Sheep Guarding Llama

I wrote today’s udpate and somehow managed to get it completely deleted. How do you like them apples. Maybe we will be lucky and decide what I had written was really boring and something better needed to be said anyway. But boy is there a lot of typing involved with writing this thing! I don’t really relish the idea of writing an entire day’s worth of updates twice. But, what are you going to do. So here we go.

Min and I got up really early this morning around 6:30. This is incredibly rare for us and no one should be expecting us to be getting up this early on a regular basis or anything. This morning is the early morning Easter service at church. We have seven people being baptized this week including three of Min and my students from Castile. So we really need to be there. I didn’t feel very well this morning so it was hard to get going but we made it. I had to call over to Jeremy’s house to get him out of bed because he forgot about church (he had asked if we would pick him up and take him to church with us this week.)

We got Jeremy and managed to just make it to church on time, no thanks to me. Church was long with seven people getting baptized. We left around 9:30. Tim Kelly that Eric and I went to elementary school at Pavilion Baptist School with was there. Tim and I went to school together from kindergarten through eighth grade. But I haven’t seen him in five years or so. He got married just a little while before I did and they live outside of Batavia in Corfu now (Corfu is just north of Darien Lake.) But Tim is working in Geneseo now at T.A.B. across from the Jiffy Lube.

We had to drop Jeremy off on our way back to Geneseo because he still had to attend his regular church service. Min and I stopped at Burger King on the way back home and got some breakfast. Min tried to go to bed when we got back to the house because she has to work tonight yet and is going to be really tired but she wasn’t able to fall asleep because she was worried about not bringing something to eat with us this afternoon.

So Min got out of bed and drove over to Wegmans and got some cooking supplies and came back and made a green bean casserole and a peanut butter chocolate brownie dessert. That took her right up until we had to leave to go get lunch. We got over to my aunt and uncle’s at 1:00 and had lunch there with the family. Min had to leave at 2:00 to get to work so we didn’t have a really long time to visit. Min left me there and I hung out for a while. Dad brought me back home at 5:00 or so.

As usual, I worked down in my office while I had the time to myself. I also watched Airheads which I haven’t seen since it was new. It is a relatively dumb movie but it has a lot of really big names in it like Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Michael McKean, Judd Nelson and Joe Mantegna. That’s a lot of people for a pretty much nothing movie.

If anyone is looking for some short but entertaining cartoons, check out Spinnerdisc. There isn’t a lot there but it is funny.

I was actually up and moving first thing this morning, well 8:30 – but that is pretty amazing for me. I had a little bit of a headache from the game last night. I seem to get one almost every week. I am not sure if it is from my eyes staring at the screen all of that time or if it is from the junkfood or if it is just caused by straining so hard for so long trying to win.

I came down and worked in the office for a while this morning. Min got up a little bit after 9:00. Jeremy was still here from last night until Sara came and picked him up around 11:00 which is when she gets out of bowling here in Geneseo.

After Jeremy left, we got ready to go and headed up to the city to meet Josh and JoAnne and Phil and Kate at the IHOP in Henrietta. We had a good time at lunch – and our waiter was hilarious. He was new but deinitely shouldn’t have been working at an IHOP. There are much better restaurants around that he should have been able to get some work at.

Kate took off after lunch to get things ready for their Easter dinner and the rest of us went to Marketplace Mall to deal with the clothes for the upcoming wedding. We ended up just going to Tuxedo Junction and getting everything taken care of in no time. That was really easy. We ordered the tuxes and did our fittings and everything. Only Montana Bob has yet to be fitted. I supposed we should be calling him Binghamton Bob or Southern Tier Bob but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it. JoAnne and Min did some looking for accessories and a dress for Min but didn’t find anything. We tried to find shirts for the guys but had no luck doing that either. We are going to have to find shirts online so that we can all get the same thing. I did pick up a new pair of Dockers while were there. The teflon coated stain resistant ones so that I can be cool like Zach. Phil had to take off at this point to get to Easter dinner so we saw him on his way and the rest of us did a little bit more shopping before heading over to Friendly’s for some ice cream. We were all really in an ice cream kind of mood so it really worked out well. It really hit the spot.

I had to look for a book at Borders and no one was going to object to going there so the four of us ran over to Borders and shopped for a little while. I needed a book on Windows scripting and luckily I was able to find just what I was looking for. Josh and Jo had to get moving, though, so we parted company there and Min and I headed on back down to Geneseo.

Min and I wanted to relax so we watched a couple of movies this evening. Saturday seems to be the only really good night for relaxing at all. We started off with the German classic Anatomie starring Franka Potente. It started off pretty gruesome but wasn’t too bad, overall. We thought that it was entertaining and somewhat intelligent. Not really my type of movie but better than most. You can still find copies of it in the Walmart five dollar bargain bins so keep an eye out for it. It is a pretty good value. There is a sequal but I have never seen it available here in the states. The sequal was made in 2003. The guy who plays the antagonist in Anatomie, Benno Furmann, starred opposite Franka in her popular romantic film The Princess and the Warrior, also made in Germany. Another one of the actors was Sebastian Blomberg who also starred in the film What To Do In Case of Fire that we had watched earlier in the week. He did the movies about one year apart.

We decided to keep with the foreign film theme and followed up with Merci pour le Chocolat which is sort of a suspense slash drama sort of thing. Very hard to put your finger on. It is really out there. Even after watching it we had a hard time knowing where the film had been trying to go. It didn’t do a good job of connecting you to the people in the film. You couldn’t really identify with any of them – which, as all of my SGL readers know, is a major downpoint to me for any movie. The movie was in French which really confused Min because she thought that the movie was set in France but it didn’t really make a lot of sense to be in France. The film was actually a Swiss film shot in western Switzerland. Min wasn’t aware that French was one of the official languages of Switzerland. The film quality was really low: making it look like something out of the early eighties. But it is a recent film. The scenery was gorgeous which really made us wish that they had filmed it in higher quality.

Tony has gotten in on the Eric Poop Head project and there is now an additional page further explaining the plight of poor Blogging Eric. You can check out Tony’s tribute to Eric at Eric the Urinal Cake Head. I would feel bad for Eric but, he did start this one. He should have seen this coming for a long time now.

Tony managed to hang here last night and spent the night. We were blogging until the early hours of the morning and slept in really late today. Min and I woke up to dad calling about getting together for lunch. He came over around 1:00 (yeah, we slept in really late) and the four of us went to the Omega Grill for a Friday Fish Fry. The Omega did something to change their batter for their fish and it is really amazing now.

After lunch we came back to the house and watched The Passion for Good Friday. None of us had seen it yet. It was really amazing. It is really difficult to sit through, though, being so graphic.

I had just enough time to take Tony home after the movie for us to get ready for the game tonight. While I was gone, Miranda arrived from Canada. We had seven people and it went really well.

Tony, Jeremy and I managed to get onto the news last night. None of us have had a chance to see the footage yet but my dad recorded it and supposedly you can see all of us sitting with Steve Bulkley and watching the seminar. That is pretty cool, I don’t think that I have ever been on the news before. It is only for one second, quite literally, but it is something. Too bad I don’t have television myself or it would seem like a bigger deal, I am sure.

We were seven for the game tonight. Josh played remotely and Art, Danielle, Michael, Min, Andy, Jeremy and I all got to play. Michael didn’t play in “the game” but played on my laptop upstairs or on Min’s GBA. In order to save everyone the gory details of the game, that information will all be posted over to The Friday Night Game blog on BlogSpot.

It is difficult, when working overnights, to know when to end one blog day and when to begin the next. But I made it home early enough yesterday that I will consider my day today to have begun when I woke up this morning – like most people do. I got up at 10:00 and got in the shower to get ready for the day. Jeremy got to the house at 11:45 and we took right off to get up to Rochester to see the Microsoft show. We stopped in Avon and picked up Tony around 12:15.

We arrived at the Microsoft show right on time at 12:30. We got signed in and had enough time to make it out to check out their “technology truck” which was mildly interesting. The truck was neat, sort of a blend of technology and comfortable seating. The only issue was that I was not sure what they wanted us to see on the truck. It was sponsored by HP and Intel but the only thing on the truck really worth looking at was an HP Tablet PC which was pretty nice, but hardly worth a whole demo truck. There were some computers showing some Microsoft applications but the place wasn’t set up in such a way as to learn anything from them. So we only looked at that for a minute.

The seminar itself started at 1:00 and we met Steve Bulkley (Jen’s husband) as we went into the show and he sat with us. The show went until 5:00 and was pretty good. Robert Jackson was our presenter and I have seen him many times – he is very good.

While we were at the seminar, Fox News arrived and took pictures of Tony, Jeremy and I as well as of Rob while he was speaking. We don’t know if we will be on the news or not tonight, but we have everyone attempting to record the news, just in case.

I won some cool stuff at the seminar including a book that sounds really cool and an MSDN subscription which I am really excited about. I had an MSDN subscription a number of years ago but it wasn’t nearly as cool back then. Or maybe it just wasn’t as cool to me because I didn’t know how to get any use out of it. It is a $1,200 value and something that I should buy but have a really hard time justifying spending the money on it.

After the show, we came back home and both Tony and Jeremy were able to hang out for a while and Min cooked dinner for us. She made her first attempt at deep frying fish. She made her own batter and fried them up in the deep fryer that I got for Christmas. It turned out pretty well. After dinner, Tony, Jeremy, Min and I tried to get in a game of AoE2 but Jeremy only had until 9:00 and we weren’t able to get very far. Tony didn’t bring his computer over since he was not planning on coming over and so I was stuck playing on my laptop that keeps freezing up on me while we are playing the game. It is really weird because it never crashes any other time. Just during AoE2. I am convinced that it is caused by a bug in the game that only manifests itself in that way on my machine. Min has another weird problem that her mouse stops working each time after my laptop crashes. Strange coincidence? I think not.

Jeremy took off and Tony called home to see if he could spend the night. He is actually allowed to stay so, he is staying. He and I tried playing a game of AoE2 but my laptop was being really awful and we eventually just had to give up on it. Oh well. I have a desktop to use tomorrow so the game should be good.

The infamous Albino Black Sheep (which, coincidentally, also is named after sheep) has some really good videos to take a look at including: The Star Wars Kid. You have to feel sorry for this kid. He probably made this video in his basement thinking that no one would ever see it but then, someone, managed to sneak into his basement, steal this video and get it posted up onto the Internet. Life can be rough. I guarantee that this kid will grow up knowing the importance of hiding videos of things that you don’t want the world to see. And, for those of you who just can’t get enough of this stuff but don’t bother looking for it yourself because you know I will post links to it (although I am sneaky and unlike other people who have simple “link blogs” to put all of the links in one place I intersperse them throughout my blog so that you have to read it all all of the time in order to find them – or just look for the blue text) here are some dancing badgers.

Min spent the evening discovering weird videos and video games online.

The other day, Jeremy expressed amazement at the fact that I knew the Hampster Dance. Little did he realize that I have been a net user since the beginning of time and every famous website in the world is known by me (All Your Internet R Belong To Me!) Although, Jeremy was not aware that the cool Hampster Dance Song used to be more than a tune on the radio but was actually a really awful website long, long ago. Anyway, I have a rough example of what the original site looked like here – now remember kids, this was originally viewed in 640×480 or 800×600 and it was JUST the dancing hamster nothing else. The Original Hampton the Hampster Dancing Hamsters Page. I know you have all missed this one. They have removed the music from the page but I think that you all know exactly what it sounds like. And for those of you who just can’t get enough of this old time entertainment, try out the classic Jesus Dance from the same era.

Special thanks to Jeremy Richardson for working hard to provide us with the following lyrics:

Here’s a Llama, There’s a Llama
And Another Little Llama
Fuzzy Llama, Funny Llama
Llama Llama Duck
Llama Llama Cheesecake Llama
Tablet; Brick; Potato Llama
Llama Llama Mushroom Llama
Llama Llama Duck
Once I was a Treehouse
I lived inside a cake
but I never saw the way
The Orange slayed the Rake
I was only three years dead
but it told the tale
and now listen little child
to the safety rail.
Did you ever see a llama
kiss a llama, on the llama
Llamas Llama Taste of Llama
Llama Llama Duck
Half-a-Llama, Twice the Llama
Not A Llama, Farmer Llama
Llama in a Car Alarma a Llama
Llama Llama Duck
Is that how its told now
is it all so old?
Is it Made of Lemon Juice?
Doorknob; Ankle; Cold
Now my song is getting thin
And I’m Out of Luck
Time for Me to Retire Now
And Become A Duck

Now it is that much easier for you all to sing along with our new SGL theme song! Check out Jeremy’s audio post of him singing the song himself.

I tried to sleep in this morning. The plan was to stay up really late last night and to sleep in really late today so that I would be able to stay up all night tonight while I am working at Wegmans. But of course, the instant the “business day” started, someone called about the work tonight just to make sure that everything was all set. Well sure, its all set except that now I am going to be falling asleep all night long since I only got four hours of sleep. Min had gotten home just twenty minutes before that phone call which had sort of woken me up but not enough to really disrupt my sleep. Then there was a second call at 9:00 and another at 9:30. Then at 10:00 I got a call about work that someone needed me to actually go down to the office and actually work and be coherent and know what I was doing. That’s not easy even when I am not tired! So so much for sleeping in this morning. Today is going to be a very long day indeed. I was concerned that Jeremy would have woken up and was going to be bored because I was sleeping in late but no fear of that – he was passed out on the futon and didn’t even notice me going around the house. I had thought that he was awake because I heard Andy getting ready for work really, really late and thought that it had to be Jeremy because Andy was supposed to have been at work a long time before that point. But it must have been him.

Well, I managed to think through the issue this morning and get things back on track. While I was working on that I realized that tomorrow has to be the Microsoft show in Rochester. Of course, it is the day after I have to work all night which makes it really tough. But the session that I should really be going to is in the afternoon – the morning one isn’t very important to me. I would like to go to the morning one and a second afternoon one but I am just not going to have the time no matter what I do. Nor is there anyway that I could stay awake through the morning one. I am going to have to play it by ear.

I gave up on going back to sleep (only four hours of sleep and I have a long night ahead of me too) so Min, Jeremy and I went to Denny’s for some lunch just before noon. Yummy. Our waitress starting quoting Napolean Dynamite – how cool. We eat there so much that we are like part of the gang.

My plan was to sleep this afternoon before going into Wegmans to work the overnight. I ended up doing some work around the house until way too late to get any good sleep. I would have to get up by 7:30 to really have any chance of making it into Wegmans and I didn’t even attempt to go to bed until around 5:00. Not the smartest move but it is hard to bring yourself to go to bed in the middle of the afternoon. Just before going to bed I took one last look through the RSS feed that I get and I noticed that BBC was covering an explosion at an oil plant in Texas City, Texas. Francesca’s husband Bennie works at an oil refinery just up the street from the British Petroleum facility that exploded. He works at Sterling. But Min wasn’t sure which facility he worked at and she was in a panic trying to get a hold of someone who knew. Finally Francesca called back from the school and let Min know that everything was okay. Bennie’s brother works directly across the street from the blast and we haven’t heard from him yet, but he should be okay. Francesca’s friend Leslie’s [sp] husband is a firefighter at one of the other plants that responded when BP blew up. Strangely, only the British news covered the story and there was nothing at all in the news here. Not even CNN carried that story. [Update: CNN started carrying the story after midnight, about twelve hours after the blast that killed fourteen people and injured over one hundred more.]

So, needless to say, getting to sleep wasn’t going to work very well. I ended up just giving up on the idea which did make it a little bit easier to get to work on time. The weather was really crappy tonight and it took extra long to get up to the city. I was planning on taking Min’s car up but she convinced me to take mine with the better snow tires and it is a good thing that I listened to here. The drive was terrible. But I left so early that I got there right on time.

Work went pretty well. Overnights are always fun. Next week is my last week working with a shadow, after that point I am flying solo for the rest of the project – if we do it. We are a long way from having that in the bag. We have an oral committment but that doesn’t mean a whole lot.

The guys that I work with on the overnights are really cool and we have a good time even though we are really tired and looking to go home as soon as possible. Everything went about as smoothly as we could expect for having not worked on the project for a month and a half. We had fun, got the job done, got a bite to eat and I managed to get home around 5:00am which was really nice. I actually got to go to bed and get a little sleep in before having to get up tomorrow.