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Everything ends

Sunday, September 1st, 2013

It was my birthday yesterday, and Marion and I thought we’d go dancing. The studio we dance at has Saturday evening dances, but they’re not held every week, so I pulled up their web page to make sure they had a dance.

Imagine our surprise to see the following notice:

August 31 – Our last Open Dance!! Join us for a send-off party for Steve & Linda and the studio staff!! The teachers and staff will all be here for the evening to dance and visit! Light snacks, good music and several exhibitions will make a fun evening of social dancing! Also, get the latest news on where your favorite instructors will be teaching!

Thanks to all our friends for all the support and warm wishes! Hope to see you soon!

It turns out that Steve, the owner of the studio, is closing it for reasons of health, and because he got a “too good to pass up” offer for the building. The new owner is going to put in a high-end restaurant and a few shops. Part of the gentrification process that’s been going on in the neighborhood for quite some time. I lived in the neighborhood for more than a decade until about five years ago, so I saw a lot of the recent changes. The loss of the dance floor will hurt, though – it’s about the largest dance floor in town (over 5000 square feet).

We went to the dance, which was nice. We saw and talked with a number of people we hadn’t seen in a long time, but because it was so crowded, the dancing wasn’t as fun. We wouldn’t have wanted to miss it, though.

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Serendipitous Discovery

Saturday, August 3rd, 2013

My daughter and I went to check out a restaurant supply store this afternoon. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sell to the public; you have to have a business license to shop there.

So, we went to the IKEA store that’s not far from it. Neither of us had been to it before, and it was interesting wandering through it. Well, I say wandering, but they’ve arranged things so that there’s a preferred path through the store that everyone more or less follows. Still, it was interesting, an I saw a few things I may go back for.

Afterward, we decided to have an early dinner, and we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to try out a place we were passing by, the Street Kitchen Asian Bistro. I decided to try the okonomiyaki appetizer, because I’ve read about it for years, but never run across any place that offered it before. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, based on what I’d read about it, but it was very good.

For the main course, I had the roasted pork belly stuffed with chinese chives, with steamed baby bok choi and brown rice side dishes, which was fabulous. Cheryl had the Char Kuey Teow – pan-fried flat rice noodles with pork, lap cheong sausage, bean sprouts, eggs, and garlic chives. It was pretty good, but I didn’t think it could match mine.

The only place I felt they fell short was the iced tea, which was instant instead of brewed. Still, I’d go back there anytime.

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Voting Irregularities

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

I voted this morning – at least, I tried to. I’ve been a registered voter here in Colorado since I moved here in the early 1980s. I’ve been registered at my current address for the last few election cycles. I received my voter registration card in the mail some time ago. I always vote in person, because I’m leery of having my ballot mailed to me. I was not anticipating problems.

I was eighth in line when the polls opened this morning, but the line moved slowly. Where I vote, they have printed lists (small books, really) showing everyone who is registered and assigned to that polling station. Each name indicates whether the person already voted by mail, already voted in early voting, or was eligible to vote in person today. It turned out that the first twelve of us in line were not even listed in the books or the supplemental lists. I’m hoping that this was just a glitch, but I’m not even going to be able to verify whether my provisional ballot was counted for two and a half weeks.

I’ve been registered as an independent most of my voting life. I was registered Republican in the early 1970s for a few years, then independent for several years, Democrat during the 1992 election season, and independent (referred to as “unaffiliated” in Colorado) since. I’m hoping that this is just a glitch, but I fear that it may not be. I was getting two or three political calls a day for a while, mostly from Obama for America, but they pretty much stopped after I told them that there was no way I would vote to reelect him. I’m hoping that there’s no connection.

My polling station isn’t the only one where things have been occurring. During early voting, there were enough cases of voting machines registering Obama votes when the Romney button was pressed (“calibration problems,” everyone was told) that the Republicans wrote to the AGs of six states asking that the issue be looked into. You aren’t allowed to campaign near a polling station, but some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that. Some people don’t believe that.

There are other problems as well. Besides the Philadelphia Republican poll watchers being evicted noted at one of the links above, we have New Black Panthers patrolling at polling stations again, armed threats in Detroit, trashed ballots in California, shredded registrations of Republicans, suppression of military voting, non-citizens voting in Nevada, only Spanish-language provisional ballots in parts of New Mexico (Why is this even allowed? You can’t vote unless you’re a citizen, and you can’t become naturalized without demonstrating proficiency in English.), fraudulent flyers, and preemptive attacks on vote fraud watchdog efforts.

Not to mention vote fraud. And conspiracy to commit vote fraud. Did I mention vote fraud?

Is it any wonder I’m concerned?

Update: Local TV news is saying that what I experienced is apparently a pretty widespread problem caused by election officials “misreading” the lists. They’ve asked people to contact their reporter via Twitter or Facebook, neither of which I use.

Posted in Activities, It's all about me, Politics | Comments Closed

Activity for the month?

Thursday, November 1st, 2012

Not very likely.

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Music Time

Friday, October 12th, 2012

Off to an Aldrine Guerrero concert tonight. Maybe tomorrow or Sunday I’ll be able to clean out some links I’ve been accumulating.

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I have a new ukulele

Monday, August 6th, 2012

For the past month or so, I’ve been taking a class at the Colorado School of Lutherie, in which I built a tenor ukulele. Class was twice a week for three hours a night, and nominally five weeks in duration. It actually lasted for a couple of extra sessions, and I had a final session on Saturday that wasn’t part of the standard class (I learned how to install a pickup in my instrument).

I’m quite pleased with the way it came out. The sound is a rather more “trebley” than I care for, but Edward, who ran the class, tells me that the lower tones will develop as the instrument is played, and getting the sound “bright enough” when the instrument is built is the hard part.

Here’s the picture of the class with our ukes. I’m in the front row on the left side of the photo. Click for a larger view.

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Blogger Day of Silence

Friday, June 8th, 2012

Ace called for today to be a Day of Silence. Given my infrequent postings, I don’t know how anyone could tell whether or not I’m participating.

In any case, the purpose is to highlight the actions of Brett Kimberlin and his associates, and to call on Congress to take action to prevent the suppression of free speech intended by these actions.

Just to make it clear, I’m joining the effort.

Posted in Activities, In the news, Legal Affairs, Politics, Voices | Comments Closed

Everyone Knows It’s Windy

Monday, March 26th, 2012

It’s been a windy day in the area, today. The forecast called for gusts up to 55mph, and I have no doubt that that speed was reached. I’m still hearing occasional gusty winds now, around 9pm. There’s a building being constructed in the lot next to the building I work in, and tremendous amounts of dust were being picked up this afternoon; it was actually limiting visibility.

I went out at lunch to see if I could fly my kite – I’ve got a Skynasaur F-36 sport kite that I haven’t flown in more than a decade. The winds were so strong that the string almost cut my fingers, and one of the two lines snapped before the kite was up 30 feet. I decided that I’d been given a sign that kite flying was not in the cards for today.

I’ll have to try again on a day when the wind isn’t quite so strong. I’ll also have to learn how to adjust the harness on the kite; I’m not sure that it’s set up properly, because it tried to head upwind past my head the moment it got into the air.

Posted in Activities, Fun Stuff, Toys | Comments Closed

Tough trip for tech

Monday, November 28th, 2011

I just got back from a trip to New York (NYC and Binghamton/Syracuse). Overall, I had a great time, but I can’t say the same for much of the technology I took with me. My cellphone came through without problems, but my camera and laptop both suffered.

The camera (a Sony DSC-TX5) got turned on my pocket, where I’d started to carry it after I noticed the stitching on the belt strap on the pouch I normally kept it in had come almost completely undone. When this happened, it appears that the touchscreen got recalibrated. I can’t get it back into working order, because, with the touchscreen as far out of calibration as it is, I can’t operate the menus to invoke the touchscreen calibration routine. If there’s a way to do it through the USB connection, Sony won’t admit it, so I’m left with sending it in for service (or buying a replacement). The current more-or-less equivalent camera (the DSC-TX9, I think), has more megapixels, which is likely a point against it in my book. Some years ago, I read a very good article that made the point that most point-and-shoot cameras don’t have lenses that are good enough to make more than 7-8 megapixels worthwhile. My camera has 10 megapixels, and the newer model has 14, IIRC.

The laptop is a different story. It worked through most of the trip without problem, but Friday morning, the screen was totally dead. I tried a number of things, and it appeared that everything was working except the display. Luckily, I have a smartphone with internet access, and a quick search for “MacBook Pro screen dead” revealed that this is a known problem caused by defective video chips that were supplied to Apple. Because of that, Apple decided that repairs of this problem would be free of charge, even if your laptop was no longer covered by warranty, as long as it occurred within 4 years of purchase. I’m probably out of luck – I’m about 3-4 weeks past 4 years. Maybe they’ll be lenient.

As it is, I’m just glad that Apple put the ability to boot into “target disk” mode into the OS – I’m currently moving the contents of my hard drive over to an external USB drive prior to taking the laptop in for evaluation/repair. I’ve read that Apple, like numerous other repair centers, has been known to reformat a hard drive even when it’s not necessary, just because it makes it easier for them. Since the MacBook has been my primary system for a few years now, I’m not willing to let them do that without getting a current backup (my last one is a bit out of date). It took me a while to find a local store that had the correct FireWire cable (even my local Apple Store didn’t), but the process seems to be going smoothly enough.

Posted in Activities, Behind the scenes, Macs | Comments Closed

What a revoltin’ development!

Saturday, August 27th, 2011

Marion and I went to the Arvada Center to see the ballet performance tonight. I’m not much into ballet, but Marion is, so I go. We were surprised to see instruments and amplifiers on the stage, leaving very little room for dancers. It turns out that the first portion of the show was not listed in the program: The Playground Ensemble, a “new chamber music” group associated with the Lamont School of Music at DU, was an unbilled opening act. The describe themselves as “a group of professional musicians and composers dedicated to presenting classical music as a living art form.” Their stated mission is “to provide stimulating performances, expand common perceptions of both contemporary music and the chamber ensemble, and nurture a community around this music that we love.”

We didn’t care for it at all. As the group’s leader stated in the narration to their second piece, classical music doesn’t have to be old, it doesn’t have to be a museum piece, and it doesn’t have to be pretty. By “museum piece,” he apparently meant “performed as scored.” Not in the sense that they disregarded the written music – I couldn’t determine that – but that they didn’t use traditional instrumentation. The piece they did that was closest to what many people would consider music was an operatic aria performed as “heavy metal vocal performance,” using a drumset, electric guitar and bass, among other instruments. At times, they used loops of chanting and other vocal effects. Most of what they did was dissonant and ugly – to me, at least. Marion’s comment at the end of the evening was that they made Shostakovich (whose music was the soundtrack for a portion of the ballet performance) sound normal.

I’ve been told several times that I have eclectic taste in music (one friend once described my collection of LPs as demonstrating that I had “packrat taste” in music), but I don’t care if I never hear this stuff again.

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