Altivo

Red-headed woodpeckers again, during breakfast this time. Almost certainly saw three different individual birds, two of them simultaneously. This is highly unusual. In a typical year we have perhaps two sightings of one bird and that's it.

Firewall box is racked and ready to drop in as a replacement for our current unit. Will have to go in on Sunday to test, though. Generation -1, a Firebox X Core, has been removed from the rack and repacked with its spare cables and paperwork. No longer supported and not usable at work, but still functional so I may take it home rather than recycle it. The problem is getting a copy of the appropriate configuration and monitoring software, Watchguard System Manager 8.3.x. I know the necessary file is on several retired backup tapes I still have, but so far I can't figure out how to recover files from a no longer cataloged backup. I really hate Symantec software, ya know? It makes things so unnecessarily difficult. If the replacement is successful, the current X750 Edge unit will remain in the rack as an emergency backup. This time I'll remember to archive the management tools to a CD instead of leaving them on a proprietary format tape.

Book arrived in the mail: Pegasus by Robin McKinley. I've already read it in ebook form, but liked it so much I decided to snatch a remaindered hardcover for future reuse. The book is remarkably well done, in my opinion (and I don't always care for McKinley.) The pegasi are particularly well thought out. Unfortunately it appears to be only volume 1 of a trilogy, the other two of which may not appear for a year or two. And it has a cliff-hanger ending. Grr.

Went after work to listen to Kishwaukee Ramblers playing at the Woodstock Mall, a converted building with really nice acoustics for a small group. They sounded particularly good. After that took Gary to dinner to celebrate payday plus income tax refund. Then we came home and watched Hop, a silly fluffy movie about E.B., a young bunny who is heir to the title of THE Easter bunny, but doesn't want to accept his destiny. Instead he wants to be a rock and roll drummer. It was silly fluff, but still fun and required no hard thinking. ;p

Accomplished? Nothing big. I made dinner. We watched the first half of Going Postal which does seem to be a brilliant interpretation of Pratchett's book for the screen. It's a British production, so they don't feel a need to dumb down or alter the plot the way Hollywood would have done. Nor are they afraid to take the time necessary to tell the whole story. The whole film runs over three hours, which would be nearly unthinkable to any Hollywood producer or director.

I managed (I think) to get essential tasks properly distributed at work so things won't pile up too badly. Now to take care of the essential outside tasks I still have to do. Spinning guild newsletter must be done tomorrow. Model railroad modules must be done in the next couple of days too.

Oh, we did finish one other task: income tax forms completed, ready to mail tomorrow. As usual, I get a nice refund from the federal government, but have to pay a small amount to the state.

Amazon packages with airbrush parts arrived on schedule today. Another is due tomorrow with a rural windmill at N scale to go into one of the railroad modules.

Just watched the 25th anniversary production of Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera at the Albert Hall. It's fantastic, a tremendous job. Don't pass up a chance to see the DVD if you can, and even if you've already seen the older movie production.

The original 1909 book by Gaston Leroux was a sort of nine day wonder and I don't think the author ever produced anything else with anywhere near the success. It was made into silent film, stage play, several movie versions, and at least two musicals. The silent film and the 1943 movie are well worth seeing, and, frankly, I think the original book is the best since all the other versions have to leave out a great amount of detail. But if you can only see one, this latest recording contains both the best musical renditions and one of the most effective adaptations I have experienced.

Weather here is chilly, and clear, though we are supposed to move into clouds and snow later tomorrow. Winter hasn't quite given up yet, but with temperatures well above freezing in the daytime, the snow can't hang around for long.

Tonight we watched the DVD of Bitter Lake, the furry/fursuit movie that was released at EF this summer. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but overall I have to say it is well done. I'm sure the production had a tight budget and very limited shooting schedule, but on the whole it is professional and easy to watch. Some glitches in the fight scenes and a few lines delivered a bit too unrealistically can be forgiven in the context.

The story is almost Shakespeare-like in subject and character, if not in language. It's a tragedy that could have been developed a bit more given time, but the concept is whole and effective. Well worth seeing if you haven't yet done so. And if you see it on DVD, don't skip the "Behind the Scenes" selection.

I won't deliver any spoilers beyond saying that the furry nature of the characters didn't seem to stand for a lot. The story might as well have been told with humans in the same sort of medieval setting. This doesn't detract from the eye candy of the sets and backdrops or the fursuits themselves, however. Rating: three and a half apples. Higher on production values, lower on writing.

A typical Monday otherwise. Too long, too dull, and too much of a letdown from the weekend.

Gary has spotted a cat on the shelter website that just possibly might be our "disappeared" Rickitoo. He plans to run over tomorrow and see if he can find out. How the cat got picked up 20 miles from here is hard to fathom, though he was excessively friendly and bold and had in the past jumped right into people's cars. If he did that at some neighbor's place he might have gotten a free ride.

Went to the local county fair today. It keeps shrinking. The yuppies who run it clearly don't understand the concepts and are doing their best to kill the whole thing off. Barn spaces standing empty, The only thing increasing is the booths full of political kooks and medical quacks.

I also hit 1000 in an odd place: My 1000th post on the FurRag writer's forum. I never thought I'd end up the chattiest participant there.

Mosquitoes were nearly extinct here 10 days ago. Now with the heavy rain we suddenly got, they're back and very hungry. Swarms of them. I took Tess out to the pasture late this afternoon, and after two hours she was begging to go back in. As soon as she saw me she came galloping, and not out of any affection for me, I'm sure. More like "Get me out of here before they carry me away!" Fortunately, these aren't the really big B52 biters but rather the tiny whiner kind but there are so many it's quite unbelievable.

We watched High Society this evening. Released in 1956, it was Grace Kelly's last film before she became Princess Grace. Ironically, it had a scene where she was driving a sports car recklessly. (In 1982 she died in a car crash.) The reason it was on our list, though, was for Cole Porter's music. He wrote so many hit musicals, but hardly any of them ever made it to film. This one was actually a remake of The Philadelphia Story rather than an actual stage musical, and Porter wrote the songs for it. First time Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra appeared in a film together, too, I think.

OK, work tomorrow still, so off to bed.

Well, after our discussion here about Wargames and Matthew Broderick, I had to see Ladyhawke again. I think Broderick did much better in this film, actually showing us a character with some development. The horse was still the scene stealer in my opinion, though I'd forgotten the great black wolf.

Since Philippe was bitten or scratched by the werewolf while rescuing him from the ice, shouldn't there have been a sequel about Philippe the werewolf?

Beautiful weather today and yesterday afternoon. Such a contrast from yesterday morning when I stood outside the vet's trying to shelter Simon from the rain as we waited for the stretcher crew. You see, I can almost talk about it now. But it hasn't stopped hurting really, and I guess it never will.

Red seems a bit puzzled by the empty places in the house, but they never had much of a rapport. Simon was too old and slow for him even when he arrived last fall.

Was a good day in spite of the gloomy skies. It didn't actually rain, but was a bit cool and we could have used a little more breeze to blow away the mosquitoes. Otherwise, I think everyone had a great time at the Illinois Railway Museum today, and thanks to casey382 for organizing it. We even did get around to riding a couple of trains. I particularly enjoyed visiting the railroad post office car and talking briefly with the old timers who actually worked in the mail service on the roads back in the 1960s.

Watched The Voyage of the Dawn Treader tonight and while some of the scenery and costumes were worthwhile as usual I found it disappointing that they felt they had to alter the story for no particular reason except to insert a lot of extra violence and muddy the original plot line. I give it no more than three out of five possible apples.

...pointless. Just sat through Tron: Legacy. Utter waste of two hours. Whoever wrote that tripe didn't get the original at all. My assessment is that the whole thing was written by a twelve year old to impress other twelve year olds.

Spring happened today all at once. Daffodils opening, blue (if hazy) skies, birds so loud they were deafening. Doing barn chores in shirtsleeves, got a little sunburn even. Went to guild meeting this morning, weaseled out of doing a presentation next month that I was volunteered for in my absence. We will substitute a drop spindle race, which was quite a popular event last time we tried it.

Now to plan out the next few days so I can get as much done as possible while I have the time in daylight hours to do it.

OK, we finally saw Avatar last night. It was OK, but no more than that. Of course most of you know that I'm not a movie fan anyway, and it takes a very precise sort of thing to actually excite me. This film was not it. In its favor: It does not suffer from the "need" to have an explosion or gunfire take place at least once every five minutes, like so many popular films today. (I walked out on Firefly for that reason. I have no interest in such silliness.) Not in its favor: In the last 40 minutes or so, it makes up for the lack of explosions and gunfire in the rest of the film. Boo. Also, when the credits rolled I recognized the similarity to the 1990 film Dances With Wolves. Almost an identical story line, just set in the American West at the time of the Indian Wars (for those of you who don't remember it.) To be quite honest, I prefer the older film. But in fact, I prefer the book on which the older film was based to the film itself. This is usual for me.

I'm left puzzled as to why so many seemed to think Avatar is a "furry film." I certainly didn't see it. Yes, the Na'vi have tails. No, they aren't furry in my perception, just alien. Sympathetic, perhaps, but alien. Even though the anti-corporate/anti-government/anti-military slant of the film does seem to fit with my opinions on same, and in fact isn't nearly as strong a message on those as I'd like to see become popular, it holds little appeal for me. I had avoided reviews and commentary on the film precisely because I didn't want to see spoilers. Consequently, I had only the vaguest idea of what was coming, and no idea that anyone else had associated the storyline with Dances With Wolves. I was quite amused when I looked it up after seeing it and found that many have made the same association and that James Cameron himself admits that Kevin Costner's 1990 award-winning film was "one of his references" while making Avatar.

Now, reviving last week's topic just briefly: the PI saga is not yet done. I revised my code to gain some efficiencies, and finally figured out how to get FORTRAN on the Alpha to use an internal floating point format 128 bits long (16 bytes, as opposed to half that for normal "double precision" arithmetic.) This improved my precision but slowed the calculation of results. On the Alpha DS10, it took about 5 hours to integrate the curve in ten billion slices. I ran a 100 billion slice version over the weekend, and it took 30 hours to complete after the efficiency tuning was added.

Results were accurate to 15 decimal places, a new high for me. The next step up might take 300 hours to run, though, so I don't know if I'm going to try.

PI to 15 decimal places is: 3.141 592 653 589 793

Oh, and I didn't get the photos from yesterday's cold and gloomy hiking uploaded yet. I will do it, though.