If I ever want to host the URI! Domain on my own, I'll have to think up a suitable domain name to register. Disney claimed a monopoly on all forms of the name "llamaboy" back in 1999 when The Emperor's New Groove was released, but they've never actually put a site at any of the locations. I guess cybersquatting is acceptable when it's a big corporation.

The essence of my second movement is finished now. All that remains is some tweaking of the proportions and fine-tuning of the transitions in the B section. This movement came out quite a bit faster than the first; subsequent movements tend to compose themselves faster because the first movement really limits the number of possible outcomes available. I'm going to start the final movement immediately and hopefully I'll finish the quartet before spring break.

By the way, the Finale 2002a update is available at the Coda website. The update itself is a whopping six megabytes, and the documentation updater is twelve megabytes.

I finished Peril's Gate yesterday afternoon, and it was worth the read. Since it's actually the third fourth of a four-part book, there wasn't a massive climax and lots of questions were left up in air. However, it did a good job of setting up the final section of the book which should be released next year sometime. The reason for publishing the parts separately is a practical one: if the book were printed in its entirety, the binding would be five or six inches thick, and a paperback edition would be impossible.

"Piano: a parlour utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience." - Ambrose Bierce

From last night's State of the Union address, I learned that the representatives of our country are excellent clappers, although there was no occasion for them to demonstrate their "two and four" clap. There was one guy about three rows back who cheated -- he stood up with the crowd at every standing ovation, but kept his hands in his coat pockets. The clapping even came in a variety of styles, ranging from a broad low rumble to a more raucous pub-style, punctuated by jolly 'attaboys whenever the Pee Wee Herman word of the day was heard up front. It's a shame that none of the billions of dollars was directed towards congressional skin-care, as such voracious clapping is bound to chafe and be detrimental to the epidermis.

In another surprise twist, President Bush did not elect to bring in a green screen to set up behind the podium. It must have been terrifying for him to stand up there and realize that people would actually be listening to the words coming out of his mouth, without cute slogans highlighted in the background.

Of course he gave an excellent motivational speech, hitting all the high points at the proper time and appealing to the souls of the common man despite his insistence on repeating the old claptrap numbers supporting his tax changes. Among the high points of the pomp was the point when he discussed giving aid to Africa for HIV and the cameras instantly panned to the distinguished black gentleman in the front row for reaction shots, because of course, all black people in America commute from Zimbabwe.

Later in the evening, he decided to nonchalantly toss Iran back into the axis of evil, evidently banking on the fact that the American majority would fail miserably if there were an alllooksame.com for the Middle East. I almost expected him to get cocky from all his overt support and throw France and Germany in too. They're not real countries, you know.

If the United States goes to war with Iraq without the support of the UN (or against its wishes), it will just confirm the views of hostile entities that the US is an arrogant and ignorant country that's still trying to play by superpower rules, and next time, it might not just be a single terrorist cell on the offensive. Is it really worth that risk for some oil? Probably not.

Especially if Bush expects us to believe that he's going to sink 1.2 billion dollars into clean-air cars.

Today I have my home inspection at 1:30. It's the part where the realtor and I shadow a home inspector as he or she goes over every inch of the house for things that could cause future problems. Once I actually own the house, I'll try to get a few panoramic shots of the interior, using the photo-stitching options of my camera.

I hate it when the padding at the top-back of the shoe gets scrunched down. Speaking of shoes, the sixth season of Friends was released on DVD a couple days ago.

Yesterday's notable search terms:

oysters that climb trees, beethoven - champion of absolute music, looking for the matches

Happy Birthday Michael Jackson! (not that one)

Plan Day

The BU Fiscal Year got off to a late start, which I blame wholly on work -- a convenient scapegoat which I also blame for sore wrists and the resurgence of polio in third world countries. Because of this, I didn't get around to making my plan for the year until just this past week. I always have a plan, for a BU without a plan is like a crossword puzzle without a vowel.

Ever since I got out of the perpetual adolescence of higher education, I've tried to create an overarching storyline to my years in the real world. It's against my nature to have long term goals that I could fill in on one of those "Where do you see yourself in five years?" surveys, but looking ahead a year or so gives me the feeling that I know where I'm going, while still enjoying my blissful ignorance in the present day. Here's what I've come up with so far for 2007:

• January: Get the damn HD over-the-air signal working and cancel my Comcast account.


• February: Install laminate flooring in my foyer. Paint and recarpet my home office -- the room where I spend most of my time. Paint and recarpet the upstairs hallway which is currently a patchwork mix of antique white and glossy white paint layered back to 1978.


• March: Paint and recarpet the living room / front stairwell. Paint the kitchen. Finally get around to writing a will. Whoever sucks up the most will get my house.


• April: Install laminate flooring in the kitchen. Redo the upstairs bathrooms. At this point, the entire upstairs floor will be stamped with the look-of-BU and ready for use in entertaining friends and the seduction of nubiles.


• May: Give a Lunchtime Seminar at work. I'm thinking about doing one on the resurgence of television soundtracks, specifically using the music of Michael Giacchino in LOST and Alias. First though, I have to make sure there's enough "interesting-to-laymen" material to fill an hour.


• June - August: This summer I plan on getting a certification or two, or three. Our company just joined some program called Skillsoft that offers online courses in many areas. I can do online courses in my sleep -- this should be a good way to beef up the resumé. If that doesn't pan out, I'll just continue down the Java Certification track and get another one of those. Last week, a coworker came to me "because I was one of the Java go-to guys". I told him that was just because all the others had quit.


• September- October: It will be time to recarpet and repaint the basement romper room and maybe redo the floor in the attached bathroom. Once this is done, every room in the house will have received the BU-treatment and I will be out of house-related projects, ending a three-year odyssey. That is, until something breaks, like the fuse in my heater did last Friday, sending the upstairs rooms into a frigid tailspin of temperate tragedy.


• November: November is the Month of Holiday Dinners. I can't mess with tradition so there will be no other projects this month.


• December: December is either my month off or my month of overtime, depending on the phase of the moon and whether "YEAR mod 2 == 0". So, no projects here either.

Besides these big projects, I also plan on hosting Poker Night twice a month with rotating rosters of rookies, composing regularly, and using the recumbent bike for 30 minutes a day at least five times a week. So far I'm on target, except for last week's Poker Night which most people had to bail on. I think they got scared when they saw I had gotten second place last Tuesday.

What do YOU plan on doing this year? Share with me as a kindergartner shares a Tonka truck.

Happy Birthday Jaood and Chris Booher!

Newsday Tuesday

The Dulles Rail Death Knell

Travelers, shoppers and office workers -- interviewed at the airport, in parking lots and in Tysons area strip malls -- said they were stunned by the Federal Transit Administration's announcement Thursday that the $5 billion rail line would not qualify for federal dollars without drastic changes in price and management. Dulles rail was counting on $900 million from the FTA, and state officials have said all along that without that money, the project would die.

Even a public-schooler such as myself could have told them that something like this would happen. Especially in an election year, why would a Republican-controlled government agency give a big win to a Democratic governor? Alternately, it was a conspiracy by all the private companies who are offering to buy the toll road in exchange for financing the project. It's ironic that the biggest debate of the past year has been whether the rail should go underground or above ground and now it's been rejected out of hand for reasons that have nothing to do with tunnels. Personally, I was hoping for the tunnel option, because tunnels are neat (and even Mitch Hedberg would agree that thirty seconds is the maximum amount of time you can depict yourself having fun on an above ground rail line).

For some, the allure of rail is to reach the airport. For others, it would connect workers with their jobs along a booming corridor of technology companies, law firms and other employers. And for others, it would create an opportunity to redesign at Tysons Corner, a sprawling 1,500-acre shopping and office district that planners envision as a Metro-connected downtown of streets, sidewalks, high-rise offices and apartments.

For me, the Silver Line would be pretty useless. Sure it would be nice to hop on at Reston instead of Falls Church for my biannual trip into D.C., but I live two miles from the airport already, and Tyson's Corner Mall is irrevocably broken -- a yuppy-filled zit on the face of northern Virginia that just needs a good squick. I'd sooner shop at Big Lots than go anywhere near the place.

The main reason I wouldn't regularly use the Metro (and never have) is that I would sacrifice a few extra miles of driving for an additional twenty or thirty minutes of travel time. Unlike my economical Dad who thinks nothing of driving fifteen miles down the road to Woodbridge to save ten cents a gallon on gas, I am perfectly willing to pay for convenience. Sure, that Metro ride might be more relaxing and use less gas, but that's an extra hour of travel time that I could have spent NOT traveling, enjoying the time at one end or the other of my trip.

Whatever happens with the plan, it won't affect my day-to-day life, but since we've already spent $140 million getting it this far, we might as well see if there's any way to salvage it. (Plus I hear that Fairfax would have to scrap their campaign to attract new residents, which revolves around the slogan, "Even this crappy county has a Silver Lining"). Here then, are three original proposals to save the rail project.

1) The Social Security Approach

2) Silver Line With a Vengeance

3) Operation: Vesuvius

New Jersey's waste alone would raise more than enough money to maintain a rail line, and the region already knows that underground shopping malls are quite popular .

Happy Birthday Jaood!

Review Day: Wrath of the Lich King

Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK), the second expansion pack to World of Warcraft, was released last November, just under two years after the first pack, The Burning Crusade. It increases the maximum level from 70 to 80, adds a new playable class and a continent full of fresh quests and exploration. I picked up the game a week before Thanksgiving and have been experiencing it at a leisurely pace, not unlike Kathy's trek to her dissertation. I decided to hold off on my review until I had completed every single quest I possibly could (except for those taking place in dungeons that require more than one person).

Exploration
WotLK introduces the continent of Northrend, a snowy vista with Norse tendencies that makes exploration a joy again -- I had as much fun exploring as I did when I first bought the game in 2004. The continent gradually increases in scope and majesty as you travel, until you reach mountains that are taller than some entire zones from the old world. Having a swift flying mount is very helpful (and you'll loot enough gold in Northrend to pay for it if you don't already own one).

Quests
The quests you perform are varied and numerous, and you'll reach level 80 long before you run out of quests. Though most of the quests follow the same basic mold (kill 10 penguins, find the magic doohickey and give it to someone), they don't feel as tiresome because of the introduction of "vehicles". You spend many of the quests on the back of a dragon or in a gnome-invented helicopter, and each of these vehicles has its own unique skillset to learn -- it sometimes feels more like you're playing a round of Mario Party mini-games instead of questing.

Death Knights
The new playable class is the Death Knight -- billed as a hero class, it is easily stronger than a comparable normal class at the same level. Though I didn't play the Death Knight very far beyond the starting zone, I found them to be mostly boring and overpowered (they're especially annoying in PvP Battlegrounds where they have an immediate advantage over all the other characters).

For People Who Don't Play Video Games
Poker poker poker poker. Wedding wedding wedding. Poker wedding wedding? Boobies boobies boobies! LOST poker wedding boobies Booty lost.

Graphics and Sound
The graphics are surprisingly nice for a game that's now four years old -- the graphics engine has been tweaked and the system requirements are now a little higher. If your computer barely ran the original game, you'll definitely need to upgrade a bit before visiting the busier areas of the expansion pack.

The music is very well-done -- before I would always turn off the music immediately, but the style of music in Northrend is understated and pleasant to listen to. It's also a little more adventuresome than you'd expect from a computer game, with some sections sounding like excerpts from a contemporary piano recital.

Bottom Line:
This expansion pack is much more polished and enjoyable than the previous one, which occasionally felt like a hodge podge of unrelated new content. There is nothing in here that will make it worth buying if you dislike the core gaming concepts behind the game, but if you already enjoy the game, you'll enjoy this as well.

Final Grade: A

Friday Fragments

melts in your mouth and most other intrinsically heated environments

♠ While exercising on Wednesday night, I managed to smash my left pinkie between two seven twenty pound dumbbells, so accept my apologies in advance if this post is a little light on Q's, A's, and Z's. Were I still playing World of Warcraft, I would have trouble casting Vampiric Embrace and circle-strafing.

♠ Circle-strafing has always felt like a nonsensical moonwalk-inspired action in shooter games -- try approaching someone at the mall and see how difficult it is to run in a circle around them while keeping your gun trained on them at the same time. I'm more inclined to believe the physics behind jumping on a high ledge by shooting a rocket at your feet and hopping, although if physics were truly involved, I guess either action would make you spill your Mountain Dew on your Doritos.

♠ Speaking of soda, Coke Zero has finally arrived at Costco, and I can now snub the twelve and twenty-four packs of Safeway for THIRTY-TWO packs at a reduced unit price. On one of my most recent trips, I bought two packs. I'm considering buying the entire stock and then bringing my own cans into restaurants that only serve real Coke. Surely there wouldn't be an uncorking fee if it's not already on the menu.

♠ On this week's menu of inexpensive but underwhelmingly cooked new website features: I have posted photos from January in my Picasa album (also linked in the top bar) and the URI! Zone is now OpenSearch-enabled. If you have a reasonably modern browser that likes to clutter up your screen with useless gadgets and menu options, you can now edit the options of your search bar to hook it up to nine years of URI! posts (an Atom feed of the results is also available). This may be about as useful to you as tits on a fish, so rest assured that it wasn't done at anyone's behest -- it was merely a quick way to prototype a technology for work.

♠ Speaking of work, I was nominated for a "Great Place to Work" award. I presume this means that my constant teleworking and trips onsite make people want to come to the office more since they know I won't be there. At least my write-up was better than the winner of the "Diverse Business Base" award: "[he] developed a plan to penetrate a new customer, and he successfully executed the first stage of the plan and captured a 3-year contract that starts with 2 people supporting the [...] customer -- and grows from there." HR really should have caught the unfortunate choices of words in that text.

♠ I actually think that tits would be much more useful to a fish than first impressions might suggest. After all, the Little Mermaid scored a prince with hers (she couldn't speak, so it obviously wasn't her intelligence), and things probably would have turned out much differently had she been top-half fish.

♠ I have no major plans for the weekend, although perhaps I'll host an impromptu game night on Saturday when the next blizzard fails to materialize so I can give away surplus toilet paper as prizes. We might also jaunt out to Front Royal to see Rebecca's cousin on Sunday. In the downtimes, I'll continue my current project of adding tags to all twelve hundred of my MP3s so they can be managed properly by iTunes.

♠ Illustrating these posts makes my hand hurt -- is it worth it? Have a great weekend!

Music Archaeology Day

Charting the evolution of my musical tastes through 13 years of representative Amazon sales

Memory Day: A Band Trip to Disney World

Nineteen years ago today, on January 29, 1995, I was a fifteen-year-old junior and right in the middle of the annual band trip. Fundraising that year must have been particularly worthwhile, as we scored four days in the assorted Disney parks of Florida. We probably had to sell something unsellable, like different varieties of sausages, but I managed to sell a grand total of 0 sausages by abusing my middle-class roots and flexing my dad's checkbook. This was fine with him, because I already milked my neighbourhood dry several times a year for Boy Scouts (tangelos and wreaths), and there's only so many times you can abuse the city councilman up the block for a guaranteed sale during election years. Sorry, Councilman Donley!

The trip involved multiple performances by the marching, concert, and jazz bands. Since everyone in the concert band was also in the marching band, a rudimentary understanding of Venn diagrams would suggest that you would do the least amount of work if you were in the jazz band and played an instrument that wasn't in the concert band -- this is why we all envied Isaac, the string bass guy. I must not have understood the concept because I was in all three bands and spent 50% of the trip putting on and taking off uniforms. (I took this lesson to heart, and would later get out of school to go on multiple Crew trips in the super important role of "backup coxswain").

We left Alexandria after school on Friday afternoon and arrived in Orlando at 7 AM the next morning, forcefully reinforcing the band trip motif by staying at the All-Star Music Resort in the JAZZ wing next to a guitar-shaped pool. After a lunch at El Pirata (which has since been renamed as "Tortuga Tavern" to milk the pirate movie series that went on for 4 too many sequels), we marched through the park alternating between Military Escort and Freedom Finale. It was a decent performance, apart from the thirty seconds in the middle where everyone lost the beat and simply stopped playing for a bit -- we were the direct inspiration behind "dropping the beat". (You're welcome, Skrillex). At the end of this parade, we basked in the success of our first Disney experience until the logistics guys shooed us backstage again "to make way for the REAL parade".

The next day (January 29th), we rode Space Mountain continuously until it was time for more performances. We did back-to-back concert and jazz band performances in "Fantasyland" which, as far as I know, was not a summary judgement of our greatness. The jazz band was better received than the concert band, playing such classic high school hits as Fudge Said The Judge and The Rufus Shuffle. In the evening, we had a private barbeque at the Wilderness Lodge and then returned to the motel to watch the Super Bowl (49ers beat the Chargers, 42-18). Actually though, none of us band nerds really cared about the Super Bowl as much as we cared about getting away from the chaperones, most of whom stayed in the park.

My three roomates, Dutton Hauhart and the Mikes, Stafford and Schoen, spent the evening throwing water balloons off of the balcony while hiding from hotel security, while I opted for the less risky activity of playing air hockey with Chris Sharp. A pick-up air hockey tournament formed soon afterwards, but it stopped being a game of skill after a flutist in a low-cut shirt decided to play. For unknown reasons, everyone wanted to play against her, but no one wanted to eliminate her from the competition. Also, everyone's shots got mysteriously weaker, barely crossing the center line, and requiring her to reach very far across the table.

Day three was Epcot day. We spent the morning in a workshop conducted by the Walt Disney World band director who was autographing photographs of himself like he was Bono. The afternoon passed with us searching for Epcot attractions where we didn't have to learn anything, and we dubbed the "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids" 3D show as the best ride in the park. After a terrible Polynesian Luau for dinner, we returned to the All-Star Music Resort for our final night. Somehow, our hotel room became the party room, although everyone was paranoid about getting caught. I fell into my standard awkward high school party role of "the lookout", and turned down the music every time a chaperone patrol passed our door.

Day four was the final day of the trip, and the only day without any band activities interfering with our serious ride plans. It was Mike Stafford's lucky day: he got a kiss from (the real) Snow White, and was randomly picked to ride the virtual reality machine in the Imagineering Labs. We left by bus late in the evening, and inhaled secondhand smoke all of the way home, from the bus driver who was apparently allowed to smoke on his bus in 1995.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Down Dog:
This new comedy pilot about a dumb, hot guy running a yoga studio (from Amazon's Pilot Season) is uniformly awful. The tone is uneven, the jokes are broad, easy targets, and it brings nothing new to the mocking of LA lifestyle. Free on Amazon Prime, but they should pay you to watch it.

Final Grade: F

Black Mirror:
This is a short (6 episode) British anthology of sci-fi tales. They're not quite dystopian or fantastic, but are told in a near future that is just believable enough to sell as real. Occasionally unpleasant and always unsettling, they'll really make you think more about the effect of technology on daily life. The first episode is definitely the weakest of the bunch, but I enjoyed them all. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: A

The Sting by Gabriella Cilmi:
This third album from Cilmi is more understated and mature than the previous two. I didn't like it at first, but now I find that the mellow timbres and unexciting arrangements make it good for background music.

Final Grade: C+

21 Jump Street (R):
This movie remake of the old TV show comes across more as parody than homage, but is pleasantly funny. Jonah Hill plays (pre-Wolf of Wall Street) Jonah Hill, and Channing Tatum has no personality.

Final Grade: C

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2016 album.

• Events
  • Rang in the New Year with a Yoga Friends party, followed by a weekend away in Sperryville on F 1/1.
  
  
  • Went clubbing in DC, solely for a company party, on S 1/9. Spent the night in a posh hotel.
  
  
  • Met up with friends in Fredericksburg and Colonial Beach on S 1/16.
  
  
  • Snowbound in the big blizzard, F 1/22 - W 1/27.
  
  
  • Planning to have delayed Christmas with my parents on S 1/30.


• Projects
  • Worked on the first proposal effort of 2016.
  
  
  • Did lots of snow shoveling.
  
  
  • Continued updating the Paravia Wiki on a regular basis.


• Consumerism
  • Bought a new, expensive suit for suit-y occasions.
  
  
  • Bought a new camera (Canon Powershot SX270) to replace the potato camera.
  
  
  • Finally upgraded to a smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S5) from my slide-out keyboard phone. Yes, I upgraded from a 2010 model to a 2014 model in 2016.
  
  
  • Not much in the way of amazing TV or music this month.
  
  
  • Played lots of Fallout 4.

January's Final Grade: B+, a relatively empty month punctuated by loud, flashy events and a nice blizzard.

List Day: 10 Ways We Have Greeted Our Small Human

1. Maia Papaya


2. L.G. (for "Little Girl" if you're Rebecca or "Lil' Gangsta'" if you're me)


3. Maiawatha


4. Cuteness Everdeen


5. Oscar Maia


6. Nugget / Nugnug


7. Mai Mai


8. Hermaiaknee


9. It's-a me-a, Maia!


10. Maia Christmas

Also, this will be Maia's theme song in future home videos.

Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Twenty Years Ago Today

Twenty years ago today, on January 29, 2000, I was in my fourth year at Virginia Tech. It snowed off and on all day long so I spent most of the day in my room in East Ambler Johnston. I did step out for lunch with Shac, Liz, and Liz's best friend, Kathryn, who was visiting and deciding whether to transfer in as a music education major.

The 29th was also the day I finally finished writing the endgame of Augmented Fourth. I posted endless troubleshooting requests to the rec.arts.int-fiction newsgroup in the days before Stack Overflow trying to solve my final coding issues:

I ultimately got the help I needed to detonate the bomb successfully (and now I'm probably on some kind of TSA list for this post). The next day, I solicited beta testers for two months of strenuous testing before the game was finally released on April 1.

To bookend this achievement, I'll be releasing a 20th anniversary edition exactly twenty years later, on April 1, 2020. Stay tuned!

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2021 album.

• Events
  • Rebecca got her first COVID vaccine shot on S 1/10 and her second on W 1/27.
  
  
  • My mom got her first COVID vaccine shot on T 1/12.
  
  
  • My dad got his first COVID vaccine shot on T 1/19.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia visited Uncle Dave and Aunt Carol on S 1/16.
  
  
  • The Smiths came over for a vented basement visit on S 1/23. Maia played her first game of Tokaido.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went hiking with the Smiths at Cub Run on M 1/25.
  
  
  • First snow "storm" of 2021 on S 1/31.


• Projects
  • Restarted an exercise regimen -- jogging 2 miles per day, 5 days per week.
  
  
  • Painted the new nursery on F 1/15 - S 1/16.
  
  
  • Met with our patio builder for Phase II on T 1/19.
  
  
  • Finally finished Puzzle Boat 7 on T 1/19.
  
  
  • Finally finished the migration of an ancient Janny Wurts forum on W 1/20.


• Consumerism
  • No amazing shows, music, or games this month.

January's Final Grade: B, This is fine, and it went by fast.

Data Day: Health and Wellness

healthy stuff I've done in the first 28 days of 2024

• Performed aerobic exercise every single day, encompassing 4 hours 45 minutes of VR Beat Saber, 20 miles of jogging, and 2 hours of snow shoveling.


• Reduced daily alcohol consumption by 38.39% from 2023 average. Replaced habit with daily black tea (2 - 4 mugs per day) and chewing gum.


• Continued treating steaks as a "not in the house" food (only in restaurants or on vacations). Had just 2 red-meat-heavy meals this month (steak at Local Provisions and Korean BBQ at Kiwa).


• Eating a piece of fruit, generally an apple, on a daily basis.


• Total Fast Food Consumption: 1 McDonald's, 1 Chickfila, 0 Popeyes.


• Weight down from 143 to 139 today.

I'm heading back to the doctor next week for the annual game of "how close can your cholesterol level get to the DANGER ZONE?!", and will let you all know if I'm still alive.