On other matters...
When I came home today (before rushing off to see the show, see previous entry), I had a message from a friend, telling me that she sent me an email. Since this friend normally calls me for purposes of Lashon Hara[1] (eta: and knows it, prefacing it with something like 'boy, do I have some lashon hara', which she didn't do in the message) , and from the tone of her voice, I assumed it wasn't good news. And it wasn't. She'd seen on an email list (which I'm not on) that the father of my ex-wife passed away. This was sad. I hadn't seen him for about 20 years, but I liked him. (My ex-mother-in-law was a bit scary, but x-fil was not.)

When I came home a little while, after the show, I found a lovely note waiting for me on the front door. It said[2], "Hope you enjoyed the show. There is a dead giant cockroach under JD's old blue sneaker in front of the étager. Please dispose of the body. Love, Joy"

It's so nice to know I'm needed. And I don't mean that sarcastically. I do hope that the demise of said giant cockroach wasn't too traumatic. You see, Joy has long had issues with cockroaches of the giant variety (also known as "water bugs", but really probably an American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) ). She'll kill them, but if there's anyone else around who can get rid of the carcass, she will let them do the deed.

Oh, also it's been three years now since I started at $COMPANY. Things have been good, and I should probably get to sleep soon so I can have a productive day tomorrow and not feel like a zombie...

[1] Lashon Hara: Gossip (literally tounge bad). It's not a good thing... but sometimes it's so hard to avoid...
[2] Well, not exactly; Joy used her and JD's real names

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Sondheim++
Today is (unless I take more than 35 minutes writing this) Stephen Sondheim's birthday. (Happy Birthday, again!).

Wait, why did I write "again" above? Well, because I already wished him "Happy Birthday", along with the cast and most of the audience of _Sunday in the Park with George_ on Broadway. Yep, another one to add to my Sonheim Musical life list. I think this leaves _Sweeney Todd_, _Passion_, and _Road Show_ as the musicals where he did music and lyrics which I haven't seen (live) at all.

My seats were at the back and to the side, which meant I didn't get the whole effect of Chromolume #7, but I'm not complaining -- at first I thought I wouldn't get to see it at all. Sorry, but I'm not willing to spend $499 on premium seats, although I'm sure those are not at the back or to the side.

It's a school night, so Joy and JD stayed home (more on that in another post, perhaps).

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Troilus and Cressida
This summer, the Public Theater (aka Shakespeare in the Park) is doing Troilus and Cressida. Joy waited on line earlier this week for tickets, and we got to see the show! (Add another to my Shakespeare life list!). The show was really good (although it was a little bit odd that the set design cut off views to the back of the set for at least 1 section on each side). The important action was at the front, so that was OK.

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She loves me (not)
She loves me, she loves me not...

Luckily I'm not talking about Joy. Joy loves me.

I'm talking about the Broadway show, "She loves me". I wanted to see it, but the last time when it would make sense for me to go see it was on Thursday. It wasn't on the half price line... until around 5, when it popped up... but I didn't leave work until 5:45, at which point it wasn't on it any more. So, I didn't get to see it. Sigh.

Anyhow, I hope your 4th of July is full of love!

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City Center Encores, again
Yet another Sondheim show that City Center Encores put on, which I saw for the first time.

This time, "Do I Hear A Waltz". It's not Sondheim's favorite musical, and that's understandable. It was a collaboration with Richard Rogers (as in "and Hart" and, more famously, "and Hammerstein"), and from Sondheim's description of it in his book (Finishing the Hat), the collaboration was a bit fraught. But just because he doesn't like it much doesn't mean that I have to feel the same way. And I wouldn't know how I felt until I saw it, right? Right.

So I did.

This time I sat closer up -- no nosebleeds for me this time. And it was just me, as Joy was working and JD was at a ball game. But I enjoyed it. There are several fun pieces (especially since they didn't do the truncated "We're gonna be all right"), and Richard Rogers really was good at writing melodies. And even though Sondheim probably didn't regard it as his best lyrics, they are funny.

For example, while Sonheim says in FtH that he found "What do we do? We fly!" repetitive, it's still very funny, has a catchy tune, and is disturbingly still on point (except for the bit about food, although I guess they still serve food on international flights).

I don't have time to continue with my analysis now, but I will say that I enjoyed the experience even though the show is a bit of a downer at points.

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Post Pesach Ponderings
You may have noticed a distinct lack of pre-pesach Goljerp postings. Perhaps you thought I've just stopped posting altogether. That is somewhat true. However, another reason is that I wasn't going crazy getting ready, because we weren't at home during Passover.

The first part of Passover (the seders) were in the Boston area, with Joy's family. But then, after we left Boston, we went more or less straight to a hotel which was taken over by one of the Kosher tour operators.

I had a number of thoughts about this beforehand, and here they are in easy to see list form with +s, -s, and ?s about staying in a hotel:
( more thoughtsCollapse )
In conclusion, we had a good experience, and may very well do it again another year -- or perhaps do something where we fit in more (Isabel Freedman center?).

NOTE: if there are any terms which are unclear, feel free to ask in comments for explanations.

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And the decision was...
(See previous post, re: which Bujold to read next)

e. Finish Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, then read Cyroburn on Saturday night and during free time on Sunday, starting Gentleman Jole around 5:30pm on Sunday...

I'm lucky I'm a fast reader, I suppose, because I also seem to still be unable to put down new books before I'm done, in many cases.

Ah, well, I can go slower on the inevitable re-reads. :-)

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What to read next
I've been re-reading Bujold's Vorkosigan books, more or less in internal chronological order, anticipating the dead-tree publishing date of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen in February. I've just got two books left. However, I just opened a box with my copy of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (which I shall call GJatRQ from now on) inside. So do I:

a. Finish the two books first, which will probably mean I'll have to wait until Friday night to read GJatRQ

b. Start GJatRQ now, which will probably mean I will get no sleep tonight

c. Start GJatRQ tomorrow, which will probably mean I will get no sleep on Wednesday night

d. Wait until the official dead tree release date of February 2nd to read GJatRQ.

I can eliminate choice d, but other than that, I'm not sure what to do. Hmm...

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My fandom betrays me
When I heard the news of David Bowie's death, I was surprised. I hadn't known he was sick. Still, I didn't really listen to his music. I wasn't took shaken up... until I realized that he was "The goblin king" in Labyrinth. Dang!

Alan Rickman passed away shortly afterwards. I guess he was in the Harry Potter movies, but I was never too into them. So didn't really hit me too hard... until I realized that he was "Dr. Lazarus" in Galaxy Quest. By Grabthar's Hammer, was I upset!

A few days ago, I heard that Glen Frey, one of the founding members of the Eagles, died. The Eagles? I guess I'd heard of the band, but I don't really listen to much Rock. I suppose I enjoyed a few of their songs, but... wait, the theme to Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy was "Journey of the Sorcerer", by the Eagles? Argh!

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Birthdays
The best part about *not* putting your birthday on Facebook is that you can then feel sorry for yourself that none of your online friends know when your birthday is. [1] Except for $OLD_COLLEGE_CHUM, who wrote a cron job which sent an email once a year, at least until they shut down his machine, or your (retired) graduate advisor's machine gets taken down or stops forwarding email.

Actually, I am not fishing for birthday wishes, or even bitter about the fact that the birthday cake which Joy ordered delivered for my birthday kiddush got delivered to a different Jewish institution two blocks away. Because the half-sheet cake (suitable for 25 people) was eventually found, and Joy gave it to me as a surprise! Now we have cake in the freezer, and cake for our building's holiday party on Sunday. Win-win!

[1] This works even better if you don't even check facebook for several days, so your self-pity doesn't get disrupted by reality. So don't go all "I actually did wish you happy birthday on facebook, dude" because that's not the point. :-)

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Pride and Prejudice and Dragons
I am reading Pride and Prejudice again. But this time, I'm doing so immediately after reading Tooth and Claw. And I must say, PaP makes a lot more sense than it did before. I mean, what exactly was so horrible about what Lydia and Wickham did? Obviously what happened is Lydia rubbed up against Wickham, thereby blushing, but without the intention of getting married. Also, I can really imagine Lady Catherine as a very large, deep red, Dragon.

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When would you go?
So suppose that you could send a camera-equivalent or two back in time -- totally stealthed, so it wouldn't be noticed by anyone. Let's say that for hand-waving quantum reasons, it couldn't go back more than 400 years, and for hand-waving privacy reasons, the mad scientist who created the thing hard-coded a limitation that it wouldn't go back less than 50 years, and wouldn't actually record any information about anyone who was alive when he gave his invention to humanity (let's say, today). Oh, and the thing will explode if tampered with, and will only work 5 times.

On the other hand, the camera-equivalents are really nifty, and have a rudimentary AI -- you can give them directions like "follow the crowd" and they will. And, depending upon what you want to record, they can stay up to a couple of months at a shot. (If you want to passively record gamma rays or X-rays, it'll be a much shorter visit than if you settle for the visible spectrum. If you want IR/UV, that'll shave off less time, but will be noticable.)

SO, when should they be sent, and with what general objectives?

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Commentary on Actually, they threw milk
So I was reading a poem, and my first reaction was "Actually, they threw milk", to the line "they threw stones at me".
I understand why an American poet writing for an American audience would say "they threw stones at me", rather than "they threw milk at me". Threw milk? Huh? Milk isn't really an object that one thinks of as a projectile. And, as an American, my mental image of milk in a form which can be thrown is this:
( image of milk (creative commons)Collapse )
Maybe the "shelf stable" boxes. But in reality, the milk was like this:
( image of milk in bagCollapse )
It wasn't a deadly projectile, but it did have a splash effect. I think some of it may have been chocolate milk. But that's not really the point of the poem. But somehow when I was rejecting the idea of writing a comment in the blog where the poem was, something about my reaction needed to be a poem itself. I didn't spend much time polishing it -- I was late for work as it was -- but I'll leave it as is.

[edit: fixed lj-cut text]

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Actually, they threw milk (a poem)
Actually, they threw milk.
The rest of it is true
even the dragons
but actually, it was milk that got thrown
in the stark, half-awake morning
filled with hateful shouting and jeers.
Actually, it was milk in innocent plastic bags
splashing on our prayer shawls and backpacks
in the Jerusalem dawn.


[Sometimes it's better not to write a poem as a comment on a post of a poem written by your poetical ex, but maybe the poem just wants to be written somewhere.]

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Another travel Sunday
This coming Sunday will be the 6th consecutive Sunday that I have travelled this summer. For those keeping track at home, first it was travelling back from a weekend in Atlanta (Bar Mitzvah), then it was travelling to Seattle (vacation), then travelling home from Seattle, then it was travelling to MA (visiting family), then travelling home from MA, and this coming Sunday travelling back from a weekend in Chicago (Bar Mitzvah). JD and Joy are staying at home this time, so it's also my first solo trip this summer. I haven't travelled solo in a while, so that will be interesting. I haven't been to Chicago in a long time, so that will make it extra interesting. Now I'm starting to get worried, so I'd better stop while I'm ahead, and wish everyone safe travels, or good times at home.

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Seattle Visit!
Had a great time in Seattle; saw Jeff, did touristy stuff, went to Mt. Rainier... and now I've got to go.

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Schadenfreude?
So I've discovered that $FORMER_COMPANY, where I worked before I started at $CURRENT_COMPANY, is in bankrupcy proceedings. I feel bad for my former cow orkers who are still at $FORMER_COMPANY, but I don't think that many of them are actually still there. I'm sure that the owners of $FORMER_COMPANY are doing fine, so I'm not feeling bad about them. But, still. Sigh.

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It's alive!
Back at the end of March 2014, I started work at $COMPANY. There was the normal initial startup stuff, getting my development environment in place, downloading SQuirreL, JEdit, and Eclipse; getting a working version of Websphere and configuring it, etc. Also learning about what $COMPANY does; I'd never worked in the $INDUSTRY_CATEGORY sector before. Who knew that $MEANINGLESS_ACRONYM meant $INDUSTRY_SPECIFIC_JARGON in the $INDUSTRY_CATEGORY world? Not me.

Anyhow, after helping another developer with a problem where my response was, "Java webstart might help!" (it didn't, in the long run, but it was worth a try), I started work on $PROJECT. $PROJECT was the attempt to take a 10 year old "program" written in "Lotus Notes" and used internally by about 120 people at $COMPANY and recreate the functionality with Java talking to a real database (well, OK, DB2).

On Monday it went live.

Needless to say, my life has been busy. It feels like I had more emails I needed to respond to in the last two days than I had the entire first year at $COMPANY. Some questions have been of the "obviously you have not read the documentation or listened to us when we had training sessions" variety. Some have been of the "wait, are you sure that you should be working in the $INDUSTRY_CATEGORY sector? You don't seem to know what $MEANINGLESS_ACRONYM means!" And some have been real bugs. A few of them have been due to $COW_ORKER's code, but a good share have been mine. Of course, I am professional, so have answered politely in all cases. And $SENIOR_COW_ORKER has been answering a bit less politely when needed. :-)

So life is very busy. That's why I'm not writing about JD's summer camp experiences, or the fact that we're going to Seattle next month, or the CSA veggies which we've been good about cooking (except the leeks, never can figure out how to cook the leeks in a limited amount of time).

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In my home
In my home, Pluto is a planet. And I'm thrilled about New Horizons' mission there.

Closest approach in about 8 minutes, woo hoo!


Edited to add a link:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

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Do I look like a tourist?
Do I look like a tourist? Or an easy mark?

On Tuesday night I realized that I'd forgotten to put more money on a metrocard for Joy. Since she usually takes busses, it's tricky for her to do this herself. So, I decided that I would go out around 8:45pm and do this while she was working. I also needed to do a bit of shopping, so instead of going to the subway station next to Columbia University, I'd go to the ABCD station on 125th street. Now, I've been going to that station pretty much every morning for work since 2006 (with the exception, of course, of the nearly year gap between jobs). So I know it well. However, I usually do not go to that station in the evening.

Alas, my experience there the other night, while not horrible, was sufficient for me to continue my habit. Basically, as walked up the stairs from the subway, a guy holding a plastic bottle bumped into me and dropped the bottle. Yes, the classic "broken bottle" scam. I said, as I normally do in situations where someone bumps me, "Sorry 'bout that" (can't hurt to be polite), and kept on going up the stairs. The bottle clunked in that way plastic does, and didn't actually sound like it broke. The guy started yelling at me, and I kept walking. Now, however, I had a problem. It was around 9pm, and the most direct route home was pretty dark and deserted. If the guy was going to follow me and try to intimidate me, I wanted it to be someplace well lit, where I wasn't alone. So I walked in the "wrong" direction, and pretended to be thinking about going into a well lit store while figuring out what the guy was doing. Sure enough, he followed me, and said "My vodka broke!" My response "Sorry!" (what eloquence!)
Scammer: "You should buy me another bottle!"
Goljerp: "Look, I'm not falling for that scam. You want me to call --"
Scammer: "It's cool, it's OK --"
Goljerp: "-- a cop, I can call a cop "
Scammer: "It's OK, good night..."

This kind of scammer doesn't want to *really* get physical or anything, just a quick and easy payoff from someone who is intimidated or feels guilty about being careless. But I can tell you that it took me a while to calm down afterwards, and it was not a pleasant experience. Next time, I'll walk to the stop near Columbia. :-/

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