Now that we’re mostly moved into the new server room, we’re running the air conditioner and keeping the door closed. Or at least trying to. The door frame is just slightly off, so that the door doesn’t close easily, and if it doesn’t latch, the air pressure difference pushes it open again.
It’s a bit disconcerting to walk into the room and close the door behind you, only to have it open again thirty seconds later… and no one’s there.
I used to like choir. Once upon a time, it was fun and entertaining and I enjoyed going. That time is not now.
For the first part of this semester, we were hammering away at Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, so that 9 of us could go sing it in Hawaii. And while that was all fun and shiny, the fact that we still had a little more than a month of class left was problematic. Our director does have a point that the choir needs to be visible and give more concerts so that we get some of the precious little money to be had around the community-college scene. However, the way she’s decided to be visible is really getting some of us steamed.
Simply put, the music she’s having us do is CRAP. We got ELEVEN new pieces the practice after the Mozart concert, and fully half of them are the type that need twice the time we’ve got and half the accompanying repertoire. Since then, we’ve received two more pieces, one of which was a shock because I actually knew it and the other of which was a shock because it was actually pretty. That brings the total of good songs to what, four? Not counting the piece she hand-picked a group to do and ended up with me anyway when one of them walked. (I’m still snickering about that one.) Add to this the fact that we have yet to hear most of these all the way through and correct. How are we supposed to work toward doing these songs well if we don’t know what they’re supposed to sound like?
Two things I don’t think she realizes:
1. We have lives. We have jobs. We have commitments that are not choir and that, frankly, come first. And when we have a goal of six hours of practice outside of class set for us by someone who is demonstrating that she doesn’t give a shit about our lives, those of us who can’t meet it aren’t going to bother trying.
2. People all around the world are more likely to do a thing when they enjoy it. And for adults to be told, in relation to an activity they ostensibly do for recreation, that they must do it a certain way whether they like it or not is NOT conducive to cooperation or to adaptation.
What I’m really hoping for is that when everybody’s gotten there tomorrow night, she asks if we’ve practiced the six hours and dismisses everybody who admits to not having done it. And if that happens, what I hope is that over half the choir is dismissed and that it’s the good half.
A few weeks ago I purchased Precious Things: The String Quartet Tribute to Tori Amos from Amazon. I was looking through my recommendations tonight and started finding all these string renditions of popular music, including…
This had me laughing, but then I looked further down on the page:
WTF?!? Nine Inch Nails string tribute?
Hmm… I wonder if anyone has done a string album for The Who.
After watching last night’s Angel, I have a new theory based on the question of just what role each person has in the Devourer’s arrival or defeat. After all, Skip told us all of them were manipulated into being where they were.
(Spoilers follow) Continue reading
About a year ago, I decided that my little universe needed its timeline cemented. I’d already adjusted it several times, and it was getting hard to keep straight. So rather than have to redo it yet again, I decided to do it right, and figure it out by generations rather than arbitrary dates. From the beginning.
I wrote a good chunk of my info down on paper before realizing that making corrections was going to be a royal bitch. And it needed corrections. So, after an abortive attempt at organizing things in a plain old text file, I started looking online. First I checked out timeline programs, none of which were really suited to my purpose. One that I downloaded would only work for dates in or after 1900–not wonderful when you’re dealing with years ranging from 191 to 730. But I did get a lead on what would actually help me here: genealogy programs.
The one I found is simple, inexpensive, and capable of exporting data to the majority of other programs out there. However, there are three main features that I find inconvenient for my purposes. I don’t anticipate that any future versions will allow you to change the calendar the program uses, but that’s what my text file is used for now. And not allowing same-sex marriages probably wouldn’t cause too many problems in the real world, much, but it’s kind of important in my world. The most annoying bit is the way it deals with children out of wedlock. They show up in a descendant tree, but if the parent whose family you’re looking at later married, the child will show up as being from that marriage. If you do an ancestor tree, the later marriage doesn’t show up at all unless you have it in Verbose mode, which is a pain because then everybody has their marriage information listed, making it very redundant and cluttered because just about everybody on the tree is listed twice.
In the interest of finding something I could customize the bejesus out of, I went DL’ing earlier this week. The open-source program looked promising, but since I can’t program and I don’t feel like sharing my data with Kelson yet, I ditched it. The other one I got is great fun to play with, and (drumroll) it allows same-sex marriages! I don’t know if it’ll give some kind of fatal error trying to save a file with that in, because the demo doesn’t let you save, but I’m willing to risk it. Even though if you tell it to display information for the parents of a child of one partner, it’s anybody’s guess whether it’ll back up to the biological parents or the married couple. It’s also very good about children out of wedlock; one of the standard display formats shows all unions by default.
But the original program might be even better if I figure out how to use ResEdit without trashing my computer. The manual says you can create new types of events and links between people. Can we say “Alternate Marriage” event link?
Yesterday was a complete Monday, and Kelson and I decided that since we needed to go to the market, we’d split up and he’d grab food at the Pick Up Stix in the same shopping center. As I was looking at yogurt, he came into the store and reported that they’d changed their menu yet again and the Buddha’s Feast (mixed veggies) that I’d wanted was now labeled a “Veggie Saute,” but otherwise had still seemed all right to get. Okay, fine. We finished our shopping and went home.
Come to find, when I opened the carton, that not only had the name changed but also the contents. I’d been expecting the old ingredient list, which to the best of my memory included baby corn, eggplant, and snow peas. None of that here. Just a lot of carrots and zucchini, with a handful of bean sprouts, a couple of mushrooms, and a sprig or two of broccoli. Not even any onions or peppers.
Then I found the meat. Not just one piece, either. Three pieces of beef and one of chicken. And it wasn’t stray chicken from Kelson’s dinner, since his was dyed brown with soy sauce and this was lily-white. So they managed to bring in bits from not just one but two dishes that weren’t even in our order! I have never been so happy not to be a strict vegetarian (or Hindu).
This is still very bad news. If a place that does kung pao is this careless about cleaning their utensils, we can’t eat there anymore. Not that it’s worth it anymore since they’ve been systematically getting rid of everything we really like. I didn’t often get the Black Bean Shrimp (aka Double Indemnity Delite), but it was nice to know that if I needed a fix, I could get it. Not anymore.
Nasty letters, here we come. And if you know anybody with the potential to be affected by this kind of sloppiness, you might want to tell them too, if they don’t already know.
I spend a lot more time dealing with spam than I used to, mainly so that all our customers won’t have to. (Most of it is spent adjusting or training the server’s spam filters.) As a result, I often look through spam that I used to just delete. One had a real gem of an unsubscribe notice:
Don’t want to receive our emails anymore? It’s very easy to oppt out. And yes, doing so really will allow you to opppt out. We aren’t just saying that so that we can put on the facade that we’re legitimate advertsers, whilst laughing away, blatantly ignoring remvve requests. If you remove your name from our list, you definitely will be remm,oved. Your name will be marked as r,emoved in our email database, and you won’t receive mail again. We don’t really know how more clearly we can explain this. Just take our word for it. Otherwise, continue toreceive these emails. Now is your chance to opp,t out. Do so by clicking this UNSUBCRIBE link. P.S. – It really works
The best part was the URL:
http:// /optout.php?mail=(my email address)
Now, you don’t have to be a net guru to realize that there is no way that link could possibly work!
It sounds to me like they might be laughing away, blatantly ignoring remove – excuse me, remvve – requests.
