October 23, 2005

The SGL Mega Media Monster is out of control. We skyrocketed to #66 on podOmatic’s daily list for yesterday. That is really exciting. Our listenership is way up from what it was. Hopefully we can keep these kind of numbers up. I am really enjoying making the podcasts.

Seven days and counting until Disney World!

I was awake at 4:30 this morning. Way too early for this ‘sleeper inner’. I didn’t have a whole lot to do that early in the morning so I got dressed and went out into the brisk morning air for a walk. I haven’t had much of a chance of late to get in a nice walk so it was nice to get one in even if it was very cold and it wasn’t for very long. I did just enough to qualify as a walk and then went back to the Comfort Inn and continued to get shower and get ready for the day. I have a long day of driving ahead of me. Or so it seems.

Dominica was up by 5:30 when the wake up call came. Then she started to get ready. Unlike our usual attempts to get out of a hotel early, today’s attempt went very smoothly. Min went down to breakfast at 6:50 and I was only a minute behind her. The car all ready packed and both of us totally ready to go. Jeremy was just coming out of his hotel room as I went down that hallway. We had decided to let dad stay longer in Ohio (by a few hours) by riding home with the Richardsons and Jeremy would ride home with us. So dad got a chance to sleep in while Jeremy will get a chance to spend some time online. Which he has all ready gotten to do a bit this weekend as he spent several hours online playing the MUD from our cousins’ Mike and Cheryl’s house on Friday. But we had to get back plenty early to be sure that Dominica was able to make it to work after picking Oreo up from Art and Danielle’s where he has been staying the weekend.

We were on the road by around 7:20. When we got out to the car we had to let it warm up for a few minutes because the windshield was covered in a thin sheet of ice. I didn’t think that it had been that cold and was not expecting ice at all.

I decided to try my own route out of Ohio to see if I could shave some time from dad’s way. I took US77 north out of North Canton up to Akron to OH8 and on up to US271 in Cayahoga that takes you right up to US90 which, of course, brings us all of the way back home. We gave that route a try and found ourselves shooting right out of Ohio without any problem at all. The way that dad likes to take is similar to taking local roads all of the way across New Jersey. Now that both of those states have turned into never-ending suburban sprawl those local roads are overly congested and you are not able to get anywhere on them. So we found ourselves in Erie, PA almost exactly two hours after having pulled out of North Canton near Beldon Village. That was way better than the time that we made coming down OH11 out of Ashtabula on Friday. We were extremely happy with our progress.

In Erie, Dominica decided that she had to find a rest stop because she had had coffee for breakfast at the hotel. Jeremy was getting hungry so we decided to make a pitstop at Burger King. On such a short trip we really should have been able to drive straight through without a stop. It really only becomes a long trip if you stop a few times. Normally on a trip of this length I wouldn’t stop on my own.

From Eric we just continued on on US90 all of the way to Batavia where we took 63 over to dad’s house. We were at the house before noon. That is a total of 4 hours and a little less than twenty minutes not including the pitstop to go the entire distance. Not too shabby. Compare that to about six hours of drive time that it took to go out to Canton.

At dad’s house we swamped his car for mine which had been in the garage and then went right down to Art and Danielle’s so that we could pick up our Oreo. Oreo was VERY glad to see us. This was the first time that he had stayed with anyone other than dad since we got him so it was a little stressful for him. Although he apparently had a really good time playing with Obie most of the time. We were very glad to get to finally see him. It is rough for new “parents” to be without their dog for three days. This is the longest that we have been without him. He was definitely very glad to see us.

When we first got home Oreo was really worked up and was going crazy running around the house. He spent quite a while playing with his big blue ball before he wore himself out and decided to take a serious nap. Min also lay down to take a nap before she had to scoot off to work the double shift. Jeremy spent the afternoon on the MUD since he only gets a fast connection to play on from time to time.

I decided to hop onto the mud a little since I hadn’t played in forever. It has been weeks since I have even logged on. There was hardly anyone playing, though, so I didn’t stay on for long.

I have a lot of work that I need to do today to get ready for the class that I am going to be teaching on Tuesday. I am teaching a history of UNIX and Linux along with a bit of technical architectural information about those products. My big project that I have to do to get ready is to prepare a number of UNIX images for Virtual PC that I can run on my laptop. That way I will have live demo systems that I can show off. I plan to hour four or five systems installed and ready to show off. I think that the class will like that. Give them a chance to see Linux, BSD and Solaris in action. It is so much easier when you actually have something to look at and not just some ethereal technical name to talk about. It should be a lot of fun. I get to talk for almost two hours. I am looking forward to it.

For all of my podcast fans out there who want to be able to call into the show and leave a message that will be put onto the show: you can now call into my show directly and leave a message at (206) 984-4582. Go for it. Join the revolution.

Jeremy and I decided to get some dinner so we ordered a pizza from Mama Mia’s. It was just a lot easier than going out somewhere. Oreo is so glad that we are home that I really don’t want to disrupt him any more than absolutely necessary. He hasn’t left my side since Min left for work. He even lets me get down on the floor to snuggle with him which he almost never does.

Scott's new Sony ICF-S10MK2 Transistor Radio AM/FM Battery Powered Mono

So I forgot to mention this the other day but I received a package in the mail from doing some survey or other and it turned out to be an old fashioned “transistor” radio. AM/FM mono. Nothing special at all. Dumbest thing ever. They must be giving them away to empty inventories or something. The thing that makes this so funny is not that this is a five cent radio that you get at Walmart. No, this was a nice unit once upon a time. Totally ridiculous today. I can’t believe that this thing got delivered to my house. It can’t possibly be worth the postage that they paid let alone the effort to put it into an envelope. I don’t have any inkling what they are expecting me to want to do with this radio. I mean I supposed that I can find some use for it as Dominica and I have no radio in the house really. There is a clock radio in our bedroom I think. And there is a boombox in the basement. Both of those are awfully cumbersome to use and neither one runs on batteries. So having this one for when the power goes out is better than nothing I suppose. But still it is a pretty weird thing to have sent to you. Since I had it sitting out so that I could talk about it I decided that I might as well grab some batteries and pop them in and see how she works. I tuned my cool new radio to WXXI-FM at 91.5 and heard the sweet sounds of a church organ coming in over NPR. Just think, fifty years ago this was how people were listening to “rock’n’roll”!

While working on some UNIX installs I decided to move to the living room and watch some Are You Being Served? with Oreo. He enjoyed the chance to just hang out together. He keeps making me move his pillow into whatever room I am working in so that he can lay beside me.

I had to clean the hamster’s cage again all ready. He really knows how to make a mess. I have a hard time figuring out his logic a bit of the time. I have no idea what he thinks that he is doing.

I finally got around to ordering some new BBC shows from Amazon today. I ordered the final two seasons of As Time Goes By as well as the first season of Butterflies from 1978 that has the same male lead as As Time Goes By. I also ordered Grace and Favour which is more popularly known here by its American title: Are You Being Served, Again?. Grace and Favour picks up many years after the original BBC series left off with the original cast heading off to the British countryside for retirement. The show only ran for a single season but it was a very good show and strangely quite different than the original show. It was a really nice way to wrap up the show that had been so popular once upon a time. The original show and been a pioneering sitcom but had been based around the theory that the episodes were almost totally stand-alone and you never had to worry about seeing them out of order. The inter-character interactions never built complex relationships and storylines. But G&F fixed that to some degree and took the show in a slight different direction that allowed them to end the long running show on a more emotional note. Dominica has only seen the pilot episode and doesn’t know what happens in the series so she is very anxious to see it and won’t know that it is coming unless she is reading the updates like all of you.

I did manage to record another episode of the SGL Podcast this evening. I was incredibly tired and fighting not to fall asleep while recording so bear with me. There has been so much traffic to the pod site that I felt it was important to get another episode put together and made available today. It is 11:30 and dad is picking me up at 7:15 in the morning to meet Min over at the Omega so I have to get to bed so that I can snuggle with Oreo. He hasn’t had snuggles in days and he can’t be happy about that.

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