OK. Here goes.

This coming weekend is the Gateway Men’s Chorus holiday show, which we’re doing with an interim director who’s rather good but who is probably feeling a bit overwhelmed by some of the poor habits that were tolerated by prior directors. (for example, I don’t know half the material and the show opens in 50 hours. Awesome.) Thanks to a schedule conflict this’ll be our last show for a while, and though we both enjoy singing we’re both ready for the hiatus.

This coming week is also finals in my two classes. I don’t anticipate any trouble with either one, though the programming final is going to cut into the department holiday party (which is shaping up to be rather epic). At least the physio final is done online.

Work? Rocks. Today, for example, I got to play with the degausser; disassemble a “legacy” box attached to an important piece of lab equipment; use a badass air compressor to remove the dust from said legacy box; discuss a large project with the school netadmin; and wrangle Mailman and Postfix for a departmental mailing list server. And through all of this, no stupid user questions!

Had a retirement party for the department’s glass washer last week. It was odd to have a very large table full of finger foods, even well into the party, and to have a cooler of beer and soda just sitting out for anybody. (BTW, when you use as many glass Petri dishes and glass flasks and glass beakers and glass test tubes as these labs do, you really do need to have at least a half-time position just to keep it all sparkling clean.)

Buying a car for Fred. (He already knows; in fact, he picked it out.) Once the papers get signed and the financing stuff worked out (hopefully tomorrow) we’ll be trading in his Ford for a sleek used BMW that is similar in vintage and mileage but that is in much, much, much better shape. An eventual project: a car PC to go in that cavernous trunk.

Another project, but much more urgent: replace the home file server with something smaller and quieter and more efficient. The GHz-or-so box we have now does the job, but it’s big and noisy and overpowered for what we use it for, though it is contributing nicely to my BOINC stats. I’m eyeing a Kurobox to replace. (This discussion will get its own post, as it’s too in-depth to cover here.)

Stuck in my head right now is Rufus Wainwright’s “Going to a Town“, which rather succinctly encapsulates my current feelings towards a certain political movement.

While I have the chance, I need to plug Portable Firefox. I’ve been using it on my USB flash drive for almost two months now, and I don’t know how I can use campus computer lab boxen anymore without it. The idea with PFF (and, by extension, other portable apps) is that, once you install it on your USB flash drive (or iPod etc.), you can then use it on any Windows PC with all your preferences and bookmarks and saved passwords and such intact. It’s a good solution for those of us who have to use public or semipublic computers or who aren’t always at the same PC (and let’s face it, a flash drive is a hell of a lot cheaper than a laptop). And yes, there are similar packages for Mac users too.

Just passed a young male undergrad, around 18 or 19, with a Fu Manchu, and it did not work on his boyish face with his short hair. Though I realize that college is a time for experimentation and everything, there are some freshman experiments that need to be halted quickly, and bad scruff is at the top of the list. It’s tempting sometimes to roam the campus with a razor in one hand and a bullhorn in the other, shouting “YOU! SHAVE! NOW!” at inappropriately fuzzy boys.

Gotta go. Discussing reproduction in physiology.

Meeegan checks in with some words of wisdom for singers, delivered by Robert Shaw. (Meeegan: enjoy the Requiem!)

Lagniappe: on the plane of aspiration

I love the idea of a contagious diminuendo…

Today’s job interview went smashingly well. The interviewer mentioned several areas of expertise that they were looking for, and — well, I had notable experience in all of those areas. (”Why yes, I *am* familiar with MediaWiki syntax!”) It certainly didn’t hurt that I am used to dealing with fiercely independent fiefdoms or that I don’t get flustered by operating systems localized to something other than English.

Next week I’m going to be meeting with the department’s admin staff and with a couple senior-level people. Nothing is definite yet, but after today my prospects for a change of office scenery look VERY good.

Also met up with an on-again-off-again chorus member, who is unable to perform in this show but who helped set up the local gay bike racing club. Bike racing is a summer-only thing for him, and he’s long had an interest in playing rugby. Long story short: we’ve decided to go to a couple practices for a local predominantly-straight club, try things out, then make a further decision about starting a predominantly-gay club. His experiences with Big Crank should prove very valuable should we take the latter route; aside from the networking he’s done there, he also knows a thing or two about the administrative back-end work involved in establishing such a group.

J* will be attending a Bombers practice tomorrow night, just to check things out, but he’s as excited as I am about this…

Also: found Fred’s favorite draught beverage on, uh, draught here, at a local Welsh pub. Methinks I’ll be returning with him soon.

Yup, it’s another in a long series of quick updates.

• First, the title. For a long time now, I’ve been interested in learning how to play rugby, but have put it off for some silly reason. This past week has had a couple Universal Nudges<tm>, though: a story in the Post-Dispatch about a local club, a post by Jimbo that mentions a recent match of his, and a rummage through the cold-weather clothes that turned up a rugby shirt I like.

  Following up on these, I discovered that the Chicago Dragons are willing to help start an IGRAB-affiliated team in St. Louis. I wrote the current president of the Dragons, and was invited to Chicago this weekend to meet the team (along with the visiting Atlanta Bucks and Madison Minotaurs [please be gentle with the Minotaurs link]) and potentially scrummage with them; though I can’t make it, I’m eager to visit sometime in the near future.

  Building upon this even further, I did a bit more research and learned that the Bombers run their B-side as a developmental squad during the fall. I can’t make practices until this school term is done in mid-October, but as soon as I can I’ll be there trying to extend my rugby-feel from purely intellectual to grittily experiential. (and no, I did not just make that last word up.)

• Chorus rehearsals started Monday with a full house and 5 newbies. Our interim director for this show has a very emphatic, fluid style that I like; it doesn’t hurt that he’s easy on the eyes. That said, I’m sad that a particular song has already been stricken from the program (and no, it wasn’t the crazed medley that kept venturing into 7/8, although that one would have been quite a challenge).
• My traffic has gone upwards lately, and it took me a few minutes to realize why: a feed from the “Wikipedia” category hereupon gets published on Planet Wikimedia, a blog aggregator administered by the Wikimedia Foundation. Since I’ve had two new posts in that category, I’ve had a surge of new visitors for those particular posts.
• Speaking of which: I keep meaning to post a response here to Kelly Martin’s excellent post “On Ignoring All Rules“, about the Wikipedia policy of the same name. It’s on my list, and I have a rough draft saved, but have not yet finished it for regular consumption.
• Did some clean-up on the scrubbook’s hard drive over the weekend. I found ~25GB worth of songs that I NEVER listen to, so *poof* they vanished. That still smarts.
• Also started to tinker with the header images on here. Nothing is ready yet.
• Been having some lingering phone and network issues at work. Yesterday got so bad that, while the network admin and my boss were busy shepherding the telco’s tech from one piece of infrastructure to the next, I was able to re-do most of a major workflow app. (Normally I’d be inundated with calls and e-mails, but when nobody can call or e-mail…)
• The weather is freaking awesome today.
• Classes are OK. My programming logic class is a walk in the park because I already use programming logic nearly every day. My philosophy class, OTOH, is somewhat interesting; it’s a pretty diverse group of students, with pretty diverse views on things, so discussions can get lively when we aren’t watching Woody Allen movies.
• Yeah, definitely loving this new theme so far.
• The inaugural Tour of Missouri is this week, wrapping up with a big finale in STL on Sunday (at the same time as Cardinals-Cubs and Rams-49ers). Apparently things are going well on the Tour as long as they keep armadilloes out of the peloton.
• Wow, somebody had better update the IGRAB page. No new posts in over a year? Seriously?

That’s all for now.

This blog is not closed; it is not closing; it does not anticipate closure anytime in the near future. It’s just sporadic as always. And, as always, there are many things that are the same, and a few things that are different.

Same? I’m still alive; so are Fred and the cats and the fish. I’m still married to Fred, and the state of Missouri and the United States of America still think that it’s a dangerous dangerous thing. My job still sucks, only more emphatically now. My classes are still rolling right along, one term into the next. I still help answer e-mail for the Wikimedia Foundation, and we still get a lot of silly questions like “I found an error, could you get one of your staff to fix it?”. (stock answer: “You can edit that.”) And I still work out and cook and drive a Mini.

Different? Fred’s done with this round of school; he should get his provisional licensure veryverysoon. (The graduation ceremony was a raucous affair; thank goodness we didn’t sit near any screamer-clusters.) Nigel’s driver’s-side window got replaced; next up is his windscreen. The gay men’s chorus’s artistic director resigned; bit of drama there, but I won’t go into it because frankly it’s played out, so instead I’ll just say that I’m eager to see how the interim director does.

There is now a deck off the back of our place. It replaces the quick hack of a railing and gives us a chance to grow our own herbs and tomatoes. Basil and chives apparently love the strawberry jar out there now; rosemary not so much.

And the snail in the aquarium died. Alas, poor Norbert; I knew him.

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Finally getting into my major courses in school, and even then I’m bored silly. Introductory-level courses are aaaaalmost done, though; once I can convince my advisor that my transferred calculus credit should meet the college algebra pre-req for some higher-level courses, then I should finally get to something moderately challenging.

That said, the history class I took in the summer session? Fuckin’ A, that class was awesome. No homework, just quizzes and tests; lots of engaging lectures; got done two hours early every night. Hope I get the same instructor for the other half of history.

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Some days, I’m tempted to learn Lisp, just so I can wax poetic about parentheses.

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Trying to find someplace inexpensive for a vacation. We did Toronto over the winter and loved it; if things work out then we’d love to go back. I’m open to suggestions in the meantime, though.

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I have a couple posts brewing about Wikipedia internal stuff, so non-junkies should brace themselves or skip past them.

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I can’t say that I’ve been good at keeping this place up; when I have the motivation, I don’t have the time, and when I have the time I don’t have the motivation. Sorry. However, I need to remind everyone of the glories of RSS (feed’s on the right side); just subscribe to the feed and your newsreader will catch updates as they are posted.

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Finally: I should take this opportunity to plant songs in people’s heads, because I can and because I’m apparently quite good at it. So only click this link if you want to see what is currently haunting my dreams. (This link haunts my dreams too, though in a strange a capella version [if "a capella" meant "the only instruments are voices and slide whistles" (the second tenors get the kickin' guitar part)]; these songs occasionally make an entrance as well, especially that fourth one on the list.)