The Penultimate Word

The truck lost.

I overheard the truck driver saying that they ought to dig out Washington Street to make it lower. I have a better idea. Just read the sign:

The dsl line was installed Wednesday, and it works fine.

I still hate AT&T.

A few years I switched from what was then Ameritech to what was then KMC Telecom because Ameritech sucked bigtime. Terrible service, screwed up orders, screwed up installs, missed dates, these were the norm for Ameritech. I was so fed up with them that I switched my business service to KMC Telecom. I never had a problem with them. They were later absorbed by CenturyTel, but still I had good service.

I had been using a T-1 for my business internet connection, but no longer need that level of service and decided to switch to a lower-cost connection like cable or dsl. There is no cable service to my building, so I decided to use dsl. CenturyTel does not offer dsl, so I had to return to AT&T, which had earlier absorbed Ameritech. I ordered a switch of the voice line to AT&T and ordered dsl to be put on the line. All this was supposed to happen today, June 22.

So the tech shows up this morning, switches the voice line to the AT&T service, and starts to leave. I asked him about the dsl order. “What dsl order? It’s not on my paperwork”, he says.

So I call AT&T. No one knows what happened to the dsl order. I get switched around to several departments, none of which know what is going on. Of course, whenever I get switched I have to sit on hold and then repeat my story to whomever answers.

At it stands now, someone did find the original order and is now trying to enter it into the system. For some reason, this takes a long time. They promise to call me back sometime today. Meanwhile, the T-1 will be disconnected today, but the dsl may not be installed until next week Friday.

Idiots.

I have a PC at work and a Mac at home, and use Firefox on both, and, of course, the bookmarks on the two machines were always different. It is simply to much work to keep track of what changes you made on what machine and try to keep the other machine updated.

I recently ran across a great Firefox add-on called Foxmarks. It is a web-based service that will keep your bookmarks synchronized on all your machines. The way it works is that you establish an account on their server, and install the Foxmarks add-on on all your machines. If you update your bookmarks on any of your machines, the changes are uploaded to your account on their server. When you later connect to the ‘net with another of your machines, Foxmarks will automatically download the changes to the other machine. It keeps your bookmarks the same on all your machines with no attention from you at alll. It is really slick.

Corner Brewery, Ypsilanti, Michigan
15 June 2007, 11:03pm

From Yahoo news:

Allison Weiss Brady, 36, a venture capitalist and philanthropist who is on the board of her family foundation, said she likes to be practical when buying handbags preferring to buy bags in basic colors. Still, she spends $20,000 per season on accessories and typically spends $5,000 per bag, much more than the $2,000 she used to spend a few years ago.

Among Brady’s most prized finds recently are a pair of $11,000 earrings at Judith Ripka and a multicolored lizard Fendi handbag for $4,960.

Brady, the philanthropist who divides her time between Miami and New York, prefers to shop at stores where a portion of sales goes to a charity.

How nice.

(From The Volokh Conspiracy).

This is a very cool video showing flight paths of US air traffic.

This is the higher-resolution original Quicktime version of the same video (takes a minute to load).

Aaron Koblin’s homepage, which is also very cool.

(From Brad DeLong)

This map, from the aptly-named Strange Maps site, shows American states renamed to countries with equivalent Gross Domestic Products. Michigan’s GDP is around the same as Argentina’s, while Utah’s is the equivalent of Uzbekistan (lucky them!).

The site has a number of interesting maps, including a terrific map of Middle Earth, and a map of 19-century Hannover, Germany, tattooed on a woman’s back.

I recently finished a book I enjoyed greatly called Piano: The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand, by James Barron, which follows the construction of a Steinway Model D concert grand in its eleven-month journey from raw wood and steel to a finished piano. Along the way, Barron talks about the men and women who build these instruments, using methods which have changed remarkably little from when Steinway & Sons began building pianos in New York City in the 1850s.

There are no blueprints for these pianos - the are (mostly) hand-built. Each craftsman learns his job from the one who had the job before him. Some of the workers are recent immigrants, others have fathers and grandfathers who worked for Steinway. The techniques they use they learn by observation, by intuition, and by doing.

When they begin building a particular instrument, no one knows how it will sound. The soul of a piano is its soundboard, five-by-eight slab of planks made from Sitka spruce. The only source of the spruce Steinway uses now is from Alaska and British Columbia. New England, packed with usable spruce after World War I, is logged out. The wood is carefully screened by craftsmen with decades of experience, who select only planks with at least 103 inches of straight, consistent grain, no blemishes, no discoloration. But there is no way to tell how the wood will vibrate when it encased in the piano.

Woven through the book is the story of the family. Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg grew up in northwestern Germany and learned the piano-making craft there. Because of wars, political turmoil, and lack of economic opportunity, Heinrich Engelhard, his wife, and several of his sons moved to New York to begin a new life there. They anglicized their names to Steinway, put the whole family to work, and by 1860 had sales of $1 million a year. Heinrich’s son, C. F. Theodore Steinway, who developed much of the piano’s mechanical action and generated many of the family’s patents, hated America so much that in 1884 he returned to Germany and opened a factory in Hamburg. The two factories work closely together to this day.

The Steinwegs moved to New York because of the large German enclave there, which by 1900 was the third-largest German-speaking urban center in the world after Berlin and Vienna. This gave them their own language and their own trusted labor pool. But to be successful they had to sell into the larger English-speaking market. This wasn’t always easy - anti-immigrant feelings are a perennial part of the American landscape. But through perserverance and real knack for self-promotion, the family became a fixture in New York society.

The piano which Barron follows through the factory, serial number K0862, became one the instruments Steinway lends out for recitals, recording sessions, and concerts. Its first public appearance was at a music festival in Kalamazoo. After it returned to New York, it was lost for three weeks. How do you lose a 9′ concert grand? It’s easier than you think.

Steinway has recently branched out into more than pianos - The Steinway Collection offers “Classic Casual Sportsware, available in a vibrant melody of styles and colors, and a select assortment of Golf Accessories”. Perfect for your next golf date with Billy Joel.

I just saw the Michigan Opera Theater’s production of Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. Jonathan Boyd and Evelyn Pollock were both excellent in the title roles. Boyd has a nice, clear, powerful tenor voice. Pollock had no problem navigating the coloratura bits in her part.

This is a long opera - 3 hours 30 minutes or so - but Gounod’s music is so gorgeous it (almost) doesn’t matter. although near the end I was muttering “die already”. The sets were spare but rich. I thought the MOT’s staging was rather static - a lot of people standing in place singing. The fight sequences were pretty good, though.

I don’t know if the original French dialog was as stilted as it seemed in English, or if the surtitles were badly translated, but at times you just wanted to laugh. For example, after Tybalt killed Mercutio, Romeo swears vengeance saying “Let my flaming fury be the only law ruling my actions.” Yeesh.

But these are minor complaints. Overall, it was a good show.

Update 6/10/07:
A friend emails:

Tom:

To keep in mind during [the] performance:

1. Three little words: Self-induced vomiting

2. A la Monty Python: I’m not dead yet!

I defy you to watch the final scene without thinking of these two things!

Enjoy.

Can you name them all?

The tragic crash of the University of Michigan organ transplant aircraft highlights just how critical this program is. Please consider signing up to be a organ and tissue donor. You can find out more about organ donation, and register to be one, at the Gift of Life Michigan website. Make sure that your family and your doctor know you have made this decision.

Can’t dance either.

My main man, George Clinton, gets David Letterman’s audience up for the down stroke.

Betcha didn’t know he even had one, didja?

(From Kevin, M.D.)

Warner Bros. and Universal Studios are opening a Harry Potter theme park in Orlando in late 2009. JK Rowling has said that the “plans look incredibly exciting”.

I have my own mental images of Harry Potter-land, so I have not seen any of the movies and I doubt I will ever go the theme park because their conceptions will not match mine, and I am sure to be disappointed. But I am sure that it will be extremely popular.

Some people think she is selling out, but I think she is perfectly entitled to do this. No one, especially Rowling, has claimed that HP is high art.