Friday win and not so win

Boring day at work, had to read some very complex technical specs in order to find out I did not have the equipment I needed to run some bug verifications, and then another spec to discover several could be done which I didn't think I knew how to do.

Gave up a trip to the bank to go to lunch with the gang, allegedly as a farewell for the IT guy who was laid off. IT guy apparently was not told about the lunch, so FAIL.  Made the mistake of giving a ride to the automation engineer who also needed to go to Lowe's. Waited for him for half an hour after checking out, he said he looked all over the store for me, but I was right outside the exit waiting for him. He had left his cell phone on his desk. FAIL.

Won't have a change to go to the bank until Monday, since there will probably be a big backup with all the OWS supporters and their asinine "bank transfer Saturday".  Idiots, picking the day when most managers will be gone, and the lowest folks on the org chart will be trying to deal with the flood of people. It's bad enough on a typical Saturday, my usual wait is half an hour.

AFter work, straight home to feed the cats, then off to Palo Alto for a special Reilly & Maloney concert which I have been looking forward to for months. It was an informal setting in the Unitarian Church, donation at the door (no reservations) so I got there early and grabbed a front row seat.

They are always great entertainment, but I was a little disappointed that they did not do most of my favorites. They really should have saved Palo Alto Cowboy for the encore, instead of ending the first set with it. But they did make it a sing-along chorus. Maloney forgot some of the words, which he did the last concert I saw them at years ago in San Jose. It is out of date, and they don't play the south bay hardly ever. They tried a lot of new (to them) material, some of which was pretty good. Sound mixing got in the way of hearing the words, though - too much guitar/banjo/mandolin and not enough voice. About the mandolin, it was played by a young man from Seattle who played well, but I didn't think he belonged there. They are a duet, and they also have solo careers, and fanboy nerdling mandolin player has the opposite of stage presence, and it just made me uncomfortable to watch him. Most of the time his part was strumming backup, and those times when he did finger pick or whatever it is called, he was better than average but I know half a dozen filkers who are better.

What made it full price for me was David Maloney reprising the Marlene Dietrich classic Falling In Love Again with lyrics gender bent for a man to sing, which I saw him do as a solo the last concert I went to many years ago in San Jose. He has since added Ginny Reilly singing harmony, and mandolin guy was in there too, detracting from David's uke. I just can't help imagining David in sexy black lingerie when  he does that number. For full effect we would need a lit cigarette.

Plans for tomorrow:
Vet at 8 am for Pumpkin weigh-in
Piano tuner at noon
Re-arrange t-shirt collection
Put comforters in vacuum-shrink bags
Fake it Saturday night

Мои твиты

• Сб, 14:09: I can haz in-tune piano!
• Сб, 14:11: Need to find an audition song for tomorrow.

So Much Done, So Much Undone

The day started way too early with an 8:15 am appointment at the vet to get Pumpkin weighed. Once again had to pull him out from under the bed. It's easy now, he's much lighter. Good news, he gained ¼ lb since Wednesday, the vet says no insulin yet, just keep feeding him what I've been feeding him. :-)

Home, relaxed with the cats till 10, then went to the office to pick up a package - two more wi-fi webcams. Started setting them up. Piano tuner showed up a little after noon, he did a good job of electronic tuning and explained that 100+ year old strings are in pretty good shape, a couple of them waver a little, but nothing short of a complete re-stringing would fix that, and it would cost more than the piano is worth. While he was plunking I finished setting up the webcam software which was more bother than the first two were because my router has some odd ideas about what a port conflict consists of, and it does not like using port numbers < 8000 for pass-through. I mounted one on the computer room wall which had been pointing at the cat's food station because its infrared was not working. One of the new ones took its place, and another old one was swapped to the top of the piano so I can see both the couch and the area in front of the patio door which the cats like to park in front of. The last one points at the foot of the bed, another of the parking areas. The first three are viewable by the public, the 4th is not. ( Read more... )

Piano tuner guy said my name was not on the gate directory, and my entry code did not work. I checked on the way back from dinner and he is right. Been here a month, there's no excuse for that. Will be calling the office Monday morning about that.

Printed up my theater resume/head shot for tomorrow's audition. Pirates of Penzance at Lyric Theater. The director is someone I directed at Stanford many years ago. I've played the police sgt. twice in that show, this time I want to be a pirate. It's more work, but more fun. And more comfortable costumes. I've decided to sing something which does not show off my voice: Where Is Love from Oliver. I wanted to sing As Long As He Needs Me, but it's too high. Ditto Happiness from that Peanuts musical.

Set up all the webcams in the call phone and in the PC. Discovered Pumpkin was curled up behind my chair as I was doing that.

Watched Stanford clobber some Pac12 team. Watched Cal do something similar, but not as thoroughly. Odd to see them play in SF in a baseball stadium. Kind of bizarre that in the middle of the budget crunch Cal, and UW are building new stadiums.

My eye is still bothering me. Will do urgent care Monday if it is still irritated.

Broke out the vacuum-shrink clothes bags and shrunk two comforters and six pillows. The amount of air in those things is amazing. I also re-did all my t-shirts, they are now on their shelves sorted by subject, though the subjects have some slack built into them. They include:

• Travel (with separate sections for Thai and NOLA)
• Local
• Humorous
• Science/Sci-Fi
• Theater
• X-rated
• UW
• Seattle
• Blank
• Vanity

I'll auction off a few at BASFA which are topical and no longer fit me. May also auction off a space-themed comforter, but that depends on attendance.

Went for a late dinner at Sizzler. Horrible service. The ice cream machine was serving liquids, many people mentioned this to the manager but nothing was done about it, not even an "out of order" sign. That corner of the room became the Spanish-speaking employees' chat area at about 9 (they close at 10) which was annoying because I was sitting there.

It rained most of the evening.

As I write this, I'm transferring my tunes (including ringtones) to the new phone. Moto uses a different directory structure than HTC so I had to wipe the SD card and restore stuff from backup.

Plans for tomorrow:
Morning: football & relax. Sleep in
Afternoon: movie & coffee w/ a friend
Evening: Pirates Auditions