Writing Wrongs

Usually every other week on Wednesdays afternoon the highlight of the week is my 1-on-1 with the boss. He's not just the boss, we're also friends, we use the same model Nikon, we share an attachment to Thailand. He even built a house there.

But things are crazy for him lately, he is tasked with way too much paperwork and database building for the upcoming new product (work which other companies would hire two other people to do) and between that and family obligations he changed our last three sessions to Thursday. This week it was canceled entirely. :-(

I caught up on some audio analysis, and there was a follow-up needed from the Monday demo (I'd found a a couple of bugs in the code and needed to show Automation Guy so he could pass them along to the programmer).

And AG also reminded me there was a response to a code bug I had filed which claimed the script worked just fine when the coder tried it. Turns out the coder had made a mistake in the documentation, putting a lower case letter in a variable name where it needed uppercase. AG merely had to change the doc. Linux is funny that way, "Output" and "output" are different variables.

Spent a little more time browsing websites for CNN, BBC, KGO and whatever the local NBC channel is.

After work I killed an hour at the former batcave Starbucks, reading on the Nexus Kindle app, James Gunn's latest novel (he is 90), Transcendental, and it's quite good. Much, much more fluid writing style than that last China M. book.

Home, on the front porch was a small packet from Amazon, the Taylor Swift DVD, Taylor Swift: Journey To Fearless [Blu-ray] (2011). Popped it into the DVD player, and was amazed. I bought it to see what all the Grammy hype was about, and now I know. Not just a pretty face/body. It's the story of her 15-month world tour, and her show is almost as much a theatrical performance as a concert. Amazingly well directed, rehearsed and performed, many of the songs are more pop than country. Lots of costume changes, and the backstage stuff with the cast and her parents looks like the two or three best musicals I've been in, where lifetime friendships are the norm. Production values vary widely,  range from home video to phonecam to HD music video and everything in between. Lots of segments with her mom, a few with her dad, many with her best friend, a couple with each cast member. It's a long show - they present it as a three-episode mini-series. Worth full price. It will be very interesting to see if she has a long music career or gets married, makes babies, and disappears. One thing I have to say to those bozoids who made fun of her Grammy performance, is she performs with a lot of passion, and doesn't need to scream to show it.

Somewhere in there dinner was Marie C, with Breyers' oreo ice cream for dessert.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe go downtown and see the all-female 1776. I'm not fond of the show, and even less fond of women playing men's roles in a historical piece, but I have so many friends in this thing I have to see it.  

Stayed in bed till 10, with Domino yowling at me early and often, but I was sleepy. She even jumped up on the bed and got in my face once. It didn't work.

When I finally did get up I saw she had barfed on the recliner seat. She's not suppose to do that. I keep it covered with a towel, so all I needed to do was throw the towel in the washer, but still...

Did my usual FB stuff, then remembered I had a groc list on Evernote. The targets were:
Safeway (whipped cream, French onion soup mix)
Trader Joe's (Fondue)
Bevmo (Kirsch, and if they had it Sabra liqueur, and, if they had it, Anthon Berg tiny booze-filled chocolate bottles)
Milk Pail (sheep and goat cheeses)
Any auto parts store (RainX washer fluid)

Thought about it, and realized that all those stores are within a block of each other in Mountain View, so hopped on the expressway (which was almost deserted) and headed there.

Bevmo - check, all three items, took forever to find because no help from staff and cleverly hidden on bottom shelves in not-quite-the-right-sections
Milk Pail - check, three small packages of my favorite sheep cheese (it's all susandennis's fault!), a couple of goat cheeses, a round loaf of sliced asiago sourdough bread, a couple of their fondue mixes complete with ceramic bowl - on sale for $3.99 each)
TJ's - check, two fondues and two sourdough mini-rounds)
Safeway - check, two packets of Knorr French onion soup mix, and two cans of whipped cream. Had to buy the real stuff, they have stopped stocking light and replaced it with chocolate, caramel and peppermint flavored.
O'Reilly auto parts - check, two jugs of RainX washer fluid on sale.

Got email from a friend who lives in that neighborhood, asking if I wanted to come over or meet her somewhere for coffee. I had promised to hook up her Comcast adapter box, so I went over.

As of today, Comcast no longer sends analog signals on their cables, but they are required by law to provide signals for all the locally broadcast stations. So what they have done is replace the signal on channels 2-13 with a message saying you need an adapter box to see these channels.

What they don't say is most of those are on the cable in HD digital form, just not always on the same channel number.

My friend has a mental block against trying to understand anything new in technology, and threw a fit when she saw channels 2-13 give her this ugly page of text instead of video, and there was no understanding that she can skip those and simply up-channel to 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, etc. Well, not quite because 3 is actually 11-1 and I never did find 4 because she kept yelling at me. So I hooked up the converter, and now she gets the same old ugly analog signal further uglified by the conversion, on the channel numbers with which she thought she was familiar. But not quite, because she did not know that NBC moved to channel 11, which is cable channel 3, in 2001. She thought NBC was still channel 4, and was livid that it was not 4-1 on the TV tuner.

And then after I got her hooked up the way she wanted she insisted that I change the TV settings to stretch the 4:3 images to 16:9, because why did she buy a wide screen TV if the picture won't fill the screen?  Arghhhhh.

Finally she had a hissy fit when the universal remote I'd set up for her several years ago (so long ago I forgot I'd done it) can't control the channels on the Comcast converter.

Sheesh. She rarely watches TV, she mostly plays DVDs on it, using the HDMI input. The Comcast box uses a coax cable connection. Stupid of them.

Home, just in time to watch 3/4 of the Wisconsin drubbing of Nebraska. Something is seriously wrong with a ranking system in which an unranked team can put up 70 points against #12. It was a fun game, though, the cornholers managed to score 30 by the end of the game, but by that time the Badgers had their 3rd string defense on the field.

Also caught the exciting last half of the Kansas State - Texas game. KS was ranked #17 TX #18, but the game wasn't that close, Texas looked like they were on Quaaludes half the time.

Watched the ends of the games and the wrap-up show while having TJ's fondue with sourdough chunks, apple chunks and banana slices. Mixed in about 1/4 cup of kirsch and it was yummy. The alcohol mostly evaporates off, leaving a hint of cherry.

Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with whipped cream for dessert. Whipped cream for Domino, against my better judgment.

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Oh, and I bought a few of didjiman's breathtakingly beautiful calendars. You should too.http://www.richardmanphoto.com/calendar.html

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I've received about four thank yous for my calendar from friends & relatives, the mailman seems to have gotten them around the left coast and upstate NY. One less international mailing because the one which went to Russia last year was handed to a person at work who was re-hired a few months ago.

Plans for tomorrow:

Photo shoot in a Union City studio at 10 am
Maybe find a Lion supermarket and see if they have Blue Dell tomato sauce.
Sit on the patio and watch the rain, and read from the Kindle.

Up way late (I have the lights set to all turn off at 1:30 am, and I was at the PC when that happened. I think I was in bed by 2:30) so I slept way in, 9:30 I was still asleep when the alarm went off. Watched some football on the bedroom TV, got up & drugged & dressed & played on the PC.

Lunch was franks & beans, a traditional football watching meal. Bought a pile of beef franks on my last Costco trip,  and after years of turkey franks these are too salty and harsh. I'll stick to using them in pasta and omelets.

Domino was way more attentive to my lunch than she needed to be, at one point jumping up on the arm of the recliner to get a better look.

Stripped the bed and threw the bedding into the washer. Looked for a T-shirt to wear, which is when I stumbled upon all the Thai shirts I thought were lost in the mail. Before making the bed with another set of sheets, I pulled off the mattress pad, and yes, that's what was turning the comfortable mattress into something too firm. Also started a load in the dishwasher.

I popped my Brigadoon OBC CD into the PC and tried to learn to music I was sent for callbacks, but the tune is all over the place - it's a jig - and it starts way higher and I think in a different key than what comes before. Glad I was not interested in this part. I also went over the bit from the script they sent, for a different character. It's a lovely quirky part, but he doesn't sing. At. All. I don't enjoy playing a non-singing part in a musical. I think for this one I'd rather be in the ensemble.

So, 2 pm rolled around, time to start making my way to the car. I got to the rehearsal hall 5 minutes before my 2:25 scheduled call, but they were running late, and it was a good half hour before my turn. The posted schedule on the green room wall said I would read first, then there was another group reading another scene, and then I sing.

There were three of us going for the non-singing part, and I think I was 2nd best. They had us read against the two male leads (there were 3 sets of those also), and then the director told us he wanted the character to be more energetic & a bit quirky, so try it again y'all. I may have done best in the round, but #1 was good too, he just chose a different quirky.

After that I sat through 5x2 readings of the strangest scene in the play - the young stranger would rather sleep than be seduced by the town slut. Three of the women who were trying for that part would not get a "no" from me.

So, enter the accompanist, and it seems I am the only one called back for Sandy the candy man. I am totally lost trying to pull the first note out of thin air, and almost as lost following the tune. So the music director comes over to me and sings it with me a few times, gives some clues, and has me sing it  a couple of times by myself. I get the impression he really wants my voice in his chorus (which is what Sandy does after the first Big Number). We go way back, he was director of Pirates of Penzance when this group was strictly G&S, back in 2004. But as I said ensemble would suit me fine.

It was fun, especially since I didn't care if I got a major part.

Plugged Starbucks into the GPS and was reminded there was one less than a mile away I'd been meaning to try. It's in a shopping plaza which is half Costco and half Staples-plus-small stuff. It was not easy to get to, there is no street entrance on that side, you have to come from the other side and drive through Staples' parking lot. I stopped off at Staples first, and got a box of calendar mailer envelopes. Then saw that Starbucks was closed Sundays. :-(

So, went to the one which is on the way home, and sat on an uncomfortable stool of a couple of hours because that's how long it took on their overloaded wi-fi to install the company version of anti-virus and its 9 updates.

Next stop, Safeway, which had a special on chicken stock, which reminded me I have two pounds of gizzards in the freezer, taking up needed space, waiting to made into soup. Also got the bullion cubes for work and the Klondike bars which were on my list, and some Stoufer's lasagna for dinner. And some other frozen meals.

On my way home, saw the produce place where I usually buy pickling cukes, and realized I had no veggies for the soup. So I got parsnip, carrots, celery, onion and garlic.

Home, turned on the football game, hauled out the crock pot, pre-heated the oven for the lasagna, put grocs away. Pulled out the Cuisinart and sliced up the veggies, then pulled up a stool and peeled 2 heads of garlic while the gizzards defrosted in the microwave.

Finally got to the recliner in time for the miserably rainy 4th quarter.

Had half the "feeds 6" lasagna, again with Domino's eyeballs on it. After I was done I gave her the plate to lick, but she wasn't interested.

Stirred the crock pot to get the meat distributed and the slices unstuck from each other.

Also, mounted my NOLA art on the livingroom walls.

And here I am now. Whew.


Plans for tomorrow:
9 am team meeting
get my nails done
MNF
Unload the dryer & dishwasher

Up till almost 4 am, almost plotzed at work at 4 pm but was woken up by needing to do some brain-engaged writing.
Lunchtime, picked up a pair of Netgear plug-n-play wifi-N repeaters. Fast food for lunch because, well, time.
Home, installed the repeaters but they did not seem to be repeating. Open box units, probably were set up for someone else's network. Screw it, I needed to crash.

Tried to get to sleep, Domino did her spynx thing next to me. That was about 6:30, last look at the clock I remember was 7:30. Woke up at a little before 11. Got dressed, drove to Denny's for dinner. Excellent service for a change. No wi-fi there, so finished reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself and switched to Slave Girl of Gor when I was done.

Back home, found the setup guide for the repeaters which was missing from the boxes. One by one reset them, paired them with the router, fired up the Ultrabook because my main PC does not have wireless and setup needed a PC which would connect to the repeater by wireless. The wizard is a little out of order, but in about 15 minutes I had them both set up with unique SSID names, and the same login and password, and was able to connect to each of them. Tivo, unfortunately, at 1 am locked me out of network setup because there's a software upgrade coming at 2 am. Stupid, it only takes 5 minutes to change the network settings, and the update might fail with the current setup. I did get the blueray player set up, and played an Amazon Prime video, it was a much better connection. Put one in the bedroom, and hooked up the squeezebox radio to it. Much better signal, but it showed that the intermittent play from Thailand's Fung Fung Fung station is not due to my network. Bummer. I get other stations from Thailand which are more reliable, but they have too many loud commercials. One thing about Thai radio commercials is they either sound like ads for a relaxing spa treatment or they sound like ads for a monster truck rally. Often the ones which sound like ads for monster truck rallies are ads for a relaxing spa treatment. :-(  

Spent a lot of $ today. Also bought a replacement connector for my camera's GPS unit (they have improved it by making a flex curled cord instead of the straight one which keeps popping out). Cord was $12, express shipping from HK $30. Non-express would take a month. Bought an iPod 6th gen on eBay, now that two 5th gens have crapped out intermittently on the car audio system. I'm blaming the battery. Also bought a battery replacement kit for the 5th gen. Both of those will probably go on eBay "for parts".  Also plopped some change into my Discover card to keep me below the limit. It's a low limit, but 0% interest. If I keep rotating money through it, I get cash back. My Chase card started charging interest (it had a 0 balance but a late submission from Kaiser for $10 cost $11.09) so I put that card away.

Bought some Safeway Select 78% chocolate the other day, and it's pretty good. I'd say 7 out of 10.

Plans for later today:
Use my free Starbucks drink card, and take my netbook there for upgrades
Maybe hit Baycon. Maybe. I've had enough of Fanime, and just don't get steampunk so no clockwork alchemy
If I didn't have a concert Sunday I'd have taken the train to Sacto for the jazz.