Our Oakville Choral Society director received a call from the chorus master of Opera Mississauga recently: Would the ‘Society like to join with Opera Mississauga to do another production of Aïda in the Spring of 2004? As the OCS director described it last night, all sorts of thoughts and exclamations raced through his mind: OM is way into debt and haven’t paid some of their suppliers, they treated us like dirt and they have the nerve to call us? Of course the chorus master just follows orders from the artistic director. Our OCS director decided to summarize his and OCS members' feelings: “No,'' he replied and hung up the phone. He felt good all day about his show of self-restraint.
Now inquiring minds want to know what other “sucker”chorus might he try and call? Would I do it again? NBL! However, I wouldn’t be averse to accepting a suitably appropriate fee, payable in advance (in cash of course). Given OM’s financial state and the seeming insignificance, to the OM artistic director, of practically everybody in the opera chorus the probability of any remuneration is extremely minute (mi – nyoot’).
From the cartoon Frazz
Portly Principal: Can you recommend an exercise for people who don’t have time to exercise?
Frazz: Sure:
- Lift up your TV set.
- Carry it to the curb.
- Set it down.
Principal: … Which TV?
Frazz: Okay some people might need to do multiple reps.
It took me, maybe, two hours to dig a 70cm diameter hole out of the sod, 10cm of so-called topsoil and the 30 cm of “virgin clay”full of tree roots, rocks and one piece of cinder block in the middle of our front yard. I made a trip to the local big-box store and bought two 3.8m3 bales of peat moss. Most of the clay I layered on my compost as it eventually breaks up and “soilifies.”The rest of the soil from the hole I mixed with sand, peat moss and sifted compost to lighten its texture. It only took about half an hour to dig up the Rose of Sharon plant from its too shady location under the magnolia to move it to its new sunny location in the middle of the front lawn. I guess that shrub has been there at least five years — its largest trunk is 5cm in diameter. Back then the magnolia used to be a shrub, too. Now I can look straight out at the magnolia’s branches from my second story window. Hopefully, after the rose of sharon recovers, it will do better out of the magnolia’s shade. I moved the shrub now because it’s the last to leaf out in the spring.
While running this afternoon I saw my pet peeve. Why do parents buy those large battery-operated cars? Kids should be running around in this nice weather and getting some exercise.
This evening’s homework was proving trigonometric identities. We had a problem with one question and I finally determined that it was actually wrong. We’ll see what my son’s teacher says.
My wife received the much circulated Neiman Marcus cookie e-mail the other day. Apparently a form of this “big company charges big bucks for recipe”story has been circulating in various forms for at least fifty years. Neiman Marcus doesn’t have the restaurant named in the e-mail nor does it even make that kind of cookie though they offer a similar recipe on their web site. Anyway, the recipe looked good to my wife as it is similar to a chocolate chip recipe she’s been making for years. She made a batch of 10 dozen (!) last night and only substituted more chocolate chips for the nuts. Yum! The only downside is that I’ll have to increase my caloric output in the next couple of weeks to compensate. 
Excuse me. I have to refill my coffee cup and have a cookie.
Occasionally I read the rec.music.makers.choral usenet news group and found this reference to “hearphones“. I have included the image. The associated site suggests that they are for hearing your voice better. Maybe so, but I prefer to use the tape recorder thank you. Anyway the discussion in the news group was about a chorister who sang lots of wrong notes except one time when he was under a bridge with an echo. The conductor(?) concluded that this individual couldn’t hear himself and wondered if there was something that could be done. Hearphones were one suggestion though not for a concert, unless, of course, the whole choir wore them. (That’s my suggestion 
)
Normally it’s pretty dull in Etobicoke, the former western suburb of Toronto where I work. Apparently someone on a backhoe doing storm sewer work near Bloor and Kipling cut through the gas main (Uh-Oh!) yesterday afternoon. Before the workers could summon help, the natural gas leaked into the basement of a nearby strip plaza and apartments and ignited. BOOM! The plaza was reduced to rubble and, unfortunately, six people were killed. I feel very sad about the owner of the family dry cleaner business in that plaza. He had just stepped out to get a coffee when the explosion happened. His wife and daughter were crushed inside. There were still lots of news vehicles and bystanders when I walked up today at lunchtime. I think nearby residents would rather Etobicoke go back to being dull.
Articles: insidetoronto, The Globe and Mail, Canada.com and a video
I had my own gas line cutting incident several years ago when I was putting in a fence post. The hole was nowhere near the line marked on the grass by the “Call before you dig”person. The gas lines are plastic so when I felt a bit of resistance I figured it was rock or a tree root: so I jumped on my spade. Uh-oh! I quickly shoved the heavy clay back in the hole and called the gas company. That sure was an expensive fence post — probably $300 in repair labour and gas charges. Only later did I read the fine print on the buried gas line notice that the error for the line on the grass was ±1 meter. Perhaps the backhoe operator or his foreman thought the gas line was exactly where it had been marked and that they were digging nowhere near it, too.
Here’s one from netfunny.
A woman and a baby were in the doctor’s examining room, waiting for the doctor to come in. The doctor arrived, examined the baby, checked his weight, found it somewhat below normal, and asked if the baby was breast fed or bottle fed.
“Breast fed,” she replied.
“Well, strip down to your waist,” the doctor ordered. She did. He pressed, kneaded, rolled, cupped, and pinched both breasts for a while in a detailed, rigorously thorough examination. Motioning to her to get dressed he said, “No wonder this baby is under weight. You don’t have any milk.”
“I know,“ she said, “I’m his grandmother, but I’m glad I came.''
Through the magic of forwarded e-mail I found out my brother, the teacher in Thailand, and his family will be coming back here just for the summer (he extended his contract for one more year). At my wife’s suggestion, I have invited them to stay at our place if they want for all or part of their stay. We could make the “study”an extra bedroom or there’s always the basement room though I really do have to fix that futon mechanism (It was probably damaged at some kids' party — not mentionning any names.). We’ll see what they say.
Now that the evenings are longer I can go out after supper and see what has survived the winter. Several new (to my garden) perenials have survived including oriental poppies, large iris and early daylilies. On the weekend I collected old plant stalks and this evening I ran them through the leaf mulcher-vacuum. I just prop it on the handles of my wheelbarrow, support the bag on a bucket and then carefully feed everything in the tube. As I probably have mentionned before I now have sustained compost production. I put all the coarse stuff (e.g. sticks and pine cones) out for the yard waste pickup and the chopped up stuff goes into the composters. It decays pretty fast (a couple of months or less) depending on temperature, dampness and whether I’ve had the inclination to mix it up.
How about that. I have my wife and my tax returns ‘netfile’d a week early this year — and didn’t stay up past my normal bedtime either. I printed out my younger son’s very first tax return so he can mail it away and get his roughly $80 refund. I still have to do finish my mom’s; but, there’s still a week to go. I should have time for that one tomorrow night, I expect.
“The typical Internet user receives an average of 17,000 email messages per year. Of this total, an average of one message actually contains useful information (it says: ‘Disregard previous email’). The rest are porno ads, investment opportunities for morons (Make Big Money Petting Kittens At Home!), and jokes that were originally set in movable type by Johann Gutenberg.''
Dave Barry
Last night’s rain seems to have greened up the grass overnight. The violets in the lawn are just starting to bloom now — the scillas have been doing so for the last week or so. Compared to the last couple of years, everything in my garden is starting about three weeks later this year.
It is sure is great to have four day weekend: you can actually get a couple of things done. For example, my wife’s business expenses receipts are tallied and her tax return is filled out. I just have to check hers and mine one more time and then netfile them for the refund we’re expecting this year. I could have done this tonight except I noticed my books were due. Normally, I could have renewed them online and saved a trip but unfortunately I had a couple of periodicals which aren’t renewable.
Yesterday afternoon I did a little visiting. My Dad phoned from Vancouver. I just love modern technology: I continued to prune the privet hedge while I talked to him on the portable phone. One side effect though is that my balding, close-shorn head got a touch of sunburn. Later we visited my son and his Golden Retriever pup, Cricket. She’s getting bigger and her hair, which once was soft and fuzzy is now taking on the coarser, wavy texture of an adult. Still very cute, though. After that brief visit we drove from Oakville to roughly Don Valley and the 401 to visit my youngest (half) brother, his dear wife and my adorable niece who’s about a year and a half. My wife helped her sister-in-law make curtains and us guys moved some boxes to their new rental townhouse. They have possession already even though they don’t officially rent it until May. It’s only a 10 minute drive from their apartment; however, since my brother doesn’t have a car, it’s takes a bit longer to walk it or bus it. They’ll be glad to get out of that apartment building: three cranky, cramped elevators and all.
I guess the only thing that didn’t get done was to review trigonometry with my son. We didn’t get home until after 10 last night and he worked all day today. So I just sent him a bunch of links I checked out on Google. Some of them I think I’ll print at work tomorrow just in case he (or I) might need them.
The image for our May 31 concert just arrived in my email so I’ve posted a thumbnail which links to the full image in the events section on the right hand side. I’d be pleased to entertain ticket enquiries.
The Bell’Arte Singers had their usual morning practice despite it being Easter weekend. Our director is so proud of his new born twins he has tell us about them before we start. As the twins are premature they are still in the hospital and, because of SARS the hospital restricts them to one parent at a time. They are trying to fight this and argue the rule is one visitor per patient. Anyway, the tiny babies are both growing well, according to dad, on mother’s milk. One is now suckling while the other still has to be tube fed.
One chuckle I remember from the practice: We were going over a spiritual we’ve done in the past and somebody asked if we should repeat the last phrase four times. Our director asked something like, “Could we control ourselves for four times.”The bass beside me muttered, “that’s a rather personal question!” Our of our tenors, Imre Olah, accompanies for the Bach-Elgar Choir and asked if we’d like to hear their concert in Grimsby tonight. We did. We also know the director, Ian Sadler, quite well. I think they were missing some “key personnel”as they had a few tentative moments and some pitch problems. But, generally, it was good concert. My favourite item on the program was Mr. Sadler’s playing of the Toccata and Fugue in F by J.S. Bach (BWV540). It’s too bad the console isn’t visible to the audience since this work requires lots of fancy pedal work as well as fingering on the keyboard. Ian is also the administrative director and accompanist for the Cathedral Singers of Ontario who will be singing at Canterbury Cathedral services for a week in August this year. My wife and I will be members. Yay!
Aside: in non musical news, the BBQ has been reconstructed with new burner, rock grid, ceramic rocks and new vinyl cover. And the steak and roast potatoes cooked theron were delicious.
Does it ever feel good to wake up, see daylight under the blind, look at the time,realize it’s a holiday and turn over for some more shut eye. I looked out the back sliding glass door at breakfast and saw my barbecue on its side: blown off the deck by the wind. Good thing my deck is only about 20 inches off the ground. Now I know a good reason for railings. Though, I had planned to replace the innards of the BBQ (rocks, burner, rock grid) sometime this spring, it looks I’ll be doing this tomorrow since the insides got scrambled when it tipped over.
The cool, cloudy spring day was ideal for my run on the boulevards and in the ravine. Winter’s snow, ice and mud have finally gone. Being a holiday, the traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, was light.
My wife’s family had our Easter gathering today at her sister’s for a change rather than Easter Sunday. That way she could have the next three days off and others could go to their respective families for their Sunday dinners. Good planning. Our company has always had an Easter Monday holiday so I’m looking forward to the extra long weekend to relax and catch up on some other activities.
I have been illustrating my blog with images gathered from here and there on the web. In fact some of those images have been linked to by the web pages of others according to my web stats. I have found that Microsoft’s Photo Editor to be the easiest tool so far to make backgrounds transparent. There’s an arrow in the toolbar that you point to the background. They even provide a “fuzziness” setting so that you could, for example, make a sky of several shades of blue transparent. As you can see in the accompanying Help About box it appears this application didn’t come from Microsoft originally. It certainly isn’t as bloated or patronizing as Word seems to be.
My wife and I had a last minute chance to see a performance of the St. John Passion of J.S. Bach by the Pax Christi Chorale at Grace Church on-the-Hill last night. For a Wednesday night, it was very well attended. In one of those strange coincidence kind of things we shared our pew (they were reserved) with a good friend of ours and a fellow chorister from the Bell’Arte Singers. I fell asleep briefly during the performance, not because of it mind you, but because of a relatively sleepless night the night before what with the sudden hot weather and all — probably over-dressed and over-blanketed.
It was 18°C after supper so, instead of emptying the dishwashwer and re-loading it, I took advantage of the evening daylight and fertilized the lawn. I’ll be at choir tomorrow night and Wednesday it’s supposed to turn cooler and rain until Easter. After I fertilized there was yet more daylight so I collected a bushel basket of pine cones to leave for the “yard waste”pickup and uncovered my azalea. It was still quite cool among the leaves I’d piled around it. Lots of tulip shoots here and there and, of course, the snow drops are in full bloom. I can hardly wait for the crocuses which were out by the end of March last year.
Recently I overheard two co-workers, the first of which was training the other one.
- Co-Worker #1: “A boolean variable has two possible values: true or false.''
- Co-Worker #2: “Umm…true?''
From Computer Stupidities
Friends of ours came to visit: she and the year-old baby stayed for the afternoon, he went for a music director interview at a church nearby. He must be very fed up with his posting in Etobicoke because he was very excited after the interview. This church is not all that much closer to Guelph though it is closer to our house. I offered to be a bass in the choir at his potential new posting if they needed one: it’s a 10 minute drive from the house and 15 minutes by bicycle as you can use the bicycle path in the ravine.
As I went for my run this afternoon, (Note to self: a glass of wine before hand kind of saps the ambition to run at speed for a while.) I though about having company. I really enjoyed the visit but it does take time to prepare the lunch, etc. and have the visit: probably the whole morning and afternoon. When you know you have so many things (with deadlines) to do, you tend to resent spending that extra time. Perhaps that’s why being company and going for a visit is so much more enjoyable — you are not at home so you ignore of all those things you should be doing. Of course in the summer there’s less things of a pressing nature to do and more daylight in which to do them.
Tonight’s homework was finding asymptotes, local maxima and minima, points of inflections, etc for various equations in order to make approximate graphs. Equations included such gems as y = x/(x - 1) and y = x2/(x2 + 3). My younger son found them much easier than last week’s word problems.
Melting is occuring; however, our driveway, being on the north side of the house, still had a large patch of ice and snow from last Friday. So I chopped it up and started dumping it on the street. Then I thought I should dump this under the pine tree — it’s always dry under there. I carted over five wheelbarrow loads. So, now the driveway is reasonably clear for our company tomorrow and, as the snow melts, the pine will get a cool drink.
- If you can’t find a screwdriver, use a knife. If you break off the tip, it’s an improved screwdriver.
- Try to work alone. An audience is rarely any help.
- Despite what you may have been told by your mother, praying and cursing are both helpful in home repair … but only if you are working alone.
- Work in the kitchen whenever you can … many fine tools are there, its warm and dry, and you are close to the refrigerator.
- If it’s electronic, get a new one … or consult a twelve-year-old.
- Stay simple minded: Get a new battery; replace the bulb or fuse; see if the tank is empty; try turning it to the “on” switch; or just paint over it.
- Always take credit for miracles. If you dropped the alarm clock while taking it apart and it suddenly starts working, you have healed it.
- Regardless of what people say, kicking, pounding, and throwing sometimes does help.
- If something looks level, it is level.
- If at first you don’t succeed, redefine success.
- Above all, if what you’ve done is stupid, but it works, then it isn’t stupid.
T H E . M O U T H P I E C E Friday, April 4, 2003
I was hired into my first permanent position at Ontario Hydro about 25 years ago by Wilf Watson, a quiet, reserved person, not unlike myself actually. Ontario Hydro vanished by decree of the Ontario Legislature and, sadly, Wilf passed away peacefully on Sunday, April 6. To quote from the on-line death notice:
Watson – Wilfred B.Sc. (Hons Engineering), B.A. Captain in REME, WWII Chartered Electrical Engineer, 32 years with Ontario Hydro Peacefully in hospital on Sunday, April 06, 2003 age 83 years. Missed by his wife Winifred of 60 years, son Stephen, daughter-in-law Seanna, grandsons Trevyn and Nicholas.
He retired in 1985 about 8 years after I joined the System Studies Section. Wilf had expertise in various fields of electric power engineering but perhaps he’s best known for pioneering work on power system stabilizers. These electronic devices allowed transmission of electrical power from hydro generation on the rivers flowing into James Bay over 600 km to the main loads in the Golden Horseshoe area around the western end of Lake Ontario. For those interested, a somewhat techical paper on PSS by former colleagues of mine is available: all of us were mentored by Wilf and Dave Lee, his successor.
Though Wilf was a man of few words (just a grunt of acknowledgement when you said hello in the hall or, if he was very talkative, maybe two grunts 
), he became quite animated about the his times in Britain during the war. Fresh food was scarce during war time so when he and Winnie hit a rabbit one time, they stopped the car, picked it up and had it for supper. Another time when he and Winnie were quartered in barracks(?) or some sort of temporary housing Wilf would decide “lights out” by shorting the plug in his room. Unlike the individual fused circuits we have here in North America, in the UK it’s not unusual for a whole floor to be on the same circuit.
Though Wilf has passed on, his legacy still survives. The System Studs still get together every once in awhile for a canoe trip, a party, and sometimes for funerals, too. I’m sure we’ll be raising a glass or two in his name. May he rest in peace.
Since I’m off to my Mom’s for supper tonight and then I’ll return home to do more OAC calculus I thought I’d do a quick round-up of news chez moi.
- My first boss, Wilf Watson, who started my career at Ontario Hydro, passed away peacefully this Sunday at the age of 83.
- After almost a year of looking for a teaching job in Victoria, my brother has landed a job teaching people how to look for jobs.
- The Oakville Chorale Society’s “Showtune Spectacular”has sold out Saturday. Step right up and order tickets for Friday while they are still available.
At lunch time I did a little tweaking on the script that grabs the latest weather and the Ontario electrical energy price. Strange: the observed weather time was an hour ahead. I looked for a bug in my code and then looked at the web site data. EC had advanced UTC, or GMT as it used to be known, by one hour. Funny, I though UTC was constant. Anyway I submitted a message in their contact form and they replied they were “working on it.”The fix in my perl script was simple enough: if their UTC time was greater than my computer’s UTC (I use NTP to keep my computer synchronized) then I subtract an hour from their “observed time.''
I decided that having the current reading in the middle of the trend graph was hard to interpret so I moved it to the right end, still retaining the lighter shade for the previous day’s values. I also decided it was convenient to cache the mtime of the script so that if I made modifications the script would automatically do a full update at the next interval. You’ll note that it’s the second week of April, below freezing and there’s snow. The average high temperature for this time of year should be 10°C or so. I’m done with winter now, thank-you. Let’s send our winter to the the arctic foxes.
Despite the snow and ice I took out my hand pruners and cut off last year’s clematis vine growth — it grows and blooms much better on the current year’s vines. Being positioned on a south facing brick wall, the vine already had some new growth visible. I also bought a bag of lawn fertilizer and 60 kg (!) of sand to spread over the ice on the driveway and sidewalk. And, wouldn’t you know it, the snow plow finally came just before supper. So I enjoyed my first daylight-saving time evening shovelling the heavy, icy slush out of the end of my driveway. Then I relaxed with an Old Credit™ Ale, and my son and I did page 2 of his OAC calculus problem set. It’s a strange world where spheres expand, right conical piles of sand grow just so and rectangular tanks fill at certain rates.
“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.''
James Branch Cabell
We decided to take a miss on choir this morning as our street still hasn’t been plowed and last night there and additional layer of ice on the approximately 8 cm of ice and snow that was already there. It got above freezing for awhile so I spent two hours (!) with a flat garden spade and shovel clearing a van-sized section of the driveway down to the street. Our part of the street slopes a bit and our driveway slopes down the street. The point of the exercise was to get the van back in the driveway. Thanks to my neighbour Don across the street who gave a push: the speedometer said 50 km/h and the van moved about 5 km/h. I’m glad to say that the wheels caught on the shovelled part of the driveway. Now let’s hope the city called back the grader guy who did the plowing this past winter. This past storm was fiendishly arranged to prevent traction with alternating layers of ice pellets, freezing rain and snow.
Usually, moving our clocks forward tonight means we’ll be sitting out on the deck Sunday night after a BBQ and enjoying the evening twilight. But the deck’s too icy and it will be too cold to BBQ. Oh well, I should get those tax returns completed and filed.
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A young female colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) weighing just 150kg (roughly twice as much as me!) was caught recently in the sub-Antarctic Ross Sea. Quite a catch, and so young as apparently they grow to colossal proportions as the chart from here illustrates. I hope these two people are olfactory-challenged! |
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Everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything about it.
I’m not sure whether the quote is correct but what’s with the snow and freezing stuff, below 0°C temperatures in April? A couple of weeks ago I wore shorts — it was a balmy 16°C! I snarfed a highway webcam picture taken just a short while ago less than 5 km from where I live. I am fortunate that I just walked and took the train this morning. Many others chose (or were told) to stay home. Apparently the ice pellets will continue until well into the evening. It certainly won’t be an easy drive getting to choir practice tomorrow morning. I hope the wind continues to prevail from the east so that my westerly run home won’t including ice pellets in the face. Perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t get around to removing the covering on my small azalea shrub: a rather frost tender plant or at least the flower buds are.
In honour of the unusual weather for this time of year, I have created a new category on this blog. I have also revised the WWW data display to include bigger trend graphs, weather warnings and the current conditions.
My brother seems to have more time on his hands than I do. But his joke within a joke for this April Fool’s Day, 2003 is kind of cute. I changed the names just because.
Dear Friends and Family: April 2nd, 2003
In the way of wishing you all well, and giving you a smile to boot, let me tell you about the fun we had yesterday, April Fools Day 2003.
I did my usual, expected, and much appreciated, morning rigging of the house for the girls. Things falling out of cupboards, toilet paper strung over the living room, things out of place, and so on. But the best joke of the day had innocuous beginnings a couple of days earlier. On our happenings of the month calendar, posted on a kitchen cupboard, I noted that Aunt Barb (Olivia’s sister and a much loved guest) was due to arrive for a visit from Toronto on April 1st.
My girls were not about to believe that. But Nadine took up the challenge and suggested to Olivia that she call Barb and have Barb call me to confirm her arrival. So, when I got home from work on Tuesday, April 1st, there was a message from Barb on the answering machine saying she was arriving and could she be picked up at the airport that evening.
Only for the briefest moment did I have a wisp of doubt about the bogus nature of this message. After all, it was I who had started the joke. Still, Rebecca was privy to this development and I decided, in consultation with Olivia, to play along. In Rebecca’s presence I told Olivia about my plan to head out to the airport that evening at 8:20 to pick up Barb. Rebecca was, just barely, biting. She looked incredulous. Is Dad really falling for this?
Nadine was still at work at the BC legislature (as a page) and was going on to her friend Ally’s place from there. I had earlier in the day told Nadine that I would pick her up at 8:30. Leaving at 8:20 was perfect for picking up Nadine, and off I went at that appointed time, supposedly for the airport.
Olivia reports that my absence was a highly charged time, especially for Alexandra. She felt terribly guilty about my having to drive all the way out to the airport for nothing. Maybe they had gone too far with this gag. Olivia reminded Alexandra about pranks I had pulled on them in the past, and ‘doesn’t he deserve some revenge?’
When I arrived at Ally’s place, and after waiting a suitable amount of time for my pretended trip to the airport, I phoned home to complain to Olivia that there was no sign of Barb anywhere at the airport. Olivia put a delighted Rebecca on the phone and she whooped “April Fools!”at me over the phone. By this time Alexandra, drawn into the gag but never having fully believed any of it, was on the other phone. To both Rebecca and Alexandra I complained bitterly about having driven all the way to the airport for nothing and, ‘boy, you really got me this time.’
Olivia, witnessing from the home end, said this was a priceless moment. Simultaneously Rebecca and Alexandra’s jaws dropped. They had actually pulled off a major joke on their wily Dad!
Clearly, Nadine, whose friend’s house I was at for the airport call, was on my side of the joke now. As we drove home Nadine suggested I drop her near the house but not where the car would be seen. She would explain that she had got tired of waiting for me to pick her up and that her friend’s Mom had dropped her off. This would corroborate that I had indeed gone to the airport.
After a short delay to allow for Nadine’s entrance, I pulled in in the car. I walked into the kitchen where the family was assembled, anticipating the final revealing of just who had fooled who. Rebecca said something about my airport trip and how they had really fooled me. I said that it remained to be seen who the real fool was.
Then the final twist came out. You see, I am not too familiar with cell phones. After I had truly hooked Rebecca and Alexandra into believing that I had gone to the airport (Alexandra had said, in amazement, “Are you really at the airport'') I disconnected the phone. But I pushed the wrong button. While R and A were standing with dropped jaws, and after I thought I had hung up the phone, Nadine’s friend Ally yelped in the background about how convincing I had been and “you sure fooled them.” Alexandra described how they had heard Ally’s yelp and had had their own chortle at me after the phone was finally hung up. Alas, the last laugh was on me.
Love, Todd, Olivia, Alexandra, Nadine, and Rebecca.
The IP address of my FreeBSD box was changed after over a year with the same IP. (Sniff, sniff such a good IP it was, too.) As I was out all night last night doing some plumbing-type work at my brother-in-law’s I didn’t get a chance to fix things until a while ago.
When Rogers caused my IP address to change via DHCP my box reported a conflict with another host on the cable network. My box is just too nice. If it senses another one using the same IP it doesn’t send out packets until the arp cache is cleared. You betcha I’ve now added a cron job to do this automatically now. I phoned Rogers this morning about the problem. I actually confirmed that my box was supposed to have that IP address. Tonight the offending computer doesn’t seem to be around with my IP address anymore. Anyway I also registed with DynDNS to have a place I can stick my IP until my son, the registrar, puts hubbo.com back on the 'net again.
By the way, I have to commend Rogers this time. Both the calls this morning and this afternoon were answered within five minutes by technical support. I managed to get a credit for the two days hubbo.com was off line, too. Technical support couldn’t do anything except ping my cable modem and confirm it was in working order. And since that other box was no longer causing me problems then I didn’t have any problem either. Still aggravating to have my box unresponsive for awhile, though.
After many months somebody seems to have been monkeying around with the DHCP server and gave hubbo.com a new IP. So until I straighten this out and the new IP propagates, hubbo.com may be off for a day or so. As if you’d know since you wouldn’t be able to read this. Sigh!