I found a place on the web where I can order the parts to fix (probably) the DAT player, so the parts are now ordered and should be on their way soon. Actually, it's just one part, but I bought two of them so I'd have a spare, since this particular part tends to go bad just from the DAT player sitting unused. *sigh*

And then, I should be able to do these transfers.

So I went down to the basement to try to transfer some old DAT tapes to the computer. Neither one of the DAT decks appears to be working correctly. *sigh*

I've found a part number for one of them, at least.

samwinolj, Bonnie, Jerry, daisy_knotwise, and I headed down to the Loop today for the previews of The Addams Family, the new musical starring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth. Gretchen's capsule review was "Well, it won't be a classic of the American theater, but it was a fun way to spend an afternoon." And that's pretty much true.

There's a structural problem in the second act that's caused by the leads not being the romantic leads in the show, with the result that a number that should be very near the end of the act ends up being pushed substantially too early. (In my opinion, of course.) This leads to a relatively weak number just before the end of the musical, but I'm really not sure how to fix it. On the other hand, that's what tryouts are for.

There are a number of current references in the show, most of which were pretty funny, one of which falls in the politically polarizing category and resulted in a brief halt due to applause. I'm not convinced that applause is what you want there, because it disrupts the timing pretty severely. We'll see if it survives, I suppose.

Although the show is not supposed to be drawn from the old TV show or the movies, but from the original cartoons, they did have the good sense to license the TV theme. We even had a cameo by Cousin It.

And Uncle Fester, playing the role of Dr. Exposition, does his best to steal the show. And he gives it a very good try.

Gretchen, meanwhile, observes that it appears that all new Broadway musicals are required to have someone fly. She blames Cats.

My pithy observation was that Morticia may well be the role that Bebe Neuwirth was born to play: "Sybil on the Half-Shell".

Of course, after such a show, we find ourselves trying to figure out how to cast it with members of SpaceTime Theater. We concluded that daddy_guido and I would engage in a death match to determine which one of us was Gomez and which one was Uncle Fester. After that, we discovered we would run into an acute shortage of women. And I suggested importing catalana to play Morticia, as she can both sing and dance.

Though it's difficult trying to cast a musical when half of the cast doesn't want to sing. :)

I went through a bunch of old credit card statements today, because ISFiC wanted to know how much they owed me for the storage locker that has been being billed to my card. Suffice it to say that I can now pay my property taxes.

And my next installment of property taxes. The good news about having money sitting out there like this is that you're not tempted to spend it. I think of it as a payroll savings plan. And if I'd had the money invested over that period, it would be worth a lot less. :)

The hole that it leaves in ISFiC's books when it comes out, however, will be a sight to behold. Apparently, we managed to avoid paying me back for three years.

Tonight's Reason #385 For Why Katie Cannot Go To Bed Now:

"My feet are too big."

I pointed out that Daddy's feet are even bigger and he was planning to go to bed shortly.

Interestingly, it seems to be quiet now. Maybe too quiet...

I wandered over to the studio computer while doing laundry to send kriel an MP3 that he'd asked for. Naturally, the computer refused to boot up.

I eventually reset it to boot to the last known good configuration and managed to get it up and running. And the MP3 is in the mail. :)

Rassen frassen hardware...

Katie turned three years old today. Because I had to go to a Capricon meeting tonight -- which meant missing dinner with daisy_knotwise, Katie, and Julie -- we went out to Red Robin for lunch. There, they brought Katie a little chocolate sundae and sang their happy birthday song for her. Katie was delighted.

On the way home, we stopped at the bakery and picked up a small cake, because there had to be candles some time. Katie insisted. :)

And Katie had a decent haul of presents. Julie gave her the "Melody Time" DVD that Daddy had picked out, while Mommy and Daddy gave her several Dr. Seuss books and a box set of Curious George books. And there was much reading as a result.

But not when the cake was present, as you'll see.
( Photos and cake inside... )

Today is Katie's birthday, about which more later. But before I get around to that, I owe pictures dating back to the pre-WindyCon 36 era. Like, for instance, November 1st, the day when Julie turned 18 months old.
( Photos inside... )

I'm bemused. Or fascinated. Or something like that.

I went to create a new view using Remote ClearCase, because I needed to replicate an old view of mine that's created using the unusable-from-here standard ClearCase client. Since I just wanted to copy an existing view, I figured I'd get the available view list in the creation process and pick the one that matched my old view.

So in the drop list that resulted, I find something called "bills_crappy_code_view".

I'm not sure if the person who created it thought that I'd never see it or simply didn't care. In either case, it makes him not nearly as bright as he thinks he is.

I wonder who that belongs to. I suppose there's a way to find out who created it...

Update: Yes, yes, there is. And now I know.

The Five Guys at Randhurst showed up as "now open" when I checked their website this morning. I took advantage of this by heading up there for lunch.

It's more expensive and more food than I should have on most days, so I probably won't go there that often. But it certainly tasted good! :)

WindyCon is done for the year. I think things generally went well, but am a bit too tired to say anything else coherent at this point.

Maybe tomorrow. (But since I still haven't posted about Saturday and Sunday at OVFF... :) )

Having finished conferring and hobnobbing with my colleague in India, I am now going to join my wife in bed. *sigh*

Well, at least I'm officially on convention time now, because I am not getting up early tomorrow morning...

daisy_knotwise has decided that it is time for Katie to have a haircut. Given that she'll be three years old next week and hasn't yet had one, I suppose she's correct. I especially suppose she's correct given how little Katie likes to have her hair washed and brushed.

But I recall how my father used to cut our hair. One false move and it was time for a crew cut.

I'm hoping Katie didn't squirm too much.

Because it is two days until WindyCon, I should have expected that the hard drive in my main home machine -- the one with all the interesting data on it, including the Girl Genius presentation that I spent two hours working on last night -- would pick this moment to fail. *sigh*

Fortunately, that hard drive is part of a mirrored pair, so I've recovered the presentation from the working drive and will shut this down in just a minute. Then it's off to Fry's to buy another drive to replace the dead one.

I didn't have the hour to spare, but I surely don't have the data to spare.

I went to Sam's Club and the Jewel to pick up supplies for dinner, as I'd requested Superburger as being really, really easy to chew. And fried potatoes. Also really, really easy to chew. But we were out of onions and low on potatoes, so first to Sam's for those. I would have picked up more ground beef there too, but they were out, so I'll grab some tomorrow so we can make meatloaf. (Chorus: Really, really easy to chew!)

I also picked up several birthday presents for Katie -- a selection of Curious George stories, three Dr. Seuss books in a bundle, and the classic Disney music DVD -- as we're at T-minus seven for her third birthday. Those all remain safely hidden in my trunk for the moment.

When I called daisy_knotwise to let her know that she'd need to thaw the remaining ground beef in the freezer as I'd struck out on fresh, I asked her if there was anything else she wanted from the Jewel other than buns and Julie formula.

"Yes," she replied. "I want something wonderful, but I don't know what."

So I promised I'd look. And on the way there, I realized what the correct wonderful thing would be. So when I walked into the Jewel, I started to head toward the bakery section, except the wonderful thing was sitting on the display right as I walked in.

Pumpkin pie. I picked it up and dropped it in the cart. I made sure to pick up more pressurized whipped cream, because I didn't want to run out in mid-pie, along with the other Superburger ingredients to replenish what we were about to use up, and the Julie formula.

When I got home, I announced to Gretchen that I had found the wonderful thing and produced the pumpkin pie. Not at all to my surprise, she concurred.

So later in the evening, we cut up the pie, giving a small piece to Katie, a fair sized piece to me, and a big piece to Gretchen, as I warned her that Julie would mug her for part of her pie.

Boy, did she! Eventually, she was grabbing the remains of the pie out of Gretchen's dish and chowing down on it. And Katie also requested more pie. So Gretchen got more pie and got Katie another small piece.

And there was much pie. And it was good.

And there is still one large piece left. :)

By way of Instapundit -- and special attention to min0taur! -- I bring you this report on an upcoming space mission for lightsails.

The root canal (phase one) is complete. I'll still need a temporary filling and, later, a crown.

Apparently, the morphology of my tooth is unusual. Oh, look. There are five canals, not four. Although two of them did meet up further down. I'm told I got my money's worth on this one. :)

*sigh* So I saw my dentist today and now have a referral for a $1000+ root canal tomorrow. Ouch!

On the other hand, we're in the open enrollment period for my company benefits, so I think I will now probably buy the family dental insurance that I had been planning to pick up next year anyway. This won't help with the root canal, of course.

The sad thing is that there are moments when I think that the root canal might be the most pleasant thing that happens all week. :)

The bad tooth has gone from intermittent to fairly constant pain. Last night, I was able to control it with ibuprofen. Today, much less so. My dentist isn't picking up messages on his answering machine over the weekend, which is not a surprise.

Now, the last time this happened was New Year's Day 2000. I eventually found an emergency dentist and negotiated with him: I wouldn't make him come into the office and he would call in a prescription for antibiotics for me. And antibiotics were seeming like a better and better idea.

Rather than call an emergency dentist, I called Dr. Bob. And he has called my local pharmacy and ordered a course of amoxycillin.

Thank you, Dr. Bob!

I was noodling around with a couple of chords, one of which I don't normally use, and tripped over a chord progression that led me to this song. And it probably doesn't sound anything like you think that it does.

I think. :) But it does have a beat.
( Lyrics inside... )

Nobody here is desperately ill, but no one is exactly well either. Katie has a loose cough, Julie has some serious nasal congestion, daisy_knotwise has been under the weather for a bit and hit the wall this evening, and I've been fighting off a cold all week.

I think I'm also about to lose a tooth.

You may remember last month's post about how Lieutenant Stockwell is busily saving the timestream from the Large Hadron Collider. Well, apparently he's got the birds working for him too.

Do you know how long it takes to train a bird to drop a piece of bread in exactly the right place to disable the LHC?

Well, that went as well as I could reasonably have expected. Now, I just have a whole bunch of work to do. :)

Well, that may have been a career-limiting move. Or not.

I'll find out more tomorrow.

It's been more than a week since I came home from OVFF, so numerous details are starting to fade. In some cases, that may be good. :) But let's see what I do remember.
( Con report inside... )