We’re sure that you’ve heard about all the flooding going on up here, and to tell the truth it is pretty bad.  They shut down the place I work on Tuesday at about 10am because the Sheriff told us we had to.  It was a total “oh shit” fest for me - grabbing backups and throwing equipment into my car.  I made it back home alright, but all the counties were in a state of emergency.  On my way back home, I could see the road that I traveled on about 3 hours before TOTALLY underwater… because the road I take to work runs right next to the river.

The past 2 days have been pretty hard.  My boss had to be helicopter’d out of his house because he couldn’t make it out.  Yes, they literally brought a helicopter and picked him off.  Crazyness.  So I’ve been taking care of things at work since I’m the only person that can recover all our servers and such.  Today I tried to go in at about 4am to get the servers back up but I couldn’t find ANY way into the facility.  Then Cait and I went up to my work through some crazy ass backroads about 1pm this afternoon, in which I was able to recover some of the server data and get it somewhat online.  So I come back home, take a nap, and then at about 8pm tonight I got a call that the servers had all crashed.  Once again I found my way (this time by myself) through the NY countryside (all whilst a huge storm was blowing in) to work where I found the servers had all crashed because of the storm and lightning… ugh.  Long story short, with my boss indisposed I’m going back in soon to play little hero once again.

Other than that it’s been a pretty interesting few days.  Here are some pictures:

I am making this post from a Linux box that I built here at work and configured all on my own. I’m using CentOS because it seemed more administrator heavy and was also desktop/workstation compatable. At work we’re looking to go to AJAX webmail, and since it is Linux based I figure it’s time to delve into the big penguin.

It’s like learning to ride a bike all over again.

So there is some pretty wickedly cool software out there on the internet now… it will match your face to a database of other faces using facial recognition software.  Well, I got bored at work and this is what I found out….

 

 

Last night Caitlin and I went to see the Binghamtom Mets play against the Trenton Thunder.  Right now we’re living next door to a AA ballpark, yet haven’t had the chance to go see a game yet.  I’ve been to AAA baseball before as a kid, but never to see an actual farm team.

Low and behold I found out as soon as we got there that Trenton was actually the farm team for the Yankees!  Wow, subway series (Mets vs. Yankees) and we had FRONT ROW seats right behind homeplate! 

I must say that it was an enjoyable experience.  The Mets pulled out the W, the final score being 8-2.  What’s one of the best part about going to see a farm team play?  The beer is about 1/2 the price of a MLB stadium.

So for $9 a piece, we got the best seats in the house and a fireworks show to boot at the end of the game.  Good game.

Finally!

I’ve been complaining about this for endless months now.  Your local cable company has a MONOPOLY on that little piece of coax line that comes into your house.  Yet, the telephone company is required by law to lease their pair of wires that come into your house to other competing companies.  The cable companies have no such law in effect and haven’t for the past 15 years.

Remember back in the 80’s when you saw those MCI commercials?  That was about the time the telephone companies were required to lease their lines.

It’s pretty apparent to me that you can transfer more data faster along coax/fiber than a pair of copper wires.  Looks like the government figured that one out too.

Your internet and cable monthly rates are going down.  VOIP is coming to a store near you! (told ya)

Other News:

• Exactly 1 month until the baby comes!
• Nick got a new car - pretty awesome.
• Happy Easter!

Today at work they had a drawing for 2 old desks that we were throwing away not using anymore.  The winner had the great priviledge of taking these 30 year old heavy metal desks home!  The ballot box was setup earlier this week and you could enter your name for the drawing.  Why you would is beyond me.

When it came time to do the drawings this afternoon, they drew a name for the first desk.  Apparently the person who “won” didn’t actually put their name in the ballot box and someone else did for them.  So they drew again.  And again.  And again.  Same name everytime.

Apparently the ballot boxes were stuffed.

Mind you I work at a manufacturing facility that makes voting machines across the country.

Irony, hahahaha.

 

 

We enrolled Newton in clicker dog training class.  I feel like it’s totally not going to do any good.  If he would stop squeezing through the neighbor’s fence and chasing their dog around their pool that would be good.  If he stopped waking up in the middle of a nap on lap my and biting me that would be wonderful. Clicker training is all positive reinforcement though so there are no punishments for bad behavior.  Whatever I just don’t want him to bite the baby.

John and I took a Lamaze weekend and now I’m even more terrified of giving birth.  The more you know eh? I also am kind of leaning toward not getting an epidural.  There are a lot  of negative points and after discussing it with John I may only want light drugs.

“In a way, it was a precursor of Christianity,” Pierris said. “Orphism believed that man’s salvation depended on his knowledge of the truth.”

For all you Sinfonian’s out there.