Month: July 2007

No more sliced fingers

cap60552 Accomplishments, General, Renaissance

I did it. I finally got around to making the replacement scabbard for my knife I use on my pirate garb.

Scabbard and Knife

Not bad for my 1st wood working project in god only knows how long. Definitely my 1st one ever using a router.

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“Swooping Vengeful Susan of Justice!”

cap60552 General, Renaissance

Nice title, Dean… 🙂

Well, as I mentioned in a previous post Seelie Court was performing at the Fountainside stage. As they started their performance Susan Scott Fry walked up and sat in the audience, clipboard in hand taking notes. About halfway through the set, I started noticing a loud bell and annoying whistle coming from down the hill. I assumed Dextre had switched to a bell in place of his chainsaw, however later it was mentioned to me that the bell was one of the town criers. After a few seconds of this mildly annoying interruption (On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being chainsaw, this was no more than a 5 in my book), I saw Susan’s head snap to the right, she stood up and took off towards Lord Mayors Forum at a brisk pace. The moment she arrived both the whistle and the bell fell silent. By the end of the song Susan had returned to her place in the audience, and there were no more interruptions from the Lord Mayors stage. By the end of the set, when she left, Susan seemed to be in a good mood and had laughed at some of the antics of the show.

As for which crier it was, I do not know, and I am also not sure if it was actually Dextre, or one of the other acts on the Lord Mayors Forum stage. I did not have my glasses on and so all I could see were various moving blobs of color. What I do know is that Susan has now personally witnessed how disruptive acts on the Lord Mayor’s Forum can be to acts at Fountainside even when just hawking for a show.

Highly Illogical…

cap60552 General, Work Stories

I was just given the “solution” to a problem I have been trying to work around. Our library catalog has a scripting language of sorts that allows you to do a lot of great things. Unfortunately, it also has a nasty logic flaw that I have discovered.

Value 1 Operator Value 2 Result
“A” = “a” TRUE
“a” = “A” FALSE
“a” = “a” TRUE
“A” = “A” FALSE

I realize, internally the programmers decided to automatically lowercase all input fed to the comparison on the left side. The problem is, there is no function to lowercase a variable. So, If I save the value of some function, say “LibraryName” someplace, and then try to compare it later… I run into “Aurora” = “Aurora” equating to FALSE because what is really being compared internally is: “aurora” and “Aurora”…

GRRRR….

A moment of joy

cap60552 General, Renaissance

This weekend was quite amazing to put it mildly. I’ll get into more of that later in another post.

I just wanted to write down an interaction that happened, that has had me just feeling quite happy.

During one of the Seelie Court shows Sunday I was standing at the top of the hill at fountainside stage selling CD’s and trying to draw in more patrons. I noticed off in the distance, just about to pass the Italian ice booth, a family walking along. The father had one of his young sons clad in a bright yellow t-shirt, riding on top of his shoulders. The boy had one arm extended pointing off to various sights of interest. Suddenly I decided to mimic them and see if they would come up for the show. I stood at the top of the hill, stretched to my full height and then pointed my arm outward towards the boy. The mother noticed me first, pointed at me and said to the boy, “look!!!” (times like this my overly sensitive hearing comes in handy) The boy turned, saw me pointing at him, and then immediately turned his “pointer” towards me with a grin on his face. I then made a 90 degree turn and began walking towards the show in an exaggerated toy soldier fashion. I heard a laugh again from the mother, and a grin appeared on the fathers face. The boy then turned his arm the same direction and proceeded to lead his family up the hill to the show. Once they arrived I greeted them with a silent smile, a goofy wave, and a broad gesture towards the music. The two boys had already picked up on the music and seemed to be peacefully enjoying it. Seeing this the parents sat down on the ground with their kids in front of them and sat for the whole show. Towards the end of the show the boy in yellow began playing with a Chinese yo-yo and slinging it towards me… I grinned, and waved at them a few times, and had the gestures returned by grins, waves, and the occasional burying of a head in a parents shoulder. The mother started to become a little concerned about the yo-yo for fear the boy might actually hit me with it. I just smiled and rattled my head. (I’ve got a shakey-eggy-thing in my hat for just such purposes) To lighten her fears I presented both boys with “magic stones” and explained they were to help remember their day. (It really is bizzare how the stones always seem to come out of my pouch matching something about the child perfectly. ) They clutched their stones tightly, their eyes beaming absolute joy, each child in possession of a treasure most precious to them and then they left.
Some time later I ran across the same family. The boys were being entertained by Jane the Phoole as their parents looked on. Their mother turned, as she noticed me walk by, came over to me and said, “I just want to thank you SO MUCH for being so kind and generous to them!” It’s times like this I really wish I had something profound to say… but all I could muster was a smile and a simple, “You are most welcome m’lady, please do enjoy the rest of your festival day”. With that I made a quick bow and continued on my way.

Those moments, when things just slip into place, just make you feel good to be alive.

Tonight on the Grill – Vegetarian’s Delight

cap60552 General, On the Grill

Tonight I went all vegetarian for dinner.

  • Eggplant, and Tomato stacker’s with Fetta cheese: Slices of eggplant and tomato brushed with a mixture of red wine vinegar, rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper are grilled individually then stacked in layers with feta cheese. The stack is then grilled a bit longer to melt the cheese.
  • Grilled Zucchini stuffed with goat cheese
  • Corn on the Cob