Musical Interlude

In my office is an HP Visualize PL-Class PC, running Redhat Linux 6.0 (soon to be upgraded to 7.0?). Attached to the CD audio port is a Benwin BW2000 speaker set. When in need of music, I fire up the Linux CD player and fill my office with sound. Last week's album, repeated numerous times, was Kid A by Radiohead.

I have eclectic musical tastes, ranging from opera, crossing over Rogers and Hammerstein, into typical Rock. But the world of music is huge, and I've been spending most of my allowance on computer geegaws and anime for the last several years. Thus it is that I am able to hear this album without having heard anything by this group before. This despite their being the critical darlings who have 'reinvented' themselves with each album, radically altering their style each time, as per the review of Kid A above.

All I can say is that I enjoyed Kid A, that it reminded me of a fusion of Brian Eno's Ambient Music, Bauhaus/Love And Rockets and the Moody Blues. When one reviewer made a reference to Joy Division:

Radiohead render creeping unease and desolation incandescent. I'm reminded of Joy Division, another band that alchemized gloomy, banal alienation into crepuscular beauty. "Kid A" is one of the loneliest records I've heard in ages. Perhaps because of that, it's also one of most comforting.
Michelle Goldberg

I shouted "Yes!". Interestingly enough, when I searched for links to Joy Division, the one above includes a quote by a reviewer in Melody Maker, stating that Joy Division inspired "U2, Depeche Mode, Nirvana, Radiohead and countless others." So I am not alone in my intuitions.

DSL == Delayed Somewhat Longer

Here's a missive launched by my ISP's sysadmin/owner just yesterday:

From support Sat Dec 2 10:32:04 PST 2000

Subject: DSL Service


I just got the following message from my DSL wholesaler. The words I
have for the short notice are unprintable. I've sent individual mail
to the current DSL subscribers, and I've contacted another wholesaler,
but for now, I've no way to offer DSL service. FYI...

"As you probably know by now, IWBC's network is down due to financial problems. Like many Internet companies, we are dependent on investor funding and are currently experiencing difficulty receiving capital that was previously committed to us.

"Our frame and DSL service is expected to shut down next week. Please take immediate steps to transfer your frame and DSL customers to another provider. All hosting accounts must also be moved.

"We apologize for the inconvenience."

I have yet to write to the sysadmin to ask what I should do with the DSL modem sent to me by the collapsing wholesaler...

Teacher Conference

We had our conference this morning with Mrs. Wentzell, Kelly's kindergarten teacher. There were no problems to report. Kelly is not the shining star of the class, outpacing all of her classmates, but she is doing well in all the categories that the teacher tracks. In the parlance of my workplace's review forms, she 'meets expectations', but does not 'consistently exceed expectations'.

We got to see samples of her 'writing' from the start of the school year and from now. It is amazing how much she has already progressed. She still gets some characters reversed, and they are spindly, but still recognizable.

Mrs. Wentzell assures me that the trouble I'm taking with Kelly in the morning over her breakfast is making a tremendous difference in her behavior in class. I suspect that the earlier bedtime is helping also.

Now we need to begin fine-tuning Kelly's priviledges at home to suit her behavior. She hasn't been giving me any problems, but Jean says she is getting sassy and won't even go to her room when she's told to. So when I get home tonight, the plan is to feed her, let her blood sugar get to a respectable level, then lay down new ground rules for home behavior.

As I told her when this school misbehavior business started, she is allowed to make a lot of choices for herself so long as she shows that she can behave in a pleasant manner. But when she lost control of herself, she lost the priviledge of choosing her own breakfast and how much to eat. The same will go for home now. She will be told when and how much and what to eat. She will be expected to go to her room when told. If not, then we will begin selecting from her favorite toys and placing them into a 'toy jail'. From there, she can bail them out with good behavior. Failure to behave will result in the toys in 'toy jail' being sent away for good to new homes (Goodwill).

We'll see how that works. Wish me luck!

Two Steps Forward...

Sunday night is here, and I find myself looking back at a weekend of failure. In terms of my dietary good behavior, anyway. On Saturday afternoon, after taking Kelly to see a rather good Santa Claus (and there were no lines), we went to Yeatsy's Mexican Cafe, where I ate all the corn chips and salsa set before me, then had a chicken enchilada with rice and beans. Ate it all I'm afraid. But I didn't order dessert!

Saturday evening was "NOVA", and as is often the case, Tom, Alan, James and I went out to eat. But instead of grabbing a quick byte at Wendy's, James blurted out that he wanted to eat at Busch Soba, located in Uwajimaya Asian Grocery. We went, and I had a bowl of soba and a plate of sushi. Ate it all again. Ughh.

Then we went to a movie after "NOVA", The Sixth Day, a typical after-NOVA movie. I had popcorn, pop and candy. Talk about backsliding.

Today I ate a small and healthy breakfast, but ate a lunch bought at McDonald's when I took Kelly there to play in the playland. Now with dinner looking me in the face, I'm planning to have a small amount of Dover Sole, some veggies and maybe a V8 juice. Wish me luck "qbullet.smiley".

Seamus Heaney

Several years ago I stumbled across the poetry of Seamus Heaney. He is an Irish poet, who has won the Nobel Prize. I currently own Selected Poems 1966-1987 and his translation of Beowulf.

Since Weblogs.com offers the ability to store binary files, I took it upon myself to read one of my favorite poems by Seamus Heaney, Personal Helicon. I don't claim to be a fancy orator, but you should be able to recognize my voice after listening to this MP3. But be warned if you have a slower connection, the file is 668 KB! http://static.userland.com/weblogsCom/gems/terebiweblogscom/Heaney.mp3

Death Sentence

Yesterday evening at 6:30 pm PDT, a friend came over to our house to watch Kelly. Jean and I took a small carrier containing our visitor, the stray cat, and drove to the Emergency Veterinary Clinic of Tualatin. They inserted a catheter into the cat's leg, then brought him to an examination room where we waited.

In the examination room, the vet inserted a hypodermic into the catheter, and injected a concentrated solution of sedative into the cat. In the space of time it took to depress the plunger fully, the cat departed from this world. Rest in peace.

I Am Mortal

Back pain persists. Probably no walkies today (thank you Barbara Woodhouse for the word walkies, though it isn't in any of the online dictionaries I frequent).

Tomorrow night is "NOVA" night, and I am one of the keepers of the distributed archive. I won't be carrying my crate of videos due to the back. This proves my point, though, about making it distributed in the first place. If one member of the "team" doesn't make it or can't carry his/her portion, the entire archive isn't shut down.

I think instead I'll take the SNES and game carts with me to show the contrast in older versus new consoles and games. Might be worth a laugh or two.