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May 29, 2006
The Dog Police
Back in the distant 80's, my other friend named Mike Jones happened upon a rather peculiar video called The Dog Police. Tom White found it on You Tube:
I cannot remember why we found this video so amusing, but I'll be damned if this isn't the very thing. When will the video made to Philip Glass' Third Act be here?
Posted by Steven at 12:12 AM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2006
Texas State Solo and Ensemble Contest Weekend
After months of preparation and competition, Alanna performed in the TSSEC today on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. She's now spent more time at UT than I did, and I was going to attend UT before RPI showed up.
We drove down Sat. night and stayed with the Werth's. Holly brought Chloe to our house on Friday, before the MNHS Graduation Ceremony that night. Alanna performed with the MNHS Wind Ensemble for the ceremony. Chloe came up to see her friend Zeb graduate. We brought Chloe back to Austin with us.
Sunday we and Chloe went to the Schlitterbaun. I'm not going to elaborate on this ... it's an older water park that has some pretty dated rides, and is perched alongside the Comal River, for which New Braunfels is more famous thanks to the brisk business in inner tubes, coolers and beer one can find at the upstream end of the river. I injured myself in several places and got a nasty sunburn ... on my shins. I did take a lot of photos of the MNHS band students who were there (around sixty) for the TSSEC (they're on the MNHS Band Photo site).
After driving back to Austin (with me on my MacBook laptop trying to debug a problem with a phone program at work), we went to Fujiyama (Anne going for the first time) and had a great meal at the end of a long, arduous day.
Monday was the competition. Anne came to the competition because she is the piano accompanist for six of the students, including Alanna. After a return drive to take Alanna and Anne to the correct building, Leo and I went Kerby Lane on Guadalupe, and then to my co-worker's home in North Austin. Leo played X-Box all morning while Nick and I worked on VoIP code. I was most impressed with Nick's collection of Kodak brownie cameras! We went to EZ's for lunch, and then parted ways.
Alanna had to perform at 11am, and then again later with her ensemble. Anne was supposed to play at 5pm with her last student, which would have been the last performance had there not been students who didn't show up to compete.
Leo and I went to Barton Creek Mall, where I got my iBook keyboard fixed and some advice at the Apple Store. To get that service, I had to wait until around 3p, which delayed the start time we could take in X-Men III. By the time we were in the theater and the movie started, Anne called saying she was done and she wanted us to come get her. I had to bail on the film just as it was getting started :-(.
We made good time back to UT (Memorial Day traffic is light on the MOPAC) and started for home. We decided not to eat fast food with the MNHS bus crowd, and instead headed north for Yanni's. Unfortunately, they were closed on Mon. so we ended up at the Black-Eyed Pea in Hillsboro. Traffic on I-35 was not good, but far from the stop-n-crawl we experienced last June.
Alanna earned two Division Two ratings in both solo and ensemble work (her entire school's results are here). Most of the really strong kids in MNHS earned this rating, so she did well. She will receive two medals, and as I understand it, now qualifies for a letter-jacket at Boyd. No doubt we'll get her one.
I spent most of Sunday walking on flat feet, which aggrivated the plantar fasciitis I have in my left foot. As a result, I hobbled around all day Monday, and am only now starting to not feel the pain ("The pain! The pain!") without Ibuprophen. Waterparks are hard on me!
Posted by Steven at 05:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2006
Bennett 5th Grade "Walk"
Today was Leo's last day of elementary school. After all the campuses he attended, he ended up spending three good years at Bennett Elementary with a great staff. I got to know some of them under less-than-ideal conditions during the 5th grade "summer camp" trip that turned into a frozen survivalist camp. But I digress ...
On the last day of school the fifth graders are let out early, and get to walk past all the teaching staff (and parents who show up) in a quasi-tradition called "the walk". I was able to photograph Leo (because I made him pose) but didn't get a good photo of his friend, Chris.
Leo was completely uninterested in the event, and didn't really seem all that interested in the significance. He just wanted to get home and start enjoying his summer of video games and swimming with Chris.
I wasn't really all that sentimental myself. Elementary school will probably be the better years for him, in terms of the help and assistance the MISD can and will offer. But it's also true that after ten years, I no long have a child in elementary school. I told Anne it was like dropping the first stage of a Saturn V ... we're on our way to college for real now.
Posted by Steven at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2006
Bennett Blast at The Zone
Leo's 5th Grade class at Bennett Elem. had a graduation party at The Zone, an indoor amusement park on the western edge of McKinney, next to the Home Depot (go figure).
The Zone features arcade games, LaserTag™, a big Bounce Room, and party rooms. There is also a pizza buffet restaurant attached, and a coffee shop with free WiFi (but it blocks BattleNet for some weird reason). I've been here before: Leo's BD party was here back in April. (The WiFi allowed me to enter this while still at the event.)
In three more days, we end our career in Elementary Schools. Leo starts Middle School this fall, at Ruth Dowell MS. I likened it to dropping the (huge) first stage of a Saturn V rocket ... we're now entering the "orbit" stage. When Leo finishes Dowell in three years, we'll drop Stage Two and be on our way to the Moon (College) with Alanna.
I realize the analogy is weird ... but it's the cafe mocha talking at this point!
Posted by Steven at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2006
Boyd Beginnings
Today Alanna and I went up to Fabion MS for Boyd HS band officer tryouts. I had asked Mr. Nuñez about it this afternoon, and he said that Alanna needn't come to Fabion, but Mr. Harkey gave somewhat contradictory instructions to the band this afternoon, and so we went.
Almost all the kids from North who are seeking an officer role were there! So much for Joe's announcement. One student even chided me for not posting it on the Boyd site. It turns out he was only interviewing kids for Drum Major. Several were trying out from North, and in the end, Mr. Nuñez only chose one student from each high school (I know this because he e-mailed me the results for posting -- in two days).
Posted by Steven at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2006
Is it over yet?
Just an insane weekend, coming on the heels of an insane week.
This week we had TKD tests, a band concert and banquet, and I had to sit in the Cage (my employer's NOC) all morning (early!) and into the afternoon on Sunday.
Just getting the band presentation finished in time was a nighmare. Then I got the crazy idea of making a DVD for the Seniors (18 of them) at the last minute, so that they would have a copy to take home in their gift bag.
I'll try to catch up on the ole' blog today and tomorrow ... stay tuned.
Posted by Steven at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2006
Second Belt Test at Vu's Studio
Today Leo earned his advanced green belt, and Alanna earned her first "gup" black belt.
The big event was a group composed of two families who have stayed with Mr. Vu through the whole saga this last year, all of whom earned their black belts. The O'Brien and Slayton families celebrated and rejoiced in finally reaching this plateau in Tae Kwan Do. Mr. O'Brien earned his belt with his two oldest daughters, one of whom was in school with Alanna at McKinney North.
It was a great day at Vu's studio as his most devoted students, people who stood beside him and helped him start his own studio, finally reached black belt.
Alanna is still his most advanced student, and has another nine months to go before her next major belt.
Posted by Steven at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2006
Blast From the Past
Way back in early 1980, shortly after my friend Matt Bailey recieved an Apple ][+ with a floppy drive for Xmas, my great uncle Harry Wassall offered to buy me a personal computer. You see, he had invested in some small computer storefront in the Washington D.C. area, and they could "get him a system at cost". That system, it turns out, was the infamous Ohio Scientific Instrument's Challenger II 4P MF.
The model I received was not unlike the image above, except it was a dark blue color with sheet metal sides (not the nice wood you see here). It also included a nice big dent on the top of the case, which probably didn't help the quality of the circuit board. The floppy drive sat in a low box that was as wide and deep as the top of the CPU case, so it was rather a large box for a single 5 1/4" disc drive.
The really tragic thing about this is that the $1695 my great uncle spent would have bought almost the same Apple ][ that Matt received. As it turned out, I spent more time on that Apple than on the Challenger C2-4P. In fact, about the only thing I did on the Challenger was learn 6502 machine code.
Yes, machine code. Why? Because the system was such a staggering piece of shit that all I could really do with it was either write small BASIC programs (I remember doing a Chemistry lab on it using the RND() function to simulate real data) or to type in raw binary 6502 instructions and tell the monitor program to "jump to" the code. My first working program drew a little spinning arrow on the screen (a single loop writing a different ASCII code into the screen buffer did the trick).
The machine had a floppy drive but no disc operating system. This was probably an after-thought ... but I read in a review of the history of OSI that they just shipped the machine with a disc monitor program and sort of hoped that someone would finish the filesystem code for them.
One very questionable thing I do recall about the model I had was that my Dad (upon investigating the motherboard) discovered that it had a UART chip already soldered to the main circuit, board and a single jumper (if cut) would activate it. OSI wanted $295 to "install a serial port" ... and the installation was simply cutting the jumper. What a bunch of scumbags to sell me something I already had.
I ended up selling the machine to a music store in Denton, TX in late 1980, favoring Matt's Apple ][+ in the end. Sometimes I wonder if I still had the C2-4P, whether or not I could get it to work, but then I think about all the time wasted on it back when the Apple ][ was so clearly the right machine and I lose all that nostalgic feeling for my first PC.
A more complete history of the Ohio Scientific Instruments company is a good read if you want to know what they did wrong (in spades).
Posted by Steven at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2006
MNHS Band Spring Concert
Tonite MNHS Band held it's Spring Concert, a more light-hearted affair that features "guest conductors" (who are chosen by out bidding others). A few weeks back, Alan Harkey (band director) asked me if I would "narrate" the event. I said yes, assuming he meant sitting in the sound booth and reading a short copy between each performance.
This afternoon I received an e-mail from Josh Kurzweil (asst. band director) with the two pages of content they wanted me to read. I called back and confirmed (to my surprise) that I was the master of ceremony and that I would be on stage at the lecturn reading the announcements. I asked about not wearing a suit (a sport coat and golf shirt would suffice) and then began trying to figure out what I had to read.
It turns out that I didn't know how to pronounce more than a few of the names, which was awkward since they were all Russian. Josh and Anne helped me with some of them, but I still managed to mangle the former student guest conductor's name, among others. Anne said that, by and large, I was too quiet (it didn't sound that way on the stage!).
Me and Victor Manuel, just before he conducted The Liberty Bell March
As I was getting ready to head over to the school, Anne and I came up with the idea of my using some of my silly hats during my annoucements. I ended up taking my propeller beanie, British judge's wig, a beret, some of Alanna's silly hats (including a Cirque du Soilel jester's hat) and making a Monty Python's Flying Circus "Gumby" hat out of a wash rag for the Liberty Bell March which most people recognize as the theme to the British TV show. It took some doing, but I talked Mr. Harkey into letting me do it. The results were hilarious for the audience, embarrassing for my daughter. :-).
After the concert, I went with the directors to Snuffer's for a belated dinner. On the whole, it was a lot of fun and one of the funniest bits was after the concert, the folks who came up to me with a question all asked, "Where did you get those hats?" I had to confess I owned each and every one of them.
Posted by Steven at 10:51 PM | Comments (0)