Admiral Nelson would have been proud

Last thing first. Delivered was this gem:


Hidden on the right side is a cassette player. As I write, the tape of my production of Beyond The Fringe is being MP3ed onto a USB drive. Slightly disappointed because the ad implied that the unit would record the tape directly to a PC via USB, but no, it needs a USB drive or an SD card, and it encodes the audio into low bitrate MP3.

It also has standard RCA line out connectors in back, so some other time I may hook those up to the PC audio card and re-record in higher fidelity wav files.

It also can process vinyl and clay (78s are not made of vinyl) the same way.

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The joke goes like this:
Admiral Nelson is on the deck of his warship. From the crow's nest comes a warning that a Spanish warship approaching. Nelson calls to the cabin boy, "Boy, fetch my red coat", and he tells his First Mate "in case I am shot, the red coat will hide the blood and hide it from the Spanish captain"
Soon, the crow's nest yells that the whole Spanish Armada is approaching. Nelson calls to the cabin boy, "Boy, fetch my brown pants!" 

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Work was busy today, I filed a bug at the team leader's request which was a funny one. Originally, the new product spec called for a feature which did some magic with some of the metadata of an ATSC video stream. ATSC is the HD signal your TV receives off the air (from an antenna, not from cable or satellite. Unless they pass it through from an antenna feed.) The feature is in the user interface, and my job Monday was to write the test cases for it. But they changed the spec, and removed this feature. So the bug was filed to say "hey, this thing was removed from the spec, what's it doing still in the software?" One of two things may happen. Either they will put it back into the spec, or they will remove it from the user interface.

Also found a bug which crashed the machine for about 3 minutes at a time. NDA says I must say more more about that.

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Lunch was late because I was writing that second bug, and I went to KFC. Ate too much too quickly, and when I got back to work my colon went into 2nd gear. Just as I was getting set to go home, there was a detour to "check the plumbing" but I still felt a little iffy on the drive home. Took another rest stop at home, then loaded the horn & music stand into the car a little early so I could stop off for gas (the trip meter showed over 400 miles since the last fill up). As I was getting out of the car at the gas station, there was some wetness, and I suspected I might need the Admiral's pants.

So after fueling (the car only took 9 gallons, I could have waited till the weekend) I went back home, and sure enough, clothing had to be changed, after one more time on the throne.

Got to rehearsals half an hour late, as they were finishing selections from The Phantom of the Opera. Not a huge issue because I sit on the end of the row nearest the door. And there was still an hour of rehearsal. We played a lot of stuff, mostly not-high notes, so my lip was happy. August's concert looks like it will be heavy on musicals. We also did Sound of Music and Grease. And we tried Wizard of Oz but it's a sucky arrangement and he stopped about 2/3 of the way through, not looking very happy. Also played Yakety Sax, a waltz by Rachmaninoff, and a couple of marches.

Home, dinner was a tiny frozen thing peanut sauce chicken and noodles. Watermelon for dessert. Tomorrow it will be mango, they look ripe.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
TBD
Maybe shop online for a Windows 10 laptop.

Calendar FAIL

• Tonight was my Credit Union's member appreciation party at the San Jose Giants baseball game. I thought it was Sunday. And also tonight was my favorite community theater conductor leading a big orchestra playing show tunes in honor of Hillbarn Theater (Foster City) in an outdoor concert. I thought that was tomorrow.
  
  Boo hoo. I seriously wanted to go to both of those. :-(
  
  Plan A was to do a photo shoot with a theater friend who was invited to pose in full Elizabethan costume for an ad for this fine feminine convenience product: clicky
  
  But she had to cancel, because her dad, who coincidentally was a pro photographer before his heart attack, needed her. I met him at a birthday party a few years ago, liked him a lot, but I guess he has become a PIA to his daughter.
  
  So the weekend's only plans now are coffee with Janice Sunday afternoon.
  
  Work was light, about the only useful thing I did was demonstrate how to duplicate the machine crash bug I filed, for the engineer who is debugging it. The last time I worked on something with her was the first week she was hired, which happened to be the week I was laid off. For those of you who tuned in late, I was re-hired 4 years ago, after 3+ years of class struggle. Engineers' Lives Matter.
  
  Lunch was at Boston Market, decided to try something different, and discovered the meat loaf is to real meatloaf as pressboard is to knotty pine. Tasty enough, but no texture. For a change there was eye candy. Usually by the time I arrive the only people eating are the staff, and they are hired for their total lack of attractiveness.
  
  Straight home from work, though there was something on my list at Lowe's, but it wasn't important.
  
  Had time at work to shop online for a Windows10 laptop. The list of requirements was short, but turned out to be hard to find:
  
• Fingerprint sensor
• Intel i5 or i7 CPU
• Webcam
• SATA SSD, micro preferred
• Size doesn't matter, I will replace it with the 1TB mSSD  in my current laptop
• Ultralight (no DVD drive)
• No detachable keyboard
• Bluetooth, and AC wifi support
• Windows 10 fully supported

The first item was the real showstopper. I hate memorizing passwords, and they are too easy to crack. And Windows 10 sucks lemons for login security. My current laptop, which I otherwise love, doesn't support the fingerprint sensor for logging into Windows 10, and there are probably other things as well. In fact, Toshiba has stopped making laptops with fingerprint sensors. 

My next choice was HP, but all their laptops which come close have AMD processors.

Sony sold off Vaio, and the new company is not selling anything outside of Japan until the end of the year.

Dell doesn't do fingerprint sensors, nor does Gateway. Heck, I don't think Gateway even makes a laptop anymore.

Asus and Acer I didn't look at, I don't like the Asus keyboard or the Acer overall lack of quality.

I don't like the clunky Thinkpad I have at work, but found what I was looking for on Lenovo's web site. And ordered one. Unfortunately it won't get here until September 9, at the earliest.

When I placed the order, Discover immediately texted me - like in 5 seconds, before the Lenovo page said the transaction had failed - to tell me my card was now blocked, unless I answered "Y" to the text. Which I did. And immediately got another text saying I was good to go. But I did have to check the "i agree" box and click on "order" again.

Watched the Seahawks/Chiefs game on Tivo. Pre-season announcers are idiots. Loud idiots. Pre-season directors don't care about the game, doing sideline nd booth interviews while plays are being executed out of sight on the field. Lots of camera mistakes - out of focus, not always following the ball, only showing the cheerleaders from the waist up, and usually the not-well-endowed ones. Yes, I'm joking about caring about that.

It was painful to watch, in large part because the NFL used the local Kansas City broadcasters, but also because the Seahawks still don't have it together. It was nice to see Smith, being ineffective again in a red uniform.

Plans for tomorrow:
No plans
Probably should take the camera somewhere.
Maybe Pacifica