It’s been quite awhile since I have used Noteworthy Composer; however, I’ve been asked to be part of the octet(?) of singers to perform Ward Swingle’s adaptation of the Rondo from Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik at the April 30th and May 1st concerts. All those dah bah dah’s and repeated eighth notes make it a fairly easy task to Noteworthy it. Then I have a couple of months to learn it in my “spare” time.
Today was the first day this winter season I could comfortably take a shirtsleeves-shortcut outside between buildings instead of winding my way around the office corridors. Heavens above, it might even reach 5°C tomorrow! And they have started reporting the UV index again.
“I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my baby, after all when you eat a can of beans you can’t be sure which one made you fart.”
A reply that a British women (may) have put on Child Support Agency forms in the section for listing father’s details.
“The 99 Cent stores were running an ad for a box of condoms for 99 cents. Do you know what you call men who buy condoms for 99 cents? … Daddy.”
Jay Leno
Saturday, Feb 21, 2004
8:00 p.m. Christ Church Deer Park, Yonge St. at Heath N of St. Clair Ave., Toronto
“Liszt and Mozart”
The Bell’Arte Singers
It started to snow in the afternoon and the driving wasn’t so great getting to the concert. A few stranglers wandered in after we started the concert. However our director was giving a talk at that time on comparisons between how Mozart and Liszt treated the simple Catholic “Ordinary” Mass texts. The choir and “orchestra” performed snippets of the Glorias and Credos from each work to provide an audio illustratration.
My overall impression, from the top riser in the bass section, was that the whole concert went well. Earlier this year, the music director and the choir board decided we should just have an organ “orchestra” with Ian Sadler at the console and a tympanist. As one choir member put it, we may have lost some aural colour but the choir saved a few grand in expenses. If I had lots of “dough,” say a big lottery win, I would love to set up an “orchestra” trust fund for the choir. The interest on this fund would be solely dedicated to paying orchestra and soloist expenses which, these days, can run to $20,000 or more.
There wasn’t a post-concert party so a sixteenth of the soprano section and an eighth of the bass section ordered a pizza, had beer and hot cider, and lounged around in pajamas and sweat pants.
<whine>I’m definitely going to have to investigate “standing” shoes. I have been wearing all black Nike “walkers.” However, after an hour of standing, my feet go numb. I suspect the moulded arch and heel supports are great for walking but the constant pressure is bad when you are just standing for long periods of time. In the last opera I was in, sandals were a part of the costume and I don’t remember numb feet being a problem. Of course, in an opera, you don’t stand in one place for long periods of time either. Perhaps a black moccassin-type of dress shoe with a flat insole liner might help.</whine>
An elderly couple had been dating for some time. Finally they decided it was time for marriage. Before the wedding, they went out to dinner and had a long conversation regarding how their marriage might work.
They discussed finances, living arrangements and so on. Finally the old gentleman decided it was time to approach the subject of their physical relationship.
“How do you feel about sex?” he asked, rather trustingly.
“Well,” she says, responding very carefully, “I’d have to say I would like it infrequently.”
The old gentleman sat quietly for a moment. Then, looking over his glasses, he looked her in the eye and casually asked, “Was that one word or two?”
In the Credo at the end of the bar 64, at letter `O', the piano reduction has the first 6 notes of the Mexican Hat Dance. It doesn’t seem to fit with any of the music before or after. A little Mozart humour perhaps?
I took the day off to compensate myself for the extended days with dress rehearsals last night and tomorrow night. As it was sunny and the temperature reached 4°C, I could remove the last of the glacier on the driveway and sidewalks. Now we just need a cm or two of snow to cover those dirty, icy chunks: dirty because of the sand I had spread on the ice.
I walked to Rona in 32 minutes to exchange an item and ran back a different route in 21 minutes. Yes, I use the “chronometer” on the watch I got for my birthday. One neat feature is the “pause.” I can stop the timing while I’m waiting for the light to change.
Our younger son is home for reading week. He tells us he has had several of his essays published in the school newspaper.
There was a worrisome email this morning that the tenor soloist for Saturday’s concert was ill. However, tonight we got an email that a recent graduate of the COC studio would be able to step in. Neither the Liszt Missa Solemnis nor the Mozart Mass in C are particularly difficult but I’m sure he’ll be spending the next two days intensively studying his parts.
Sometimes you forget the little things. I wrote a Perl script and module to collect web logs on another Win2k server. The script is run each day by the so-called Scheduler service. If the script finds an error condition, it exits and sends a message to the Win2k Event Log; otherwise, it logs routine messages to a file. Today with Mail::sendmail I added the functionality of emailing myself what was written to that log file since I don’t always look at the Event logs on that server every day. The problem I had to solve was how to send the log file stuff no matter where the script exited. I looked on CPAN for a likely script and re-discovered the END{} block — stuff that gets executed at the, ah, end. Now the log entries will get emailed no matter whether the script exits normally or unusually. Of course, if it doesn’t execute at all then I won’t get an email.
Some of the ice on the sidewalk and lower driveway had loosened its attachment though it was -12°C this afternoon. Prying up with my flat spade it felt like a backhoe lifting up slabs of old sidewalk. The ice was 5 to 8 cm thick in places. In other places I used my metre long crow bar to crack the ice. Eventually I had to stop: my feet were getting cold and my wrists were objecting to the pounding.
My wife had the “package” supper and show at the Living Arts Centre featuring the Nylons to celebrate Valentine’s day together. According to one of the four a cappella “boys” it’s their twenty fifth anniversary. I was happy — they sung what, to me, is their signature song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
There was a bit of confusion at the beginning as their were two venues for the supper buffet: the restaurant and the one of the smaller theatres. We lined up at the wrong one. Anyway, apparently I had reserved early enough as we were table seven out on the periphery. Table sixty, for instance, was almost beside the buffet table. I discovered that cold (as from the fridge) grilled peppers and zucchini taste like, umm, cold vegetables, sorta like yesterday’s barbecue leftovers. If I were at home I would have zapped them in the microwave. The rest of the buffet was good though. The bottle of house wine was $28.95 which actually made me happy, in an inverse sort of way. The wines I have made and bottled at the store for between $7 and $9 a bottle taste as good or better than that one. Here’s to the wine at my house!
Friday night we were so tired; we watched TV until about 10 and then went to bed.
I got in a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, “I’m going to mop the floor with your face.”
I said, “You’ll be sorry.”
He said, “Oh, yeah? Why?”
I said, “Well, It’s not very absorbant and you won’t be able to get into the corners very well.”
From CLEAN LAFFS - Thursday, February 12, 2004
Sometimes, when I viewed my son’s site, certain images wouldn’t show up. They did on Firebird (now called Firefox) so it wasn’t the rendering engine. Today, I remembered the userContent.css file I had installed over a year ago. Now that I use Adblock I had forgotten about the other method of removing unsightly ad images. I commented out the stuff in the css file, restarted Mozilla and voilà the images are back on my son’s site. Now I have some work to do with Adblock to remove the banners that the css file used to block.
Today’s clever idea was a “finding a needle in a hay stack” solution using Excel. For the last three years a particular requirement has been noted on, perhaps, a dozen or so projects. I had to find out which multi-year projects had been noted in the first two years but not on the third. As there are maybe a thousand on-going projects I used the MATCH function combined with the functions, NOT(ISNA()), to see if the noted project was in the list and conditional formatting to highlight the dozen or so matched entries for each year. Now it’s easy to page through the spreadsheet and see whether the highlight extends across all three years or not.
That TV cable is no longer lying across the second floor hallway. Today I fished it down the cold air return to the basement and thence to the video amplifier near the service entrance panel.
Today’s find at Rona was a spring loaded access cover usually used for access to valves or wiring. I sawed an 8 in. square hole in the wall in order to be able to drill holes through two studs and pass the cable through from the hall cold air return to the room with the TV. Then I just snapped the cover on. The hole patching can wait until I redecorate that room. For the time being, the access cover is hidden by some storage drawers.
The longest part of the job was in trying to fish the cable from the unfinished middle room of the basement over the finished hallway to the service entrance panel. After a couple of frustrating tries in the afternoon, I broke off and ran on the treadmill. Then it was time to make supper. After that fine repast I made one more attempt — this time successful. I guess being exercised and well fed had something to do with it. Or maybe it was the stronger flashlight I used in this attempt.
My younger son is now a published author. His opinion piece appeared in the University of Windsor student-run paper The Lance.
Today’s stats: #3 / 344 ↑ / 107 ↑ / 3.0% ↑ / 4.43 / 10.5 / 80 / 49 ↑.
Good thing I used the treadmill this morning as I almost fell flat on my back while walking to the corner to get the newspaper later on. Yesterday’s partial thaw and freezing rain have made the sidewalks and paths “somewhat” icy.
This came in my inbox the other day. I think it went through a garble or Gollum filter before it was emailed. Perhaps including this person’s address in this posting will allow me to return the favour.
From: Online-Citibank <pvangool@elturista.com> X-Mailer: The Bat! (v2.00.6) Personal To: me Subject: Citionline _E-MAIL_ Veerification Dear_ CITI_bank Mebmers, Thiss email_ was _sent_ by_the_ Citibank_ serevr to veerify your_ EMAIL adress. You must coltpmee this pceross by clicking on_the link below and enteering in the litle _window your Citi_Bank _Debit card nummber and CARD PIN that _you use in local ATM Machine. This is done for Your pcrtoetion -F- because some of_our memmbers no legonr have acescs to their email adsrdsees and we must verify it. http://citi.net:%68%46%47%54%41%52%59%41%74%4d8@%67%66%62458%66%77%64%2e%44%41% 2e%52%75/%3f%50%6f%54%6e6%70 To veerify your_ email adress and _access_ _your_ Citi-bank account, klick on the_ link _bellow_. ckYvAt
Today is my birthday.
My age is a perfect square. My age won’t be another perfect square until the year 2019. How old am I?
Hmmm, it seems that as your blog creeps up in the search rankings then it becomes attractive to blog comment spammers. It’s a good thing I installed Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist a while ago. I’m sure my readers don’t need any pr0n site URL’s or “new” ways to enlarge various parts of their anatomies. In fact I won’t even dignify their efforts by publishing what was blocked. Judging by the frequency of attempted postings this must have been an automated script or perhaps the poor soul at 61.11.26.134 has Parkinson’s disease and has trouble doing just one mouse click.
2004.02.02 09:15:14 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:15:30 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:15:41 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:15:48 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:16:03 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:16:18 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:16:32 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:16:43 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:16:51 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:17:04 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:17:18 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:17:28 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:17:45 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:17:55 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:18:03 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:18:13 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:18:23 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:18:31 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:18:42 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:18:50 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:19:00 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:19:08 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:19:23 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:19:34 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:19:56 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:20:06 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:20:17 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:20:33 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:20:50 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:21:04 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:21:14 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:21:25 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:21:43 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:21:50 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:21:58 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:22:18 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:22:25 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:22:33 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:22:43 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:22:54 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:23:02 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:23:15 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:23:23 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:23:36 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:23:47 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:23:57 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:24:11 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:24:25 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:24:36 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:24:43 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:24:54 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:25:16 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:25:24 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:25:32 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:25:43 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:25:55 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:26:03 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:26:14 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 09:26:28 61.11.26.134 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 23:05:02 82.76.136.19 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 23:08:13 82.76.136.19 MT-Blacklist comment denial ... 2004.02.02 23:08:52 82.76.136.19 MT-Blacklist comment denial ...
In the learn-something-new-every-day department I learned how to access the company’s LDAP directory: first via a visual basic script, using M$ “Active Directory Provider” object, found on the Internet. I then converted the script to Perl because the Win32::OLE module provides similar functionality to VB script. I preferred not to use Net::LDAP because that would have meant installing extra modules on top of the “stock” Windows Perl.
What was the reason for doing this? Rightly, the company decided they only wanted to maintain one database of names, emails, locations, departments, etc. When the Intranet “portal” was set up a couple of years ago it added another employee database. Each employee had to be entered manually on a form — very tedious for the approximately 250 employees we have at the moment. Shortly, I’ll have an automatic, daily Perl script to transfer and update the Intranet database list from the LDAP directory.
my @printed_fields = qw(LastName FirstName Initials Email PhoneNum Location Title) ;
my @ldap_fields = qw(sn givenName initials mail telephoneNumber physicalDeliveryOfficeName title) ;
my $select_fields = join(',', @ldap_fields) ;
use Win32::OLE ;
my $LDAP_SERVER = "LDAP://ldap-server:389/dc=mycompany,dc=com" ;
my $obj_connection = Win32::OLE->new("ADODB.Connection")
or die "$me: can't create ADODB.Connection\n" ;
my $obj_command = Win32::OLE->new("ADODB.Command")
or die "$me: can't create ADODB.Command\n" ;
my $obj_recordset = Win32::OLE->new("ADODB.Recordset")
or die "$me: can't create ADODB.Recordset\n" ;
$obj_connection->{Provider} = ("ADsDSOObject") ;
$obj_connection->{ConnectionString} = "Active Directory Provider" ;
$obj_connection->Open() ;
$obj_command->{ActiveConnection} = $obj_connection ;
$obj_command->{CommandText} = "select $select_fields,objectClass from '$LDAP_SERVER' where objectClass='user' order by sn" ;
$obj_recordset = $obj_command->Execute()
or die "$me: can't execute $obj_command->{CommandText}\n" ;
print join(',', @printed_fields), "\n" ;
$obj_recordset->MoveFirst ;
while (! $obj_recordset->EOF) {
my %record = map {
$_ => $obj_recordset->Fields($_)->{Value} ;
} @ldap_fields ;
substr($record{initials},0,1) = '' ;
print join(",", map {
$record{$_} ;
} @ldap_fields),
"\n"
if $record{sn} && $record{givenName} && $record{mail} ;
$obj_recordset->MoveNext ;
}
$obj_recordset->Close ;
Americans are all a titter over a bare breast. Well, it wasn’t even bare since there was some sort of “decoration” over the nipple. I don’t think it was an “accident.” Who is Janet Jackson? And did she need the publicity?
And in other news we’ll be getting six more weeks of winter. Whatever.
How do you decide whom to marry?
You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if
you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and
she should keep the chips and dip coming. — Alan, age 10
How can a stranger tell if two people are married?
You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be
yelling at the same kids. — Derrick, age 8
What do you think your mom and dad have in common?
Both don’t want any more kids. — Lori, age 8
What do most people do on a date?
Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get
to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you
listen long enough. — Lynnette, age 8
When is it okay to kiss someone?
When they’re rich. — Pam, age 7
Is it better to be single or married?
It’s better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need
someone to clean up after them. — Anita, age 9
How would the world be different if people didn’t get married?
There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn’t there?
— Kelvin, age 8
How would you make a marriage work?
Tell your wife that she looks pretty even if she looks like
a truck. — Ricky, age 10
From t h e . m o u t h p i e c e Monday, January 26, 2004