Yay! I finally feel like Dance Theatre is starting. I realize that it’s actually been going on all year, but I think until we start preparing for the concert I don’t feel like anything is going on because I’m not actively involved. We had a run through of the pieces for the tech crew (which includes myself). We have a nice variety. I am not sure if we have the same number of “quiet” pieces this year or not. We do have one piece that’s almost disturbing … it’s set to a piece from the movie soundtrack for “The Cell”. Some of them are pretty cool though. I’m going to suggest to our media technician that we bridge in a 300watt Crown amp with the new Nady amp… I’m not sure if we’ll gain anything but I’d like to know. 
More “thump” is generally a good thing. For those of you who are interested, the concert performances are April 1-5th, at 8pm in the Davis Theatre at UW-RF.
Archive for February, 2003
It’s the end of another weekend again. I did manage to get some cleaning done this weekend, so my house is in reasonable shape. I paid Rich and Sonja a visit this afternoon and we did lunch at Pizza Lucé’s in Minneapolis. Yummy. I think I can safely say I don’t care for garlic on pizza. Poor Rich had the hiccups for most of the afternoon. After eating all that pizza, he was very uncomfortable.
I did some searching at a Circuit City for a TV monitor for video editing. They had a nice 14″ sony tv for $199. I’m not inclined to spend that much on one though. I talked to my friend Joe tonight about my IIgs problem. He said he had a 1/2 dozen of them and is willing to send me a replacement motherboard to fix my problem…. or I can wait until Easter …. he thinks he might be coming up for a visit. I think I can probably wait that long … in the meantime I can live with an emulator.
Tomorrow is another work day. I hope the network problem I discovered late Friday is fixed … otherwise I could get a lot of calls about printing.
I had an enjoyable day. I went up to my parents to pick up my camera’s memory card so I can loan it to beldurnik for his trip. I got to eat yummy homemade cinnamon rolls too. I came home and napped for three hours, which was refreshing … also probably explains why I’m awake at 11:45pm. I woke up and putzed on the computer for a while … decided to try and find an Apple IIgs emulator since I can’t get my IIgs to work. If anybody has one they’d be willing to sell, I might be interested. I really miss playing some of the old classic games for them …. Montezuma’s Revenge, Sea Fox, etc..
After that, I did some cleaning and got word that flutterbyefred and liz4jc4ever wanted to stop by with pizza … which of course I couldn’t object to, even if they weren’t bringing pizza. We watched Gone in 60 Seconds ‘cuz flutterbyefred hadn’t seen it yet. It was an enjoyable time with good company.
It’s been another long week at work. I nearly went home ill this afternoon but I wanted to get a computer delivered. The recipient was very happy. I also got to order some audio equipment for the Dance Theatre concert to provide some “thump”. Should be fun. The amp is 125W per channel and I got a pair of 15″ subwoofers too for a total less than $500. We’re going to hook them to a crossover so they just provide bass. If anybody’s interested, we got them from the marsmusic.com going-out-of-business sale.
Anyway, I’m really tired tonight. I haven’t posted the past few days because I’ve been having trouble accessing the LiveJournal website… not that I use it to post, but I figured if I can’t access the website I probably wouldn’t be able to post with the client either. I have my new wireless access point. It’s been giving me grief by cutting out the wireless signal occassionally. I’m not sure why. I might have to give them a call or email and ask what’s up. At least it’s not cutting out wired service, which would affect my mail server.
Yesterday the chancellor gave her doom and gloom talk regarding budget. I wasn’t there so I got the news second-hand. Apparently all adjunct faculty positions are being cut. Yikes. UWRF’s share of the state budget cut is $1.6 million … which is quite a hefty chunk. To compensate they’re going to raise tuition $250 each semester for the next 2 yrs … making up 38% of the cuts. While it’s harsh, I think they’re between a rock and a hard place. If they don’t raise tuition, they have to cut programs. If they cut programs, they will lose students. On the other hand, by raising tuition, they may lose students too. Hopefully aid can make up most of the difference. UW System still ranks #9 in the Big Ten for tuition costs, but that’s little consolation to the student who can no longer afford school.
Yesterday I finished my sofa project. I converted a sleeper sofa into a semi-regular sofa for flutterbyefred and liz4jc4ever. It was fun. They now have additional seating space in their reshall room. I found it amusing that the sofa was going back into a reshall because I used it myself when I lived in Prucha Hall… I think it was even about this time of year when I moved it in there. How crazy is that?
I need to hook up with someone from my parents’ neck of the woods so that I can retrieve a SmartMedia card for Rich to take on his trip. I hope he enjoys it. I’d love to go overseas someday… maybe a honeymoon.
Time for bed … I’m thoroughly exhausted and am having trouble typing.
I’m really frustrated tonight. I tried setting up mail services on morpheus and I am apparently missing some parts but I don’t know where they are. I guess I will try to index some more of the install CDs tomorrow and see if it’s on something other than the first CD (which wouldn’t make much sense to me).
Tonight I watched a fair amount of morbid television … perhaps that is contributing to my mood. I watched a 2-hr show on kamikaze … pilots and such. Now there is a show on suicide bombers. Grumble. It’s off now though … ‘cuz it’s bed-time for me.
Well, it’s 10:35 … time for bed. It’s the end of the weekend. I wish it would last a day or so longer. I wasn’t as productive as I had planned, but I did get something accomplished today. I spent some time in my spare bedroom modifying the bedframe that I built. I wanted it shorter so I chopped the legs a bit. It now looks quite reasonable. Now I just need to get a new mattress for it and probably finagle some additional support bars. The mattress is going to have to be a futon because I don’t think a new regular mattress would be flexible enough to go up the stairs particularly easily.
I also got the “server” that was up at my parents up and running. I think it could use a good cleaning because the soot and stuff that it ingested up north is now being spewed back out to some degree because I can smell it. I think it also contributes significantly to the temperature in the room though so it’s not on right now. I am going to try to move my mail from my main server over to this backup so that I can upgrade the mail softwere on the main one to something that will support seive scripts. I’d also like to start using a mysql database for login so that I can set up mail for people without giving them a login account. I found instructions on doing so, but my first attempt at part one failed to build. Grrr.
I also got off my butt and emailed some people I haven’t heard from in a while … Laura and William. Laura is a student at UW-LaCrosse and William is a grad student going for his doctorate in nuclear physics. Talk about a long ways from the farm he grew up on. I hope I hear back from them soon.
Random thought … anybody know where I can get a working Apple IIgs? I’d like to play some of my old arcade-type games again … hopefully the floppy disks still work. I know some of them do because I have a partially functional IIgs right now that will boot them, but I can’t type anything with the computer so I don’t know if the games actually run.
Well, I spent most of the day up visiting my parents. This morning I did some tidying up in the house … not a lot mind you but enough to make me comfortable leaving it. I also had fun writing out checks for bills (bleh!). I left around 11am. Got up there in time to have ham and cauliflower chowder (yummy!) for lunch. I decided to give my parents my Airport wireless base station as a replacement “dialup server”. It appears to work quite well and I hope is more reliable than the Linux server I had set up for them. I brought the Linux server home with me and will probably use it for testing or something. At the very least, I could use something to take over handling email and such if I need to rebuild my primary server again, which is looking somewhat likely at the moment given the compiler issues I’ve been having.
Anyway … ’nuff on that. I enjoyed seeing my parents again. They seem to be doing well. One thing I don’t like about being up there in the winter is that I inevitably come back smelling like wood smoke because that’s what they use to heat with. I did get my hair cut though so I no longer look quite so odd when I take off my hat. Once I shave, I should actually look presentable again.
I wish I had picked up some more popcorn. I’d like to make some for snacking on during the “Great American Race” … aka the Daytona 500.
Yup. It’s Friday night. I’m glad. I’m tired. I crave the warmth of blankets around me and a pillow under my head. I wish I were better rested. I’ve been having problems sleeping this week. I’m not sure why. My sleep schedule is so out-of-whack that I actually got up at 6:15 or 6:20 this morning and was at work at 7:10. That’s just plain not right for me. I think the fact that I “crashed” yesterday wasn’t good either. I should try to catch up on sleep this weekend.
I’m going to go up to my parents’ house and visit for some time this weekend. I also need a haircut so this will be a good opportunity for that. While I want snow, I’m not sure when I want it to come. Probably tomorrow. I don’t really mind driving in it. I need to get the necessary lumber to do the sofa for flutterbyefred and liz4jc4ever. It should be fun. I’d like to give them some storage space in it since they’re losing a significant amount of room.
Well, bedtime for this rabbit. I hope the women had a safe trip down to DeForest.
I suffered a burn-out this afternoon. I was finally able to leave work at 5:30 and came home and promptly crashed for 2 hrs. Not fun. I am supposed to have statististical analysis of the email survey results done for a meeting tomorrow morning. Unfortunately I’ve decided that Microsoft Excel isn’t up to the task. I will probably end up using SPSS to play with it. It’s been several years since I’ve done any work in SPSS, so this could be interesting. I could probably use a refresher anyway. We just got the latest Macintosh version in at work. I hope that I can find the CD again because I fear that it may have fallen into my trash can and lost. Not good.
I’m not sure if I’m going to work all day tomorrow. I’m seriously considering taking off the afternoon because of what happened today. I could just shut my office door and request no interruptions. It would be nice to be able to get some of these things that I’ve been working on piecemeal taken care of. New computer setups. Some research projects.
I’d like to go to one of the hockey games this weekend … UWRF is in the playoffs again and ranked #4 in the nation. We play St. Scholastica. Anybody interested in going with me? At some point this weekend I’m heading up to my parents for a while … I might even stay overnight up there.
Today has been very disorienting for me I think. I’ve been mixed up as to what day it is all day. I woke up this morning thinking it was Tuesday. At some point today, I found myself thinking it was Thursday. Not so much fun. I didn’t get some of the things done that I need to get done this week… like compiling results from the email survey for a meeting we have on Friday. I did manage to get a really old task for a belligerant user taken care of though.
I did have a professor on campus who just plain pissed me off today. Thankfully he has decided that the best course of action is not to fight our network infrastructure policies. It remains to be seen what else he will fight. Give professors grant money and they think they’re God’s gift to the University. Sheesh.
I managed to get my dishes washed tonight. It took me longer than it should have, but they’re done and I have something to eat off of for several days.
I did some testing of my backup software. The trial copy of the new version I downloaded actually handles having a tape fill up. Regrettably, I have been unable to get the nice GUI for the software to work so I’ve emailed tech support on the problem. Another gripe … companies that require information assuming that you’re a business. The software manufacturer required a company name. Grrr.
Tomorrow is another day … I have three meetings scheduled at this point … 8:30 – 10, 10-11, 1-1:30. Doesn’t that sound like fun? More opportunities not to get things done. I wish Barb were going to be in tomorrow … apparently some bad things happened in the networking services staff meeting this morning … yelling and people walking out and such. Last year we pow-wows to figure out how we could work together better as a department. Right now, it appears that even some of our teams are having issues. Thankfully I’m not directly involved in that one, though it would be nice to be able to help rather than watch helplessly from the outside.
Well, off to bed again.
