I'm still having sporadic problems with my Internet connection, as a result of the NIMDA worm which appeared on Tuesday, taking advantage of yet another Microsoft vulnerability. I'll try to post more meaningful news when everything is working properly on this end.

We saw the movie, One Hour Photo, last night and it was pretty good. Robin Williams effectively played another creepy protagonist, even better than he did in Insomnia. I guess this will end the debate on whether he is capable of acting beyond Patch Adams and the guy from What Dreams May Come. The cinematography in the movie was especially well-done, although I thought that the ending was a little out of place.

Kids use PlayStation for high-tech homework

Over the weekend, my dad and I moved 3600 pounds of concrete mix from Lowe's to my shed in preparation for laying some cement work around my house in the near future. That's almost thirty times my body weight.

Yesterday evening, someone from my hometown of Alexandria found my site by Googling "winkler botanical preserve" sex. The Mark Winkler Botanical Preserve is a small wildlife area nestled in the shadow of I-395 where I played one summer (as previously reported in an August update ). I did not have sex there, being an elementary school kid at the time (sixth graders did not begin having sex on school buses and in nature preserves until over a decade after I'd grown up). Although this particular search phrase has a considerable ick factor (what if the searcher was a familiar face like the mayor or my old next-door neighbours?), I figured I would provide a FAQ for future visitors who are also interested in such knowledge:

Q: How do I have sex in the Winkler Botanical Preserve?
A: Visitors to the preserve are advised to have sex in the exact same manner as they would anywhere else, including, but not limited to, bedrooms, bus stations, and out front of a 7-11 with a day laborer. Protection, such as a blanket, is highly recommended, since roots and shrubbery may chafe people who are not used to the outdoor setting.

Q: Who do I have sex with in the Winkler Botanical Preserve?
A: Visitors may have sex with whoever they choose, though for maximum irony it should be someone named Mark Winkler (not to be confused with Henry Winkler, a.k.a. The Fonz). Google cites two possibilities: one is a male jazz vocalist and the other is involved with the Highland Hope United Methodist Congregation. They have the same eyebrows, though, so perhaps they are one and the same. Note: Mark Winkler of The Mark Winkler Company is not recommended, as he has been dead for many years, and that's just not cool.

Q: Where do I have sex in the Winkler Botanical Preserve?
A: We recommend the small lake in the center of the property (see the Google satellite image above). Visitors feeling particularly randy should stop off at the equipment shed along the banks of the lake, although you are more likely to be spotted here. If you require a bit more time to "get in the mood", you and your swain should amble to the opposite shore where the woods provide some semblance of privacy and any exclamations of passion will be drowned out by trucks downshifting on the Interstate. Get ready for romance!

I must be cautious with the amount of explicit information I provide, because otherwise I might get put on the short list for investigation by the FBI's new porn squad . Incidentally, they are currently hiring, and I'm sure many of my readers would be a perfect fit, having plenty of on-the-job training to recognize porn. I bet the posted req's for these job opportunities will be fun to read. It's ridiculous to think that a ten man squad will be able to wipe out a multibillion dollar industry -- this squad will barely be able to keep abreast (!) of new companies as they try to stamp out the old ones.

Lost, Episode 2x01 "Man of Science, Man of Faith" premieres tonight at 9 PM on ABC. I'd post the episode summary, but some of my readers (like Jack and Kim) are still wending their way through Season One and I don't want to spoil anything. No Season One spoilers in the comments please! There's also a "This is what happened in Season One" catch-up episode at 8 PM, but if you need that then you really owe it to yourself to watch the DVDs instead. I, myself, am looking forward to the second season because J.J. Abrams is very good at creating shows that run for two seasons. Whether he can maintain that creativity into the third season and beyond remains open for debate (see also, Lauren Reed in Alias, Season Three).

My Name Is Earl was pretty funny, but I can see it getting really annoying and derivative before the end of one season.

Yesterday's search terms:
hamster sale herndon, how do you know if your african land snail is ill, "winkler botanical preserve" sex, dokka midbeam, classify the clothes by style

Premature Matriculation

An article in the Post yesterday discussed a local 18-year-old student who managed to graduate from UVA in one year with a double major . He was able to accomplish this by taking 72 hours worth of AP credits in high school, and plans to finish graduate school in a single year as well. Not surprisingly, this guy came from the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology -- I can think of maybe two students from T.C. Williams who might have attempted this and they both would have burned out and become potheads by year two.

Now I admit that I wasn't a collegiate lollygagger in my day (I took sixteen to nineteen credits a semester and two classes every summer to finish my double major in an awe-inspiring five years) but I think this kid's case is just ridiculous. All too often, schooling is directly correlated with how many subjects you learn, completely omitting the social aspects of it. Schooling is not just about the number of pages you assimilate by graduation time -- if it was, most dedicated people could easily finish in a matter of months versus years.

The duration of school is a critical part of the equation and crucial to your growth as a functioning member of society. By following the established timeline for primary education and college, you are learning about yourself and how to interact on a daily basis with the rhubarbheads you will share the world with for the remainder of life. Four years of college teaches you the responsibility of waking yourself up for class (or learning how to work the system so you don't have to), lets you forge long-term friendships, maybe meet your future spouse or just fall in and out of love, get arrested, or become kidnapped by an itinerant biker gang that's just passing through town on their way to a biker convention in Omaha. All of these are critical life experiences that you'll never experience if you try to finish schooling as fast as possible.

It seems like many kids today are anxious to race through the "learning" phase of life to get straight to the "real world" phase where they make lots of money and run for Congress (not to be confused with the "Real World" phase, which is also known as "college"). My advice to them? Slow down! The middle section of life between schooling and retirement is a temporal sponge that will gradually expand to fill the available space -- why sacrifice a few years of intense stimuli for an equal number of years in "more of the same"? Getting there early will not give you any advantages, and in all likelihood, you will probably suck at it because of a distinct lack of preparation. You will be just like those clowns that play Super Mario Brothers for the first time ever and try to warp directly to World 8.

The world will laugh as a Bullet Bill goes straight up your ass.

Friday Fragments

the critically-acclaimed literary sensation in the tradition of Hop on Pop

♠ The final portion of Extreme Makeover: The Three Year Home Edition has begun and there are now six-hundred-forty-five square feet of carpet in my basement, ready for unrolling. My dad and I tried to go with the fifteen-foot carpet rolls this time around since the space is so big down there. They're a little more awkward than a standard twelve-foot roll (not unlike a social face-off between a software engineer and a systems administrator), and ooze off the tailgate of the truck like a drunk Mexican on permanent siesta when you try to get them home.

♠ Before I tore down the basement, I had one final party there, mainly to celebrate my 28th birthday with four hundred of my dearest friends. We ate giant steaks, two kinds of mashed potatoes, and a variety cheesecake pack called "Sweet Temptations" (It was sweet). After that, we played caption games, drank lots of Guinness (or wine, in the case of Rosie), and then played several rounds of pool.

♠ Anna and Ben didn't come because they are no longer my friends, but while transferring the above picture from my camera to my computer, I discovered several cute pictures of Ella looking coy on my couch, just like this one. If you don't think this picture is cute, you have no soul. For more cute Ella, look at this.

♠ There are enough readers with babies (or expecting them!) now that it's high time we had a baby-off. Every reader with a baby could bring them over to my place, dress them up with tiny American Gladiator costumes, and put them in the ring. The last baby standing (or sitting up, or lying on their back, depending on their age) will win a $5 gift certificate to Amazon.com.

♠ Speaking of Amazon, I'm expecting my shipment of Heroes, season one, and Prison Break, season two any day now, because I don't already watch enough DVDs. Which should I watch first?

♠ I also finished the first season of Dexter, the story of the serial killer who only preys on criminals that slip through the cracks. The show was outstanding and no more disturbing than any given torture scene in 24 (most of the flinchy or truly gory stuff is implied off-screen, although there's lots and lots of blood). Michael Hall gives a great performance, and after just a couple episodes, you'll forget that he was ever a gay mortician on Six Feet Under. I highly recommend this series, especially if you are weird like me and have a fascination with reading about serial killers. Once you reach episode eight or so, make sure you have an evening blocked off, because you won't be able to watch any of the last four episodes without wanting to watch them all at once!

♠ At my birthday party, it was recommended that I open Uri!flix because I own more TV shows on DVD than God. A lot of people argue that owning a TV season on DVD is a waste of money in the days of downloadable episodes, but I always reason that thirty bucks for sixteen hours of entertainment isn't bad at all, especially since I tend to watch them multiple times and lend them out to friends. It's no worse than going to the movie theatre and buying a bottle of tap water and a movie ticket for sixteen dollars.

♠ When we went to the beach last week, we brought along 35 bottles of Costco water and 48 bottles of Yuengling. By the end of the week, all the water was gone, and there were only 2 beers left. This is because we spent most of the week drinking, and eating fruit dipped in chocolate.

♠ Dipping chocolate kind of sucks after it starts to harden. After looking like poop, it looks like the brittle and tasteless microwave brownie found in the Banquet TV dinners from the 1980s (part of this complete dinner including corn, some kind of jelly side, and two pieces of fried chicken).

♠ Speaking of fried chicken, it's Friday, and time for Popeyes! My weekend plans include some work on taxonomies, a trip to some Improv Show in DC, and some work in the basement. Happy Birthday Judy on Saturday. Have a great weekend!

Weekend Wrap-up

The prelude to Bachelor Weekend started with New York Strip steaks at Jack's house, followed by a random gathering of high-school era guys. We tried out Jack's recent purchase of Beatles Rock Band and learned that trying to sing along to "Within You Without You" is a retarded proposition. Later on, we switched to poker, except for Chris Sharp, who switched to poker and Scotch (resulting in a massive depletion of both reserves). I conceded and came in second, winning $10, though I might have gotten first had it not been 3 in the morning.

Following a breakfast of chocolate chip banana pancakes, the three of us, Ben, Jack, and myself, got on the road for a trip to Atlantic City, which would be my first trip to a casino where I was old enough to touch anything. (To clarify, I'm talking about gambling machines, although I suppose other interpretations could apply).

We arrived around 1 PM and picked up Mike (of Mike and Chompy) who had flown in from Boston so he could lose at blackjack. The next step was to locate a cheesesteak shop which we ultimately determined did not actually exist, so we ended up at the Whitehouse sub shop. Their cheesesteaks were delicious, but this was probably because we spent an hour in line at near-starvation levels before finally getting them.

After checking in to our room on the 37th floor of the Borgata (which I kept calling the Bogota throughout the weekend), we took a quick power nap and then signed up for a single table of poker in the Borgata Poker Open. Though there were many high-rolling events going on, we played it safe with the smallest one that had a $100 buy-in. Unfortunately, they gave out one too many stubs for the game, and Mike was unable to compete. The rest of us didn't completely suck though -- Jack came in 6th, I squeaked in at 5th, and Ben walked away with the top prize of $700.

We celebrated in the high-class buffet, where I had a completely balanced dinner consisting of sushi, raw shrimp, fried shrimp, mussels, clams, macaroni and cheese, prime rib, lo mein, and multiple chocolate mousses with chocolate playing cards on top.

After our dinner, we ambled around the casino paying our stupid peoples' tax into various video poker machines and noticing the ridiculous number of coeds who had come to the casino solely to enter their $25 cover nightclub. There must not be a lot to do in New Jersey. I made it to around 2 AM before retiring for some sleep, but the others were out until 4 and even 5, trying their luck at dealer games.

On Sunday, we dropped Mike off in Philly after Ruby Tuesday burgers, because his previously purchased flight would have sent him home to Boston by way of Orlando and possibly Arizona. The remaining three of us finally made it back to Virginia around 3, and I got home around 5. My activities for the evening included cat-feeding, laundry-doing, and twelve hours of sleep.

All in all, it was a successful trip, and we even found a reason to go back a week after the wedding.

Museday Tuesday

As part of this feature, which I started in 2007, I compose a very brief work (under 30 seconds) inspired by a randomly generated title from an online word generator. The composition can be for any instrumentation, and could even be a purely synthesized realization that might not be possible to perform in the real world.

I work on the excerpt continuously for an hour and then post whatever I've managed to complete, even if it's a poorly constructed slum of a song supported by a foundation of droning double stops and abused tubas.

Meretricious: (adj.) Based on pretense, deception, or insincerity.

This excerpt is written for string quartet and other sound effects. Other than the initial impression as I started writing the melody, the title adjective didn't really play into the creative process at all.

Memory Day: Ten Years Ago

The nice thing about having a website that refuses to die before it jumps the shark is that eventually your "Ten Years Ago" column will be able to refer to old posts to prove that you actually did go to music grad school or own a motorcycle or get banned from entering Libya because of a religiously insensitive hat.

Ten years ago today, I was living in Parkwood Apartments two blocks from the FSU Music Department College School Commune and studying hard to become a professional composer (which is like an amateur one, but with less time for composing, and more grants to apply for). Each apartment was hewn from cinderblock like a combination toaster oven / motel room, although my high rent (for Tallahassee) of $450 a month meant that it was relatively clean, relatively quiet, and did not smell of urine-infused grapes.

The NIMDA worm had recently been unleashed on the Internet so connections to the place where this website was hosted (music.vt.edu) were sporadic for several days. Likely though, I used NIMDA as an excuse to not write a post, and spent the afternoon mindlessly playing Diablo 2. I was also still fascinated by the movie, Memento, and trying to get everyone I knew to watch it.

There weren't a lot of folks to convince at this point though, because I had not yet fallen into that wrong crowd of music theorists and composers that would corrupt my soul over the next two years. Being shy and new in town, I employed my traditional approach for making friends, which involved sitting at home alone on the weekends until the sheer musical genius of my coursework (and its font selection) convinced everyone that I was awesome and needed to be invited places. This also worked at Virginia Tech.

This isn't to say that I was completely antisocial. As anyone from the caste of the perpetually single can tell you, you're always sizing girls up for the prospect of a relationship, even when you tell yourself you aren't -- there is no on/off switch involved. I recall working diligently to chat up the friendly graduate assistant who worked in the office, only to be stymied about a week later when I noticed her wedding ring -- this is the type of scenario that undergrad dating gives you no preparation for.

I also recall the cute freshman string player I met while observing one of Juan's introductory classes for Music Pedagogy. I even went back the following day (which blew Juan's mind, because no one wants to observe more than the mandatory number of classes) only to find that she had skipped, leaving me to sit through fifty minutes of people unfamiliar with the treble clef. Nonetheless, we would meet again during my many trips to the music library where I would help her with some theory and she'd check out my endless batches of scratched CDs.

The reason for checking out so many CDs was the dreaded Listening Exam, which consisted of 125 selected works. You had to pass a listening test with 14 or 28 songs correctly identified before receiving your Masters (21 for Doctoral students). Since I was not yet ready to part with adolescence at the time, I resolved to get 21 right on the first try so I wouldn't have to take it again as a Doctoral student. Unfortunately, I didn't actually know many of the songs, and wasn't about to pay money for CDs full of twentieth century music performed by rubbing hedgehogs together, so I spent the last half of September checking out a few CDs at a time and ripping them to MP3s.

I then applied the universal lesson of public schools: It doesn't matter how well you know the material as long as you can pass the test. I grouped the songs by textures rather than eras or composers and focused on telling apart the similar clips (and ended up passing with a 24). I heard that my study sheets continued to thrive in the years after I left, which is a longer shelf life than any given composition. In hindsight, I was far better at preparing teaching and presentation materials than writing songs.

As the month of September came to a close, I settled into a routine: passing History of Music Theory factoids through my brain like kidney stones through a storm drain, eating lunch (a side of fries with ketchup) with Mark Connor, Kathy Biddick, and Mike Catania at the Loop while doing the USA Today crossword puzzle, looking forward to Dr. Spencer's wryly subversive Music Pedagogy class, and pretending that it still mattered if I practiced my trumpet every day.

"The 'whatever' will hit the fan, and we need to make sure the fan is running very slowly when that happens." - Dr. Spencer, on the pitfalls of overexplaining figured bass symbols in basic theory classes

BU's Theorem of Pandora

After creating a fresh, new Pandora station, no matter how eclectic your tastes might be, attempting to tailor the station's music with Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down choices will ultimately crash-land the station into one of three end-states:

Weekend Wrap-up

On Friday afternoon, Anna came to visit with her brood and also dropped off some birthday fudge from the Outer Banks. In the evening, Rebecca and I ate grilled salmon on the back porch before the late summer mosquitoes drove us indoors.

On Saturday, I had breakfast with Returned Mike at Virginia Kitchen, after his 5K run at Dulles Day on a runway. Rebecca started her semester of yoga teacher training this day, so I spent the rest of the day at home doing some much-needed Fall Cleaning. This includes such standard tasks as washing curtains that had hung for a decade, and getting rid of all cooking oils and sauces that expired more than a year ago.

In the evening, we dressed up and went to a wedding party for one of Rebecca's coworkers. The party took place in a new subdivision of Ashburn at the very end of Loudoun County Parkway and featured food from three separate India restaurants.

On Sunday, I continued checking things off of my Fall Cleaning list with periodic breaks to read Shift and play Heroes of the Storm. In the evening, we scrounged for dinner from things in the cupboards and watched the movie, Whiplash.

How was your weekend?

Memory Day: 1982

1982 was another year from which I retain no memories of my own -- the first dribs and drabs of events I still have today don't start until 1983. According to my parents, my sister spent a good chunk of this year sick and in Children's Hospital, so there wasn't much leeway for entertaining me in the nature I had grown accustomed to.

My parents recall that I was good with puzzles very early on, and could even piece together a puzzle flipped upside down so the picture was not visible. This intelligence was also demonstrated in an earlier test at the pediatrician's, where they wanted to see if I could put a raisin in a bottle and just ended up eating the raisin.

After turning 3 in September 1982, my parents toted me along to see the government bureaucrat responsible for slowly processing my naturalization paperwork. According to legend, he had a thick Southern accent and kept reciting my name as "Brianhh" while he leafed through tall stacks of forms. After a minute of this, I piped up from the corner of the room where I was playing to say, "Not Brianhh, Bri-IN. Bee. Are. Eye. IN!" This confirmation that I was a future STEM contributor led to the office finding my paperwork more quickly than expected.

I still retain my naturalization certificate because it functions in place of a birth certificate (I was probably born in Kenya). Every six months when I have to renew my military cards for work, I get to tote the big certificate around to bewildered government employees that don't know what it is and just want to stamp out a new ID card before lunch -- to them, I am an "edge case".

The picture below was taken late in 1982 in our upstairs living room, which mostly sat unused except at Christmas time. We had a fireplace there that we were never allowed to use because of a structural fault in the chimney that apparently sent smoke back into the house. I also continued to wear that sweater with the wildlife on the front well into kindergarten three years later.

Other posts in this series: 1979 | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1990 - 1991 | 1991 - 1992 | 1992 - 1993

List Day: 30 Words Maia Recognizes in Context

Recipe Day: Crispy Broiled Shrimp

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb thawed, peeled, deveined, legless shrimp
• 1/8 cup panko breadcrumbs
• 1 tablespoon melted butter
• 1 tablespoon shredded or grated parmesan cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
• lemon juice

Directions

1. Place shrimp on a foil-lined broiler pan at room temperature. Coat with melted butter, breadcrumbs, cheese, and parsley.
2. Set broiler to HIGH and broil shrimp about 4 inches from the heating element for 4 minutes. Shrimp are ready when no longer translucent.
3. Spritz with lemon juice and serve!

I like how quickly and evenly shrimp turn out in the toaster oven -- you can quick thaw frozen shrimp about 15 minutes beforehand and have lunch, dinner, or a snack ready in minutes. Maia immediately inhaled 4 shrimp the first time I made this, so you know it's good.

Ian Year 1 Month 5 Battle Report

Ian has made it five months past his first birthday.

He walks well and likes climbing unsafely on chairs, tables, and high beds. Things with wheels are still his favourite and he'll always point out the wheels in books, even the books most unlikely to have cars in them. He likes picking Maia up at the bus stop in the afternoon and yelling "BUH!" when the bus rolls down the street.

He still only has 4 truly visible teeth although there have been signs of other indecisive ones near the gum line. Teething as a kid that is old enough to understand pain a bit seems rough -- he'll wake up crying in the middle of the night and won't always be able to get back to sleep.

He doesn't speak much but understands plenty. He can sign "please" and "more" and his most common real world is "nononononono". He'll wave goodbye to anyone, especially me as I disappear down the stairs to the basement office each morning. He also tries to sing Baa Baa Black Sheep and his rhythm and relative pitch is surprisingly recognizable.

He loves hanging out with Maia and doing whatever she's doing, especially crayon coloring or playing "DVD Store" with our ancient movie collection. He can get hangry very easily, but after a solid meal, he'll wander over to the bookshelf and entertain himself for a long time. If Maia watches something on TV, he'll dance to the theme song and then get bored and wander away.

His daily schedule: Up around 6:30 AM, off to Stroller Strides or the Sterling Library midmorning, an hour nap around 11 or 12, 40% chance of a half hour nap around 4:30 PM, and then in bed by 7 PM. The parent trade-off occurs sometime after I stop working for the day, usually 2 or 3 PM. Then, Rebecca will go off to work two nights per week or we'll all hang out as a family for dinner.