I'm back from a relaxing week in Blacksburg, and ready to start working on Wednesday. The trip was just like old times: I got in a couple birthdays, some quality practicing, a few readings of my stuff, and even did some last minute poster work for the upcoming War Requiem concert this week. Luckily I didn't have to turn any pages this trip, but I did make it to a Convo and a New River Valley Symphony concert on Saturday. My trip coincided with the first annual Music Education Alumni Conference, so there were lots of familiar faces around the department. I also added a few cat and normal pictures on the Photos page, but I didn't get out much with the camera so the offerings are pretty slim.

I'm heading back to Blacksburg on Friday for Nikki's and Shac's recitals, but for the next few days I'll just be doing housekeeping tasks and settling into the Northern Virginia lifestyle. I also want to start writing for my thesis this week. Hopefully my dual residency plans for the summer won't interfere with my creativity.

During my whirlwind musical explorations, I discovered the British group, Coldplay, and liked their stuff enough to buy their two CDs, Parachutes, and Rush of Blood to the Head. They have a very laid-back and tastefully clean sound that I enjoy listening to. A couple of good numbers you might like listening to: Yellow, Shiver, Clocks, and God Put a Smile on Your Face. Also the song, Scientist, isn't spectacular, but it's got a very artsy video. If you've got a fast enough connection, you can watch it here (WMV 15.7MB).

I met with Dr. Spencer this morning to go over the details of the MFIT project and he gave it his stamp of approval. From there I wandered around campus turning in keys to key people (LOLZ) and finally returned to HMU to pick up final grade sheets which weren't there yet. The only things left on my to-do list now include packing, getting gas (automotive kind), getting a haircut, and doing final grades.

There's going to be a barbeque at Beth's tomorrow for the end of the year, people leaving, and other assorted phenomena. 5 PM, or so I've been told. Feel free to drop by if you happen to live within a ten mile radius of the city.

My future plans (IV of V):
With Finale under my belt, I'd like to really learn my other musical software and hardware, including Cool Edit Pro, MIDI Orchestrator Pro, and the Roland SC-8850 I bought last year. Right now, I know enough to be dangerous with them, but not enough to take full advantage of their musical possibilities. I still have my nicely mixed Recital CD from Tech that I haven't done more than burn MP3s from. I'd like to be able to tweak various aspects, like the pitch-deaf instrumentalist and the occasional wrong note. Also, now that I'm going back to where all my great singer friends are, I'd like to rerecord some of the vocal numbers in a multi-track manner and toy with the balances. The MP3s from the live recital that I have up on the Music page really aren't the greatest quality -- hopefully that will change in the Fall.

Pickled Mutant Babies have everything to do with alcoholism
So what did you do after preschool?
Spread of buggy software raises new questions

I'm trying to decide what sort of update schedule I should go on this summer. I won't do anything as drastic as stopping now and restarting in August, but I may cut out a few days a week, or just the weekends. It's hard work posting pictures of Booty's ass, and if I don't take some sabbatical time every now and again, I'll burn out like Bill Watterson.

What are your thoughts?

Yesterday's notable search terms:

There were NO searches yesterday!

Major work on the new guest room is complete, just in time for Florida-Kathy to move in for the summer. All I have left is to move some more furniture in and take care of things like curtains and bedspreads.

Friday Fragments

My mind is a swirling miasma of scintillating thoughts and turgid ideas

I updated my smiling visage on the About page since the old picture was almost two years old, and did not accurately reflect the substantial increase in hotness and maturity I've gained (I've got a +2 to maturity). The new picture was taken during my Blacksburg trip with my camera set to the highest resolution, coincidentally named Superfine™, which is also the caption of the picture. AM I RIGHT?

Speaking of eyeballs, I've been using Microsoft ClearType for a couple months now and I give it two thumbs up. ClearType is a free method of displaying computer fonts on any Windows XP computer to be both sharper and easier on the eyes. You can see an example of the difference here . If you spend many hours each day on your computer and have eye strain, give it a try. It may seem strange for the first week, but once you go ClearType, you'll never go back.

Euro-tic Adventure, Part VI of X

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Collioure is a small town on the Mediterranean Sea that's nearly invisible on most tourist maps. Rick Steves devotes a few sentences to it in one of his guidebooks, and we thought that a town off the beaten path might be a nice "vacation within a vacation" at the 2/3rds mark of our trip. At first glance, fresh off the train, it was just a deathly silent tiny town with no vistas of interest. As we walked down the single street from the station, though, this perception changed.

First, we hit the market square where all manner of goods were being sold to the locals, including a stand selling nothing but spices and sweet-smelling herbs. This spilled out next to a long ancient drainage canal filled with ducks that led us to a beautiful Mediterranean beach with a scenic church and at least three abandoned fortresses (from the days when the border to Spain was here). Throughout our stay, it felt like we were the only tourists around, able to experience a closer approximation of normal French life while taking eight million pictures of the scenic landscape.

Using the excellent guide from the Tourism Office, we found a hotel room with a balcony, toilet, sink, shower, AND TV for a killer rate, run by a cute little family (without a word of English spoken) and in a central part of town. It was too early for lunch, so we wandered through the tight alleys of shops and bought hand-churned cones of ice cream (Straciatella for me and Snickers for Rebecca). When the lunch hour finally rolled around, we ordered a hand-tossed pizza and ate it next to the bay.

After lunch, we walked the grounds of an abandoned fort that's nestled in the center of the town and then took a quick siesta to make up for our early train. The weather was still warm and walking-friendly when we woke up, so we picked a random street and wandered out of town into a neighbourhood that Rebecca said reminded her greatly of California. Almost every family owned a cat, and one family even had a couple donkeys in a roped up area near the creek trail. We spent a good couple hours just wandering through the area and saying "bonjour" to friendly locals.

In the evening, we returned to the central town and had crepes with Nutella and Grand Marnier, an 80 proof alcohol. The crepe stand was actually just a front for selling Grand Marnier, because you could buy entire bottles there, and take free recipe cards outline all the things to sprinkle Grand Marnier on. We then treated ourselves to a full meal at a real restaurant (noodles with calamari for me, and beef with a salad for Rebecca).

After dinner, we wandered back to the beach where a church, a chapel, and a lighthouse were all constructed in close proximity to the sea wall. Scenes like this were really the best part of our trip -- being able to experience ancient and awe-inspiring settings nestled into the rhythms of everyday life. On an unrelated note for Rob, this may be the first time I've ever been able to use the word "everyday" in a blog post rather than "every day".

The day ended (as all days should) with wine on the balcony of our hotel room.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

The farther south you go, the smaller the breakfasts get -- Londoners celebrate the start of a new day with eighty pounds of spam, while breakfast in Spain is nonexistant since everyone is still asleep. French breakfasts were weak sauce, and we ultimately ended up eating a Quiche Lorraine, two oranges, and a bag of chips. We ate breakfast, did a load of laundry in our sink (just the sweaty inner stuff), and then wandered south into the unexplored part of town. We skipped some stones and invaded some private beach property, and then decided to take our books to the beach for some sun and intellectual exercise. Unfortunately, the clouds rolled in at this point and chased us to the local cafe where we warmed up and had drinks.

After a time, the clouds disappeared, and we decided to hike up to a peculiar gaudy arch overlooking the town (lower circle on the picture to the left). It turned out to be another chapel, and from there we decided to hit the quaint windmill (Moulin de Collioure) higher up in the treeline (the second circle). By this point, I was feeling ambitious so we decided to hike up to the fortress on top of the mountain, or at least as far as I could go until my bum knee collapsed into a quivering blob of gelatin. This hike included a brief rock scramble, but we successfully made it all the way to the top. Unfortunately, the fort was private property, but we found a scenic rock shelf and ate oranges while watching the fog roll in over the town below.

We knew it was time to hike back down when a bus full of tourists suddenly pulled up next to the fort and all manner of amateur photographers swarmed our private little party. After returning to the town, we went to the hotel for another siesta with the TV on.

There were two French commercials that stood out in my mind -- the first was for a detergent called Colon 101 where the narrator announced that there were 101 uses for COLON. The second had a cartoon girl skipping through a wonderful world singing, "In my world, there is no cancer." The commercial ends when the girl's world explodes and is replaced by a message that essentially said, "Cancer is everywhere. Wake up to the real world." I drifted off during this amazing entertainment, but Rebecca skipped siesta to watch a show in Spanish about the mating habits of zebras (to practice her Spanish for the next leg of our trip).

Our last evening in Collioure was spent eating gigantic "American" sandwiches under a playground setup, the only dry ground after an intense but brief rainstorm, and then drinking some more wine on the balcony while watching the locals come and go below.

To Be Continued tomorrow...

You can view the Collioure pictures here .

Just Plain Tuesday

I was stuck in the alien autopsy room until late last night, so I didn't have time to write a Newsday, or a Museday, or even a Boozeday.

List Day: Nintendo Games

I'm pretty sure that my childhood system for choosing Nintendo games involved equal parts Voodoo and research, because otherwise it'd be nearly impossible for a gamer such as myself to have more crappy games than good ones. Though 19 total games might seem like a poor showing, it's offset by the fact that I owned EVERY computer game in existence.

Final Fantasy: I got all the way to the end of this game, only to realize I'd need to spend another two years leveling my characters up far enough to beat the final boss. Also, no one else accepts the fact that one of the enemies was a humanoid alligator dressed up like a pimp.

Zelda II: Adventures of Link: This was a game I loved and played the most as a kid. I even orchestrated a version of the dungeon theme when I first bought my Roland SC-8850.

And yes, the games were alphabetized, except in the case of a series, which were ordered separately and numerically. I am an engineer.

Recital Day

Part III of IV

By far, the poster with the most longevity and popularity was the Asian Invasion poster, which still hangs in my office at work. The creation of this poster required me to expand my massive collection of Dave Matthews and Canadian Brass CDs with my first and last Beatles purchase ($8.99 in the bargain bin at the Christiansburg Walmart).

After reshuffling the flowers to spell URI! and a trumpet, I splattered the background with friends and professors from high school and beyond. You can even see the plastic cow we put on Jason Chrisley's birthday cake on the left side below Mike Robb. This poster, and all of the rest from the complete series found a second life in Tallahassee where I used them to decorate the cinderblock walls of Parkwood Apartments. There's not a lot else you can do with cinderblocks.

Besides designing posters, crafting intricate stagehand charts and graphs, and making sure that Kelley got to rehearsal on time, I also tried to be involved in every piece on the program. Although it was a composition recital, I figured that it would be more over the top if I conducted four songs, turned pages on anything with a piano, and performed at least one song on my trumpet.

Although I had played trumpet since the fifth grade, I was never more serious than an average performer. Music was a member of The Arts where it didn't matter if you had painted all of your leaves brown because that's how they look with Red-Green color blindness, and it was only happenstance that I rolled off of the trumpet shelf and onto the composing shelf. I haven't yet decided if The Arts in this metaphor are a particle board bookcase at a yard sale or the Antarctic region under the CFC hole, but either should suffice for your mind's eye.

Despite my continuing preference for "playing" over "practicing", I did manage to buckle down and practice heavily for the one trumpet piece I performed on the Recital -- that behemoth of Romanticism excesses, the Arutunian Concerto.

Arutunian Concerto excerpt (3.0MB MP3)

♠ The section in the excerpt actually turned out very well, and showed that I was a possible contender for any future Music Decathlon. The introduction got off to a rough start, after I sent the sixth note of the piece through an unexpected puberty, but I recovered nicely.

♠ As a trumpet player, my forte was always understanding and interpreting the phrasing, language, and intent of the written score. Those other intangibles like pitch, tone, and practicing more than 2 hours a day were always tossed in the backseat.

♠ I chose the Arutunian because it was long enough to show that I was seriously putting forth an effort. This is in direct contrast to my Junior Year Convocation performance where I performed a piece called Scherzo that was 1:41 in length.

♠ As the piece cranked past minute 12, I began to realize that I had indeed given this performance my all -- so much so, that I had no endurance left for the final two minutes of the piece which involved a free form trumpet-alone section of progressively higher high notes. As I tumbled off of the shelf into this cadenza (here, the shelf is made of ice), I could immediately sense that every trumpet player in the room knew I didn't have enough gas to make it to the end. Thankfully, an on-the-spot reinterpretation of the rests and melodic lines coupled with notes an octave lower allowed me to get all the way to the end with most of my dignity intact.

To be concluded tomorrow...

Weekend Wrap-up

I've had a lingering cold outstaying its welcome since last Wednesday, so I really wasn't up to much this weekend besides napping and gaming. We did get out to Delmarva's for dinner on Saturday, where we sat on the patio and heard the distant strains of a Red Hot Chili Peppers / Muse cover band. After dinner, we were unsuccessful in locating the band on foot, but we did get to keep our Starr Hill glasses from the dinner promotion.

On Sunday, we went out to Linden for belated Easter time with Rebecca's Loudoun third of the family.

Very little else happened, although we finished season one of Orphan Black and Rebecca beat Ben at Hearthstone in spite of Deathwing (thanks, Hex!)

How was your weekend?

List Day: 5 Random Observations

• I never thought I'd see the day where the number of pithy motivational slogans in my LinkedIn feed would outnumber the number on Facebook. This must be what managers are doing all day long.


• Auto-flushing sit-down toilets need more engineering work. Either you perch timidly hoping that it doesn't flush in the midst of your business, or it fails to flush on Friday night, leaving a mellifluence of odours and rapidly evolved cultures of bacterias (some with a spoken language) on Monday morning.


• Google is about to permanently retire the old version of Google Maps, replacing it with a newer one that's slower, unintuitive, and has less features I need and more features I hate. I've had the classic version bookmarked ever since they started forcing traffic to the new one, and when that link stops working, I may even switch over to Bing Maps, which works for all of my use cases. I guess it's time for a technology pendulum swing.


• There are little stone pillars decorating all of the entrance roads to Herndon, and every week it seems like a new flourish is added, like the date of incorporation or a faux stone tapestry. I'm guessing someone is playing with "use or lose" budget surpluses, on the magnitude of a few bucks a month.


• They could save a lot of money on the White House Correspondents' Dinner if they'd just forgo the actual dinner and post the transcript of all of the jokes online. That's the only part that anyone cares about.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Lars and the Real Girl (PG-13):
This indie movie about a closed off man who starts a relationship with a blow-up doll had the potential to be very mishandled and shot for easy laughs, but turned out to be pleasant and poignant. It's one of those movies where the ad copy calls it hilarious, but instead it's mostly just charming. Free on Amazon Prime.

Final Grade: B+

Patton Oswalt: Talking for Clapping:
Patton Oswalt's latest comedy special is in the same vein as his previous work -- mainly storytelling through disjointed fragments of thoughts. It's moderately funny but loses momentum once he starts talking about his kids. The kids of stand-up comics are never as interesting as the comic thinks they are. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: C+

Dreamland, Season Two:
The second season of this Australian "The Office-like" show delivers more laughs, but pretty much covers the exact same ground as before. There's no overarching plot and each episode feels about the same. This is the type of show you'd want to watch an episode of in isolation when you need a laugh, rather than binging. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B

Cheng's Oriental Restaurant:
Cheng's in Sterling captures the decline of Americanized Chinese food perfectly, right down to the indoor koi pond with no fish in it. The food was inexpensive and solidly tasty, although Rebecca was disappointed by how much of the menu was deep-fried. All in all, it was a pleasant dining experience. Though the place is not hipster-flashy or a brewery, sometimes you just want to eat some comfortable lo mein while surrounded by old white people.

Final Grade: B

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

A few photos have been added to the Life, 2017 album. Google Photos sucks.

• Events
  • Went to a crazy baby consignment sale then hiked the muddy banks of the Occuquan River with Sara on S 4/1.
  
  
  • Got a flat tire in Herndon on H 4/6.
  
  
  • Had a Dinner With Friends at Michelle's house on F 4/7.
  
  
  • Hosted a VR Party with Evil Mike, Tom, Annie, and Sara on S 4/8 then had Ethiopian food at Enatye that gave me smelly fingers for the next two days.
  
  
  • Updated our TDAP shots then had dinner at Mellow Mushroom on T 4/11.
  
  
  • Met with our doula, went to a baby shower, then stopped by my parents' for my Mom's birthday on S 4/15.
  
  
  • Went to Michelle's Moving To Berkeley party on S 4/22.
  
  
  • Met up with Rebecca's parents, the Wrights, the Edwardses and the Mueller-Catanias on S 4/23.
  
  
  • Had a sonogram on W 4/26 that confirmed the ongoing presence of girl parts on our child.
  
  
  • Saw Michelle one last time on F 4/28 before her cross country drive in order to optimize the packing of her Prius.
  
  
  • Went to a picnic with Rebecca's work buddies to send off PT Arturo on S 4/30.


• Projects
  • Painted the Nursery Formerly Known As Office in Easter colours.
  
  
  • Did baby preparation stuff like picking a pediatrician and assembling a crib.


• Consumerism
  • Got to level 635 in Overwatch, with 652 hours played and a 51.7% winrate. Also enjoyed the VR game, Keep Talking and No One Explodes.
  
  
  • Enjoyed watching The Night Manager and listening to newly discovered music by Bryce Vine.
  
  

April's Final Grade: B+

Recital Day: 20th Anniversary Nostalgia

Here is the long and unnecessarily verbose recital program I created for my music recital 20 years ago. I sacrificed my spring break in my final semester to stay in town, print 175 copies on the constantly jamming music department printer, and painstakingly bind them on a real binding machine.

(The text is preserved for easier reading here).

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2023 album.

• Events
  • Went to a birthday party / egg hunt in the rain at Algonkian Park on S 4/1. Had the cousins, Sammy and Renae, over to babysit and eat burgers afterwards.
  
  
  • Went to see Elizabeth and the Catapult open for Mark Erelli at Jammin Java on S 4/2.
  
  
  • Went to Massanutten for Spring Break on M 4/3.
  
  
  • Had tasty barbeque for lunch at Virginia BBQ on T 4/4 in between trips to playgrounds and ponds. Went to the Massanutten Overlook in the evening for a short hike.
  
  
  • Caught Maia's violently sore throat on W 4/5. Had dinner at Campfire Grill (game burger steaks).
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went on a sunrise hike on H 4/6. Went to the petting zoo, had Campfire Grill for lunch, and then hit the Massanutten Indoor Water Park in the afternoon.
  
  
  • Headed home from Massanutten on F 4/7 with a brief lunch stop at Chick-fila.
  
  
  • Egg-dying with Grandpa Tom on S 4/8.
  
  
  • Easter visit with the Links in Brookville, MD on S 4/9, which I missed because I was sick.
  
  
  • Surprise visit for my Mom's 82nd birthday on M 4/10.
  
  
  • Went to the dentist on F 4/14.
  
  
  • Maia went to my parent's house for the weekend, F 4/14 - S 4/16.
  
  
  • Dinner with Ian at Burton's on S 4/15.
  
  
  • Had the grandparents over for Ian's 2nd Birthday Party on S 4/22.
  
  
  • Ian turned 2 on T 4/25.
  
  
  • Family dinner at Chuy's on W 4/26.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went to a middle school play (Little Mermaid) on S 4/29.


• Projects
  • Improved the Lillard Road sidewalk area on F 4/14.
  
  
  • Finished redoing all 400 Advent of Code puzzles in Kotlin on T 4/18.
  
  
  • Started learning Spanish on Duolingo in spite of all of the ads.
  
  
  • Went to the HOA meeting on W 4/19.
  
  
  • Finished doing series reviews of The Wars of Light and Shadow on /r/fantasy on Reddit.


• Consumerism
  • Enjoyed watching the final season of Better Call Saul and BEEF on Netflix.
  
  
  • Still playing Overwatch 2.
  
  
  • No amazing new music this month.

April's Final Grade: B, Sick in the beginning, but lots of good memories and fun outdoor time.