Our first dress rehearsal with orchestra took place Wednesday — over 30 instrumentalists vs 45 or so in the choir. If we all played / sang at once I'm sure the choir wouldn't be heard. However, Brahms skillfully orchestrated his works so as to not obscure the singing. Marcato singing on occasion and attention to consonants also help. The venue at St. Anne's, a domed church, has a lovely acoustic and a “whisper gallery” effect. The director complained about us basses being too loud; however, as we could hear his instructions from across the chancel and the orchestra as if he were standing next to us I believe he heard our singing as if we were standing next to him.
So I'm taking the day off to get a few things done before our second dress rehearsal tonight. Getting up at 6:20 am, working all day and then standing and singing for more than two hours is just a bit too much for body and voice. I'm going to where more comfortable shoes, too. All of the Brahms music program is a challenge but especially Gesang der Parzen, in six parts, with only 3 of us baritones (the fourth guy was ill on Wednesday) on one part. One has to be careful not to “blow the pipes” by singing too loudly especially on pitches that are high in your range.
If your MP is a back bencher you don't often hear about them except for the odd photo-op pamphlet now and then. I hear our MP, Carolyn Parrish is bad mouthing Americans. Maybe she does this often, I don't know, but this time it was caught by reporters. Everybody's just a little sensitive at the moment about the “to war or not to war” question. Somebody at work commented that perhaps I'll be voting in a by-election soon. Now if somebody asks me who my MP is (yeah right ;-), I can say, Ms Parrish, you know, that women who claimed Americans are all illegitimate children or words to that effect. No fading wall-flower back-bencher she.
Lest you think your doctor doesn't care about your hours long wait (and no interesting magazines to be had): I heard an interview the other day where one doctor admitted one reason he doesn't like his patients to wait a long time. During that wait, he said, his patients will think of other things to ask about as well as the original problem such as a sore throat, etc. Often answering questions about these other things will take more time than the standard ten minute appointment.
Doc, I have a sore throat and bad cough and now I also have this pain in my butt from sitting on a waiting room chair for so long.
…since I first set up this blog and created the first post. It's about 29 C° colder today — the temperature was -17°C when I left this morning. No thoughts of gardening or other outdoor activities yet; especially, since the weekend dumped another 15 to 20 cm of snow.
- Back My lower back is still a bit sore from my fall on Saturday morning but it seems to be more a staying in one position problem. I need to get up from my chair and move around more often than I usually do.
- Music Folder I left it behind at choir practice on Saturday. Fortunately my business card was in it so the church office secretary was expecting a call. Choir friends who live nearby will pick it up for me so I expect to get my folder back at tomorrow's dress rehearsal.
- Van I dropped it off yesterday morning. I rode in the Courtesy van driven by an older man, probably about my mom's age. We had a pleasent chat about this and that until we got to the GO station. It was a bum alternator that made for sluggish starting. Fortunately my wife and son picked it up in the afternoon so I didn't have to waste part of the evening doing it.
- Exercise I didn't run home yesterday: too tired to work through the snow. Also when I tried to jog, the pounding excerbated my lower back pain.
- Snow There comes a point, about this time near the end of February, when softly falling flakes of snow are no longer pretty anymore. I'm ready for robins and crocuses.
Winter has returned. Thursday and Friday saw days with above 5°C temperatures and lots of snow melting. It started to rain Saturday, then snowed a bit and then rained again. Then late Saturday evening the temperature plummeted to -10°C and it snowed and blowed. I spent much of Sunday morning shovelling the packed drifts out of the driveway and walkways. Then the snowplow came by … twice! My poor neighbour with the healing ankle and me with my sore back from yesterday. At least living on the bottom of a crescent there's no neighbour on the other side so I just pushed the snow plow's leavings to the other side of the street —- a bit slower perhaps but my back thanked me. Why, this evening I can bend over without wincing and put my pants on standing up!
Today's exercise was running through the snow. I think I packed 10km of energy expenditure into 5km especially running through those drifts. It beats yesterday's run on the treadmill on account of the slushy rain outside.
Just bought the downloadable version of QuickTax and sketched out mine and my wife's returns. I need to find out what sort of RRSP contribution I should make before next Monday. Then I'll have to tally the receipts for my wife's music teaching business. Oh, and I'll have to take the van in to be looked at: the battery or charging system is barely working and the Check Engine light comes on intermittently. More $$ to spend I imagine.
I upgraded the Moveable Type Software to version 2.6+ and discovered “Text Formatting” plugins support. What does this mean? Well, bold and emphasized text, for example, can be entered thusly:
*bold* and _emphasized_
rather than like this:
<strong>bold</strong> and <em>emphasized</em>
A tip o' the toque to Brad Choate for this nifty module. This will speed up my blog composing as I won't have to remember opening and closing tags for run of the mill text.
I was carrying a briefcase, a bag of music, a bag of things for snack and my water bottle to choir practice this morning. Therefore, I didn't have the range of motion required to wave my arms and prevent myself from falling on my backside on the “black ice” on the sidewalk. Ouch! My back hurts every time I change position. Guess I'll have to take something tonight or I'll be waking up every time I turn over. The injury might have been exacerbated by sitting up straight on the “bum-buster” pews at the church for the two and half hour morning practice. My voice is slightly hoarse, too. That's a lot of Brahms (Ein Deutsches Requiem, Gesang der Parzen and Schicksalslied) for one practice, though, I was pleased I didn't make that many mistakes.
Being a "morning" person I can't understand the snooze button. If I wanted to sleep 10 minutes later I would set the alarm for, well, 10 minutes later. Since the usual shave, shower, breakfast, dressing routine takes about 40 minutes I subtract that from when I have to be out of the house and set the alarm for that time. None of this snoozing stuff except, perhaps, on the weekend. But then the alarm would have come on "by mistake" so I'd shut it off and go back to sleep. I guess there are those who like to imagine they are morning people. They set their alarms for two hours before they have to leave and keep pressing the snooze button until they finally regain consciousness.
Mild It went up to 6°C today. After a month or more of sub-zero temperatures, it is finally mild enough that I can read my pocketbook until I get to my stop. Then I can zip up my jacket, don my toque and put on my gloves as I exit the platform. Kinda slushy and wet running home, though, but I'll get over it.
Sunny I no longer get up before the crack of dawn. I could see my way down the hall this morning with the faint daylight coming in at 6:20 a.m. Can spring be far away? Still, last year the snowdrops were already poking out of the ground — no sign of them this year.
I cut in half about 20 cardboard rolls, the 3" dia x 3.5" long kind found in those large bum-wad dispensers found in institutional washrooms. My wife will hand them out at a her talk on Sunday about making instruments. These rolls will form part of a drum. I also put holes in and mashed flat dozens of beer bottle caps. I believe these will be for tambourine or noise-maker like instruments. Seeing the huge bag of assorted cardboard tubes I guess a lot of bums were wiped and hands were dried for the musical cause. Decorated drums will look and sound much better.
The Web site you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Program aborting:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask far too much.
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.
Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
I like this one:
Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.
I use Mozilla or it's lighter weight cousin Phoenix to do most of my browsing except for the odd site which requires IE because they've used some M$ software to create the site. (The corporate intranet where I work is a big offender in this regard.) This web site described some ways to do some ad-blocking with css coding in the userContent.css. I used this file to solve a printing problem: At great expense (heh! heh!) I downloaded a driver from HP to do multiple pages/page and correct gray-scale shading at 600dpi with coloured documents on the Laserjet 5 Si/MX at work. One problem, though, is that trying to print pages from some sites will give very light lettering on a white background. Here's a userContent.css entry that will fix this:
@media print {
body { background: white ! important;
color: black ! important; } }
That is, when printing, the default background is white and the text colour is black, unless specifically overridden by the document. Works for me!
You may recall that I replaced the washing machine hoses in my brother-in-law and his wife's condo apartment. They complained about their bed — probably over 20 years old, and their TV or at least their closed-caption accessory device. What are these deaf people going to spend their money on anyway. So, today we met them at Costco because the store had a $100 off coupon offer for a matching Queen size bed and box spring set this week. And they also looked at TVs finally deciding on a 27" Sharp model and they also purchased a DVD player. Of course, being deaf, they don't need that expensive amplifier and 5 speaker theatre surround sound system. Their neighbours should be grateful. It was also quite a feat wheeling a queen side bed through the main aisles on a busy Saturday afternoon.
I had brought the old Grand Caravan (doesn't smell good inside now that my son sneaks a smoke or two there now and then.) However, though the van can fit 4x8 sheets of plywood it can't fit a 60" width Queen size mattress, even on the diagonal, so I had to tie them to the top of the van with ropes. Two ropes I fed through the side windows and tied inside and the third I tied from the frame under the front bumper to the the frame under the rear bumper. Then I drove at 60km/h tops, from Costco near Dundas and 403 to my brother-in-law's place in Milton. I think the only casualty was the plastic moulding aroung the side windows: it might have cracked under the strain of taut ropes or because it is so cold out. The drive with Queen-size mattress and box springs' set on top was the first part of the adventure.
I was the first to arrive even at my snail's pace. Once my brother-in-law arrived we took the old mattress set and stacked it in the garbage/recycling room by the door. I rember doing a similar thing at my son's old apartment with a old couch. Then I got the van and backed it up to the receiving doors. Well, apparently this was against the condo by-laws where furniture may only be moved in between 12 and 1 on alternate Saturdays (I exaggerate slightly of course!). The super (on his day off) had been roused by some busy body on the board I guess. He said, well I guess you can leave the new mattress set in this locked area near receiving and exchange mattresses on Monday. Oh, I said, I guess we'll have to take the old one back up to his apartment. Oops. Condo owners are supposed to get rid of their own discarded furniture. Otherwise, the super does it at their expense! "Just following the condo board's rules", he said. Well, Derrick and Carol showed they were reasonable people: I put the old mattress and box spring in my van and we took the new ones (on the QT) up to my brother-in-law's apartment. My wife had suggested I unload the van from the underground parking but I was afraid the van, stacked with mattress and box spring, wouldn't make it through the garage door. The second part of the adventure was over.
I set up the new bed and my wife and I put on the sheets. She had stopped by an M&M Meat Shop so we had lasagna, cataloni and garlic bread. Then we moved the 27" TV, this time from the underground parking, up to the apartment. Fortunately, the only hard part was lifting the sucker out of the box: pretty routine connecting the cable and DVD box. I just made sure the sound was down low and that closed captioning was enabled. Now the two of them are happy and will probably sleep well tonight on the new mattress.
Damm, upon leaving the apartment the van's "Check Engine" light is on. I drove to the gas station. Filled up. Paid $40! (First time I have every paid that much but at 80.9¢/l it's no wonder.) The "Check Engine" light didn't come on again — perhaps there's a loose connection to a sensor somewhere. End of adventure and time for a beer I'd say.
It was over 80¢/litre earlier this week but it was back "down" to 78.9¢ at the local station so my wife asked me to take the car, stand in the -12°C temperatures and fill it up. Oh well, since I was out I bought some groceries, some flowers and a card for my love, my Valentine tomorrow. One year I forgot. After that I don't ever want to forget — though I can't remember what happened there was probably a lot of angry and hurt silence for the next week or two.
My younger son asked me if I would help him in calculus this semester. A major request but I acceded. Today's "review" involved factoring polynomials and rationalizing numerators and denominators. I now realize this is stuff I haven't done for perhaps 25 years though I have used algebra occasionally at work. Thank goodness for the internet: a quick google came up with several sites and links with math class lecture notes on how to solve these problems. My son might not have the patience to browse this stuff but at least Dad can relearn and teach him without so much fumbling about.
For my birthday last week my family gave me a zippy CD writer (48x24x48x). My son offered to install it for me and I said where's the fun in that. The installation was no problem — I replaced the DVD-ROM since we have a DVD player now. However I found that the old CD writer was still just a shiny coaster maker. So, I yanked it out and now use the DVD ROM as the source for CD to CD copies. And, just now, I made a good copy of the Knoppix Linux on a CD. The next step is to back up the "user" files on my Windows Me box and then upgrade it to Win2k.
My cousin Kirsten the forester and her husband Greg, also a forester, have started their own forest. A baby sprout by the name of Daniel David was born on Feb. 7 at 9:10 p.m. weighing in at 7lb, 1oz. and 19" long. The extended Service family keeps on growing. I know the spirit of Kirsten's father whom I knew as uncle Dave, dying suddenly 3 years ago, will surround mother and child with one of his famous hugs. Aunt Shawna is already fiercely proud of her first nephew and I bet Grandma Darleen and step-Grandma Brenda are too. My only disappointment is the child is two days late (Well not really, but it would have been cool to have had my cousin's kid be born on my birthday)!
Yesterday the Bell'Arte Singers (BAS) co-hosted the third annual Choral Symposium. The clinician this year was Dr. Richard Nace. Dr. Nace told stories about, demonstrated and expounded on his choral conducting techniques. His signature, so to speak, is "exploring the expressive nature of your choir through Tone-Shape-Spirit". He was very nice, warm individual; however, as I am not a teacher, nor have I ever conducted choirs of young persons I found his talks rather "non-revolutionary" — more common sense advice of the caring and sharing, politically-correct variety. One music teacher I talked to said a workshop with her choir with Dr. Nace really helped her students. So I'm really not qualified to judge his worth. What I look for in a conductor is an indication of the beat and dyamics or expression. Whether this is made with grand inclusive, "gathering in" gestures or a waving baton with some accompanying hand motions I don't really care as long as there are clear cutoffs and tempo indications when (and if) required. Even though the self-annoited Maestro of the local opera company had really no idea how to lead a productive rehearsal for amateur singers, he was a fine conductor. I could even follow him in my near-sighted state, sans lunettes, on the opera stage. But, I digress. I probably should have done something else on Saturday morning and just come for the choral conducting master classes and the reading session in the afternoon.
The BAS had a party after the day's work. I chatted with Dr. Richard Nace at the party and he recognized me as the one who was smiling "all the time" while I was singing, even sight signing. There are probably two reasons for that: a) I like to sing and b) my first voice teacher insisted you can't make a good sound with your voice without a smile in it somewhere. He probably saw me during the reading session, reading through a new arrangement of "Verleih' uns Freiden" by Felix Mendelssohn — a personal favourite with a grand bass entrance. I told him I was an engineer and he asked me why I hadn't taken to a career in music. I like engineering work, the technical challenges and, of course, it pays well enough to support home ownership, a family, etc. Unless you're really, good music can't provide those things; nevertheless, choral music makes for a great hobby you can probably carry on with all your life. And there's the love interest: I met my wife in a choir.
My wife has invited a teacher colleague to supper tonight and my older son and his girlfriend, our daughter, will also be joining us. I have been told my birthday gift has been hiding out in his car. I have met the colleague, she's quite nice — obviously my wife enjoys her company.
On Saturday the Bell'Arte Singers and the OVF are co-sponsoring a Choral Conductor Symposium at a high school in Oakville. I'll be singing in the choir while four lucky (or unfortunate) souls will conduct us and be critqued by Dr. Richard Nace, a choral clinician. In the morning, Dr. Nace, will, apparently, be talking about the roles of choir members. The symposium will be an all day affair. Afterwards, the choir has been invited back to a member's place for a party. As she lives but a few kilometers from our place one of us is sure to attend.
My only problem will be my lack of vigourous physical activity on Saturday. I guess I'll have to run some extra kilometers on Sunday morning.
I have become quite a fan of defining inserter (operator<<) methods for my C++ classes. Output becomes so simple just: os << instance_of_my_class. I rewrote my program logging to use an ogzstream class and custom inserters for "almost everything". When I run into problems I just have to add a short log statement and see the results. I would always run in to problems using the Visual C++ TRACE macros which use a printf type of format string. There's a (quite small) limit on the string buffer which causes an ASSERT if it overflows. And it isn't typesafe whereas with operator<< you can output almost anything and if the compiler can't find a << operator for a class it will complain. TRACE will merrily compile anything and then ASSERT or crash if the item isn't a CString or a simple type like int or double. The debug and logging macros I use are shown below. The CError::stream() and CError::gzlog() are static methods which define static variables internally so that I can do logging and stream formatting at any time during my program — even during static class variable initialization. In effect I'm using singletons.
// Usage: GLOBAL_MSG(FILE_LINE, fmt, arguments...) ;
#define FILE_LINE THIS_FILE, __LINE__
#define GLOBAL_MSG CError::global_msg
// Pre-format an inserter expression msg with a date-time stamp, a keyword,
// the source code file and the line number.
#define INSERTMSG(keyword,msg) \
CError::now() \
<< " " << keyword << " " \
<< CSplitPath::get_filename(THIS_FILE) \
<< ":" << __LINE__ \
<< " " << msg
// Usage: LOGMSG("result", "The result is " << result) ;
#define LOGMSG(keyword,msg) CError::gzlog() << INSERTMSG(keyword,msg) \
<< std::endl
//
#define POPUPMSG(x) CError::stream() << x ; \
CError::popup_msg(CError::stream().str().c_str(), 0, \
CSplitPath::get_filename(THIS_FILE).c_str(), __LINE__) ; \
CError::stream().str("")
#ifdef _DEBUG
// Fancy macros to generate debug or trace listing in the log file as well
// as a trace message. It is wrapped in a CCriticalSection because TRACEZ
// messages may come from different execution threads and the CError::stream()
// is shared among them. There are two std::endl, one to flush and send the
// line to the log file and the other to new line terminate the string.
//
// The if ... TRACEBUFSIZE works around a TRACE0 bug as TRACE0(string)
// resolves to AfxTrace("%s", string) and there's a 4096 character buffer
// limit which causes an assert if string is more than this number of
// characters.
//
// Arguments: (keyword,expression,inserter)
// keyword - a string e.g. "trace"
// expression - if (expression) is true send inserter to file and debug
// output otherwise just use TRACE0
// inserter - C++ << expression
//
// Usage: TRACEMSG("trace",1,"The value is " << value) ;
//
// Reasons:
// 1) You can't imbed inserters in function calls though I have tried. :-)
// 2) Uses TRACE0 so that no formatting is done. In some cases formatting
// may overflow whatever buffer visual C++ provides causing an assert
// which isn't related to the program.
// 3) Completely disappears when _DEBUG not defined.
# define TRACEBUFSIZE 230
# define TRACEMSG(keyword,logfile,x) do \
{ \
CriticalSectionLock cs_lock ; \
CError::stream() << INSERTMSG(keyword,x) ; \
if (logfile) \
{ \
CError::gzlog() << CError::stream().str() << std::endl ; \
} \
if (CError::stream().str().size() > TRACEBUFSIZE) \
{ \
std::string str(CError::stream().str(), 0, TRACEBUFSIZE) ; \
str += "...\n" ; \
TRACE0(str.c_str()) ; \
} \
else \
{ \
CError::stream() << std::endl ; \
TRACE0(CError::stream().str().c_str()) ; \
} \
CError::stream().str("") ; \
} while(0)
# define TRACEZ(x) TRACEMSG("trace",1,x)
// Trace with no file logging.
# define TRACENZ(x) TRACEMSG("trace",0,x)
# define TRACEIF(condition,x) if (condition) \
{ \
TRACEMSG("trace",1,x) ; \
}
# define TRACEIFELSE(condition,x,y) if (condition) \
{ \
TRACEMSG("trace",1,x) ; \
} else { \
TRACEMSG("trace",1,y) ; \
}
// Log info messages to trace output as well as log file.
# define INFOMSG(x) TRACEMSG("info",1,x)
# define WARN(x) TRACEMSG("WARN",1,x)
# if defined(ENABLE_VERBOSE) && ENABLE_VERBOSE
# define VERBOZE(x) TRACEMSG("verbose",1,x)
# else // ENABLE_VERBOSE
# define VERBOZE(x)
# endif // ENABLE_VERBOSE
#else // _DEBUG
// Some macros now cause their arguments to disappear and insert nothing.
# define TRACEZ(x)
# define TRACENZ(x)
# define INFOMSG(x) LOGMSG("info",x)
# define WARN(x) LOGMSG("WARN",x)
# define TRACEIF(condition,x)
# define TRACEIFELSE(condition,x,y)
# define TRACEMSG(keyword,x)
# define VERBOZE(x)
#endif // _DEBUG
#define GZLOG(x) INFOMSG(x)
I was informed by the manager of IT that the job opening I had applied for has been cancelled. He sounded quite embarrassed about it. I'm not really all that surprised. Perhaps the president looked at January's financial reports and declared wafy. My résumé is now on file and my intentions have been declared so I'll have to be happy with that for the time being. Apparently I came "highly recommended" to the IT manager.
In other news:
- Happy Birthday to Me!
- Happy Birthday as well to Kim, my wife's sister, and Susanne, a good friend.
- A niece in Victoria has been selected to be a page in the BC Legislature — her first job. Congratulations to Nicolia!
Sun-dried tomatoes. On the weekend we found jars of sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil at Costco. Today I had a bagel, cream cheese and these sun-dried tomatoes. Yum! Now I'll have to see if I can get fresh basil at the local store.
Quiet please. I made a plywood stand about 19 in. high yesterday and brought it to work. I set it up under my "desk" (actually it's more a wide shelf around the cubicle) in several places until I found a place I wouldn't accidentally kick it (often). Then I moved the Compaq behemoth horizontal-type PC there. Finally, after a year or two, I don't have the annoying whine of the processor fan "in my face" anymore. Now I'll be able to eavesdrop on my fellow cubicle dwellers' phone conversations more easily.
Applied for an internal vacany I had mentionned I was going to apply for a job vacancy in IT. Today I did it as the opening closes tomorrow. I think I wrote a pretty good essay on the application form on why I might be suitable even though I don't have all the acronymic qualifications listed. We'll see. It's probably the first time I've applied for a job in 25 years except for a downsizing episode in 1993 when we all had to apply for our own jobs. Even if I don't get selected I've still "declared my intent."
And finally this evening my wife and I watched a documentary on the Nathaniel Dett Chorale and its music director Brainerd Blyden-Taylor, an "afro-centric" professional 20 voice choir based in Toronto. The documentary was aired on Vision TV: well done with lots of singing and less talk. We know the director and one of the choir members and I had even considered auditioning last September — another thing to try upon early retirement.
- At choir practice we sight-read a new piece by an Emily Crocker. Of course there were the usual Betty Crocker (she of cake mix fame) jokes. Our director came up with the best one. "Emily" must be one of the many Crocker children since the mother's motto was "moist and easy."
- We took back the china cabinet contents to my wife's brother's condo now that the new carpets are laid and the furniture is back in place. We also gave them a hand by washing all that china and glassware — something that looks like it hasn't been done for many years. My brother-in-law showed us a picture of a friend who would be coming over next week and I'm pretty sure I see this guy every day, waiting for the same GO train home as I do. I knew he was hard of hearing when I had heard him speak to the ticket guy. Small world!
- Yesterday was mild, up to 4°C. In typically Canadian fashion we saw kids out in T-shirts. I went for a run with just my Nike running shirt and a fleece sweat shirt. Today (Ground Hog Day), it was a bit cooler so I added another layer. Today was also a tired day. You know the kind: you feel like you could have slept another hour or two, you're yawning all the time, and you lie down to do your crunch exercises and feel that you should take a nap right there on the floor.
- We had the neighbour over for supper yesterday evening. Her house is warm again with a brand-new $3,000 furnace as the repairman had condemned the old one because of a cracked heat exchanger. She sighed and said "I guess the new hardwood floors will have to wait a year". She just had her rugs cleaned because one of the cats had done its business everywhere. She had wondered why until she discovered the cat's bottle of twice daily anti-constipation medecine was almost gone. Apparently the friends looking after the place had mis-read the dosage: instead of 0.35 ml they gave 3.5 ml — ten times the dosage. Besides crapping and peeing everywhere, that poor cat must have had really bad cramps, too. One silver lining of the house being so cold when she came back from her trip is that the smell wasn't as bad as it became once the heat was on again.
- I have started the last semester of Grade 13 with my younger son. Last night it was reviewing logarithms and finding line equations given the slope or intersecting points. Later we'll start calculus. I can hardly wait. I'll have to give my rusty brain a shake or two.
- Lastly, according to my web server logs and the AWStats software, I had 1492 "unique" vistors and 18862 "hits" in Janary. Way to go Internet.
Unfortunately these tragedies are so public. I hope the news media will grant the 7 crew members' families some time to grieve in private.Will we, the public, ever really know what happened? Just about seventeen years ago the "Challenger" blew up just after liftoff because of a frozen O-ring or two. Will the cause of this accident be so innocuous seeming? The only clue so far is that a bit of insulation broke off the rocket engines during liftoff and may have damaged some heat shield tiles on one of the wings. The grisly evidence is spread over Texas. Let's hope the various U.S. bureaucracies will eschew finger pointing and just find out what happened and how to prevent its reoccurence.
My mom sent me some of these so I looked for some more. They are supposed to be "real" messages from Japan.