Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

We got about 2 inches (5 cm) of snow in Dayton yesterday and this morning. Yet I'm acting as if we got two feet (60 cm) of snow. I'm staying inside, not going out very much, and getting stuff done at home. Last night, I made a trip to Kroger to get some groceries after dropping off my daughter with her mom. Today I made another trip to Kroger to get a few more groceries -- items that weren't on my list last night.

There's really not a lot of shopping I want to do now. Money's a bit tight right now, and I need to concentrate on getting what I *need* and not what I *want*. I have food at home, and I should work on eating that instead of going out for lunches and dinners.

Somewhere I have it in my head that I'm snowed in, like I was during the Blizzards of '77 and '85. I don't know why. Maybe I just feel like staying at home and tackling the things that need to get done, instead of avoiding them by going out. Believe me, there's plenty of things that can be done. Having things to do at home is my hedge against getting cabin fever.

In the meantime, I brought out the bread maker and made two loaves of bread. I also made chicken pot pie casserole, varying a recipe I obtained from a cookbook. And I cleaned up -- and cleaned out -- the kitchen.

While perusing music and videos for the Alan Parsons Project on YouTube, I found out that former Project collaborator Eric Woolfson passed away from cancer on December 2 of this year. I don't think it's been mentioned here on mine or anyone else's LJ.

Now is a good time for me to add his musical works to my wish list -- Freudiana (oh please re-release this!), Gaudi (the musical), Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination, The Alan Parsons Project That Never Was, and so on. I should be able to get most of these via the ericwoolfsonmusic.com website.

Rest in peace, Eric. You and your musical talent will be missed.

Yesterday (Monday) was the Winter Solstice. For me, this holiday has more meaning than the crass commercialism that Christmas has become. It's the return of the Light. For someone like me who has Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), this is important.

So how did I spend it? Sleeping in until 11. Going food shopping. Had Skyline Chili for lunch. Made a chicken pot pie-like casserole for dinner. Thought about lighting a candle, but thought the cats would knock it over. Watched a little Monday Night Football. Then went to bed early.

Hapiness is when one of my cats -- usually Marcus -- wants to snuggle with me. My cats give me joy. (Unless, of course, it's Mercury licking my face at 3:30am and waking me up.)

.....get along like oil and water.

Spent the evening trying to configure modems on 2 laptops running Ubuntu. One is a Dell Latitude CPxJ running Hardy (8.04) and a PCMCIA modem. The other is a Compaq Presario M2000 running Karmic (9.10) and a built-in modem. I think both of these are actually winmodems, which means the modem builders cheated and used part of the Windows OS to get these modems working.

I have an external modem that will work on the Dell. Haven't tried it on the Compaq yet. If it doesn't have a serial port, it's a moot point.

Bottom line: Drat. Was hoping to get the modems working. This would be one less reason for me to keep Windows. All mom has at home is plain old telephone service (aka dial-up).

I started getting into music when I was young. When I was 5, my parents got me a three-octave, 12-button-chord Organaire organ for Christmas. They thought it was a good way for me to develop my eye-hand coordination, which at the time was pretty horrible. They soon upgraded the organ to a Thomas Californian 261 organ. I guess they liked the young man who played organ at the mall so much that they wanted me to be like him. Ugh.

In 4th grade, at the urging of my parents, I started clarinet lessons. In junior high, I transitioned from clarinet to alto clarinet to bass clarinet. I played bass clarinet in my high school marching band, wind ensemble, and pit orchestra for the school musicals. When I started college, I put the clarinet in the closet. (The bass clarinet belonged to the school district, so it stayed behind.) I didn't even play in the pep band. After I graduated from college, I met some filkers -- science fiction fans who were musicians. And so I started hanging with that crowd. I also dug out the clarinet I had stashed away years before.

( I liked playing again. )

Last Friday night, I was watching The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, and at the end of the show was a lovely singer/songwriter named Diane Birch. Her style reminded me of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Phoebe Snow -- singer/songwriters from the early '70s. She was playing a white Rhodes Mark 7 electric piano. (I've always loved the sound of the Rhodes; we had one in our high school jazz ensemble.) The song she sang grew on me.

Watch and listen to the video.

I think I'm going to make a run to Borders RSN to purchase her CD, "Bible Belt".

In the last couple of days since my last post on the topic, I found out that ACM, IEEE, and the IEEE Computer Society all have digital libraries online.....for members only or for a monthly or annual fee. I believe their libraries contain all their back issues. I'm sure of this for ACM; I'm not so sure for IEEE. (Links included mostly for my reference.)

Communications of the ACM
IEEE Spectrum
IEEE-CS Computer

Another reason for me to ditch the paper versions of the magazines, which mostly consist of technical research papers. Most of these papers won't be read, used, or needed by me.

Has it strictly been my experience that employers don't support employees' activity in professional organizations? In all the companies I've worked for, they've been neutral to indifferent about my membership in such organizations. That's another reason why I let my memberships lapse.

The cats woke me up this morning, as they often do. I may go back to bed later, but for now, I'm up.

While I was going through the stuff I have in the basement of my mom's house, I came across two boxes of magazines. One was filled with issues of Communications of the ACM from 1983-89, and the other had issues of the IEEE Spectrum and Computer magazines from 1985-86. These are publications from technical/professional societies I belonged to at the time. My professors saved their old issues, as they had them displayed in their offices. And so I thought, why shouldn't I?

Somewhere, in a corner of my garage, I think I have a box or two of issues of Communications of the ACM from 1989-1999, when I chose not to renew my membership with ACM. I felt that I was paying for a magazine that I wasn't reading, and at the time, the society's news and activities were not relevant to what I was working on at the time.

I'd hate to throw out these old magazines. As with most of my paper output, I'd rather recycle them. But I think they'd be useful to someone. So I've been hanging on to them, hoping for a worthy recipient. I thought about local college and university libraries, but they probably already have the issues. Does anyone have any other ideas?

I'm keeping the issue that has Donald Knuth's "The Telnet Song", and the issue that Cliff Stoll signed for me. But everything else can go. And I'm keeping all the SIGGRAPH stuff because I think they're way cool.

While I'm here with my mom, I figured I might as well go through some file boxes, and binders full of printouts I haven't looked at since college. I found some things that I've been missing for years. I found my Peanuts Book of Pumpkin Carols, which was filed under old greeting cards. I got rid of my old ACM, IEEE, and DECUS correspondence, flyers, and newsletters.

I also went through a couple of boxes labeled "Misc. Stuff", and found a reel of tape with my electronic music class project, "Inside the Mentat's Mind". Now to find a reel-to-reel tape player so I can convert it to cassette, CD, or MP3 file.

Most of the paper files that I no longer need have been taken to a local dumpster for recycling. (I didn't take the pile of SF con flyers printed on colored paper.)

Now that this box has been gone through, I'm ready to go to my aunt's house for Thanksgiving dinner with her family.

On a lark, I started searching YouTube for songs I haven't heard in years. Some songs I have in my collection, in various formats (vinyl, cassette, CD). And a few I don't have in any form except brain memory. Lo and behold, YouTube continues to deliver. I'm slowly building a playlist on YouTube containing these hits. I may split this off into several playlists over time. Right now the playlist has 17 songs and counting.

Looking at this playlist, I'm realizing that there is a significant number of songs by Canadian artists which didn't -- and still don't -- get a lot of airplay south of the US/Canadian border. Jane Siberry, Triumph, Saga, Gowan, Kim Mitchell, The Box. I was blessed to have grown up in a border town and be exposed to a wide variety of music. That's another thing I miss about Buffalo.

I'd like to challenge the local "we play anything" station to play some songs by these artists.