Backdating to Thursday

Not a lot happened at work. Found out that instead of being expected to write a lot of test cases for a new video format, all I was asked to do was suggest to the person who wrote the first pass that he needs to copy all those and add a second circuit board to the tests.

Plodded through rush hour traffic to downtown SJ, parked on the top floor of the cinema lot (it's almost never that full after 6 on a week night), and went to Cinema 12 to see a set of short indie movies. And then got back in line for another set.

My nutshell reviews:

Shorts Program 2 - (Dis)connection

The Baddest Part (15min)
Bonnie & Clyde wanna be
The leading lady showed a lot of range, from batshit crazy to sexy to dangerous to vulnerable. The leading man mostly looked on, being boyishly handsome. Both did a great job with their characters. This film is done in short clips, and until we were 3/4 of the way through the movie it didn't matter if they were chronological. When it mattered, they were. I liked and hated that we are not shown enough to know if they pulled off the robbery or not. Okay cinematography, but too much shooting into the light. 

Barrio Boy (8min)
Hispanic barber has the hots for male redheaded customer. Mostly voice-over. Okay acting, okay cinematography, lighting could have been better. Very perceptive story, cute ending. Loved the name of the barbershop, and that it's embedded into the bench in front. The "bad boy" loiterer gave a great performance, but I think the character distracts from the plot.

Coney Island Dreams (24min)
Irish eyes
Best acting in all the shorts, all the characters, all the time. Superb cinematography. It took me a while to realize they were splicing back and forth between past and present, I think they were counting on the leading lady's eyes to be The Clue. But since she is in sweats in the past and in a sun dress in the present, I thought we might be seeing sisters in two different story lines. But once that resolved, it was brilliant. Very well written, poignant, loved the ending, and the scene before it. Second-best of show.

Home (20min)
Chinese
Hole in the wall is a camera. We see a fixed shot of a section of livingroom, as a couple evolves through the years. Very well acted, enjoyable story line, ocassional subtitle translation failures but for the most part spot on. 

Strange Men (20min)
Paranoid Tumwater girl gets out of jail in Mean Cops, AZ, calls home for bus/train fare back home. She's paranoid, but that turns out to be justified. Excellent cinematography, lighting and makeup (or lack thereof). Costumes were good too. Great acting from the guy she meets in the coffee shop. There was one script error in the Amtrak station scene - the agent says "that's a regional..." but what she is showing him is a schedule for one of the train routes. The line should have been "that train doesn't go to Seattle" (I did not see which schedule she took off the rack - but only the Coast Starlight goes to Seattle from LA. I wouldn't call the others "regional" though).

Cupcake (14min)
Swedish lesbians
BORING. The plot takes forever to develop. Filmmaker thinks the lens needs to be inches from the subjects at all times. Horrrible choice of angles, even in the rare long shots.  We're supposed to believe the set is a prison cell, when it's obviously the kitchen in someone's apartment. The insane struggle at the end was not justified in the rather tame relationship during the rest of the film. And after the movie opens with the cupcake, we never see or hear about it again.

Through The Breaking Glass (A través del espejo) (15min)
From Spain.
Can our dreams control others? Dying woman's dreams. Alice in Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass analog. Powerful animations, beautiful location shots (dream world) superb cinematography both outdoors and in the hospital setting. Best in show, by a long shot.

---------------
Shorts Program 4 - Animated Worlds

Jinxy Jenkins, Lucky You (4min)
Beautifully drawn, captivating story of jinxed boy meets magically lucky girl. Excellent score tracks through many moods and levels of excitement. Set in SF, very romantic ending. Tied for Second-best in show.

Bear Story (11min)
BEST OF SHOW. Incredibly fine artwork, powerful story, poignant, almost made me cry. Helped by a score which matched the moods of the piece. Very clever mechanical circus-in-a-box. Clockwork marvel.

The Dam Keeper (18min)
Horrible watercolor impressionist art, strong anti-bullying theme, WTF climax and ending. Pig is the protagonist. Too long, and the two themes of the story were not integrated as well as they could have been. Theme 1 is the devoted dam keeper schoolboy (similar to Hugo). Theme 2 is this schoolboy is bullied, but a new student befriends him.

Behind My Behind (4min)
Meh. SJSU product, mediocre artwork, mildly annoying score. Otherwise a pleasant fantasy about what has fallen through the sofa cushions. Possibly drug-inspired.

Crow (5min)
Boring. Ink infusions creating Rorschack type patterns, not my idea of animations. Poem voice-over is boilerplate Native American tale we've heard 100 times. An insult to crows.

Deadly (9min)
Highly amusing. Well drawn, probably the most romantic thing featuring Death® personified since the Terry Pratchett books. Irish film, but no accents that I noticed on the characters. Or maybe it was subtitled? Tied for second-best in show.

Dinner For Few (10min)
Excellent artwork, but extremely opressive score and story line and highly annoying cats. More pigs.

Footprints (4min)
Total WTF. Sloppy pen and ink artwork, sloppy animation, sloppy story line, the only thing which made any sense was the ending, and even that not so much.

German Shepherd (10min)
Horrible title for this film about a Jewish boy who is so guilty about his mother's hate of all things German that he seeks out "good Germans". Not much animation in this, it actually starts off with some photographs of the protagonist as a child, which IMHO was a waste of film. Voice over narration. Some rudimentary stop-action drawing animation which sometimes illustrated the story, sometimes just took up space. I hated this one for purely personal reasons - my parents both lost family to the Nazis, and hated all things German.

Heavenly Peace (6min)
Cartoonish art, very well drawn for the style (I'm not thrilled about this style), the plot is all about Christmas, did not work as well in mid-February. Great storyboarding. Cupid lies. Nice to see a gay couple movie where the being gay part is preipheral.

The Last Resort (8min)
Really good story with lots of amusing twists. Sense of humor from the opening titles.  Well drawn, character voices were spot on. My #3 choice.

Luna & Lars (9min)
Marionettes in stop motion, though most of this could easily have been done live video with puppeteers. I did not like the makeup used on the puppets, or the special defects. The music was a montage of 78s-style dance instrumentals. Lots of work, but not to my taste.

Nine (9min)
Kitty/ghost fantasy with warthogs as antagonists. Superb artwork, okay score. Gets pretty WTF at the end. Nice to see all those Thai names in the credits - lots of people needed for this very complex animation project.

Teeth (7min)
What's with all the flies? Voice over, okay artwork, story about a guy who doesn't take care of his teeth. Disgusting surprise ending.

Chiaroscuro (8min)
Fireball vs cubes. No story, frenetic score, excellent but simple artwork. Made me dizzy, I shut my eyes for the last half.

johnnyeponymous MCed the second set, always fun when he's in charge.

Got out of there about midnight, home at 12:30, last-minute check of FB and Quicken, and went to bed. 

Backdated to Friday

Woke up with Spook close enough to pet with my right hand, at 3 am and 6 am. But after that she did her usual disappearing act, until the alarm went off, when she attacked the corner of the bed by my feet.

No goodies at work, because whomever is in charge of that had the day off, and had brought in donuts yesterday.

Not a lot to do at work, wrapped up some tests and some data housekeeping.

Lunch at China China, the Korean buffet which has sushi. Very bad sushi. No thin Korean beef slices, but the ribs were excellent for a change.

Stayed late, but got antsy after half an hour, went to the new shopping center at El Camino & Scott, got a coffee at Peet's which I tried to drink in the car, but it was truly horrible coffee. And took too long to cool off. So I drove to the Santa Clara Players theater and parked there, got out the tablet, sat on a park bench and read until it was time for the box office to open. My buddy George was there as usual, had a ticket for me. I'd paid online weeks ago. Opening night usually sells out because after there is a champagne gala, and they put out a really nice spread in a recently renovated house at which Jack London used to sit out on the veranda and write.  Lovely place, and a HUGE improvement on the tiny pavilion they used to use.

The show is an unknown called Harris Cashes Out and one reason I went is two friends (out of a cast of 4) were in it.  When I got to the theater someone I did not recognize called out to me, the director as it turns out. He knew me from a couple of benefits I did in Ben Lomand, and maybe I was at a cast party at his house once, when he directed a show my at-the-time best friend was in.

It was not ready for prime time. Lots of muffed lines, some messed up blocking. Entertaining show because of a lot of clever quips, and amusing character development. They kept the set simple, but a huge mistake the director made was having books on the shelves rearranged between scenes. It was not needed, and bogged things down a lot. May have been done to mask costume changes (there is no backstage, the dressing rooms are in a house two doors down).

I enjoyed it well enough, and by the time they have done a couple more shows it will all fit into place. After the show I talked to the cast, they agreed there was a lot of improvisation tonight, and it wasn't quite ready. No show tomorrow, next one on Sunday.

Home at 10, totally sleep deprived, in bed without even firing up the PC. Spook joined me.

Appointments

Slept in, till about 9. Spook did not like that one bit, she kept whining at me, and attacking the corner of the bed nearest the door. After I showered and dressed, she raced me to the treats bowl and won by about 10 seconds.

She had spent about 2/3 of the night on the bed. Yay.

Fedex had delivered a small package to my front steps last night, opened it this morning and it was an ink cartridge for a printer I have never owned. Looked at the address, and they were off by 4 houses. Takes talent to mistake 7 for 11. So first chore this morning was to walk it over to #11 and leave it on top of his mailbox.

Started a load of laundry, then my alarm reminded me to go to Murphy Street and buy some thin mints. The only Girl Scout troop selling today would be in front of a bead shop. Parked behind the stores, and kicked myself because there's a Goodwill right there and I have a pile of stuff to brig to them, and was sort of planning on doing that today.

Found the troop, and even though they were in GS green, they looked too young. Ought to have been in brownie brown at that age. They were down to the last thin mint box, so I bough it. The leader said a delivery was due within the hour, and suggested I do some shopping (it was farmer's market day on Murphy Street), so I did. After a bit of wandering I bought an allegedly sourdough baguette, to go with the assorted fowl pate. Lots of oranges of many varieties for sale too. Tempted to buy some creamed honey, but I'm trying to cut down on sweets.

Wandered back to the cookie stand, bought 3 more thin mints, and on my way out of the market bought 3 large sweet Asian pears. There was a lot of good looking fruit, but the prices were too high. I expect a direct-from-farm strawberry to cost less than Safeway, not 50% more.

Home, put stuff away, opened a document I'd made for the songwriters' meetup Tuesday and added a page with just the English translation. The first three pages have Thai, transliteration and translation a line at a time. The challenge is to write English words to the very pretty music, and retain the story line. Which is that the singer is very shy, and cannot bring herself to say That One Word to him, so she will whisper it on the wind, and maybe he will hear. The song ends with the singer blowing (into the wind, presumably). Part of the challenge is Thai songs don't rhyme, and the tempo patterns are more random than Western songs.

2 pm rolled around, I took the car to Toyota of Palo Alto. Sunnyvale messed up the last two times I took it there, and didn't have any appointments available for today. Even if they did, past experience is it's a first come attitude there. Palo Alto is a much smaller service department, but they respect appointments and do things right.

I sat in the lounge and read from the tablet, made more difficult by a Chinese man playing videos LOUDLY on his phone, and sometimes calling his wife over to watch and chatter. The car was done in record time, all free as part of the 6-month checkup.

Next stop, the Starbucks down the road a piece near Best Buy. The restroom was available, which saved me a major accident. Two Immodiums this morning did not conquer last night's gala reception. Bacon wrapped bacon, I think, and éclairs did me in. Got to remember the lactose killer pills. Instead of mocha I went for iced tea and a piece of pumpkin bread.

Drove around the back of Best Buy, a little early, Steve-O was finished with the previous appointment and waiting for the car's owner. I handed him the USB cable, and also described the screen angle issue. He was able to install the cable in a few minutes, but there wasn't much he could do to the screen mounting without building a special bracket. Looking at the unit, I can probably make a hood to block the glare.

Made a wrong turn coming out from behind the store, and ended up across the street from Orchard Supply. Parking lot was more full than usual, they were having a grand opening, the places had been remodeled closer to Lowe's floor plan. I was only in there to get a couple of planters to replace the too-small ones I have in the kitchen window. After being given totally wrong directions by a helpful staffer, I finally found them.

On to Petsmart, finally found the right filters for the cat water fountain. That ought to keep the bugs out of the main bowl. Also bought a curved scratching thingie which was excellent for guarding the foot of the bed from Spook's claws. Once again I was asked by the way too adorable Tiffany if she could help me find something. I was looking at the litter lockers, which would be an improvement over the tall kitchen trash can I'm using, but they did not come with the air filter, and the store was out of them.  

While I was out, I needed to stock up on frozen dinners, bananas and soft cheese (for the baguette). Also got a larger jar of natural peanut butter (I like the stuff, mixed with sugar free jam. Just don't like having to stir it.).

Home, unpacked everything, there was a USPS box for me on the stoop, the new shorter needle syringes. I still have about 3 months' worth of the slightly longer ones to go through yet.

Watched some Tivo. The last NFL Combine. FFed through most of it, because it was 90% every player running the 100 yard dash and the commentators talking to each other and ignoring the action on the field.

Caught up on all but the last 2 TMZ episodes.

The new Tivo has a thing called OnePass, which went and changed my Season pass for the Graham Norton show to include all 57 episodes available on Netflix. I don't subscribe to Netflix, and TiVo does not offer a way for me to bulk delete those 57 links. I will send them a nastygram about that. Some other time.

Synology "support" asked me to send a copy of the logs. They are in .dat format, I suppose before I rant abut them being encrypted I should open up the log file. Okay, done. And they are encrypted. Boo, hiss. They are responding as if they have never seen this issue before, even though it's all over the user's forum, dating as far back as 2002. There are no answers there, so they may not have a fix.

Dinner was supposed to be a Marie Callender beef pot pie, but only half of it was edible. They changed to a cheaper pie dish, and 10 minutes was too much for it, the gravy bled all over the container and dried out. I'd had an appetizer, low-fat baked chip (Cape Cod brand, they are almost edible) with crab and bacon dip.

Plans for tomorrow:
Frys', see about buying an NAS 2-bay diskless enclosure
2 pm, Janice's, help her put Outlook contacts onto her new PC and load Quicken data from the USB drive. She is a total whack job about computers, despite having used them at work for at least 30 years. She claims electronics baffles her. But it baffles her only because she wants it to.  And then she's taking me to a belly dance class recital, or something like that. There's a good chance I know one or two of the dancers, but I haven't told her that. In case I don't. And in case I do.
Then at 6:30-ish, a new San Jose musical theater group is having a launch party. I know most of the main players, and I wonder what they are thinking.

What I am thinking is:
Sunnyvale has craptastic tech, and has to share space with a highly successful private childrens' program. They rarely sell out a performance
Saratoga's two groups are very cliquish and only choose Old Standards. They also have huge subscription bases and usually sell out before the show opens. And they have a crappy little auditorium to play in
Tabard downtown SJ is a horrible little stage in an upstairs lounge. Not a proper theater
Mountain View and Menlo Park have no community theater
Santa Clara is in a tiny pavilion behind a museum, 80 seats, they don't do musicals
Los Altos is in a converted bus barn
Lyric (SJ) does mostly Gilbert & Sullivan, along with Old Standards and unknown G&S era staged readings. They at least have a wonderful rehearsal space/set construction area and use of a major legit theater
Palo Alto has the best theater and set shop in the area, but have to share it with TheatreWorks, and they do a lot of iffy shows. And it's a hellacious commute after work.

Fry's, Bellies and Theater

Got tired of waiting for Synology support to get back to me about their product not showing up on my network map, so I went to Fry's, picked a similar Seagate unit (diskless 2-bay NAS enclosure) off the shelf. Shelf price was $199.95, Amazon had it listed for $96.65. I showed the cashier the Amazon price, and invoked the "we'll match any Internet price"  clause. For a measly $103.30 it took him 20 minutes and three managers to get approval. I will be nastygramming them tomorrow. The box is somewhat the worse for wear, and I bet what happened is they put this on the shelf a couple of years ago at the bleeding edge price of the time, but now these things are common as goats.

I get it home, take the drives out of the Synology unit and pop them into the Seagate,  do all the installation stuff, and I get the same error as the Synology. Very upsetting, because the two Seagate backup units I have with non-removable single disks work just fine.

So it's probably a Windows thing, but try to get help from Microsoft...

Got to a stopping point just in time to go to Janice's and not do much except show her that the two programs she was complaining about on her new PC did not lose any data. She had not bothered to actually try them after she installed them.

Her TV remote needs to be reprogrammed, though.  It doesn't change the TV input correctly when switching from DVD (HDMI) to TV (cable coax). She only watches TV three times a year, so it's not critical.

And then she drove us into the hills above San Mateo to a house party for local belly dancers. First person I saw on entering was Lois White, stage name Leyla Lanty, whom I have known since maybe 1985 from Stanford folkdancers. She choreographed the G&S operetta I directed long ago. She's older than me, I think, and while she doesn't have all the moves anymore, she could still put on a good show.

It took forever to get the dancing started, people had a tough time finding the place, and a tougher time parking. We had to bail after only 4 dancers because we both had places to be.

Picked up my car at Janice's, went home for just enough time to tinkle and pet the cat, then to Santa Clara downtown for the launch of San Jose Musical Theater. It was a potluck, not having brought anything was not a problem. I signed on as a founding member for $50, using two dead secretaries of the treasury and a dead president. But it occurred to me a $50 bill would have been more appropriate, because theater companies often live off Grants.

They already have a board and officers, and the artistic director is a long-time director/producer/manager who had done most of his work with Saratoga. I'm sure he helped found the group with that position in mind, but it's okay, he's way qualified. I've never worked with him, because the two times h cast me in shows, it was for parts I didn't want to play. Actually one of them was a part that would have killed me, dancer in Hello Dolly. He's always friendly, remembers my name.

Also one of the board is a woman I did a lot of shows with in Menlo Players in the 80s, always the dance captain, and a joy to work with. I did not know any of the other leaders, though the person who led off the meeting has chatted with me before, she saw me in La Mancha in Saratoga. In the audience was another Menlo Players person, though he arrived as I was leaving Menlo. I've seen him in a lot of shows, also as a director, and he brings his students to the model rocket launches. Also there was my wife from Saratoga La Mancha.

They are starting small, with a Cole Porter concert in the fall. Two of the cast sang a tunes from the concert, both forgot the words big time. My second favorite accompanist accompanied them. 

I told the board peeps that they can call on me to help maintain the (nonexistent) web page. Their social media guy has set up a Facebook and Twitter account but doesn't have a URL yet.

I'm not as enthusiastic now as I was yesterday, but there's still hope.

Home, not much garbage to take out, barely enough recycle to justify hauling the bin to the curb, but I got a lot of exercise flattening boxes and making a recycle bundle.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
BASFA (I have auction items)