Rick's Journal

One week from now and 7V will be all over.  It's been a heck of a ride and a lot of it has been fun, but I'll be glad when it's over.

This weekend saw more time spent on the house renovation project, though most of it (for me anyway) was on restoring order and cleaning in areas that were already done.  Man, the dust from drywalling gets into everything.  What a pain in the butt.

Amidst trying to get that done I just had to finish 7V update work if I was going to meet the schedule.  I managed to pull that off by staying up late Saturday night.

Sunday we had a wedding for someone at Monique's work and then flute choir rehearsal last night with half a football game sandwiched in between there which I half watched while I finished the half-assed job of a Madrigal PEL I ended up submitting.  I didn't even reread it before submitting it.  Sorry Madrigal staff.

So tired.  I wish Marlin had Columbus Day off too. 

The Eastwyck team players from NERO spent the weekend at my place.  This consisted of silway, thedeviantangel, draco, byron and talon.  There was no IG session, just OOG bonding.  We played games and talked and ate and ate and ate.  We played multiple games of Settlers of Catan and RoboRally, both a lot of fun.  Of course I didn't win a single game all weekend, but it was still fun.

Monique did her usual amazing job of making too much food for everyone.  Let's just say the scale was not my friend this morning.

I miss playing with these fine folk.  I miss playing Kumir.  Sadly, I just can't go play while I'm doing 7V, so it probably won't be until late in 2012 that I play again.

Flute choir rehearsal was awesome.  It was the first time in a very long time that we had that many people all at the same time.  The sound was really good.  It was nice to see that people had kept up with practicing over the break, a break extended by two rehearsals due to winter weather issues.

And then, there were 7V PELs.  We got the vast majority of them in this weekend with a huge number yesterday, last night and the wee hours of this morning.  I was up until after midnight processing and I still have about 20 to go.  Silly 7V players, waiting until the last minute, but the PELs are so wonderful to read.  I love our players.

This weekend was a really good time and a wonderful way to start a vacation.  That's right, as of Friday night I'm on vacation for two weeks!  Yay!

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Wonderful weekend.  I enjoyed it so much.  Today I head off to FL for (almost) two weeks of resting and recharging in warm, sunny FL and I get to see Monique again after her being gone for a week.  Yay!

The weekend was pretty good.  We slept in late both days, late being 8:00 and 7:30.  It's late for me anyway.  Got much needed sleep.

I picked up my son Nick and my grandson Jason Thursday.  They're visiting for two weeks.  How does that equate to a pretty good weekend?  Well, Nick has been incredibly helpful and useful around the house and Jason has been wonderfully well behaved.  It's a big change since the last time we saw them at Thanksgiving when I wanted to beat him most of the time.  Nellie couldn't come out because of work.  I wonder if her absence is the difference in Jason's behavior.

Saturday was spent cleaning the house, doing laundry and shopping.  We spent a lot of money this weekend.  We ended up getting Monique a new Blackberry 9000 Bold.  She's very excited about having a GPS built completely into her phone and being able to get her work email on her phone.  We also bought three Disney movies for Jason, Pinochio, Sleeping Beauty and Little Mermaid.  We watched the first two Saturday night with Jason and Nick.  I had forgotten how much fun Disney movies can be.

We had a great moment with Jason.  Monique figured she'd get him banana chips to try and get something a little healthier into him than potato chips.  We had a big build-up about them as being special chips just for him.  You have to trick him into eating most things.  He's pretty fussy.  He very enthusiastically bit into one.  Then his face scrunched up and he spit it out back onto the plate and said, "That's disgusting!"  He doesn't speak well at all for his age, but this came out clear as a bell.  It was hysterical coming from a three year old.

Today Monique and I worked together on the backlog of mail and bills.  We hadn't opened mail in about 3 months.  It was a painful way to spend a lot of hours on a weekend, but it feels good to have it done.

Tonight was the end of an era for my flute choir.  One of our founding members is leaving us to take a new job in New Orleans.  Tonight was his final rehearsal.  We worked on some pieces for a church job we're doing in May and then spent the last half hour doing whatever music he wanted to do as a going away present.  It was a lot of fun.

The weekend was both fairly enjoyable and productive, an unusual combination.

Friday was a day off from Marlin.  They very unexpectedly gave us the day off, making for a long weekend.  I went into United Health Care with Monique and worked with her new db designer answering a lot of his questions for the aspects of this project that he is taking over.  Then I spent the rest of the day working on my part of the db.  I've got to say, I LOVE my new laptop.  This thing just flies, no matter how much stuff I have open.  It really boosted my productivity.

Saturday, Monique and I went into her work again.  While I was working on the database I was also loading some of my CD collection onto my computer to get on my new iPod.  It demonstrated again how much I love my new laptop.  I had only loaded a couple CDs on my old computer and every time I was doing it, the CPU was completely maxed out and I couldn't do anything else.  The new laptop not only didn't break a sweat, but also let me have several instances of Access and SQL server open while it was doing it.  Just out of curiosity I watched the task manager for a bit while I was working and never saw it go over 70%.  Wheeeee!  I know, I'm sounding like a geek.  Just let me enjoy it.

I hit a huge snag Saturday that really screwed me over, cost me several hours.  I'm going geek again.  Fair warning.  I have a query that needs to select only the first record that meets the criteria.  This is very easy.  There's a SQL statement that starts out with "SELECT TOP x" where x = the number of records you want.  In my case, I put a one there and SQL picks the first record.  Access however picked 2 records, which totally messed me up.  Of course, it only started displaying this stupid behavior when I started doing larger data sampling, so it I had to go way back to the beginning of things I'd worked on Friday to change things.  I spent hours trying to fix this unexpected problem and it set me way back.  There were times I wanted to cry.  It was so frustrating.  So much wasted time.

Sunday, we took down all the Christmas decorations and (mostly) cleaned the house before going back to more database work.  I figured out my problem from the previous day and made a bit more progress, but still failed to meet my deliverable goal for turning it over to Frank (the db developer at UHC). 

Flute choir rehearsal was ok.  We have a new member.  She is an excellent player.  We had several of our regular members out, so we were still a little thin on numbers.  And early on in the rehearsal, my head cork popped out of my bass flute.  Fortunately, Cathi, the new member had a bass flute and let me use it for the rest of the rehearsal.  I can see why she's not fond of it and doesn't want to play it herself.  The low octave is horribly unresponsive.  I guess I'm just going to have to get mine fixed quickly.  I think it's going to be time for a new one some time this year.  *sigh*

Not a bad weekend as weekends have been going lately.  Saturday morning Monique and I went into her work to spend the day with her new programmer, Frank.  I spent time showing him my methodologies and giving him overviews of the three projects I've done there so that he can take over on them.

The one that is currently in progress will be completed by the two of us in tandem and hopefully by the end of January I will have that monkey totally off my back, only giving occasional advice and consultation.

Saturday night, after dropping Monique off at home, I headed up to New Haven for the annual Fantasy of Lights to raise money for Easter Seals.  I ended up getting there a little late.  I hate being late for anything.  On top of that my sinuses were bugging me a lot, so I started into it not feeling all that nifty.  I suited up with the whole reindeer garb and the big gaudy Rudolph hat with the bright blinking nose and antlers.  In spite of feeling a little under the weather, I quickly got into the spirit and was soon greeting people with my usual holiday flair.  The interactions with the people are just loads of fun and I look forward to this every year.  Unfortunately, by 8:30 I was totally wiped out and I left early.  On the bright side, it was the busiest year I can remember to date in 7 or 8 years of doing this, so it was a good night for Easter Seals.

Sunday we spent most of the day working around the house, cleaning, decorating the tree, laundry, followed by a football game (Yay!) and a really good flute choir rehearsal.  We had a new member last night.  She hasn't played in two years, but she was enthusiastic and she has her own bass flute, which she thinks she'll skip playing for a while so she can get her C flute back in shape.  We finished preparing all of our Christmas music for the Ronald McDonald House Trees of Hope fund raise that we'll be playing at next Saturday.

Wow!  This is one of the best thank you notes ever.  It came from the bookstore owner where the flute choir played Saturday.

Hi, Rick! Where should I even begin?? Let's just say that the Silver Village Flute Choir performance was AWESOME!!!!! I honestly did not know what to expect and you went way above and beyond my imagination. Everyone just loved it to pieces and some of my customers came back yesterday AND today to tell me how much they enjoyed it and want to know when will you be performing again! Yikes.

Please, do relay our sincerest gratitude to everyone who performed and know that we truly appreciated your time and energy. Personally, I loved the music so much I did not want it to end! (My favorite was your transcription of the Moonlight Sonata.) I know I am unable to pay for a performance at this time and would not dream of asking you to volunteer your time for repeat performances. That said, if you ever need a willing audience to test out new materials or just feel like performing, you know who to call!!!

(By the way, if you were to charge, how much would it be? Just an estimate would be fine. In case I win the lottery...)

Thank you, thank you again. From the bottom of our hearts. Keep up the beautiful work.

Regards,
Dorothy
Written Words Bookstore

I am most pleased.  I suspect we will play there again, maybe in May or June.

The past few days have been pretty good, I have to say.  We got  Thursday and Friday mostly off from the ERP project at work.  The guys working on the install with us had a client in the final stages of their install, so they couldn't be here with us.  It was great time for getting less behind in things for my normal workload.

create_universe , burkefireguy11  and Mark (LJ unknown, Adeon, new Eurvein guy at Madrigal) came up Thursday night on their way to NPC Endgame this weekend.  They came in from VA in the wee hours of the morning but were good sports and got up with me Friday morning anyway.  Monique made us all breakfast before work.  She's the best.  I love her.  I went in about two hours late so I could hang out with the guys.  Good time.

Saturday I took Monique and her friend Pam to the airport.  They're going to FL for a week's vacation.  It sucks that she's got so much more vacation than me, but she really needs the time to rest.  She's been pushing as hard as me.

After dropping them off I went to the CT Renn Faire.  It was a nice change of pace to just wander at my pace, stop where I wanted, spend as much or as little time at any one thing.  I've enjoyed visits with others, but this definitely had a lot to say for it.  There was a phenomenal mime.  I didn't think you'd ever catch me singing the praises of a mime, but this guy was incredible beyond words.  He "accompanied" several of the other acts in what appeared to be improv.  He used his total body to express everything.  He was quick on his feet and IMO, by far, the most entertaining thing I saw; a mime.  Who would have thought it?

Of course, I saw far too many things I wanted to buy.  The bright side of that is that I saw so much I wanted that nothing stuck out above the rest and I ended up buying nothing.  I saved a small fortune by wanting too much.  Win!  :-)

And of course the lovely and talented vanora27  performed and then we went out to dinner after with a couple of her friends.  I stayed out way too late considering the hour and a half drive home, but it was so much fun it was completely worth it.

Sunday saw a house that was far too cold.  I finally buckled and turned on the heat.  Nothin'.  I went and checked the furnace and it had apparently been totally shut down.  I read the directions.  I played with it a little, very little.  There were 2 valves, 2 knobs and 2 switches (that I could find).  I asked myself, "What's the worst that could happen if you mess with it?".  Unfortunately, I answered myself, "It's a gas powered device you idiot, you could blow up".  I decided I'd call our plumber today to come turn it on correctly.

So I ended up bringing in firewood and starting a fire.  It didn't warm up the whole house, but it certainly took the edge off.  And it was a lovely backdrop for our flute choir rehearsal.  I've added in a couple extra rehearsals outside the normal schedule because we have a performance in mid-November and our bi-weekly schedule was already interrupted too much by LARPing.  I won't schedule a rehearsal on a LARP weekend because if I do, I'm either too tired or I don't make it back in time.  Since I run it out of my house, those aren't good things.

On the bright side, the music is shaping up nicely and I'm feeling good about the people attending and the performance as a whole.  I just wish I could get better commitment from people.  Waiting until a month before a performance to know I'll have enough people is nerve wracking.

On to work.  Happy Monday all.  Have a good week.

Yes, I'm still working on answering all of yesterday's meme requests, but I had to share this!

There's an exchange going on on a flute choir list I belong to where a woman is looking for recommendations.  On this one email, an original piece of music I wrote got the most amazing, well thought out analysis and recommendation that just made my day.

The piece in question has a rather interesting back story, which can be found here (http://home.earthlink.net/~rgpierce/china.html).  It always amazes me that people like this one, but it's the coolest feeling in the world when they do.