Alan Menken Redeemed

I loved Alan Menken's work in The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. In subsequent movies where he worked with Tim Rice, it became more obvious to me that I liked Howard Ashman more than I actually liked Alan Menken.

This was confirmed to me when I saw the theatrical version of Beauty and the Beast in which Alan made a few musical changes. Since I know the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack so well, the changes were painfully obvious to me. The first act I actually liked better than the movie and at the intermission, I even made a few comments to people that I think that Menken has possibly redeemed himself. The second act however confirmed to me that I really don't like Menken's musical style.

Tonight I went to Enchanted. This soundtrack has totally redeemed Alan Menken in my mind. It was so good that I did not even consider that he could have been involved until his name showed up in the end credits.

The best song on the soundtrack, That's How You Know, almost ranked him up there with with Hans Zimmer - well almost. Unfortunately, Alan has Home Alone 2 smeared across his resume - and that's going to take a lot of really good writing to cover up.

Common sense?

ICYC - bubble gum and beards don't mix. Funny what you don't think of after 15 to 20 years of not chewing gum....

Scams and Viruses

I received the following scam alert yesterday and knew that I needed to make sure that everyone had heard it! (As a bonus, I also attached a virus alert that you need to pay attention to in case you haven't heard about it yet!)

---

I hate it when people forward bogus warnings, and I have even done it myself a couple times unintentionally... but this one is real, and it's important. So please send this warning to everyone on your e-mail list.

If someone comes to your front door saying they are checking for ticks due to the warm weather and asks you to take your clothes off and dance around with your arms up, DO NOT DO IT!! THIS IS A SCAM!! They only want to see you naked.

I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid.

---

If you receive an e-mail with a subject of Badtimes, delete it immediately WITHOUT READING IT. This is the most DANGEROUS e-mail virus ever.

It will rewrite your hard drive and scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. It will recalibrate your freezer's coolness setting so all your ice cream melts. It will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your VCR, and use subspace field harmonics to render any CDs you try to play unreadable.

It will give your ex-boy/girlfriend/ex-husband/wife your new phone number. It will mix antifreeze into your fishtank. It will drink all your beer and leave its socks out on the coffee table when company comes over. It will put a kitten in the back pocket of your good suit and hide your car keys when you are late for work.

Badtimes will make you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus midgets. It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your current boy/girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Visa card.
It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it. It will tease your dog. It will leave strange messages on your boss's voicemail in your voice. It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.

Badtimes will give you Dutch Elm disease. It will leave the toilet seat up. It will make a batch of methamphetamine in your bathtub and leave bacon cooking on the stove while it goes out to chase high school kids with your snowblower.

These are just a few of the signs. Be very, very afraid!

---

Consider yourself warned. And be careful out there!

Some of you may appreciate this....

I was sent to watch this in August and I'm still laughing at it, so I guess that I need to post it.



I realize that it makes very little sense to the non-classical-musically minded among us, but to somebody who once played Pachelbel's canon on tuba (the tuba part for the band is the same as the cello part for orchestra), I can very much appreciate this.

I love going to weddings and hearing the brides who are so excited about how they chose Pachelbel's Canon in D instead of something more traditional. I think I've heard Pachelbel at every wedding I've been to but my own.... (At least at the reception...)

This morning in worship, we sang Brad Kilman's "We are Hungry". I started laughing so hard, I almost had to leave the room.

Adding Insult to Injury

Over the weekend, my sweet bride shared with several people that I was injured and made up this really neat story of how I fell into a ravine. So, now as people are asking me about my huge injury, I get to explain that the "ravine" was about an inch, maybe two, high. Basically, I tripped and it laid me up for 2 days.

From bad to worse...

So yesterday I sustained what is most likely my first ever sports injury. Since geocaching is a non-contact sport, I figured the probability was lower, but obviously not at zero.

So, I have a sprained ankle, and I’m trying to determine if there is a fracture.

In the process of trying to lessen the swelling, I got to prove my allergy to Advil.

And so I also can’t see very well since my eyes are swollen shut.

Halo Flu - a month late...

So, for the last month or so, I've been working my way through Halo's 1 and 2 in preparation for the release of Halo 3. One of the things I like about the Halo series is that it's not a "kill everything that moves" game - there's actually a plot. I wanted to catch up on the story line before I got moving. I remembered most of the plot of 1, but since I had a one-year-old around the house when Halo 2 came out I wasn't able to play it at full volume and missed some of the story. I still have small kids in the house, but I figured out a way to hook headphones up to my 360. When it came to replaying the games, I knew that I wasn't in a hurry to finish because I wasn't going to be able to get Halo 3 until Christmas anyway.

Well, Wednesday of last week, I received a copy of Halo 3 mailed to me in an unmarked envelope. A gift I do appreciate (in case the random gifter reads my blog - you can consider this post to also be my thank you note), but it gave me a bit more incentive to finish Halo 2.

Well, I finished Halo 2 last night. Then I got "sick". My wife said that the smells eminating from the bathroom and passing out around midnight were convincing enough to take a day off from work.

So, I got to play a while today. My favorite part so far is a little Easter Egg that I found wandering down a random hallway. Two characters with voices STRIKINGLY similar to Simmons and Caboose on Red vs Blue arguing over knowing the password necessary to open a door. I got myself clobbered just so that I could share the moment with Melissa.

So, a geek walks into an REI...

Ya know... Certain people just don't "fit" certain stores. A guy just can't walk into a Victoria's Secret. And a chubby, white-n-nerdy just can't walk into an REI. You could just see everybody looking at me placing their bets - is he going to get a gift card or is he going for the GPS area?

Anyway, I'm now the proud owner of an eTrex Legend.

Merry Christmas to me! And thanks dad....

Well, they found me....

In the last 24 hours, I have received 3435 spam emails. I think I might need to make some changes. Only about 20 weren't filtered out. I must say that I do like Outlook 2007.

Not sure what to think yet...

Found 3 today, but did not get to mark one, as the person enabling my new potential addiction is a premium member and so I don't have access to add one to my official count.

So, I read somewhere...

So I've been reading some books recently (Mind Hacks and Mind Wide Open since it is necessary due to the nature of this post) about the nature of the mind. One of the biggest things that I have learned about is the problem of source confusion and false memories. Boiling it down, here's the real problem: I use the phrase "I read somewhere" more often than I should, and I trust people who use the phrase "I read somewhere" much more than I should.


So why is this a problem? When learning new information, your mind makes connections with previous information. If you read something or hear something from a unreliable source (or even better, you hear half of something while you are flipping channels), and then something else from some source (either reliable or unreliable), your brain begins to synthesize this ideas into new thoughts. Well, here's the core of the problem: That new thought might be total garbage because a garbage source was used in its development.


What I have learned through reading the books mentioned above, as it has processed and connected with a few other experiences recently, is that I have lots of garbage in my mind that is scaffolding for lots of other garbage - and I have no idea what the original sources are for quite a bit of this information. ("Somewhere" and second-hand "somewhere".)


So, how much of whever is in my mind reliable? Do I need to start completely over? Obviously, I can't just throw away 35 years of knowledge and memories. I also have a large amount of practical knowledge that I didn't learn from books or from classroom settings that I feel that I can rely on because I learned by doing and that "doing" works (such as computer programming and breathing).


I think that several people in the world also need some mental housekeeping. How many of our convictions are based on things that we were taught and that we have never actually convinced ourselves of?

My Centennial

So, this marks 100 posts. It's interesting because today I went through my blog and added Labels to everything now that this is a feature of Blogger2, which gave me an opportunity to read all 99 other posts. (It also gave me an opportunity to completely hose my RSS feed - sorry about that.)

As I read, I realized that my blog has grown up quite a bit in the last two years. At first my posts were random thoughts, but I think that I have finally selected a few themes to stick with - for now. Most of those posts at the beginning could only be Labeled as Funny, since they had little to do with my life, getting to know me, or really sharing any of the things that I think about on a regular basis.

I also find it sadly amusing that my readership has dwindled down to next to nothing - I think there are still maybe five people who might read my blog regularly. But that's ok - I'm not trying to change the world, I'm just trying to let people get to know me a little and give a few people a little something to ponder. A chance to laugh a little at what parenthood and tech support throw my way.

I recently spent a week at a Technology in Education conference which has given me a few ideas as to what directions my blog should go from here.

So for now, thanks to those who are still here, and hopefully I will his the 200th post in shorter than the 2 years it took to get here.

Tech Support

Yesterday, I got to call tech support while working on my parents computer. This ranks up there with my least favorite activities in the world. After spending 2 hours troubleshooting the issue I determined that it must be a server issue. Well, when you call tech support, they take you through everything that you've already been doing for the last two hours. And as we all know, most tech support has recently been outsourced to India, so not only do you get to be redundant, you get to struggle with the English language at the same time (apparently coin-furg-ation is the Indian pronunciation for configuration). And since it's my parents' computer, all the software is at least 5 years out of date.

The first person that I talked to had a great idea of deleting the coin-furg-ation file and he didn't have enough sense to back the file up first, but since he was getting paid for his advice, I figured that he was confidant in what he was doing. (I generally don't spend the extra time to back up files if I am confidant in what I am doing.) Well after deleting the coin-furg-ation file, we got an error that the configuration file could not be found - was I supposed to be surprised. So, he decided at this time to escalate my issue to the next tier.

The guy at the next tier spoke significantly better English and confirmed that there was a change in the server configuration. He gave me the settings that I needed to change but wanted to send me in a different direction for application support on the configuration file. Instead of spending another 20 minutes on hold, I figured that I could reinstall the software instead (since I'm sure that's the conclusion that application support would come to anyway).

Well, I reinstalled (and actually upgraded since we couldn't find the original installation disks) and I typed in the settings that I was given at the second tier of support - and of course it still didn't work. Doing all of my background server pinging and route tracing, it still seemed as though the server wasn't connecting.

When I called a second time, the guy started me through all of the same things that I had done before. Then it came to my mind that the newest version of the software that I had just upgraded had a better way of connecting to the server - I mentioned this to the tech support guy and as he rambled on for a few minutes about how much better the new connection is, I changed the configuration to include the new connection and confirmed that it worked correctly. Finally, the tech support guy started with "so let's open up the coin-furg-ation set up [yes the second call started on teir 1 again] - go to Start and Control Panel". I told him that I already had it confugured and tested, I thanked him for his time and ended the call.

So, my question: Is there a way to bypass tier one? Can there be a code phrase known by all tech support that says "let's act like we've done everything in your little booklet already, can you just pass me to tier 2, where probability is higher that I will talk to somebody who speaks English with a more American accent, and so I don't waste your time and you don't waste mine?"

The guy who had me delete my configuration file just sent me over the top. Especially when it still seems that their inital connection port is dead on their server. I guess that it forces the upgrade process, but I think that it seems really rude.

Well, it's free... like a puppy....

People who like Linux obviously don't value their time. I have spent the last 2 months installing Linux on my server. (I obviously haven't spent 8 solid weeks, but I started the process 2 months ago. I have spent about 40 hours in the last week.)

I have used Linux before, but the server was about 15 years old. (It was given to me by somebody who upgraded their home computer and knew I was needing a server. So, it was obsolete to him, and that was 9 years ago.) And the version of Linux that was on it didn't get updated very often - aka ever. I will appreciate the comfort of knowing the there is an update engine now.

On the positive side, as I sort of stated before, Linux will run on very old equipment very well. And from past experience, it is very stable. I also have a Windows server and other than not getting along with my KVM switch, it has been very reliable, too. But the computer that is now running Linux was dying under XP, I didn't want to even consider Vista on it. I can see how if I was getting Linux for a desktop or laptop where I might not care so much about detail-tweaking Linux might be worth it.

On the negative side, since it is Open Source, the flaws are very exposed, which creates a very uncomfortable feeling. Several years ago, I actually received calls from a university because somebody had hacked my system, set up their own user account and was actively using that account to hack into the university's servers. Ever since then, I have never really favored the security model that Linux provides. Also, finding help with issues is very difficult for several reasons. First of all, the people like me who don't quite trust the reliability of Linux aren't willing to give too much information about their systems' setups for exposure reasons - if I talk about servicexyz on my system and the trouble I had with setting up the tuv-port, it would show that I might not have considered the issues with qrs-port that all the hackers are exploiting. Secondly, the assistance that I was able to find talked about servicexyz v4, and I really have no idea what version was included with my version of Linux. Finally, there are lots of wikis and forums on Linux, but I don't know if the post that I am reading was written by Linus Torvalds himself or somebody just as incompetent as myself.

I do feel that my server is up and running now, so our rss feeds and email should be much more stable. For now, I am going to do my victory lap as I sing "I am the champion... of my world!"

Perspective...

Last night, my daughter refused to eat a chocolate covered strawberry that was offered to her. "Dad," she whispered to me, "I don't want to eat a dirty strawberry."

When she was offered an ice cream bar last night, it seemed that "dirty" ice cream is acceptable.

So long and thanks for all the fish....

*sniff*

[sic]

I received a letter today from a local restaurant. I have removed the restaurant's name to protect the stupid.

---

Congratulations.....YOU'RE ARE ALWAYS WINNER...at XYZ!
.
.
.
To redeem this offer, simply present this letter,(not to exceed $3.99) your server when you order at your local XYZ.
.
.
.

---

The General Manager of the restaurant even bothered to hand sign it. All in all, it was a very professional looking letter. Do I highlight it when I return it? Do I add proper proof reading notation?

Colorado

Yeah - I hate these emails just as much as the next guy, but this one actually struck a chord.

You know when you're from Colorado if:

• You'll eat ice cream in the winter.
• The weather report says it's going to be 65 degrees, you shave your legs and wear a skirt.
• It snows 5 inches and you don't expect school to be canceled.
• You'll wear flip flops every day of the year, regardless of temperature.
• You have no accent at all, but can hear other people's. And then you make fun of them.
• "Humid" is over 25%.
• Your sense of direction is: Toward the mountains and Away from the mountains.
• You say "the Interstate" and everybody knows which one.
• You think that May is a totally normal month for a blizzard, and you grew up planning your halloween costumes around your coat.
• You know what the Continental Divide is.
• You don't think Coors beer is that big a deal.
• You went to Casa Bonita as a child.
• You bought your car from John Elway.
• You were tear gassed at college and you can't even remember why.... something about football...
• You've gone off-roading in a vehicle that was never intended for such activities.
• You always know the elevation of where you are.
• You know that there are two kinds of Colorado Girls: those who shave, and those who don't.
• You wake up to a beautiful, 80 degree day and you wonder if it's going to snow tomorrow.
• You don't care that some company renamed it, the Broncos still play at Mile High.
• You know that Colfax is a street you would most likely find a hooker.
• You get pissed off when people confuse Colorado with Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, or "one of those other big square states out west."
• When you hear that the Chiefs and the Raiders are having bad seasons,you laugh uncontrollably.
• Every movie theater has military and student discounts.
• Everybody wears jeans to church.
• You actually know that South Park is a real place not just a show on TV.
• You know what a "trust fund hippy" is, and you know its natural habitat is Boulder.
• You know you're talking to a fellow Coloradan when they call it Elitches, not Six Flags.
• You can never figure out why your out-of-town guests faint from altitude sickness on a picnic to the mountains.
• Your two favorite teams are the Broncos and whoever is beating the crap out of the Raiders.
• You know there are different types of snow, and you know not all types are good for sledding, snowballs, or snowmen.
• You've experienced shoveling a driveway, but once you finish, you have to start right over.
• You've been to the original Chipotle near the DU campus on Evans.
• When people out East tell you they have mountains in their state too, you just laugh.
• You go anywhere else on the planet and the air feels "sticky" and you notice the sky is no longer blue.
• At least one family member has some 4 wheel drive vehicle.
• The weather channel calls for snow so you plan a snowboarding/ski trip for the next day and know that a coat won't be necessary because it won't be cold enough.
• You don't even bother checking the news for school cancellations unless you can only see solid white outside your window and your front door won't open.
• You were taught to drive in the snow before you got your license.

And you thought 'Episode I' sucked....

Well, I have just finished watching the Star Wars Holiday Special. (I am quite aware that most of you have never even heard of this disaster in the Star Wars archives.) I was one of those who started watching it 29 years ago and was forced to shut it off by an older brother who thought that it was too stupid to watch....

So, for 29 years I have wondered what I had missed. For about 15 years, I was totally in the dark and actually slightly bitter at my brother - then, thanks to the Internet, geeks around the world began to circulate this awful show on VHS - discussing how awful it was and telling stories of how horribly drunk the cast was.

This year I actually met somebody who admitted to owning a copy. And against my better judgement, I talked him into letting me see it. I have to say that it didn't live down to the awful standard that had proceeded it. I wouldn't say that I actually enjoyed it - but I understand why my brother shut it off. And I understand why it only aired once. And I understand why George Lucas wants to hunt down every bootleg copy of it and destroy it. (To his defense, George's name was nowhere near the credits.)

It is a typical 70s holiday special set in the Star Wars universe. There are lots of other stars doing song and dance numbers. But since it was in a galaxy far far away, there was no Christ for Christmas and so all of the songs were cheesey, new-agey "Life Day" songs. And in typical 70s holiday special style, there was a very disjointed and stupid story line kind of holding the whole thing together. (Sorry, I'm running out of appropriate adjectives here)

I think that the worse part was that the center of action was Chewbacca's family (wife, son and father) and there were no subtitles - just random grunts followed by signs and jestures so that the audience could sort of follow the plot, if they so desired. They could have shortened to whole thing to one hour (yes, shortened - from about two full hours without commercials) by using subtitles. Also to add to character development, they showed some features of the Wookee home and "Life Day presents" which, if removed, could have shortened it to maybe 15 minutes - which is about all it is worth. And a 15 minute show isn't really worth watching, so save yourself some time.

Truly a great argument against non-religious celebration of religious holidays, broadcast television, and drinking.

Thanks Tone

For those who have been paying attention....

In 2002 and 2003, Microsoft released their most recent versions of Windows and Office. Since then, the Reseach and Development team has basically started from the ground up and spent a great majority of their time researching how their software and operating system are actually used and not just how Microsoft thinks their product should be used. They have taken this research and greatly improved on the most used functions and made improvement on ease of use in these specific areas.

No wonder solitaire now ROCKS!

;)

Still waiting...

So, my last post was about my Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.... It's turned into a month or two.

I noticed today that there is still snow in my parking spot from 3 months ago....

My last week has been particularly awful....

Next week is break - so I get to spend time "relaxing" (aka cleaning the basement, fixing cars, fixing computers, writing computer programs and installing servers - all while being attacked by a 20 mo. and an almost 4 year old kid). My break is over and I don't even remember having it yet....

Oh - and there's a birthday in there somewhere too I guess....

Hoping for a good few days in there somewhere....

Australia here I come...

I know this is a reference that not everybody's going to get, but: Alexander's daddy has had a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad week.

My Song....

Hey look - somebody wrote me a song! (All except the bubblewrap part...)

The parable of the water bottles

I went to my car this morning and there was a water sitting by itself in the cup holder next to the driver's seat. Since it was only 4 degrees outside, it was solid ice and could only be used to kill small rodents. However, behind the seats I had a package of 24 other water bottles - same size and same conditions as the water bottle by the drivers seat, however, since they were together in a bundle, the ice inside the bottle was thin and with very little effort, was drinkable.

Last summer, the water bottle next to the driver's seat was hot and horrible to taste. However, again the water in the bundle, although not exactly wonderful, was refreshing enough on a hot day.

Travel Log

Doing better on the US than...

Yeah... It counts as 0%

Do you think I can visit the 37 non-original colonies before I hit the main Atlantic? I think I should try to hit Maine and Alaska before I leave the country.

Been to Florida 3 times - all by flight. My opinion: It doesn't count as an East state or a South state - it's Florida.

Looks like the next family trip gets to be N. Dakota. Yay! Perhaps we could go to the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople.

create your own visited states map or create your own visited countries map

Yay Bureaucracy!

So, the other day, I put in a request to buy a few copies of Windows Vista and Office 2007 for my school. I wanted a few people to try running it so that as we get closer to the day the district buys it, I will know some of the ins, outs, and other issues, and will be a lot more effective in training teachers on how to use the new products. I can also test the other software that we have for compatibility. (Keep in mind that these are both huge parts of my job description. Also keep in mind that I have been running the Betas and Release Candidates for both for several months - and love them - I just want to get the official final releases - to see if the RSS issues that I'm having got fixed - among other things. It would also be nice for my entire life not to collapse in April when the Betas expire.)

Of course, my request was turned down.

Now, the reason is the fun part. I was turned down because somebody in ITS (who happened to be me) loaded the Beta for Windows and found an issue that was significant. Well, last week, we upgraded our email software, the main program that I had a conflict with, and so it would be nice to run the new email software on the official release of Windows Vista to see if the problem still exists. But I can't because I previously found an issue and reported it.

Well, I wrote to one of the people whose job is it officially, by the district, to do this testing and reporting, let her know about the hang-up, and she found a way to get me a few copies of both. And my old department chair, who is now her boss, okayed the purchase, so I might be getting back to work soon....

That is, if it ever stops snowing so the shipment can actually get here.... It should all thaw by April. Right?