And tomorrow’s the day I decided to drive to work because I have a choir rehearsal downtown in the evening.
Perhaps my nephew who came over from Thailand at Christmas wished too hard for snow!
Saturday, Feb 26, 2005
8:00 p.m. Christ Church Deer Park Anglican, 1570 Yonge Street, Toronto
“A Midwinter Celebration!”
The The Bell’Arte Singers accompanied by critically acclaimed organist Ian Sadler
I enjoyed singing this concert of Mozart’s Te Deum, Haydn’s Little Organ Mass and Dvorak’s Mass in D, the “original” chamber work for choir and organ. I hope the audience had a good listen, too.
Last night’s impromptu choir party took place at the new Fox and Fiddle (used to be Shopsy’s) across the street. I thought just that three of us were going; however, after putting the music in the trunk I found we were a party of 20 or so. In some ways this was better than a house party. After standing for a couple of hours performing at a concert you end up standing around some more at someone’s house. And a pint Guinness seems just the ticket after an evening of singing.
Last night’s dress rehearsal went OK. At one point I was told to not sing as loud and for the other basses to sing louder. I know that one piece very well as I was bass section leader when I learned it first. In that other choir I always had to lead as there were some entries when I was never sure whether the rest of the section would join me. Perhaps I was still leading since we are standing “scrambled” and I can’t hear the rest of my section.
My voice is resting at the moment; although, this morning I played over some of the pieces for next Saturday’s concert. I’m hoping the choir I’ll be singing with next week knows the material well — I want to add to the voices not to lead them. I would need much more learning time or familiarity for that.
Our practice for Saturday’s concert went well. The Dvorak Mass in D sounds particularly “grand” with the tracker organ at Christ Church Deer Park.
In non-musical ponderings, I wondered if the young lady I saw on my way to the subway has problems with chest colds: I saw a lot of chest and some cleavage in these -6°C temperatures.
Between 15 and 30 cm of wet snow fell last night. I shovelled the sidewalks and a path down the driveway since no had to drive this morning. It was a heavy walk to the train station and also at the other end. Of course, the streets were already plowed to the pavement.
I think all municipal politicians should be required to try and walk to work on snowy days. Maybe then the sidewalk plows would be sent out sooner instead of a couple of days later.
I decided to run in the valleys today; however, the rain last week has made everything icy. You get kinda get slowed down gliding or taking steps across the sloping icy parts.
I finally used my router and new stand to make some small ½ in x 1¾ in parts out of PVC moulding for my wife’s Indian flute making club. I used the switchable two-outlet strip to also power the vaccum cleaner to suck up “some” of the chips. As is customary, the setup took longer than the actual fabrication. I figure with the cost of the stand and the two straight bits I bought each part only cost about $10 each to make!
I had a look at the music that I will be singing to help out the bass section of another choir. There are several Finnish songs to learn. With the help of the Internet, I have found an audio pronunciation guide. It turns out that Finnish is similar to Italian in that you learn a few rules and you can almost sing the language like a native. I’m glad English is my mother tongue. Otherwise, how would I know how to pronounce cough, rough, through or thorough? There’s also a Gaelic song. Instead of accents these folk add extra consonants and vowels to symbolize the sounds. Sometimes it seems a one syllable word has 10 letters!
It was too cold (-3°C) to do some “work” in my garage workshop but I did do some tidying up. Today’s tossed items included:
- a box of foam trimmings (for packing?)
- a couple of computer power supplies
- a parallel port scanner (remember those?)
- lengths of coax ethernet cable (cat-2?)
- several speakers from the intercom system that used to be in our house (quaint 1970’s technology)
- wood structures I built to go on things I no longer have
- junk (of course!)
Then I rearranged the remaining stuff for somewhat easier access. Perhaps this spring I should see what I have stacked and stored along with the two or three 4' x 8' sheets of dry wall.
A moldy, oldy that re-surfaced in an email list recently.
A Jew, a Christian and a Muslim were having a discussion about who was the most religious.
“I was riding my camel in the middle of the Sahara,” exclaimed the Muslim. “Suddenly a fierce sandstorm appeared from nowhere. I truly thought my end had come as I lay next to my camel while we were being buried deeper and deeper under the sand. But I did not lose my faith in the Almighty Allah, I prayed and prayed and suddenly, for a hundred meters all around me, the storm had stopped. Since that day I am a devout Muslim and am now learning to recite the Koran by memory.”
“One day while fishing,” started the Christian, “I was in my little dinghy in the middle of the ocean. Suddenly a fierce storm appeared from nowhere. I truly thought my end had come as my little dinghy was tossed up and down in the rough ocean. But I did not lose my faith in Jesus Christ, I prayed and prayed and suddenly, for 300 meters all around me, the storm had stopped. Since that day I am a devout Christian and am now teaching young children about Him.”
“One day I was walking down the road,” explained the Jew. “I was in my most expensive designer outfit in the middle of New York city. Suddenly I saw a black bag on the ground in front of me appear from nowhere. I put my hand inside and found a million dollars in cash. I truly thought my end had come as it was a Saturday and we are not allowed to handle money on Saturdays. But I did not lose my faith in Jehovah, I prayed and prayed and suddenly, for 500 feet all around me, it was Tuesday!”
Regarding that memory leak: I sent an email and called the technical support of the watchdog timer board manufacturer describing the problem. They were kind enough to send me the sources to the DLL and I compiled them. “How about them apples” — no more leaks.
Now I have to make sure that the new DLL is actually setting/resetting the hardware watchdog timer since I had problems trying to link the VC6 LIB file with the Borland C++ code.
A choir I was in several years ago is “desparate for basses” and I’ve been asked to join them for their next concert on March 5. So, I have just a couple of weeks to cram in a concert’s worth of music starting this Saturday when I get the repertoire. Of course, the Bell’Arte Singers have their concert at the end of next week. I have given notice to the “Messiah 2005” choir in Oakville that I’ll be missing a few rehearsals.
We got notice today we are “on the list” for a male soft-coated Wheaten terrier on March 12. Good timing as my wife will have just started her two week March break.
I rehearsed the Messiah (parts 2 and 3) with a (new to me) choir on Saturday morning. Today the Oakville Choral Society sang at Oakville’s Town Hall in support of an Oakville Arts Centre. As usual our half hour slot was delayed by at least half an hour.
I would have said my script was done until I analyzed some binary files. I programmed strictly to the spec.; however, it seems there must be a work-around because I’m missing all of channel 3’s data since the Feb. 3 whereas the old program gives data for that (and all the other) channel. I shall see if the firmware guys are ignoring their own extra parity byte.
Today, we put down a deposit for a male Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier puppy. We visited the breeder and saw a litter of puppies and young “Mikey,” a three-month old returned because a family was “allergic.” We met several of the dogs: all very friendly—I have lots of kisses on my face. At this point we are waiting to hear if we get a puppy in a few weeks or the three-month old almost immediately. Now will have to get the gear: crate, leash, toys, food, dish, etc and choose a name. For the moment, I like Fugue.
We got a couple of lithium AA batteries as part of a marketing promotion. I used one in our kitchen clock—should be good for a few years. I tried the other in my fm tuner/mp3 player. I have found its output voltage to be very sensitive to the cold. The other day it was in my jacket pocket in about -10°C weather and the device shut off because the battery was too low. When I turned it on later after it warmed up to room temperature the mp3 player said the battery was at full potential. I think I will have to switch back to an alkaline AA battery and use that lithium one for something else.
I was “hired” at work to troubleshoot a problem with some hardware and controlling software running under win2k. There was a memory leak adding 4k to the main process every 10 seconds or so. Using the System Monitor “snap-in” and monitoring the process' “working set” I was able to view the memory leaking away. I traced it to the software (dll?) controlling a hardware reboot timer. After disabling this “feature” the program ran over lunch with nary another byte used. We brought the computer back from the transformer station relay for some remedial work and testing of the software and some other problems it has.
I have always enjoyed software troubleshooting.
Either my wife is into money laundering or she forgot to check her pants' pocket. Should I consider the $10 and $5 bills my tip for unloading the washer and hanging up the stuff?
The union shared an arbitration settlement with management after 17 hours of mediation-arbitration bargaining(!). The details seem somewhat unusual: such as 1.5% every six months for the three years of the new contract.
Here’s a family picture when I was 10, dated July 25, 1965. Yours truly is standing in the arms of my aunt. Present are my mom, her parents, two of her brothers and their wives, my siblings and one of my cousins. I presume my father was taking the picture. Items of significance include:
- I wonder if my sister remembers being a show off?
- My mom and her two brothers are divorced from those spouses in the picture.
- This is a surprising picture to me because, unlike my father’s side of the family where we “reunite” regularly, the last time I saw my mother’s side of the family get together was at my grandmother’s funeral. Even then, many of my cousins weren’t there.
- That property where the picture was taken is now occupied by several very expensive townhouses.
- I think the sun dial I got for Christmas from my mom is the one sitting just behind my sister’s left hand.
The event was quiet — just like me. We spent the evening at my older son’s place in Guelph among the 3 cats, 2 dogs, budgie and various aquatic wild life. My older son’s partner cooked a great meal (thanks, Brianne) and my wife baked my favourite cake (angel food with a delicious, sweet and gooey corn syrup / egg white icing from Edna Staebler’s Food that really schmecks). My younger son put in an appearance though he had to leave early in order to make another phone call / interview for one of his college journalism courses.
Now that I have reached the half-century mark it really doesn’t seem as old as I thought it was going to be when I was a young lad back in the 20th century.
I put a greeting card addressed by my wife in the mailbox for someone in another city. A couple of days later it arrived in the mail. Canada Post has such intelligent mail sorting machines that it must of decided that the return address sticker pasted to the back of the envelope was a better address then the one my wife had hand-written on the front. She has very legible hand-writing by anyone’s standard. We know it was machine-sorted because of the flourescent bar codes on the front of the envelope beside the stamp. We have mailed it again. This time my wife put To: on the front and From: on the back. Perhaps those bar codes will trigger a manual override and have the card sent on. We’ll see.
I got the training today. I can hardly until wait the trainer’s stories come to pass—I’m looking forward to a steak dinner at a posh “Gentlemens” Club; or the Call Girl that accompanies you on the elevator up to your hotel room. Neither ruse swayed him. His point was that integrity is really your only trump card in rejecting something because of a non-conformance.