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February 11th, 2007

05:23 pm - Blue-tinted glasses It's hard to believe that a week has passed since the Colts won the superbowl. That day, it was hard to focus on anything else. Reading things on the internet and listing to media experts talk about the game, you wouls have thought it was the psychic network hotline. Everyone had an opinion, it was different than everyone else's and the arguments were compelling. My dad and I have been season ticket holders since the mid-80s and it is amazing just how much you can get into something. One of my coworkers had a small gathering which was much fun than watching the game alone. Only problem is that you have to control yourself a bit. After the Bears ran back the initial kickoff for a TD, I thought I would explode. Between that and the rain, I was concerned. The pacing began. I hovered around the food, grazing on a shrimp dip and triskets. I'd sit for a bit but the next break in the action, I was up again. I am certain that everyone thought it was funny. My PDA phone was convenient as I read postings on the Colts email list which I created more that 15 years ago. It was like a virtual family sharing the highs and lows. In the end, the Colts prevailed and the shirt I had worn for every home game and the playoffs remained Undefeated. To say that this city needed something like this would be an understatement. It really was special. Probably better that as a city, we celebrated the way you should. There were no fires, no destruction. Just a lot of hugging, shouting, and dancing. That is how you should do it. Monday was the parade with temps in the single digits and a wind-chill that was frigid. A few thousand braved it to watch the parade. The players actually stood out in the cold for the entire thing. So where was everyone else? Sitting next to me in a filled RCA Dome. Me and several others skipped class to head over. While we waited for the team to arrive, a replay of the SB played on the Jumbotrons. You knew when each big play was coming and as you would expect, the crowd exploded as if it was happening for the first time. There was a buzz in the dome that was similar to what was there barely two weeks prior when the Patriots came in for the AFC Title game. Once the players arrived, it was awesome. There really wasn't much planned. The MC was the radio voice of the Colts who I knew from high school. One of his daughters was a classmate of mine and lived one street away. He announced the owner and GM, both who spoke briefly. Next was the coach Tony Dungy who was one of the people who really deserved to win. He is generally a great person. he too spoke briefly praising the entire team not just as players but as role models to be proud of. Last one for the planned part was the game MVP, Peyton Manning. I seemed very overwhelmed my the outpour of emotion as was everyone else. That was all they had planned. The crowd responded with "Defense, Defense!!!" and in responce, they much maligned defensive players took the stand. From there, the rest of the team came up in units... Offensive line, receivers, running backs, and special teams. Our punter, Hunter Smith, talked for the last group with one of the funniest comments. He thanked Peyton and the Offense for making him the least used player at his posiiton in the history of the game. While not true, it was a nice tribute. And that was how it ended. It was only later in the week that it really started sinking in that we won. What a great start to 2007. Current Mood: content

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December 28th, 2005

01:09 pm - Peace!!! Poor Linda has to work this week and has taken the girls with her. MIL is also back at her place packing up her personal stuff. She is selling it and the furniture to Linda's boss. Looks like the snowbird will spend more time in Florida so no longer needs her trailer here. Ever since Linda's father died, her mom has just flitted around and wasted money. Oh well, her choice. As for me, this has been a wonderfully peaceful morning. It's been a long time since I've just been able to relax and sleep in. I cannot remember feeling this rested. I'll probably do some reading in a bit - have less than 100 pages in the 800+ page book I have been trying to get through. I need to do this more often. Current Mood: relaxed

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December 27th, 2005

12:48 pm - And never a fall... That was probably the acoomplishment from yesterday I am most proud of. One of my former interns, Ryan, was in town to celebrate the holidays with his family. He gave me and one of my coworkers, Debbie, a call to see about doing something and somehow ice skating came out on top. Surprisingly of all the things I've tried over the years, this was not one of them. I suspect it ha something to do with concern about my ankles. I had my share of problems with them as a running in high school and college. Oh well, can't back out now. Ryan dropped by my house about midmorning and after rounding up the kids, we were off. Linda was a little nervous too. She took the girls roller skating several months back. Caitlyn lost her balence (how much can a 4 year old have?) and pulled Linda on top of her. Ended in a trip to the ER but she turned out to be fine. She has such a hard head. The girls were excited in any case. We stopped at the major downtown shopping mall first to get some lunch which is where Debbie and her younger son met us. It's funny to link of him as young as he is a junior in high school and Debbie is several years younger than me. She loves watching me deal with the challenges of raising daughters until I remind her that he could have grandchildren before mine even date :-) Anyway, I digress.... We got to the rink which was originally built for the Pan-AM games back in 1987. I have walked past it millions of times but this was the first that I ever went in. From the ceiling hung the flags of all the participating nations. Nice touch. We got our skates and got set to go. I never really thought about it but I guess it makes sense that hockey skates are different and was thankful that that is what I got. There was no way my ankles would move in those things. Calling the metal part "blades" seemed pretty funny too. There wasn't anything remotely close to being an edge on them. Just flat surfaces the width of a pencil. So much for hollywood. I carefully took to the ice following Heather. She decided that she would try to run on skates but with little success. She litterally crawled along the edge. After one lap, she went off with no desire to try again. No one could change her mind until I whispered something in her ear. She immediately smiled and headed back out. L and DD asked what I had said. It was simple, "I said she made a very cute ice skater." Always appeal to that kids ego :-) She eventually shuffled along nicely. Caitlyn already learned that and as long as she had someone's hand to hold, she was doing great. As for me, I used the same movements from ancient roller skating days and was able to amble across the ice. Not a lot of speed but I was passing the wall huggers. As I said before, I never fell. That surprised me though; not because I had never done this before but because the ice was so rough. I never expected that. I did find that if I worked toward the middle of the rink, the ice was much smoother. After 2 hours, it was time for the zambonie to make an appearance and signeled our departure. We all had a blast. Only problem was when taking off the skates, Heather had a burn mark on the back of her leg. Told her she needed longer socks. Fortunately that drama didn't last too long. Current Mood: accomplished

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December 24th, 2005

07:59 am - Ever have one of those nights? The In-Law Christmas gathering was at our house last night - we have the only place big enough to hold it. Over all it went fine except for the normal in-law in-fighting. I am honestly thankful to come from a small and very close family. We don't go through all this melodrama. In any case, everyone eventually left for their respective homes (other than my MIL who is staying here for a few days). Everyone else headed to bed which gave me some time to relax. Finally I too was ready and crashed. Instead of peaceful sleep though, my mind decided to kick into overdrive. I have no idea why. In my dreams I was writing parallel programs to run on a grid cluster and comparing them. First, I rarely program much and when I do it usually is something to automate some sysadmin task. The last time I wrote anything to run in parallel was several years ago as part of a grad course project. At about 5am, I told myself that I needed to think about something else and found myself having just been hired by the U. of Nebraska CS dept. their senior sysadmin. I hadn't even told my current boss yet. Huh? I spent 6 months in Oklahoma ages ago and there is nothing out there that would attract me. While many may make fun of calling Indy a city, I prefer and nice sized metro area to lots of rural space. Finally got up at 7am though I hope to crash again in a bit. Now that I am typing this, I noticed there is a very tiny thread holding it all together. Perhaps two intertwined ones. Last night in the background, the IU Butler basketball game was on. During halftime was a 5 minute segment about IU and it's efforts in "Cybersecurity." Most of the people talking were people I work with there to include my second "boss" in the IU security research center. Earlier yesterday I got an email from one of the other associate directors of that center concerning my graduate work next semester (after eons, I finally applied and was accepted to grad school - another story). His big area concerns phishing (if you read slashdot, you may have seen something last summer about an experiment done on the IU students). Before I get started on readings he is going to send me, he wanted me to start thinking about what things could be removed from a system that could make it more vulnerable to attack. I think that has been percolating in the back of my mind all day. Hmmm... maybe I am ready to go back to sleep now and after reading this, so are you. Sweet dreams... Current Mood: thoughtful

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August 30th, 2004

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July 20th, 2004

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July 9th, 2004

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June 29th, 2004

10:02 am - Double the fun I don't know why but it always seems that the summer flys by while the winter seems to linger on and on. At least this year, I am getting my money's worth out of the nice days. I have played sofball on sundays for about 5-6 years now - same team. We have a pretty good time and have had our successes.While warming up for the last game, one of the guys asked several of us what we were doing on tuesdays. Looks like he is putting together a team to play. This was how I first got to know these guys. The team I was on back then played them all the time at this sports park. On a few occasions, I filled in for them too when they were short handed. It helped that at the time I was best friends with one of the guys brother (he got married and we rarely even hear from him anymore - why does that happen?). I imagine we'll use the same name as in year's passed, the misfits. Seems to fit somehow. So tonight we are on. 8pm start. Somewhere in there I am sure we'll have a few 10pm ones. I forgot about how late some games can be. No matter, I am a night owl anyway and this gives me more time under the sun... um... lights? Play ball! Current Mood: chipper

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June 28th, 2004

04:13 pm - Inflation Last weekend I got a new introduction on how costs change. H was been wiggling a loose tooth for the better part of a month and finally (with the help of her aunt) pulled it. She was so excited. You would have thought that she hit the lottery. Maybe in a 5-6 year old's view of the world, she did. It meant it was time for the tooth fairy to visit. I really don't remember being too into anything like this but L's family must have been. She had a special pillow for just this purpose. It was small and frilly with a special pocket sewn in for the tooth. Before we left this L's SIL, everyone was telling H what their kids got. No way out now - had to make sure the TF keeps up with modern times. That night we were all exhausted, having been on the go all day. i thought H would crash immediately but no such luck. She tossed and turned a bit adding to the difficulty of the tooth fairy stunt double to make the switch. Adding to the difficulty was that the special pillow was underneath the one H sleeps on. have to check with L on pillow placement in the future. Fortunately a corner was exposed and pillow slowly pulled out. Out came the tooth (talk about tiny) and in went $5. The tricky part was getting the pillow back but H never stirred. Finally it was time for bed. I received an announcement that morning had come when H ran into our room waving her money. She first stated that she got $5000 but eventually agreed it was $5. Still it was a fortune for her and she was excited. Made the effort well worth while. Poor C didn't want to be left out so she got an advanced load from the tooth fairy - she took $1 from my change dish. I hate to think what the second tooth will cost :-) Current Mood: amused

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June 25th, 2004

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June 23rd, 2004

12:33 pm - Ego Strokes Every so often we need our egos stoked and today was a nice one. Several months ago, I received an email from a publisher asking my permission to quote part of an email I sent to list I am on concerning a crypto program a professor on the west coast wrote. It was a cool little program to help make/break codes. Great tool for explaining how some of the classical stuff worked. Apparently the author was on that list and forwarded my note. Anyway, the book was recently published and our Prentice Hall rep sent me a copy (since I teach this stuff). Low and behold, on the back cover was my quote including my name and university. While it is not something you can put on a resume or anything, it is pretty cool. Okay... I really need to get some work done today... Current Mood: bouncy

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June 15th, 2004

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June 14th, 2004

07:58 pm - Thoughts on RC It has definately been a week of morning for the country, not just for the loss of Ronald Reagan but also the passing of Ray Charles. My dad is very into music and has a collection on vinyl, tape, and CD that is amazing. I have always been the benefactor of all this. It was not uncommon to see us at a Metallica concert one night and the Symphony the next. There are very few styles of music we don't listen too. In any case, I thought I would share this email he sent out to my cousin about RC. Note: he grew up in Philly which was known for good music. Ray Charles and I go way back - pre-WP days in fact. In 1957, there was a general white radio station/parent rebellion. Too much of the rock and roll music was being "taken over" by blacks (Little Richard, Frankie Lymon, etc.). The music was too wild and nasty for their lily white children to be subjected to. Actually, they had a point. For example, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters did a song called "Work with Me Annie." 'Working' like 'rock and roll' were blackspeak for having sex. Ballard, who was forever recycling the same tunes, followed this up with "Annie Had a Baby." The tune was great. So Mercury records, rearranged it for big band and Georgia Gibbs sang it as "Dance with Me Henry." Not to be outdone, Hank retaliated with "Henry's Got Flat Feet (Can't Dance No More)" again to the same tune. The white covers of black hits produced some memorably hideous songs like Pat Boone's ("Ain't That a Shame") - after Fats Domino; Georgia Gibbs' "Tweedley Dee" - after LaVerne Baker; the Crew Cuts' "Sh-Boom" - after The Chords; Kay Starr's "Wheel of Fortune" - after The Videos much racier, jivier version, and so on. To top it off, rock-a-billy and country & western stars like Conway Twitty, Carl Perkins and Faron Young were getting regular airplay on WIBG. One day, at football practice, one of our black players had a portable radio playing this really cool music. Turned out to be radio station WDAS. It didn't take long for me to get hooked. It and its sister station, WHAT played non-stop blues, jazz, R&B and rock and roll as it was made to be played. One day, a dj played an entire album of this guy called Ray Charles. It was his first Atlantic lp - featured "I Got a Woman" - that I knew by Bill Haley and the Comets, Mary Ann, This Little Girl of Mine (of Everly Bros. fame) These were songs he had written and he played them with an eight piece jazz combo. I went out and bought the record and Auntie thought I had gone off the deep end. You think the Beatles were radical? It turned out that Ray had already been playing professionally since 1947. He had a trio - called the McSon Trio (after the guitarist MC Something or other and Ray Charles RobinSON. Record labels - not understanding the pronunciation, thought it was "Maxim." In any event, it was a jazz trio with Ray singing very much like early Nat Cole (on the pop stuff) and Charles Brown (on the blues). Ray's natural voice was gospel-like, and when he finally began singing blues with his gospel voice, a horde of traditionalists howled "foul!" Big Bill Broonzy said, "He's got a good voice, but it's a Church voice." There were numerous black audience hits, but then came "What'd I Say." Even WIBG picked up on it and the legend was born. What resulted was that, classic or not, white people started to become interested in the blues. The Stones were strongly influenced by Ray Charles as were The Animals and Eric Clapton and Joe Cocker. But folks like Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howling Wolf and Little Walter, Bobby Blue Bland and Jimmy Reed became mainstream artists. Then Ray decided to cut some jazz combo albums, toured Newport - great live album from there, and finally, in 1959, felt he was ready for a large orchestra format. The album was titled "The Genius of Ray Charles" and Ray's band was combined with the Count Basie Orchestra on side one. Side two was a string orchestra. "Let the Good Times Roll" earned him a Grammy. The rest of the album featured standards. This was new territory for a pop artist, but it worked so well that Bobby Darin followed suit and produced "Mack the Knife." Sam Cooke and Brook Benton also produced big band albums and a new trend was started. Ray left Atlantic Records because they wanted hit records not albums. He switched to fledgling ABC Paramount which allowed him complete artistic freedom on albums if he would also produce a couple of singles each year. The singles became huge hits in their own right as well as singles released from albums. He created the idea of the concept album with "The Genius Hits the Road - twelve songs about cities and states. "Georgia on My Mind" made a classic out of what had been an unnoticed Hoagy Carmichael tune. A big band album with Ray on the Hammond B3 followed and produced three hits including "One Mint Julep." A concept album of songs named after women followed - and then Ray got a wild hair up his ass - or so everyone thought. "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" introduced the mainstream audience to country classics. It also spawned an industry as every artist had to make a country album. Ray stayed with the country genre on and off for the rest of his life - and there is now a boxed set of about 90 country cuts. He has a duet album coming out and a legacy of doing more for popular music than any other single person. His version of Eleanor Rigby is the best vocal version of the song anywhere. I had the good fortune to catch his act a couple of times - once with the Indianapolis Symphony, and twice with his own big band. He drove drummers nuts - he conducted with his shoulders, body sway and feet. He wasn't really all that nervous - that was how he led the band - and quite often, his drummers missed feet signals and really screwed the tempos up. Also, he never worked from a play list. Instead, as he finished each song with a brief piano run, that run would contain the clue as to the identity of the next song. And Ray didn't waste time as he moved from one song to the next. He very rarely ever introduced a song. But he left a legacy that likely won't be topped for a long time. Current Mood: nostalgic

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07:56 pm - One game left Well Heather's first season in a sport is nearing an end. Saturday was supposed to be a game but the daily battery of storms we've had caused it to be cancelled. Not that they told us. We called the ballpark about an hour before and were told things were still on. Seemed to be the case for most of the team as we had 7-8 kids there. No one from the other team though. We decided to have a practice but it didn't last too long. The coach is a nice guy but has no clue how to do this. Not saying that I do but when I have helped, the kids have seemed more into it. Oh well, thursday is the last game and I think Heather had fun. She has even watched some of the big girls play and ways we wants to do that. Helped that my nieces also play. Next up will be soccer in a couple of months. Heather says she wants to play that too so we'll give her a chance to try it. I don't want to do more than one sport a season. I've seen parent who do nothing more that drive one place to the next. Kids should get lots of time to just play. At least that is my take on it. Current Mood: amused

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June 11th, 2004

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June 10th, 2004

07:53 pm - A bad day at the ballpark... ... is much better than a good day at the office. One of the nice things working here is that I ahve a fairly flexible schedule. Since we are downtown, it is easy to get to a lot of interesting places. One favorite during the summer is Victory Field which is the home of our AAA baseball team. Yesterday they had one of their business person's specials (day game). With as busy as I have been the last couple of months, I decided I owed it to myself to take a break. I was going. One of my coworkers felt the same way and joined me. It was a nice day dispite the a few threatening clouds. The sun peeked in and out and the home team played the AAA affiliate for the Phillies, the team I grew up following. Essentially I couldn't loose no matter which team won. It was a high scoring one too (for baseball) which included an in the park home run. All in all, good times were had by all. Now it's back to the grind. Current Mood: relaxed

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June 8th, 2004

01:01 pm - Here's to another season in the sun Every year I have enjoyed writing that title and hope I get to for years to come. For those of you who wonder about the origin, it is the movie Major League when the aging catcher toasts to his not being cut in spring training and getting one more year in the big leagues. For me, it is that I was asked to play softball again this season. While I have been working to get back into running shape, you always wonder if some new people will end up playing in your spot. So once more into the breach, well behind the plate to catch. Play ball! Current Mood: sore

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12:59 pm - Too many Trading Spaces episodes? Linda loves that series and the first true signs started last weekend. For some time now, she and other family members have been discussing that colors to paint the rooms. When we moved into the house, the builders said something about waiting 1 year before doing so (I think because if they have to come in to fix something, they don't want to be responsible for anything like that). Well in a few weeks, it will be two years. Now that her mom is back from her 6 month hibernation in florida, everything is in full swing. It started saturday with the living room walls. Borders were taped and out came the rollers. Phase 1 of the plan Linda, her SIL, and mom hatched a couple of weeks before. While I suggested that I still possessed veto powers, they just laughed and went about there plotting. So color #1 went up - melted butter. Let me ask you something. Is there a reason for so many color names? What ever happend to the primary colors with adjectives? I mean light blue, dark green, etc., but I digress. So far, it looks good but it is hard to tell yet. All the furniture is still in the family room and that is because the carpet was ripped out to make way for lamenant flooring. We had some of this in our old house. tTis one is a little darker - cherry wood. Of course I am sure I am the one to blame for this because it was "my cats" which ruined the corners of the carpet and a few base boards marking their territory. So now it is new flooring and base boards. Also on the agenda - ceiling fans. Linda bought not 1, not 2, but 5 for the house. We did have that many rooms prewired for fans when we had it built but I didn't expect they to be bought at the same time. Fortunately I didn't have to put them up. SIL's hubby does this sort of work all the time so is helping out. Not sure he had a choice either since his wife is one of the key members of the painting conspiracy. In trade for all his help though, I get to do geek stuff and fix (or rebuild) their PC which crashes when starting most programs. So there you are. MIL blows into town and chaos reigns. At least next time they get these ideas, I hope they will follow the "While you were out" show's approach and send me someplace cool for the weekend. Current Mood: busy

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