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October 30, 2005
Not Going to State UIL
MNHS Marching Band didn't make the preliminary cut this afternoon in the Area UIL Contest in Mesquite. McKinney High did, but didn't finish in the top three, either, so once again, no band from McKinney is going to State UIL.
The kids were pretty heartbroken about it, and the girls were (many) weeping. It was a hard day for everyone. As always, photos on the MNHS Marching Band Photo page.
To add to our misery, the football team won last Friday, making it very likely we'll have to stay in town for the playoff game after Thanksgiving, which will ruin my trip to KC at Thanksgiving time.
Posted by Steven at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2005
Programming Perl
Programming Perl
by Larry Wall and Randall Schwartz
Ok, you should know by now that there will be computer books in this list. There are several that "rocked my world" but of all the programming langauges I've put on my toolbelt, few emcompass more ideas and capabilities than does Perl. This is the definitive book on Perl (now in it's fifth or sixth edition), the infamous "Camel Book" (can you guess why?).
Perl rocked my world because it builds from the C Programming Language, adding bits of Fortran, BASIC, Pascal, and even Bourne Shell and LISP, to create a dynamic mess that has incredible power, but which is probably too ungainly to use on large projects. Having said that, a lot of the infrastructure of the Internet is built on Perl running on UNIX™ OS. It's more than a "scripting language".
Perl is the first language to provide robust text processing features (e.g. dyanmic strings, regular expression handling, and powerful string manipulation through the grep() operator), seamless hash tables (i.e. associative arrays), and the very-LISP-like concept of self-modifying code (through the exec() operator). These features were never in one single language before Perl came around.
After this edition of Programming Perl came out, Perl added object orientation, database (and SQL Database) support, the concept of "packages" to simplify sharing code (Perl is, of course, open source) and even a web-based database to find those packages (the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network). The language continues to evolve, and the book continues to change and expand (there are now seven or eight Perl add-on books), but this will always be the edition that introduced me to Perl, and to the jocular philosophy of Perl:
There's more than one way to do it!
Posted by Steven at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2005
Austin By Day
I'm driving down late Tues. night on the 2nd. of Nov., and returning in the late afternoon on Wed. the next day. I have to be at Maskina for a developer meeting, and probably won't have time to visit with anyone or even do lunch -- it's a bad week for me to travel as band and school are taking up every evening that week (Anne will have to find a sitter for Leo on the 3rd. -- any volunteers?).
Update
I'm going to get up really early Wed. morning and drive straight down for the day instead. I hate doing it this way, but it confines the "damage" to one day.
Posted by Steven at 01:48 PM | Comments (0)
Porkins Is Dead
Red Six died Sunday of pancreatic cancer (a particularly nasty cancer).
Born William Hootkins on July 5th, 1948 in Dallas, TX (my home town!), he was only 57. Made famous for participating in The Battle for Yavin in the first Star Wars movie, his role, though brief, was popular (as Red Six, he was one of the first Rebel X-Wing fighters shot down on the Death Star).
In a busy career, Hootkins worked regularly on both sides of the Atlantic. His first film role was in 1977, playing Jedi fighter Jek Porkins in George Lucas' Star Wars. Though the part was small, it had a big impact. He joked in a Whatsonstage.com interview two years ago (See 20 Questions, 28 Jul 2003): “In a sense, my career's been downhill ever since. Fans still come to greet me at the stage door with action figures of my character and embarrassing photographs for me to sign.”But such recognition did have its upside. As he also told Whatsonstage.com: “I still didn't realise what power would come from that job until a year later I received my first fan letter. In it was a drawing of my scene by a little boy, and it was actually a clearer and more understandable version of the scene than George Lucas'! He asked if he could have an autographed photo. When I checked the return address, it was the leukaemia ward of a children's hospital. It's a blessing to me that I have any power to make even the tiniest difference in other people's lives.”
All these years later, I'm stil amazed at the amount of fandom that bit players from Star Trek and Star Wars have. Rest in piece, Porkins.
Posted by Steven at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2005
The Whole Earth Catalog
The Whole Earth Catalog
Stewart Brand, et. al.
Subtitled Access to Tools, The Whole Earth Catalog and the sequels (The New Whole Earth Catalog and The Next Whole Earth Catalog) are a strange product of the Sixties. A bunch of Berkeley intellectuals collected information about real tools, essays about using them, and bound them all together into a single volume that tried to be a one-stop reference for the emerging Environmental Movement.
Lead by the polymath Stewart Brand, who later founded the online community The Well, it was one of the most interesting catalogs around. The products described in it included information on how to buy them (and even the price), but it was the sheer practicality of them that astonished. And they covered everything from world-spanning products to minutiae. It really was the Whole Earth.
Posted by Steven at 09:48 PM | Comments (0)
McKinney Neighbors
The Dallas Morning News ran the new McKinney Neighbors insert today in the paper. On pages seven and nine one finds the band photos I submitted for inclusion. On pages fourteen and fifteen you can find the AnimeFest 2005 photos I submitted. I am all over this issue! If you don't live in McKinney, you didn't get the insert. (they did one for Allen, Plano and Garland, at a minimum).
Posted by Steven at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
Ray-Bob and Alanna
My dad came to the MNHS football game against Justin Northwest HS (near the Texas Motor Speedway) tonite. He got to see Alanna's band marching their full UIL program, and as a "bonus", he got to hear me announce the program on the stadium's speakers. Mr. Harkey, the MNHS band director, asked me to read the announcement this afternoon.
Despite all those years doing radio at WRPI and even performing in two plays at RPI, I was scared senseless before I began. I didn't have the opportunity to rehearse the lines in front of the band and the drill team, so I was unsure about the timing of the announcements. As it turns out, I did fine reading the announcements, but I was a bit off on the band and I was waaay off on the drill team announcment. I did well enough, however, for Mr. Harkey to ask me to do it again this Friday.
Personally, I think it's just a way to keep me from taking 400++ photos of the band on the field at halftime.
Sadly, the Bulldogs lost 32-49, but apparently we're still in the running for the playoffs (four teams are tied for fourth place!). If we do go to the playoffs, we may be marching on the day after Thanksgiving, which means we'd have to cancel our trip to KC. We won't know for some time.
In any case, I finally went to a football game with my Dad. Sadly, he had to explain what was happening on the field for me ... I am that ignorant of football. One band parent sitting behind us was screaming at the umpires the whole game ... it was awful! The cushions I bought a few weeks back saved both our asses, and the Northwest ISD stadium was stunningly beautiful and clean. Even the concession food was great. Man, McKinney needs a decent stadium.
I never thought I'd say that!
Posted by Steven at 11:53 PM | Comments (2)
October 20, 2005
Boyd Bound
This in the Dallas Morning News today confirms what we've suspected for some time (Alanna will attend the new Boyd HS, being built across Virginia Pkwy. from us):
McKINNEY – School officials have rolled out a proposal to open McKinney's third high school to ninth- through 11th-graders next year, forcing hundreds of teenagers to switch schools.Superintendent Tom Crowe said students from the district's two current high schools would be reassigned to the new Boyd High School with the aim of creating a socioeconomic balance at all three schools.
Few transfers would be allowed.
Of those reassigned, only siblings of seniors could remain at their schools.
"It's going to cause some consternation in some parts of the community," Mr. Crowe said.
The school board is set to vote on Monday to determine the basic grade configuration and the guiding philosophy for how Boyd students would be selected.
Once those guidelines are set, a community group will develop a final proposal with geographic boundaries for a school board vote expected in January.
Mr. Crowe told the school board on Tuesday that his plan would prevent McKinney High School and McKinney North High School from growing into the University Interscholastic League's 5A classification, which includes larger schools.
"It's not just the athletic side," Mr. Crowe said. "It's the academic and extracurricular activities that would also be the challenge."
He and other school leaders said being in the larger classification would make it more difficult for greater numbers of students to participate in activities.
Cody Cunningham, the district's spokesman, said the 5A classification would also be much more competitive because the McKinney schools would probably be on the smaller end of the 5A group.
"Whenever you have a small 5A competing against a large 5A, you run into issues with a school not being competitive, and that also impacts student morale," he said.
Mr. Crowe said opening the new school solely to ninth-graders or to ninth- and 10th-graders would not solve overcrowding problems.
The district is projected to have 5,100 high school students by next year, about 700 students over the capacity of the current high schools.
"We all know the kids are much more resilient than the parents are," Mr. Crowe said. "It depends on how the parents approach it, how the kids will handle it."
Tamara Miller, whose son is a freshman wrestler, said her family is looking at the situation the best way it can. Since most of her son's friends live in their neighborhood, she expects that at least they would move together if reassigned to Boyd High School.
"It's not as big of a deal as it could be," Ms. Miller said. "I'm not thrilled about it, but I'm not sure what else they could do."
Unlike many districts, McKinney does not assign students based only on geographic location. Rather, the district tries to create an economic balance at each school by busing students.
Mr. Crowe said he wants to maintain that goal because it has been academically successful for the district.
Developing rezoning plans is often a contentious process in fast-growing districts. Nearby Frisco recently settled on a plan for a new high school that sparked significant objections from parents.
Mr. Crowe said he developed his parameters regarding the grade levels and socioeconomic balance to help relieve the pressure from the community.
Geralyn Kever, school board president, said she expects that many parents will want to be involved in the decision process.
As the parent of a current 10th-grader who may have to switch schools, Ms. Kever said she has heard from parents who are excited about the extra opportunities that could be available at the new school.
Ms. Kever said she also understands why the superintendent doesn't want to allow transfers.
"If we're not firm in the boundaries and transfers are something that are easily solicited on the part of the citizenry, you end up spending significant manpower on those types of issues," Ms. Kever said.
Mr. Crowe asked principals to submit names of parents who might be interested in joining the group. Other names have been given by board members and directly from parents themselves.
The community group is expected to start meeting at the beginning of November. All meetings will be closed to the public, but the group will hold a public hearing before making its final recommendation to the board.
While the Superintendent is right, it's not entirely about athletics, they still drive most decisions about UIL issues, and drag the band nerds and smart kids along with them. Such is life in Texas.
Posted by Steven at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
MNHS Marching Band Earns a Top "1" Score at UIL
Tonite the McKinney North HS Marching Bulldog Band earned a score of "1" at the UIL competition in Mesquite. A score of "1" is the highest possible, and it means that we'll be competiting in the "area" UIL competition at Mesquite Memorial Stadium on Oct. 29th.
The photos are here.
Posted by Steven at 11:37 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2005
We Should All Have This Problem
Sleep sex attacks? That's the name of the article on the BBC News website.
Imagine awaking in the middle of the night to find your partner trying to make love to you - while they are sound asleep."Sleep sex" is a term coined by US scientists to describe the phenomenon, which can cause people to commit sexual acts on themselves or their partners - while asleep.
The condition can range in severity from disruptive moaning to unwanted, and sometimes violent, sexual advances to their partner.
But no matter how serious their night-time behaviour, patients did not remember what they had done the next morning.
The Stanford scientists, whose research is published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, believe the condition is caused by a sleep disorder combined with emotional problems.
This just sounds like post-marriage "nocturnal" behavior. Besides, isn't the wife supposed to sleep through sex?
(I can just hear the roar from Anne and Melanie on this comment.)
"I'm just kidding!" -- Fericito.
Posted by Steven at 06:28 PM | Comments (1)
October 17, 2005
Leo's Braces Come Off (Mostly)
Leo's upper braces came off today.
Anne took him to Dr. Buchannan this morning, and they quickly removed the upper track, leaving him a "monorail" on the bottom. They also removed some "springs" that were coming loose on the bottom, and causing more than a few morning emergency trips to the orthodontist, all at their cost.
We were on the way to Experience McKinney (redubbed "Apocalypse, McKinney" by Mike Jones) when I took this photo.
That's Collin Snell sitting next to Leo; we took him and his mom to MNHS for the first (and probably last) Experience McKinney event tonite. Alanna had to be at the JV Field all the time we were there for MNHS Band Practice, and missed out on all the pandemonium.
Posted by Steven at 05:39 PM | Comments (1)
October 16, 2005
Neutron Star
Neutron Star by Larry Niven
I was given a copy of Neutron Star by my Jr. High friend Greg Jones after a conversation about science-fiction and astronomy back in 1976. He thought I might enjoy the book. (Almost needless to say) It rocked my world.
I hadn't read much SciFi at that time, (as I recall) only Red Planet and The White Mountains and the other books of the Tripods trilogy, and a few Caldecott winners like A Wrinkle in Time. Certainly nothing "hard" (which in the vernacular, meant cutting-edge speculative fiction using the latest scientific discoveries as launching points). Niven's book read like a documentary on a space-faring future that I would see expand in a short time to nearly overwhelm the universe of Star Trek in my imagination.
Niven took Heinlein's paradigm of building a "future history" and made it his own. He fleshed out other worlds humans would discover in the future, and made them as weird as possible. He worked from scientific principles, but always stretched one's imagination to the breaking point, as is the case with his first Hugo winner, Neutron Star.
In this collection of shorts, we meet what will become the major players in Niven's future history. The Puppeteers, Louis Wu, and Beowolf Sheafer. We learn about Niven hyperdrives, Puppeteer hulls, and Slaver stasis fields. We are introduced to human colonies like "We Made It" and Jinx. It's a wonderous, terrifying place, Niven's "Known Space" (itself, a small bubble of stars merely 30 light years across).
The title story is itself a brilliant lesson in Newtonian physics, distorted by a new discovery (back in 1966). Radio astronomers had just detected regular, intensely strong pulses coming on the microwave band (Bell Labs scientists and some microwave techs wrangled over the Nobel Prize in Physics for this; for once the techies won). These signals turned out to be coming from insanely dense objects composed almost entirely of neutrons, massing as much as stars but compacted into volumes that resembled small moons. These objects spun wildly due to conservation of angular momentum and also emitted powerful electromagnectic waves through their charged poles, thus causing the regular blips that were at first presumed to be a signal from an interstellar intelligence.
The astronomical community called these objects, likely the radioactive remains of supernova, neutron stars.
Niven introduces his first of two main characters as a down-on-his-luck interstellar pilot of hyperdrive ships who is legally bribed into flying a special starship around a neutron star. The catch? The last crew to do so was horribly killed in the otherwise "indistructable hull". I won't spoil the ending, but you have to think hard to guess the way out of this "ship in a bottle" conundrum that Niven constructs. It turns out to be a fascinating lesson in orbital mechanics that the layman should be able to follow.
This book, and the others to follow, gave my imagination a whole new Universe to play in. Niven's ideas bled into role playing games like Traveller and even into TV shows like Star Trek (an episode of the animated series is based loosely on one of the short stories in Neutron Star). Larry's clever use of current astrophysics, and even his Libertarian philosophy, became embedded in my psyche (hey, I even voted Libertarian in 1980).
If you haven't read it, give it a look. You should be able to find this book in any used bookstore for a modest fee.
Posted by Steven at 12:16 AM | Comments (0)
October 15, 2005
Alanna Earns Her Deputy Three Belt
Today Alanna took her penultimate step towards a black belt in Tae Kwan Do by earning her Deputy 3 Belt, which is half red and half black.
Alanna awarded her 3rd Deputy Belt by Master Choncie Reid.
In December she will take her final test for the full black belt.
Posted by Steven at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)
MNHS vs. Frisco
Tonite the Bulldogs beat the scraps out of Frisco's (aptly renamed) Racoons, 31-7. See the many, many photos of Alanna and her buddies here.
Posted by Steven at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2005
News Flash! Ninjas Invade McKinney!
McKinney, TX - A Stonebridge Ranch woman called 911 today around 9:10pm to report that she was being stalked by a ninja. [Ed. Note: obligatory Dave Barry disclaimer here] I am not making this up.
Police K-9 units, a Texas Department of Public Safety helicopter and a teenage boy got everyone in one local neighborhood ready for Halloween early.McKinney Police Capt. Randy Roland said police had to set up a perimeter complete with police officers and a helicopter around 9 p.m. Saturday for a 911 call from a woman walking in the 3200 block of Hudson Crossing who said she thought she was being followed by a man dressed in black with a machete.
But it turned out to be a 13-year-old boy playing ”Ninja“ in a costume with a plastic sword.
McKinney Police Capt. Randy Roland said dispatch received a 911 call about a suspicious person at 9:18 p.m. Saturday from a young woman who was walking her dog down Hudson Crossing.
According to an e-mail written by McKinney Assistant Police Chief Rex Redden that was sent to several city and police personnel, she said she thought she was being followed by a male suspect dressed in all black and carrying what appeared to be a machete. She was able to stop some other people for help. They were watching the man who turned and ran through a nearby apartment complex.
Some officers were dispatched to the scene who began searching for the man. Another witness said they observed someone with a similar description jumping the fence of the apartment complex and heading towards Gabe Nesbitt Field. Police established a perimeter with additional officers, and called in K-9 units and a DPS helicopter since the search area was large and filled with heavy woods.
Nearby residents came out of their homes to see why a police helicopter was circling over their houses. Monika Arris said nearly everyone on her block was standing outside.
”They were just trying to see what was going on,“ Arris said. ”The helicopter circled overhead for 45 minutes to an hour. You couldn't see what was going on. The traffic back there at Hudson Crossing, there was quite a bit of it. There was more there than normal for that hour.“
Collin County spokeswoman Leigh Hornsby who also lives nearby said the traffic caused by the 20 drivers she counted brought out the carelessness in some of them.
”There were so many residents who got into their vehicles trying to find the source of the incident traveling through my neighborhood, a couple of them even made U-turns through my lawn as they were looking for source of this,“ Hornsby said. ”That was my point of my frustration .“
Douglas Vining who lives on Drake Circuit said he also heard the helicopters but he wasn't worried about their reason for being there.
”It's not first time it's happened,“ Vining said. ”I wasn't locking my doors and hiding by any means. I have protection.“
Redden said in the e-mail that one of the K-9 dogs found a scent but eventually lost it. He also said the helicopter searched the wooded area with a ”Forward Looking Infrared“ or thermal camera but no one was found.
Just as police were about to call off the search, officers received a dispatch call from a man who said his 13-year-old son had been playing with his Ninja sword in the area and believed he might have accidentally scared the lady. Officers went to the man's home had ”a nice little chat with the father and his son,“ Redden said.
No charges were filed and no arrests were made. Since no report was filed on the incident, the young woman, the father and the 13-year-old could not be identified, Roland said.
Either the local police have nothing better to do (judging from the success of the recent speeder crackdown, I'd say they don't), or they're a bunch of rubes. Either way, literally tens of thousands of dollars later, they didn't get their Ninja. Imagine if it had been a real Ninja!
Kudos to Charles F. for pointing out how incompetent my local police are, and how paranoid my neighbors are.
Posted by Steven at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)
Café Brazil Parrots
I did my usual brunch at Café Brazil today, and when I left to head home, a couple was dining outside with their parrot.
They told me that they've had this critter for eight years, and that they've already requested their children take care of it in their will (the bird will out live its owners). They were traveling out of town for the weekend, and naturally, the bird must travel with them.
Clearly, Café Brazil is an appropriate place for them to dine with a tropical jungle bird, but even so, it was rather surprising to see it. Fortunately, I chose to carry my Nikon with me today, otherwise I would have missed this opportunity to take photos. I didn't ask them how much attention the bird gathered, but from the crowd that formed after I made a big deal about the bird, I'd say it was probably quite a lot, even without the Monty Python jokes thrown in.
McKinney, despite itself, is getting cooler every week.
Posted by Steven at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)
October 09, 2005
Creation
Creation by Gore Vidal
Set in the Fifth Century BCE, this historical fiction novel chronicles the travels of Cyrus Spitama, at times the ambassador of the King of Persia, but always the grandson of Zoroaster. His travels through Asia and the Mediterranean intersect with some of history's greatest people, including the Persian kings (Xerxes and Darius), the great Greek philosophers and mathematicians, the man who became Buddha, and Confucius.
The novel is dense and the characters come and go in great numbers, as is the nature of the historical fiction. The complexities of court in Susa (in modern Iran) consume a lot of pages, but the flavor they give the story brings the whole era to life. Like Graves' I, Cladius, the people we meet in the story are larger than life, yet humble in their own ways (even the kings).
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this work is that it spans a period of human intellectual expansion that has seen no equal. Philiosophy, mathematics, politics, communications and international trade erupted in this time across Asia, and the breakthroughs in thinking and the model of the world became distinct from the more anamistic one that preceeded it. Vidal's genius is inventing a man who would have been able to take in the span of it for as the ambassador of the Persians, he travels across the whole of Asia, itself so vast and impassible that many of his trips are once-in-a-lifetime adventures.
If I were to pick a starting point for homo symbolis, it would be in this time, and with the people Vidal re-creates with such a rich texture.
Finally, when Confuscius spoke, he did not address himself directly to the issue. "You know, when I was fifteen I set my heart upon learning. At thirty, I had my feet planted firmly in the ground. At forty, I no longer suffered from ... perplexities. At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of heaven. At sixty, I submitted to them. Now I am in my seventieth year." The master looked at the edge of the mat on which he was seated. Carefully, he smoothed out a wrinkle that was imperceptible to us. Then he looked up. "I am in my seventieth year," he repeated. "I can follow the dictates of my own heart because what I desire no longer oversteps the boundaries of what is right."
Creation, ISBN 0-345-34020-5.
Posted by Steven at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)
New Series: Books That Rocked My World
Each week I'll highlight a book I've read, recently or a long time ago, that "rocked my world". Each of these books gave me a new paradigm on the Universe, and altered my perception of it immensely.
They won't be in any particular order, but I'll try to keep the variety up. Most will be scientific texts written for a popular audience, but some will be very rich with ideas and dense with complexity. I have a copy of each of these text in my personal library, and I re-read them every so often to refresh my memory of the concepts and/or worldviews they project.
Needless to say, I recommend them for reading!
%Share and %Enjoy.
Posted by Steven at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)
October 08, 2005
Denton Golden Triangle Contest
Today was our second MNHS Bulldog Marching Band competition in nearby Denton, TX. We were at the Denton ISD uber-stadium, and this time we didn't start first, so we left McKinney around 1:30pm for a brisk drive across US 380 to north Denton.
In a field of ten bands, with only Newman Smith HS competing in our division, we did a pretty good sweep of the division awards (all) and we ended up 3rd over all. Our color guard and drumline won best overall, but the drumline shouted out "In your face!" when they won, which marred our victory. Mr. Harkey and Kurzweil were furious at the drumline; there seems to be little that can be done to discipline the percussion group and I think they act up knowing this. Frankly, I'd sack the jerks after UIL this coming 19th.
I took nearly one-thousand photos today ... and you can wade through there here.
Pictures featuring Alanna are here, here, here, (a whole series starting) here, (on the left) here, (on right at attention) here, (peaking behind the third guy) here, here, and finally (just ahead of the tubas) here.
Posted by Steven at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2005
MNHS vs. Hebron HS (away)
Tonite we got a shelacking from Hebron HS. They beat MNHS 45-7, but at times it seemed like the score would be much, much higher. The band photos are here.
Posted by Steven at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)
GE Finally Agrees to Clean Hudson River
General Electric (makers of fine polluted rivers) has finally agreed to dredge the PCBs from the Hudson River (from Troy to Hudson Falls), after fighting the case for as long as I can remember.
The agreement appears to end years of resistance by G.E. and initiates a process in which the company could eventually spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remove PCB's from 43 miles of river bottom stretching from Hudson Falls to Troy.Work will start in the spring of 2007 and could be completed in six years, if there are no interruptions.
But there are no guarantees that the $700 million project will go smoothly, because the consent decree splits the cleanup into two phases. While General Electric has agreed to Phase 1, it will not make a decision about the second phase until the first is completed. The company also agreed to pay $78 million to cover government costs associated with the cleanup, on top of $37 million it has already paid.
General Electric used PCB's, or polychlorinated biphenyls, in the manufacture of transformers. PCB's were banned in 1976, but the large amount of the chemicals that G.E. had discharged into the Hudson had settled into the bottom of the river, where they posed a continuing threat to the environment and to people who ate fish caught in the Hudson.
For years the company argued that dredging the river mud would cause more problems than leaving the PCB's undisturbed. Environmental groups and community organizations along the river claimed yesterday that the consent decree did not ensure that the entire river would ever be decontaminated.
Under the terms of the agreement, G.E. will dredge the heaviest deposits of PCB's, at a cost of $100 million to $150 million. That work, which is expected to take about a year, will remove about 10 percent of the 2.65 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediment.
The remaining mud, in which the contamination is lighter but spread over a much larger area, would be dredged in the second phase, a project that would last five years and cost about $500 million.
It would be nice if Troy's river wasn't such a sewer of toxicity. Here's hoping GE will not make it worse.
Posted by Steven at 01:03 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2005
P.D.Q. Bach Jekyll and Hyde Tour
I'm taking a break from the (possible) second round UIL competition of Alanna's marching band to go to the Eismann Theater in Richardson to see Peter Schickele doing his P.D.Q. Bach shtick. I thought I had missed the final tour he did several years ago, so this is an unexpected and wholly delightful surprise.
One review says:
Peter Schickele arrived in a wheelchair for his concert Thursday night at Severance Hall. Pushed down the aisle at top speed by Nurse Crumley, he was unceremoniously dumped at the foot of the stage. Picking himself up and brushing himself off, he lumbered on stage and launched into a nutty monologue. For the next two hours, he kept the audience in stitches with his zany new show, The Jekyll and Hyde Tour. In his absent-minded professor persona, Schickele lectured, sang and played the piano, tromboon (a hybrid instrument combining the worst features of trombone and bassoon) and lasso d’amore (a hollow tube that produced musical tones when whirled above the head). He was assisted by soprano Michèle Eaton, who portrayed Nurse Crumley, and tenor David Düsing, who also functioned as keyboardist, percussionist and stage manager. After intermission, Schickele departed from the printed program and launched into a delightful series of musical party games. Among the clever tricks were three-part rounds with ridiculous words, canons in inversion and retrograde, musical greetings composed for family celebrations, a lampoon of French lyrics and a medley of ’60s-style songs in close harmony.
The show is at 8pm on Oct. 29th, and tickets cost from $32 to $43 each.
Posted by Steven at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2005
For Comparison Purposes Only
Can anyone tell me if Alanna looks more like me or her mother:
I honestly cannot tell.
Posted by Steven at 05:23 PM | Comments (1)
Alanna's Glamour Shots
As promised, here are two of the four photos taken at Glamour Shots two weekends ago.
I certainly don't recognize her!
[Click on each photo to download the fullsized scan, suitable for printing.]
Posted by Steven at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2005
La Madeline
Looks like La Madeline is building a restaurant at El Dorado and US 75. This will be a welcome addition to McKinney's burgeoning international palette of restaurants.
Posted by Steven at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2005
Tournament of Champions
Alanna and I spent the day in scenic Carrollton, Texas at the Tournament of Champions Band Competition. We marched against twenty-eight different bands in four "divisions" (I still have no idea what distinguishes one division from another) from all over the Metroplex, and even as far away as Georgetown, Texas (just north of Austin). Let's cut to the chase:
McKinney North HS Bulldog Marching Band won Best of Division II!
Unfortunately, that didn't mean we were in the top ten bands, so we performed a second time "in exhibition" but didn't compete in the second round. According to Mr. Harkey (MNHS Band Director) our Color Guard, Drum Majors and Drumline all scored very high and "pulled up" the band's overall score.
Anne got up early and took Alanna to the band hall by 7:30am so she could see the video LaDonna took at the Crosstown game the night before. I staggered in around 8:50am, expecting to be herded onto a bus and leave by 9am. Instead, we sat around until 9:30am. We had to check in by 10:15am at the Stanridge Stadium (near Valwood Pkwy. and I-35E), and amazingly, our bus ride down Central, across LBJ, and up Stemmons only took thirty-five minutes.
Stanridge Stadium is in the middle of an industrial park area in Carrollton, which means it is no where near any restaurant, grocery store or other convenience store. Almost all the volunteer band parents rode on the buses, so we had no way to run errands the whole day we were there. This was not good planning.
We had to be on the field by 11:45am, and before that, warming up at 10:55am, so it was a mad scramble when we arrived. We parked at the opposite end of the complex from our cargo trucks, so the pit crew and all the students with heavy instruments had to walk about a half-mile to get at their equipment. Fortunately, they put the trucks near the warm up area. LaDonna and I scrambled up to the top of the enormous stadium (which I kept referring to as El Ziggurat) to film our performance. She didn't bring a tripod for the video camera, so I loaned her mine. I took around 400 photos of our performance.
I found out later that Mr. Harkey was pretty peaved at our scheduled performance slot (#3), since it meant rushing to bed from the previous night's game, and then rushing back to MNHS early in the morning for today's events. Some bands didn't have to show up until 4p to perform. They were very fresh compared to ours, where most of the kids didn't get a chance to clean their uniforms from the previous night.
After our performance, the band posed for a group photo. I took the opportunity to shoot a wide collection of photos of the kids getting setup, and (essentially) the same photo this guy was doing. I'll post a link to it here when I get it cleaned up.
Lunch was catered by a BBQ vendor we used last year. When I got to the tent with the food (at the other corner from our buses and the equipment trucks), I found out that the caterer had not brought any drinks; he assumed the parents were doing that. We had to scramble to get our afternoon water hauled over and handed out to the students, which depleted our supply. Then, while waiting in line, Alanna's captain was knocked backwards onto the parking lot cement by two other male students who were horsing around and chasing each other. I saw (in horror) as this girl fell backwards and her head bounced off the cement. It was a tense few minutes while our RN band parent tried to treat her. A Carrollton EMS medic showed up and looked her over. The first concern was concussion, and then later hematoma. She was unconscious for a few minutes, and was very sick for about an hour. All this happened before Mr. Harkey was even "on-site".
When he showed up, he took the two young men to the side and read them the riot act. I talked to one of them afterwards -- he figured he was going to get expelled from the band. He was sick to his stomach about what happened, and seemed sincerely upset about the girl. Alanna was very upset since this was her clarinet officer. By the evening, the injured student was sitting up and she even performed in the exhibition. I'm continually surprised by how many kids get seriously hurt doing this marching stuff.
After lunch, we had nothing to do for hours and hours. We sat in the stadium, slowing getting sunburns (my Tilley hat kept my face and head from burning, but my arms sting). We were dissappointed in how rowdy other bands were. They were tossing crap from the higher seats, dumping food all over the place, and in general, acting like undisciplined monsters. Not surprisingly, those bands didn't place at all.
The bus ride back was long and I had to tend to one of the flute players with a bad knee. I had to open another cold compress pack (bursting the internal fluid chamber took a long time to figure out) on the ride back; this girl was in serious pain after marching twice with a bad knee. Some of the boys in the bus were so goddamned loud I wanted to knock heads together at one point. Riding on busses other than Alanna's is a pain in the ass!
I took Alanna to El Fenix for dinner after we left the band hall around 8:45pm. We got home, stuffed, filthy, and very tired, around 9:20pm. That was the end of our thirty-six (plus) hours of Band this weekend.
Amen.
Posted by Steven at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)