11 days

I can't believe it has been that long and I could find nothing to say! I'm losing my touch.

Actually, it's been pretty quiet - the boss was away for a time, work was pretty quiet, no crises at home, and no recalcitrant vehicles with which to deal. I was off last Friday and today, so I have not worked that many days, and generally nothing new has been started since so many people are not around.

This past weekend was a music weekend for my wife and myself - we spent a day at a church in Hanover, Pennsylvania previewing choral music. For thos unfamiliar with the activity, a bunch of people get together in a good-sized venue with a prepared stack of music (200+ anthems in our case) that will be directed by a clinician and sung by a choir composed of the attendees - in this case, over 600. Now unless you are a chorister, you probably can't appreciate the trill that accompanies one of these sessions - not because the music is done so well; often it is difficult and not done perfectly, but all the folks there try, and the result can be quite beautiful.

These sessions are normally available to choir directors, but many mere singers go, also - some as friends of the director (I go as the director's driver) and often these extras help the director to choose new things for the choir to do. It's a thankless task, sometimes, bit it is a great way to pass a day for a singer - and some of the newer writers are doing some really neat stuff that can only be heard in these clinics. An additional bebefit is that the clinitians are often the writers of the music being previewed, and they tend to be really interesting people.

After the music, I had hoped for a brief visit with an old friend, but it was not to be - so Phyllis and I wandered over to visit our younest and her baby and generally whiled away the afternoon playing with an infant - and it was good!

Tomorrow I have to go back to work. The server didn't get built that I had intended to build over this 4-day weekend. Some computer trouble at church did get fixed, but some more is still waiting. I never got the motorcycle out to get the fork lock installed, but then again as cold as it was, I wasn't looking for an excuse to start it up.

Right this minute I am watching Necessary Roughness, a football movie that I have seen more times than I can count, and I still enjoy it - something that makes no sense whatever as I do not follow sports at all and never have. Odd that another favorite is The Natural, a baseball movie. Some days I make no sense to myself.

I had a traffic rant ready last week after a particularly crappy trip in, but realized that there was nothing new in it, so I pulled it beforeI published it. I maintain that most traffic accidents could have been avoided either by not raising the last two glasses, or by exercising a little courtesy - but casual observation shows nobody to be listening. Maybe someone will piss me off next week and I'll let it go then.

We had yet another organizational change last week, but as best I can determine, it will not mean much of anything to much of anyone in the long run - we'll still have the same meaningless numbers collected and displayed as if they have some deeper meaning. I somethings think that we in Information Technology have done ourselves a disservice by collecting all the data we do - it gives folks the urge to compare disparate numbers and think that they may relate to other numbers (that make them look good, of course) when in actuality they are more like apples and mongooses. This can be hard to explain to folks in a position of authority over you, especially when it is not anything like what they wanted to hear.

It snowed today. My grandson thought he'd died and gone to heaven, but it looks as if it will not last - at least not enough to keep him home from school tomorrow. Disappointment reigns.

I have a kitchen to clean up, and a server to build - enjoy the balance of the day, y'all.