10°C here and only 4 in Victoria where one of my brothers lives. All our snow cover is disappearing fast and the local creeks and rivers are swollen with floodwaters.
Today I chose to walk. As a bonus, more “happens” than when I run:
- I asked a women what was the breed of her three dogs: Cairn terriers a.k.a. “Toto” dogs.
- Another woman was walking her pure white full-size poddle which was wearing four black boots!
- A man asked me about finding a condo / apartment on a particular street. The problem is that this street is a “ring road” and there must be dozens of townhouse developments along it. I could only point out where he was on the map he was carrying. It looked to me like he should be on the other side of the ring about a ½ km away.
- I found a retaining wall next to the sidewalk covered in English Ivy. I should take some cuttings and root them for transplanting in the spring between the new walkway and the garage: a very shady place.
Today I bought a stud finder from the planet Zircon. It used to be a tedious process to find the drywall screws or nails using one of those small pivoting magnet thingys. Of course, now I ask myself why I didn’t buy a “finder” years ago.
I easily located the studs and screwed three standards using a 2 ft level to verticalize and a 4 ft level to horizontalize the brackets. On this hardware I placed a 16 in x 8 ft shelf about 12 in down from the ceiling so my wife can store boxes of stuff “up there” in her sewing room. I also bought a light aluminum step platform so she can reach said boxes.
The greatest part of the time I spent doing this job involved removing the Rubbermaid UPC labels and glue from the six pieces of shelf hardware.
According to this article, the brain may “store” music differently than other memories. One example described one composer who suffered a stroke and could no longer talk or understand speech but continued to compose for another decade until his death. Perhaps this would explain why I can almost “instantly” remember performing a particular work after hearing it again but it will take much longer for me figure out when I last sang it. That is, my musical memory doesn’t appear to fade that much nor does it usually have any temporal characteristics. I might remember a piece I sang just recently as well as one I sang thirty years ago. I can’t say the same, say, for books I have read unless they were “really good.”
As of this writing the death toll is said be 63,000 though some areas are still inaccessible because of the mighty force generated by the Boxing Day sea-floor earthquake and subsequent tsunami. I have collected some images of just the physical destruction. There are many more images of bodies, body bags and coffins but also of the thousands of heroic rescue workers toiling away in the tropical heat and humidity, amid the stench of decomposing corpses, to try and help clean up the mess and distribute aid to the probably millions of newly homeless peoples.
I spent about 3 hours this morning drinking coffee and reading a book, The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams: a parallel Faerie world-type fantasy. The whole idea of have the time to sit and read for a while is just “awesome!”
In the afternoon I went shopping for some sort of tall, narrow shelves to house my wife’s sweater “collection” and for an “upper shelf” for her sewing where she can put boxes of her “stash” items. I discovered our little Aveo5 hatchback can hold a 16" x 8' board with the hatch closed. If I had taken our Buick Century I would have had to have that board sticking out of a back window in these -10°C temperatures.
I was going to run on the treadmill this morning but saw a couple a couple of joggers go by on the park path behind our place. Perhaps the 20 cm or so of snow ice were clear enough on the local trails. Nope! It was a tough slog everywhere that little bit of slippage on the single-track slows you down and tires you out. Lots of calories were burned—the whole idea of this exercise. It was quite pretty though with the fluffy flakes of snow coming down and Vivaldi on the ear phones.
On Christmas Eve we supped at my aunt and uncle’s in Port Hope and attended two of his church services: the family carol service, wherein I reprised my role as a camel in the pageant. The last time I performed this role was when our older son was young enough to be the baby Jesus. At the later 10 p.m. communion service my wife and I sang O Holy Night. Originally it was going to be a duet but I didn’t know my lower part well enough and the young accompanist was having a bit of trouble, so, we sang it in unison. As the weather was clear after the service we drove home. Late Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day it took us about 1½ hours for the Port Hope to Mississauga trip, a journey I would usually allow 2 to 2½ hours these days.
Christmas was a time for family. My older son and girlfriend dropped by and the five of us had brunch and opened presents. My favourite, from my dear sweetie, is a small MP3 player and FM tuner iRiver device. I guess my only complaint is that the 2 point font on the LCD display is rather hard to see for these older eyes. It seems to me that the small i is to marketing what mega was a few years ago. Now I need to collect or generate some MP3s. The evening supper was at my in-laws, both in their 80s. This was probably the last Christmas gathering they will host. (They did get lots of help from the rest of the family.)
I hope everyone else had a Merry Christmas or, at the very least, enjoyed this holiday weekend.
Everybody had the same idea: I went to the local grocery store early, the parking lot was crowded, and the store was very busy. I was looking over the pepper squash (I like to bake or roast it on the BBQ) and someone asked whether I knew anything about squash. I replied that I knew how to cook it so she asked my advice on which kind was best for soup. I told her butternut because that was listed in the ingredients of the last container of squash soup I had. She grabbed two large ones.
I wonder what the going rate for “produce advice” is?
In typical “by the shores of Lake Ontario” fashion, there’s a crust of freezing rain forming on the 20 cm of so of snow that fell during the night. It was tough slog to shovel this morning due to the weight of the snow and ice. Though I worn a rain jacket over a sweater, I was soaked to the skin.
Yes, I could write a family newsletter; however, images are so much
better. Last night’s pics of the family get-together at my
sister's place are available courtesy
of my older son and his digital camera. Special guests: my brother and his family back from Thailand. Missing: my young nephew Crawford, with his timezone still in the Pacific Ocean somewhere, went to bed, younger son went to gf's family Christmas on account of they (her family not my son) are leaving for Mexico today (weather permitting 
).
A boring job is now out of the way. I’ve sent an email to the few individuals who didn’t hand in their music. A couple of them couldn’t make it to sing at the concert but some others were there. I’m not sure what’s so hard about this: if the music doesn’t belong to you, you need to hand in the music immediately after the concert.
After the concert, instead of being able to entertain and mingle with our audience guests, my wife and I have to run around asking and reminding people to hand in their music. What a pain. At least I have found a pretty illustration for my whine/rant.
The web server and everything else in this domain went down with a power outage yesterday so the hubbo news has been queuing.
Just in time for my brother’s arrival from Thailand he would have been greeted with -25°C temperatures last night. My toes almost numbed out walking to the train station this morning. However, it is supposed to reach 1°C tomorrow: almost time for shorts again.
We have two hamsters for a while—courtesy of my younger son’s girlfriend who’s off to Mexico with her family and the rich grandpa that sponsored the trip.
Two parties on Saturday: an open house at my older son’s place in Guelph and an office Christmas party at our GM's house in the country. Half the guests parked at the bottom of the long hill because it was too slippery to climb without four wheel drive. In fact tow trucks had be called in to extract the caterers' van from the ditch. But it was a good party, even the company president appeared to be having a good time.
Today was my last work day until the New Year. Except I might have to go in on Christmas Eve to make sure a script is processing some new files that will be coming in by then.
Our company is demonstrating a technique for AMR using the power lines. The novel aspect about this method is that the metering signals can transmit through transformers. Other technologies have to use additional equipment to “go around” those transformers. After a couple of weeks of data gathering for five house within a block of each other there’s some interesting statistics already. The highest energy house uses 4½ times more energy than the lowest one and the peak usage is 3.6 times higher. I’ll have to find out from the test co-ordinator why there’s such a difference: teenagers, electric water heater or heating, extensive outdoor Christmas light display, etc?
After two days of busing it to the QMS internal auditor training course I’ll be glad to get back to GO Transit:
- The trains are (usually) on time.
- I don’t have to transfer nor do I have to wait between 10 minutes to half an hour to catch the transfer bus at a cold bus terminal where smokers are puffing away.
- If I have to stand, it is only for 15 minutes.
- There’s only 3 controlled stops between my arrival and destination stations.
It seems worth that extra $1.25 somehow.
It’s been an exciting day learning about internal auditing for ISO9001:2000 the standard for QMS. I have another day to go. On a scale of 0 to 10 of excitingness this rates at least 0.0031415926535. Compare this to SRED which I’d give a rating of 0.000000000141421356237. Oh well, it keeps me busy and adds something to the résumé.
I met my boss in the washroom on my way out tonight. I couldn’t very well tell him my train was coming since he was describing some billable work I’d be doing in the New Year. Luckily, the train was just late enough that I could run and catch it.
I overhauled a part of my web site of power line carrier based meter reading data in preparation for a new trial at a different utility. In the process I broke the automatic script which updates two exisiting trials. Luckily I discovered the error (the new htpasswd was missing an entry) before I left tonight: I’ll be away from work for two days to get ISO9001:2000 auditor training.
There was an unlucky bit: a part in my office chair broke. I can no longer adjust the tilt of the seat back. Come Friday morning I think I’ll get a similar chair I discovered in our conference room and “turn in” the old one.
Sunday, Dec 12, 2004
3:00 p.m. Eastminster United Church, 310 Danforth Ave, Toronto
“A Christmas Masque” with the Toronto Masque Theatre
The The Bell’Arte Singers
Eight part, double choir antiphonal singing in the wrap-around gallery at Eastminster United Church is what Christmas music is all about to me. To make music as well as sing. Yes, I enjoyed myself even though my voice, today, is more basso than baritone. Three days of concert singing does that to you.
I have nicknamed one choir member “Ten-to-One Mary” or “Mary Come-Lately.” Our Saturday dress rehearsal was annouced as being 10 to 1. We usually rehearse on Saturdays at 10:00 for 2½ hours. “Mary the Soprano Soloist,” from Peterborough, was supposed to been staying a local hotel. We tried phoning them. No-one by that last name. Finally at 12:50 while we were singing the last carol of the rehearsal, Mary showed up. Ah, we said, “Mary the Literalist” was finally here! “There’s something about Mary.”
Friday December 10 and Saturday, December 11, 2004
8:00 p.m., Glen Abbey United Church, Nottinghill Gate, Oakville
“Mostly Messiah”
Oakville Choral Society
Two sold-out houses! Congratulations to the choir on good performances. My personal “best,” so to speak, was last night’s performance. As four tenors were absent on Friday night I sang tenor in some pieces with varying degrees of success. I noticed, however, that “my” basses had some problems with notes and entries. In order to “rest” my upper voice registers, I sang the audience carols an octave lower. Last night I returned to my usual spot amongst the first basses and we did much better. I did have some inadvertent solos where I came in, correctly I might add, and, a beat later, the rest of the basses joined in. Overall, though, I think the male sections of this choir have improved greatly in sound and quality over the past few months.
The music director made one cut last night (selections from Hadyn’s Creation) and tightened up the program. Friday night we ended with the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Last night we had time to add Worthy is the Lord and the final Amens to that.
It seems that only four persons showed up to assemble the risers and set out the chairs which would explain why the audience was waiting in the narthex when I arrived at 10 to 7 on Saturday night. I might have come earlier had I known but I had already “served” three times and given up part of a vacation day, too. Fortunately the movers did the work last night after the concert.
I didn’t go to the pub last night even though it was on the way home. A Guinness would have been an excellent salve for the throat. I figured a the mixture of loud talking and alcohol might have “roughened” and deepened my voice too much for today’s concert. I was also tired of wearing my tux for the third evening this week.
Today’s Word-a-day email was a word that looks like something my son would have made up. I think the definition is rather boring, IMHO.
backwardation (BAK-wuhr-DAY-shuhn) noun
A premium paid by the seller to the buyer for deferring delivery of stock or some other product. Opposite of contango.
I took today off to rest up for tonight’s Mostly Messiah concert.
We had sold chocolates to cover the cost of moving riser’s in and out of the church. However, the rental contract person and the wedding booking person both booked the church. We took down the risers after the dress rehearsal Wed. for the wedding rehearsal Thurs. I helped set up the risers this morning. We’ll have to take them down again after tonight’s concert and set them up again tomorrow afternoon after the wedding. I don’t think I’ll be able to make that setup session as I have another dress rehearsal on Sat. morning for Sunday’s concert. I think the stage manager will either have lost all his hair or have it turn completely white after all this.
On a cheerier note the OCS are sold out! I heard the ticket person had just one ticket left out of 800 on Wed. for the two performances tonight and tomorrow.
Vintners in the Napa Valley who produce primarily Pinot Blancs and Pinot Grigios have developed a new hybrid grape, which acts as an anti-diuretic and will reduce the number of trips an older person has to make to the bathroom during the night.
They will be marketing the new wine as Pinot More.
From Clean Laffs email
# This isn't very explicit on the web so I thought I would show
# a short example of how to make an array of filehandles using
# the IO::File module.
use IO::File ;
my @fh ;
# Make 11 files with the numbers 0 to 10, 1 number per file.
foreach $file (0..10) {
$fh[$file] = new IO::File ">$file.txt" ;
# print $fh[$file] "$file\n" ; # This doesn't compile
print { $fh[$file] } "$file\n" ; # Inside a block it does
}
exit 0 ;
“This week’s action item: Clean out your keyboard. See if you can identify all the substances you find!”
From The cranky user: Hardware and usability, Part 2 by Peter Seebach
My BIL complained of a weak arm when the superintendent at the condo found him in the elevator in the mid-afternoon. She called 911 and the ambulance took him to a hospital in Mississauga. Unfortunately he was coming down the elevator to go and pick up his wife from her physio. appointment. In his agitated state (he’s very hard of hearing and difficult to understand), he either didn’t know or didn’t remember the address of the clinic; just the street name in Milton. I phoned around to several places and the Milton hospital to see if I could locate such a place. Eventually, as I travelled home from work, my sister-in-law and my son located her. My wife picked her sister-in-law up and brought her back to the apartment.
By this time my BIL was feeling better and the neurologist said he was fine though he wanted a meeting with my wife, her brother’s POA. Presumably they would discuss what drugs he may be taking, etc. It looks like it will be a long night for my wife as she’ll have to drive him home again as well. More good news is that her school will cover her work tomorrow if necessary.
I remember the first LED's I “owned” were in a calculator I bought in 1975. Now I can trim my eaves and eavestroughs with LEDs. I think they have a richer, red colour than coloured incandescent lights plus they are claimed to last 200,000 hours. A quick calculation based on 8 hours/night for a month each year means that I will enjoy 833 years of use from these puppies. I’ll be sure to include them in my will so that the next 30 generations of my descendents will be able to enjoy them, too.
It was the first run of the season where ice is forming on the puddles. Fortunately there wasn’t much wind so a fleece sweater over my long-sleeved running shirt sufficed. I was “slow” today about 1:08 instead of the 1:04 I’ve be able to do in the last couple of months. I’ll blame this on being out late last night.
Saturday, December 4, 2004
8:00 p.m., St. Boniface Church
“A Baroque Christmas”
Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra with guest conductor: Dr. Lee Willingham and his choir: The Bell’Arte Singers
My voice register is a little lower today after “blowing the pipes” on chorus selections from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. I agree with our music director’s opinion that the the Oratorio’s first chorus, Jauchzet, Frohlocket is one of the most joyous, uplifting pieces of the choral literature.
One soloist experienced a problem by coming in a beat too soon during a duet even though that person had previously performed this “perfectly” in rehearsals. Even more embarassing was to receive compliments on the solo from choir members who hadn’t even noticed the error. This probably speaks to the tremendous talent and professionalism of the music director who brought along the orchestra. At least the soloist didn’t falter despite realizing the mistake. Perhaps part of the problem lay in the fact that the soloist had to leave the choir during the previous movement and quickly thread a path through the instrumentalists and music stand power cords to a spot near the conductor’s podium. The lighting was poor and the soloist had to stand slightly in front of the music director in order not to block the sightlines of some of the orchestra. All that, and still try and count bars of a piece where the orchestra starts on the last eighth note of a 4-beat bar and the singer comes in several measures later on the last eighth note of the bar. There, the incident has been described and now we’ll move on to better things.
As my in-laws live close by the concert venue we visited there between dress rehearsal and concert and after the concert. The older I get, the more tired I seem to be the next day if I stay up past midnight. I definitely won’t be lingering after the two evening concerts coming up this week.
December the third is a significant family date: my wife’s birthday. Usually we are too busy rehearsing or concertizing; but not this night this year. So I treated my wife, my two sons and our daughter (ICL) to supper at the local Canyon Creek Steak and Chop House.
Until February the fifth of next year my wife is now the same numerical age as I am.
A visiting minister waxed eloquent during the offertory prayer. “Dear Lord,” he began with arms extended and a rapturous look on his upturned face, “without you we are but dust…”
He would have continued but at that moment my very obedient daughter (who was listening carefully for a change!) leaned over to me and asked quite audibly in her shrill little girl voice, “Mom, what is butt dust?”
Borrowed from Clean Laffs email.