from walking more than necessary. I enjoy walking but my right foot has been hurting a lot recently and I am trying to give it time to heal.

Dominica wrapped up her project around eleven. And then she was off to bed. I went on and worked until midnight. Not much sleep for me but the class is almost over. Only so much more work to come out of that.

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.

I am starting to get into the early morning groove again.  I have been doing it for three weeks now.  One of those weeks was on accident.

Oreo stayed home with me today.  He was confused about being home on a Tuesday but happy to have extra time in the sun.  His ideal week would be going to daycare on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and sleeping the rest of the time.  He is on a little bit of a diet these days as he has been putting on some extra weight recently due to all of the cookies that he has been convincing people to give him and the extra meal that he has been getting from us.  So we are cutting back.  We expect that he will slim right down again.

Here is how to cut costs when there is an energy crisis, it isn’t just about public transportation but about getting the maximum amount of people moved around for the least amount of power spent.  Super Efficient Trains.

Dominica got home and we ordered in from Nino’s which we haven’t had in a while.  We watched one episode of Doctor Who which we have from Netflix while we ate.

I spent the rest of the evening working on homework.  It isn’t officially due until tomorrow but I never know how much free time I am going to have and it is always possible that I will lose an entire evening without warning so I can’t really let homework go until the last minute without taking risks.  So I stayed up until midnight getting my homework completed and submitted.  I was really tired when I finally got the chance to head off to bed.

Today Dominica found a house in Amhert, New York that she really likes and is very excited about.  It would take a lot for us to be able to get it, though, so it seems incredibly unlikely at this point.  But we will see.

We were both up on the early side today. We had to go out to Military Park a few times today so that Dominica could take some GPS measurements for her “GPS and the New Geography” course. She is really getting into the class. It turns out to have been a really good choice for her.

I went down to the deli in our building to pick up breakfast. We ate and watched an episode of Family Ties and then Dominica went off to work on her homework. I decided to take a nap as my migraine was pretty bad and I was not going to be able to get any work done unless I was feeling better. I lay in bed with my eyes covered listening to the News from Lake Wobegon on my iPod for an hour or more. I didn’t really sleep but I felt a bit better after that.

For years I have used the word moreso always believing that that was the standard spelling. Apparently “more so” is more common. However it would appear that the OED (the Oxford English Dictionary – considered the standard for the language) includes it. So I am going to keep right on using it. Possibly even moreso.

This afternoon was spent almost exclusively doing homework for Min and the term paper for me.  I found the topic very challenging but I am hopeful that I have come up with a decent paper.  It is hard to do a paper for a class that you have not done a paper for previously because you are never sure of the expectations and by the time that you know it is too late.

Dominica had to go out to Military Park three times to take her GPS readings and she had to do a lot of mapping with Google Maps.  But the work that she is doing is really interesting and I think that she is learning a lot about GPS and Web 2.0 technologies.  This course that she is taking appears to be relatively writing intensive and seems to really push a lot of though provoking topics.  I think that Dominica is getting a lot out of it.  More than just the value that appears to exist on the surface.  This seems to be one of those highly valuable liberal courses that people talk about but rarely get to take.  So I am excited for her.  It is a lot of work, and she seems to have to work harder for this, her “easy” class than she has to do for most of her advanced standing classes.

My evening was also busy with page-outs to the office.  I was pages several times and had to keep my email on all day to deal with things as they came in addition to the tiny “check out” work that has to be done on Sunday afternoons.  That only takes a few minutes but I did spend a bit of time on conference calls and talking to the support teams at the call center.  Nothing disastrous or stressful.  But a lot of hand-holding and double checking things.  It was a pretty busy Sunday night.

I wanted to go to bed early tonight but Dominica and I did homework until after eleven thirty and after all of that work neither of us was ready to fall asleep yet.  So I decided, since I kept getting paged anyway, to just wait out until midnight logged in to the office watching my email (my “on call” shift ends at midnight when the normal overnight shift begins) and then we would watch an episode of Family Ties so that we can get off to sleep.

Dominica did manage to sneak in some more Christy today.  She finished the television series either last night or this morning and today she managed to watch the first two made to television movies and to start the third.

I did get a chance to learn a bit more about using Handbrake today to do MPEG2 to h.264 conversions.  There is a new version of Handbrake out that is a big improvement over the last (.9.2 now instead of .9.1.)  I am getting the hang of making some good quality compressions.  I have so far discovered in my first test that I can compress a standard size MPEG2 compressed television episode of approximately one gigabyte to less than one third of its original size while actually improving the quality through high quality deinterlacing and deblocking algorithms.  And acceptable quality compressions can be made at closer to one tenth the original size.  I am really impressed with h.264.  I am surprised that there has not been a movement to use h.264 on the DVD carrier media as a stop-gap before BluRay.  A DVD carrying h.264 could carry twice as much content, roughly, as current Video DVDs.  That means that you could have average length movies at extremely high quality or have a single DVD contain ten or fifteen television episodes at the same quality as the originals.

Tomorrow is my birthday.  I have been thirty-two years old for the last three minutes as I write this.  Time for bed.  I can’t stay up late.  I am not as young as I used to be (like when I started today’s post.)

I stopped at Cafe Airlie on the way through and got my usual egg, cheese and potato with black pepper on a hardroll and some apple juice for my walk to the train station. It is so warm out that even with a light rain my fleece is a bit too much and I am too warm.

Dominica discovered this bit of disturbia today that occurred along a highway that we drive past on a regular basis. This is right along our normal route between Newark and “back home.” Although now we tend to go out to Williamsport before heading north.
Things were relatively busy at the office today. But busy in big bursts. Really busy bits with large bits of nothing as well.

I learned today that the coach of the New Jersey Giants (an American Football team from Rutherford, New Jersey which is playing in the NFL Super Bowl this year) used to be the coach of the Rochester Institute of Technology, RIT, Tigers. RIT is where I am currently attending for my Masters of Information Technology degree.

My Ruby based email log processing script ran today processing about two million database rows of data. That took several hours of intensive processing. It was 230MB of data sitting in my email account that had to be moved out. But that is a lot of stuff that isn’t stored in there anymore and that is no longer stored on my home storage area network (SAN.) I am very happy with how the script is working.

I did have to make some modifications to the script to get it to process all of the rows correctly. I had not dealt with some older data yet and there were some “end of log” messages, some unnecessary quotation marks and some bad line feeds that needed to be stripped out. But the script is more robust now and is getting better by the day. I think that by tomorrow night that I will most likely be done with all of the archival email processing except, possibly, for one small batch that needs some special oversight. Then I can focus on some reporting tools to dig into all of the data that I have been collecting.

I did some reading in “Practical Ruby for System Administration” today and learned some new tricks for using Ruby as part of by BASH command line. I never think of using Ruby (or Perl, for that matter) in a “one liner” or in-line mode. But it can be extremely useful for that. So I think that this is some good learning for me.

During her lunch break today Dominica went shopping and picked up a folding table for us to use in our apartment. We have been without anything resembling a table for two years now and it is beginning to be a problem. We definitely need a table for our Dungeons and Dragons games. So she picked one up at Home Depot. She also picked up some shoes while she was out. Her shoe collection is getting pretty big.

Dad lost power due to a massive windstorm tearing across Upstate New York today. We were talking over instant messenger when his power went out and he disappeared. It was gone for what seemed like four or five hours but it was on again by the time that I got home from the office.

I had to rush home so that I could help her to unload the car but she got stuck in traffic and I was home almost an hour before her anyway even though we left at almost exactly the same time (she left five to ten minutes before me.) I got home and logged right back into work and put in another hour or so. Then I helped Dominica unload the car, we fed the dog and we ran right over to Food for Life for a quick dinner.

After dinner we came home and I wrapped up the “office” work, started in on my Project Management homework, read some of “Manage It!” by Johanna Rothman which I am trying to finish reading this week and kicked off another long round of email transfers so that I can continue the process of migrating the data into the database. I can’t believe that I am already into the seventh week of my Project Management class. It is amazing to me how quickly the classes just fly by. When I was young they seem to drag on forever. Now I can’t even seem to get a chance to get into one before it is over.

Our first Netflix DVD came via the post today – 28 Weeks Later. It is the sequel to 28 Days Later which is one of the greatest, if not the greatest zombie apocalypse films of all time. Dominica has been extremely anxious to watch it. So I am trying to make time tonight so that we can watch it. If we don’t get to watch it tonight it could be a long time before we get to see it and one of the problems with Netflix and us is that if we don’t get to watch one movie then we don’t get to move on to another movie until we do. This is a problem when there is a movie that we both want to watch like this one. Normally the plan is for Dominica to get movies that only she wants to watch and use Netflix as a method of providing just her with movies so that she can watch them when I am working. It is already apparent how difficult a serialized movie stream will be if we try to watch everything together.

Dominica did some homework tonight as well for her GPS and the New Geography class. I pointed her in the direction of the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference which is perfectly tied in with her class. If you are interested in the content from the conference from 2005 through 2007 you can listen to the talks and panel discussions on IT Conversations for free. Very good stuff. Well worth a listen.

Tomorrow is a doggie-daddy day. Oreo is very excited. He was totally ready for today to be his sleep-in day but had to go to daycare. I will be working from home tomorrow and performing a much needed clean up of the apartment. Tomorrow night Dominica and I are heading to the Prudential Center for the first time and will be seeing the live show of Dancing with the Stars which was one of my Christmas presents for Dominica (yes, she actually asked for that.) The really cool thing about the show is that we will get to see Wayne Newton who will be singing, but not dancing, at the show. On Friday we are thinking about heading north up to my dad’s place to visit for the weekend (surprise dad!) But we will have to see how the weather is going to be. We don’t want to be driving in snow. But we do want to avoid the American football game this weekend.

It was almost nine when we started watching 28 Weeks Later. The movie was very interesting because it takes place in London and specifically on Canary Wharf where I worked while I was there just a couple of months ago. They showed people riding the DLR, getting off at Canary Wharf train station and had tons of footage of the buildings, Citi London and One Canada Square, that I worked in while I was there. There was just tons of shots all over the place that Dominica and I got to go which was incredibly cool. But that didn’t redeem the movie which was a horribly cheesy successor to the first film. This film seemed to be a zombie apocalypse cover for social commentary on the US military today. It was not an enjoyable film in the least. The plot was weak and boring and the gross factor was way too high and unnecessary. And every character in the movie was so horribly stupid and everything relied on so much coincidence and plot holes that it made no sense at all. I would avoid this movie unless you just can’t resist seeing Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs firebombed. And even then, just watch those bits. For those of us who have worked there it is pretty neat to see your office used as the site of a zombie infestation!

After that we popped in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air to watch before heading off to bed. The final result is that the movie was bad but Netflix is a great deal and we are very excited to be using it now.

The real reason that I went to Borders was to get the next book in the series that I am reading, “Exile” by R. A. Salvatore, but it turned out to be the only book of the series that they didn’t have. But then I noticed that they did have the “complete series” in a single book which was only barely more expensive that buying the two remaining books alone. So I just grabbed that – “The Dark Elf Trilogy“. The larger book will be harder to carry to read on the train but getting the books that way is much cheaper and I only have to worry about getting them one third as often.

I stopped at the McDonald’s in Newark Penn Station to surprise Dominica with dinner and then walked home. It was so warm this evening that I had to carry my coat everywhere and even then I was far too warm. My brief time outside between locations wasn’t enough to cool me off at all. I even had my sleeves rolled up! And it is December.

We ate dinner while watching Are You Being Served? in our bedroom and then opened up Dominica’s new D&D packs so that she could see the miniatures and the dice and all of the stuff that she got. She was very excited. We stopped watching television to play through the very short solo adventure that came with the Player’s Kit. It was very silly and incredibly short but it was a good learning tool I guess. We are hoping to get to try the starter adventure that comes with the Basic Game soon. It should have good learning tools in it as well including how to use the miniatures in the game and the dungeon tiles.

Dominica went to bed a bit before me. I stayed up reading “Exile” for quite a while.

I am working from home this morning as the weather is supposed to be really awful and when I work from home Oreo is able to stay home from daycare allowing Dominica to only have to drive about half the distance that she normally has to drive. And I don’t have to walk a long way in the sleet too. That would be crappy.

My job for the day involves getting the house clean for the D&D game that will be here tonight. Everyone is attempting to make it over here around six although the weather might make that a bit difficult. If the weather was good Dominica could be here around five forty but six might be pretty ambitious. I am sure that we will order in dinner tonight.

The snow and sleet started in Newark at a quarter after ten in the morning. Driving is not going to be fun for those stuck out in it.

I got all of the dishes done quite early this morning which was quite the accomplishment. With those done and out of the way I could focus on the real cleaning to be done for the rest of the day. Having so many people over to our apartment recently has really made for a regular regimen of cleaning and it shows. There isn’t so much to be done anymore and what is done is more thorough.

At eleven the snow started and it was so dark outside that I had to turn on some lights in the apartment to be able to see properly. It was a serious snow storm. We are expected to get six to eight inches today. Dad is expected to get ten inches back home near Rochester.

Our new matching chair is supposed to be delivered today but we will see what happens with the weather being as it is. It would be awesome to have that in time for the game tonight but that doesn’t seem possible at all as it needs to be brought up and assembled before we can use it and if we don’t get it finished and cleaned up it would just be a big mess in the way until it was and we don’t have very much time to play as it is.

Another day has passed and the software pirates have not contacted me with the address to their secret lair so that I can ship the computer chassis back to them. So it is looking more and more as if I got a free computer (sans software) out of the deal. Too bad the computer is so beat up. But at least it was free. And it appears to work too. Can’t really complain too much I guess.

My afternoon became horribly busy – partially because of people saving stuff until the end of the day and partially because I was left covering for people attempting to drive home in the bad weather and partially because Kinko-FedEx needed me to stand in the store for forty minutes while they boxes up some stuff for me to send out. I had called ahead to make sure that FedEx could handle doing the boxing for me and they said that that was fine. Then I got over there and thought that I could just drop the stuff off, pay and be on my way in five minutes. Nope. Forty minutes of just standing around waiting for them. Argh.

Dominica had a crappy drive home in the sleet and snow. I wrapped up everything that I could at work (more to come later on though) and quickly showered and continued cleaning as fast as I could. We had originally scheduled tonight at six for a D&D group thinking that that would be plenty of time but now it is a major panic to be ready. It was all that I could do to get the house ready and to get myself ready and to keep up with the after-hours work that was pouring in.

Dominica got home just after six and took Oreo out. I had just fed him his dinner and he wanted to go for a walk although not a long one as he does not enjoy this weather at all.

Ramona arrived around six thirty and Kevin and then Chris arrived a little after seven. So we actually had a bit more time than we had planned but ended up needing it as I had not had time to get a character ready for Kevin since we didn’t know until tonight that he was going to be playing.

We ordered in pizza from Nino’s and we all ate just before starting to play. We played more or less from eight until a little after midnight. About halfway through the game Dominica baked us an apple pie to keep everyone happy. We remarked that it doesn’t get much more American than D&D and Apple Pie.

We were all very tired by the end of the game and were ready to get to bed. Everyone has to be at work tomorrow except for Kevin who is just using up his saved up vacation time.

Andy drove to Canada today. Of all days – worst weather of the entire year so far. Took him nine hours to get up to North Bay, Ontario! At least he has GPS now and an Audible account. He has a ton of driving to do in the next week. He is going to Pittsburgh next week and this will be the most driving that he has done in a single week in years, I am sure.

Tomorrow night Dominica and I are driving to Arnold, Maryland for the Nicklin Christmas Party. We won’t be leaving until seven or eight at the earliest so it will be quite late by the time that we finally arrive. At least the weather is supposed to be good tomorrow.

I got caught up on my Project Management class at RIT. Once again, I am taking a “master’s” class that appears to be nothing more than a simple recap of the same class that I took while doing undergrad at SUNY Empire only the undergrad was quite a bit more thorough and expected more of us. I really don’t feel as if I have gained much through this experience so far. Although that is what I had predicted.

The latest Apple Nerd vs. PC Business Guy (The Girl) commercial. What in the world made Apple think that having the kid who played the “supreme Trekkie nerd” from Galaxy Quest as their mascot was a good idea and then have a series of commercials where they try to show “socially inept” as cool? This is a great series of spoof’s on Mac’s horrible advertising campaign of late: Money, Work, Music. You can check out the original material here from Laurie McGuinnes.

Part of Apple’s mistake was hiring Justin Long who is quoted as saying “I’m very, very computer illiterate… I get the worst of both worlds. I look like a geeky hacker, but I don’t know anything about computers.” – Interview with Fred Topel, June 28, 2007. Apple’s message: Mac’s make you look like a geek but not have a clue. Um, that’s not how “geek chic” works. It is important to note that when selecting their spokesperson Apple went for “nerd” (as in ComicCon) rather than “geek” as in LinuxTag. Apple is more aligned with the “dresses up like comic book characters crowd” rather than the “writes amazing business software in their spare time crowd”. Apparently Apple is hip to the jargon of the industry yet. Or assumes that their customers aren’t.