Mid Week Mixed Bag

Today has a number of elements to it.  It is Wednesday of course, among other things like Hump Day and Veterans Day.  The day began with good News also.  Before I left work this morning the boss informed me of  a promotion and raise coming my way.  My elevation is due to his pending trip to visit his Mother in Bangladesh.  I am to assist his wife in the operation of the business while he is away.  More money is always nice and it not a salaried position so I will get paid fo rall the time I put in.  A definite win for me!

I had a really good Veterans Day moment this morning when I was sitting out on the patio in front of the store.  A handsome young man came up who was a regular customer approached the store.  The difference this morning  was that he was in the uniform of the a Navy ROTC cadet.  I had noticed his chevrons were of a Naval variety and had asked him to verify that it was Navy ROTC.  I mentioned that I like his branch of ROTC because I was a Navy Veteran.  He immediately thanked me for my service and I asked him about his goals and aspirations military wise.  He wants to be a pilot and as I served on an Aircraft Carrier in wartime, we had a lot to talk about.  It always gives me great pleasure to see a handsome young prospective Naval officer, dedicated to his goals,  So many of our young men have no direction, it is nice to see one who knows wherein  his path lies and a real pleasant way to begin my Veterans Day.  If you are a Veteran, Thank You for Your Service.  If you know a Service Member or Veteran, take a moment to say thanks today.  It will be so appreciated.  

Wednesday is also the usual day for New Adventures in Good Music, and I shall not disappoint there today, either.  I ran across a couple of fabulous recordings by Canadian Pianist Glen Gould.  I also found a couple of short documentaries that I want to share with you today.  

Today's play list explores the life and music of Gould, with two short documentaries and his most famously identified work, the Bach Goldberg Variations.  The first short documentary follows Glenn Gould to New York City. There, we see the renowned Canadian concert pianist kidding the cab driver, bantering with sound engineers at Columbia Records, and then, alone with the piano, fastidiously recording Bach's Italian Concerto.  In the second  short documentary, Gould enjoys a respite at his lakeside cottage. This is an aspect of Gould previously known only to the collie pacing beside him through the woods, the fishermen resting their oars to hear his piano, and fellow musicians like Franz Kraemer, with whom Gould talks of composition.

Glenn Gould's debut album of Bach's Goldberg Variations was recorded in June 1955. The Columbia LP quickly became one of the most revered piano recordings ever made and Gould became the most famous classical artist of the day. His exciting, unorthodox new way of playing Bach left listeners awestruck and critics around the world hailing him as a genius. But until recently this iconic album was limited by the dated recording technology of its time.

On September 25, 2006, history was made again. Zenph Studios recorded its debut re-performance® to standing ovations in the CBC's famed Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. The date would have been Glenn Gould's 74th birthday, and what a gift Zenph created to give his fans.

The Zenph re-performance is a revelation in its clarity, depth, and vibrancy. Gould seems to play at an almost inhuman speed and yet with complete accuracy. The 30 variations dazzle the listener with their inventiveness and variety. As music historian and Gould biographer Kevin Bazzana writes in the CD's liner notes, "Here, albeit with his trademark vocalizing no longer accompanying the performance, Gould's musical personality is unquestionably present..." 

The companion piece I have chosen to share with you on my tumblr is a gem also.  Gould's memory capacity was legendary. Both his mental and finger memory made it possible for him to reproduce and play music literature many years after his last practice and performance of the same. A famous illustration of this statement would be an event that occurred in 1970, when the renown Italian pianist, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, was unable to go through with his performance of Beethoven's Concerto No.5, Emperor, in Toronto. Gould was given a telephone call on Thursday evening. The problem was explained, and he was asked to substitute for Michelangeli the next morning, on Friday, when the Toronto Symphony and the conductor, Karel Ancerl, were scheduled to work with Michelangeli. Gould's answer was affirmative and good-spirited. In the space of the next few night hours, Gould rehearsed the Concerto he had not touched in four years. The program was televised and, subsequently, aired on September 12, 1970. To everyone's amazement, Gould played Beethoven's Concerto in front of the camera flawlessly and by heart.

Now it will be hard to top those performances, yet a little icing or 'candy' to add to the mix should tie things up nicely.  As it is Hump Day, the splash fest known as Wet Wednesday is filled with skimpily clad lads lounging about the page down below.  Over on my tumblr, Your Hottie of hte Day is the flawlessly beautiful Sins-Asian, Andy Honda.  Thanks so much for the visit, see you again soon.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!

Bitten by the Lazy Bug

I must confess to a bit of laziness this morning, thus the late hour at which I am bringing this post to you.  I opted for a nap instead of going ahead and knocking this out simply because I could.  The fact of my laziness not with standing, I still have relevant content to share with you.  The play list for today is sorta short and but very sweet in this classic recording of the Cello Concerto by Ludwig von Beethoven.  The video looks like it is from a 50's or 60's television appearance by Glen Gould and Leonard Rose, although that is only my conjecture as the video description  gave no details on this.  No matter, it is still a marvelous performance of this great work by Beethoven.   Of equal majesty to the music are the men in today's collection of eminently Humpable Hunks gleaned once again from my earliest Eyecatcher collections to please your discerning eyes.  Now I think I will take another nap.  See you again tomorrow.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!

New Adventures In Computing, Part 1

Sheraton Pattaya Resort, Thailand

Gee, it is good to be back among the living once again. The weekending adventures had left me on Sunday evening an exhausted, loopy, yet very satisfied man. You could say I burned the candle at both ends and the middle over the course of four days. It began with the anticipated arrival of my new computer on Thursday. Well, actually, it began when I got up to go to work on Wednesday night. A fairly innocuous beginning to what would turn out to be a series of events which would leave me totally drained physically while being emotionally very satisfying. When I arrived at work on Wednesday my paycheck was waiting for me as Thursday was pay day. Since I go to work at midnight, it was technically Thursday but business wise it was still Wednesday until 4 AM. Anyway, the night passed swiftly and I got off work on time and changed into comfies to do all my pay day stuff. I had spoken to Techguy2020 the day before and had arranged for him to deliver my new computer on Thursday. This saved me having to take multiple buses there and back, having to carry the computer with me on the return leg. It was worth the 15 dollar delivery fee. I set out to cash my check, stop by Family Dollar and then return home to await the arrival of my new computer. I prepared my old computer for the transition to the new one by moving all data files to my D drive as a precaution against unexpected problems. I thought I covered all my bases but as it turned out I missed a couple of things.

The last time I had switched boxes with all my various drives and peripherals it was a simple plug and play operation. This is what I was expecting, what I got was something else. But first I had to gain possession of the box. This turned out to be quite a game of hurry up and wait. I took a nap for a couple of hours then got up as I did not want to miss the delivery. I chatted with various folks, talked a long while with WS in Omaha on Skype and other things around the house to pass the time. I passed lots of time and heading towards late evening I was still waiting. By this time I was concerned as I did have to work that night and I had not slept all that much. I gotta give Techguy2020 points, he did keep me informed of his progress all during the evening but as midnight approached I still had no new computer. He call at 11:30 asking if I could meet him by the front entrance in about thirty minutes and I told him I would be at work at the front desk and he could just bring it in there to which he agreed. I went to work unrested but excited.

I got my routine started for the audit and waited for Techguy2020 to arrive, and waited....and waited.... and waited. I had just closed the day out on the computer at work when he finally arrived with my new (to me) box. The poor guy looked as exhausted as it would turn out I was to be by Sunday night. He brought me a Dell GX260, 2.6 ghz Pentium 4 processor with 512 ram, 512 cache, and 128 video cache. He also brought me all sorts of software CD's to ease the process of converting to the new box from the old. The rest of the night could not pass swift enough as I wanted to get the whole thing started. The time finally came for me to get off work and I headed home to begin my adventure in earnest. What I was expecting to be a relatively short process was not that at all. For sure it did not take long to physically take down my old computer, remove the relevant drives, peripherals et cetera and install them in the new machine but it was then the adventure really began. I plugged up all the bells, whistles, wires and what not then I was ready to power up my new machine which would bring me into the modern age of computing. I could hardly wait.......

I pressed the power button and the boot sequence began then stopped leaving me a black screen with just a cursor in the top left corner. Every manufacture of computer hardware has their own quirks when it comes to getting the OS started but I had not expected this to be a problem. How wrong I was! My old computer was a Compaq and when I had built it, I took the drives and peripherals from my older Compaq and it had booted right up and I just continued computing. I came to find out Compaq and Dell do not speak the same geek. In the end it seemed almost like getting the Old Soviet Union to talk honestly to Communist China. I was glad I had taken my precautions in preparation for the transition because it looked like I would have to boot from CD to try and repair the Windows XP installation. Repairing XP did not allow it to boot normally so I tried a reinstall. That was not happening either. Now nearly 4 hours into the project I had a new computer but it would not boot up no matter what I did. I then decided to take the fateful step of reformatting the C drive and starting afresh with a clean install of XP Pro. The only problem here was time, I was already tired from only two hours sleep on Thursday and did not want to be overly tired going into a busy weekend at work. Time did not turn out to be my only problem.

I reinserted my XP CD began the process of wiping out my C drive so I could get XP installed and go to bed. This was not as easy as it sounds. It was now approaching 3 PM and the window for getting some rest was shrinking at a rapid rate. I got XP installed, booted up and started customizing things. Thankfully I had saved my display theme on my D drive so the color scheme came out right but I still had to load the drivers for all the different devices but Techguy2020 gave me a CD with over 50,00 XP Drivers so that was again just a matter of time, or was it? One by one I installed all the device drivers with the last being the driver for the video card. I restarted my system and up it came. I started downloading programming that was not able to be saved and generally setting up when the video card glitched so I had to do another restart. It would not restart normally no matter how many times I tried so I called Techguy2020 for advice. He told me to start in safe mode, uninstall the video card then restart and reinstall. I did this several times, each time to have it glitch again causing a repeat of the same process again. About the third repeat the computer would not reboot. It would start the boot sequence then glitch and start again, never actually getting windows loaded in safe mode or otherwise. I was now 11:30 PM, I still had no computer up and running and I had to go to work with out having gotten any sleep.

Rather than recount the rest of the story in one over long post, I will continue the adventure tomorrow, leaving you with some video to catch you up on Nuke, Holly Oaks and an excellent two part video recording of Bach's Toccata in D Minor by Glen Gould. This is followed by an special expanded eye candy section to make up my lack of post yesterday (yet another adventure to recount!). All of the photos today are from my Picasa2 screensaver (I also have a Webshots screensaver) and are quite tasty indeed. Until next time as always, Enjoy!

Nuke Still In New York





All The Latest From Holly Oaks





Bach - Toccata In D Minor - Glen Gould - Part One





Bach - Toccata In D Minor - Glen Gould - Part Two