October 5, 2004

Well, we actually got a decent length entry yesterday. Not bad. I had to be up at 5:00 this morning which is really early by my standards. It was all that I could do to get out of bed and to get moving. Today was the Microsoft show in Ithaca and Niagara has a table set up there with some information about us so I need to be there all day.

I attended the Microsoft show. It started at 8:00 this morning at the theatres on Catherwood in Ithaca and it ran until 5:00 in the afternoon. I got to attend two seminars down there and I will get to attend two different ones when I go to the other Microsoft show in Rochester on Thursday. Today I got the chance to attend the Connections show which is targetted at Small Businesses and the TS2 show which is targetted at Partners. Min is going to be going to the exact same two shows on Thursday while I go to the technical events on that day. I did get a chance to wear our new Niagara Telecom branded clothing for the first time today. I didn’t really get any feedback on it, though, so I don’t know how it went from a marketing perspective. But eventually maybe people will get used to seeing our logo and will know who we are. Since they will see our logo on our shirts, in the yellow pages, on the website, at the Microsoft events and in November, at the Rochester Tech Expo, maybe they will start to remember who we are. By the way, we have plenty of tickets to go to the Rochester Tech Expo for anyone who is interested in learning about what services are offered by companies in the Rochester area. It is November 3rd and 4th at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center. So, just let me know if you are interested. It would be nice to have people that we know there so that our booth with look busier 😉

I got called today with my start date for the contract position in Albany. I am officially starting on October 12th! We aren’t too tempted to believe it but that is only one week away so we are right down to the wire. Of course, no sooner do they call with the start date in Albany than SunTrust opens up some new interesting positions in Atlanta:( My timing is never very good. But the important thing is that I have work. And Andy has work too so that all works out really well. And Min is at her new job that has all of the benefits:)

After the show, I drove up to T-burg and had dinner with Nate and Tammy. Then it was up to Walmart to pick up today’s release of Disney’s Aladdin Special Edition. After entering the new DVD and CD data into my spreadsheet, it is official that we now have over 1000 CDs and over 850 DVDs and Laserdiscs with only a small portion of those being LDs (maybe 200-250 total!) Lots of LDs have been switched over to DVD already as I find them cheap. I am always on the lookout for a movie bargain. It is amazing that movies are often cheaper or the same price as a music CD these days. And CDs are about the same price as DVD-Audio and SACD. Which is really weird because that is the same content but on a higher quality media that costs more to produce. I don’t really understand the economics of it all. I did pick up Hilary Duff’s new release today as well as the CD from that new pseudo-country act Big and Rich. I didn’t know how much I was going to like their CD but it really rocks, I really like it. It is hard to define because the music on it is all over the place but there are at least four songs off of it that I recognize from hearing on the radio including “Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy”, “Rollin'”, “Holy Water” and “Wild West Show”.

I didn’t get home until late and I only had about twenty minutes to see Min before she had to leave for work in Henrietta. I decided that I needed to relax this evening so I went down and watched Willow on the big screen. That is the first time that I actually watched that movie in a long time and now I realize that it really wasn’t a very good movie at all. In fact it was really cheesy and silly and the effects were terrible. They used that pathetic stop motion animation on the hydra in the one scene and it just looks awful. It is way to reminiscent of Jason and the Argonauts for me to think that it was okay. And the composite work with the brownies was really bad as well and done in a very silly way. It is too bad because I remember that being a much better movie than it really is. Lucas really should have gone back and updated that one. The Star Wars movies were all really impressive for their time but Willow wasn’t impressive ever. No stop action animation is ever okay unless you are doing an entire film like that like Wallace and Gromit or Chicken Run. Maybe the moral of the story is, “Don’t do stop motion animation if you don’t work for Aardman!”

I decided to write the update tonight instead of going to bed promptly because the hamster was awake and wanting something to do and since he has been so neglected recently, I wanted to make sure that he got some attention. So right now he is tooling around the house in his hot red hamster ball. It is his first chance to use his new ball. He broke his old one and had to go for an entire week without one at all and that is really rough on a little hamster who finds that that is his only form of entertainment. So he is having a good time tonight. He is also happy because the house got really cold yesterday but it is back to a normal temperature today.

I will be around tomorrow but I will be swamped working on homework and contract stuff so I will be home but very busy. Tonight is Min’s last night of work for the week so she will most likely come home and sleep a little tomorrow but will probably be awake most of the day.

Eric and I had been planning a trip to Washington next week but since I have to be in Albany starting on Tuesday (and really, I need to be out there Monday night) there is no way for us to go. So I will probably be around at least a little on Monday. Joe, Min’s brother, was planning on coming out this weekend to go to Letchworth to see the leaves but we discovered today that this weekend is the Letchworth arts and crafts show so it would be a really bad weekend for going down there to see anything.

Okay, time for Scott to get off to bed. Sleepy time.

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