The Topic of Great Randomness

[kk]

My mom is like that sometimes, but only if we are having people over. She panics, goes nuts, and then in the end (no matter how many spots she claims to have missed), everything works out well. I think it's a waste of time; I think cleaning too much shows that you've got almost nothing better to do, which I accuse my mother of a lot. :P

Haha, I'm watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and there was just a moment when Kirk said, "A planet of living machines, heading to Earth to look for their creator?" I paused the video, and laughed for about a minute, thinking, "Of course, they're looking for Dairine!"

[estar9821]

Ha, funny! I really need to watch Star Trek.

My mom does that too, I think every mom does that, and today she was literally still vacuuming two minutes before our guests came.

[SilveredBlue]

Hmm, I do try to write slower, but than my hand gets tired. Especially after I've done my daily three hours of piano practice. I guess I have to tough it out...

My mom tries to keep stuff really clean, but it's hard with four kids. Especially considering that two of them are boys- if you've never met my brothers, you've never known how fast things can get dirty. Or muddy. Or chaotic. Or covered in little pieces of plastic and metal that are marketed as toys but are beginnning to look suspiciously like Chinese water torture reinvented.

[estar9821]

So, what was everyone's favorite Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Eid gift?

[NickRyan]

First day back at school and I can already tell that this semester isn't going to be as good as the first because i got moved out of my favorite teacher's class.

estar: I got an Ipod touch which is probably my favorite present.

[SilveredBlue]

I don't have to start school until the 11th. Woo hoo!

Although I have a paper, some math, and a physics study guide due on that day, so I'm basically doing the hard parts of school now.

Estar9821: my favorite gift was the violin care set I got: fancy imported rosin, humidifiers, a nice stand, and best of all, some clip-on LIGHTS. Now I can actually see my notes! *cheers*

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Well, we're busy trying to finish up our move. I knew things had gotten away from us in the housecleaning department, but didn't realize quite how far until we got (almost) all the furniture out and saw how much was left on the floor. :-( Donna and I are both packrats, and the girls never got taught to pick up after themselves... We're trying desperately to keep things under control in the upstairs -- we're leaving things in the basement until we have a place to put them. I'm vacuuming almost every day, so the road salt doesn't gain a foothold on the carpeting (which covers pretty much the whole place, unlike the old apartment, which only had it in a couple of the rooms).

We've moving from a three-bedroom apartment to a two-bedroom townhouse, with two floors and a basement garage. It also has a garbage disposal and a dishwasher, and baseboard heat instead of forced-air, along with being slightly cheaper each month, so we feel like we made out pretty well. It has lots of windows, including the whole back wall of the living area, opening onto a small deck which overlooks the Penobscot River. We're technically in another school district now, but have applied to finish out the year where we are.

Re: Star Trek -- for some reason, Ael and Erin have decided that the original Star Trek is the only real one, and that The Next Generation is a pale imitation. I picked up The Best of TNG Volume 2 the other day, though (what, no Borg?), and played Relics and Cause & Effect for them. I think they're starting to get a clue now. :-) (My brother got a Blu-Ray player and Star Trek 2009 for Christmas, I'm so jealous....)

Re: Mozart -- heh. It's been so long since I thought about it at that level, it was funny to read a discussion about the ornaments. I've internalized that sort of thing now -- I may not do it right, but it's just the way I play. On an unrelated note, I'm trying to arrange Thompson's "Alleluia" for my community band. I know there are existing arrangements, but it's more fun to try to figure it out myself. Once I get it written out on score paper, I'm going to transcribe it to GNU Lilypond so it's actually readable. If any of you musical types want help figuring it out, let me know. It's not as intuitive as Finale or Sibelius, but it's pretty straightforward, and gives you an incredible degree of control if you want it. Check out The Mutopia Project for some completed Lilypond transcriptions of PD music.

Guess it's time to stop babbling for now. :-)

[SilveredBlue]

I didn't know you were a musician, Garrett! Then again, I'm fairly new, so I probably am just out of the loop. It's fun to find people who love music like me- I'm generally regarded as a fanatic in my family/friends circle, and I bug those who play an instrument to duet with me- no luck.

Wow! Thanks so much for the Lilypond thing! I just spent some time doodling around, and it's waaaay better than the Finale Notepad (free, and expired) that I was using. I might actually be able to make some music on this! And it'll come in handy when I need to arrange duet parts for my students. yay!!

Mutopia is good, but I think the Petrucci project, also known the International Music Scores Library Project (IMSLP) has more scores. I got a copy of Bartok's Six Roumanian Dances for Violin off there- and it had some faint markings in it that were very. funny. (The scores are scanned from originals).

For example, over Roumanian Dance #1, in big capitals, it says, "GIT 'ER DONE!". heh. #3 proclaims, "LIGHT FINGERS." And, in a more helpful way, many fingerings and positions are also marked.

Old markings are funny. You have to wonder who and why....

[Tuttle]

Heh, my boyfriend has redone it in Lilypody multiple times after his mom has written things up in Finale. He's the type who things need to be pretty for, it amuses me. Of course I'm also a LaTeX user, and we both go out of our way to use the exactly correct symbols for things, when it takes an hour to find it (and then go correct the professor because he's using the wrong symbol for entailment )

Holidays were long. Didn't get done with school stuff until the 21st, so we at that point got to start thinking about gifts. Figured out a few but didn't get them printed off with the makerbot a friend is keeping in our apartment. We still need to do that. Christmas Eve service my parents and I had to leave the church we meant to go to because of incense and go over to the one I normally go to. I hate incense, it was giving me a headache /before it was lit/ and this was the "less likely to bother people" kind. Christmas morning we spent at my famiy's place, opened those gifts. Then rather than me go to my extended family's get together I went over to boyfriend's family's house with him. That was good. My family's gifts focused on good outdoorsy clothing, his family's gifts focused on cooking. Also, in our stocking we got a really pretty version of Narnia with the original drawings at the beginning of all of the chapters. Is pretty .

He's working on making himself skiboots because none fit him (literally we tried size 50s on him, they weren't wide enough). So the next day was spent on that. Didn't get as far as wanted to because of how exhausted everyone was. Day after that we went up to Vermont with my parents for hiking. It amuses me that one day my boyfriend was the one who made us turn around because of his knees hurting, while the other day he could have just kept going long after everyone else was frozen. I tease him all the time about his being built for the rediculously cold. Also, we went to a used bookstore 'cause I wanted to get into a bookstore, and we ended up admiring a 4 volume set of books on the history of math. My parents ended up getting them for us while I was trying to figure out if I should spend my christmas money on them. They're hilarious, its great.

I need to get in contact with a professor about an ISP for the last requirement for my CS major. Probably going to be in verfication - proving proofs correct. Seems both interesting and marketable. I'm going to be graduating in Feburary with the math major.

I are not ready to graduate. Finding a job is impossible I don't know how to do so. It is really annoying to not know what to be doing now.

I should go help clean the apartment. It's a wreck but I've not been awake yet today when it comes to being functional. Bleh.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

I didn't know you were a musican, Garrett!

You must have missed this post, then. :-)

Mutopia is good, but I think the Petrucci project, also known the International Music Scores Library Project (IMSLP) has more scores.

They both have their good points. Petrucci has more scores, but they're all (?) PDFs, so you have to deal with the limitations of the original scans. With MutopiaProject, you can typeset the scores from scratch, reformat them, and correct errors. (Errors in PD scores? Say it ain't so! :-) )

ETA: Oh, btw, Silver, I just read your sig quote. Consider yourself *thwap*ed. :-)

[SilveredBlue]

hee hee. I haven't even read the books that my second sig comes from. Kathy posted both those quotes in the appropriate thread, and I thought they were hilarious enough. This, by the way, is the third change my sig has gone through since last November, and the second avatar change. I must have a chameleon for an ancestor.

It's likely to change again soon...

Oh, Estar thought my avatar was french fries. It's toothpicks. And it says "Toothpick of Virtue." just so everyone knows.

What is your avvie from?

[estar9821]

SilveredBlue, you have students? But you're still a school student yourself? Cool, that's an awesome way to make extra money.

Well, since this is the Topic Of Great Randomness, I guess I'll tell you all about my watch woes. For some reason, my watch started beeping every hour on the hour, and it never did that before. I'm scared it'll happen in the middle of a test or something and everyone'll look at me. I beeped the other day in the movie theatre, and some people looked around to see where it had come from. I just put it in my purse and I couldn't hear it anymore...

[SilveredBlue]

hee hee, I was in a Spanish class and there was this boy who had a watch that beeped at 12:00 (which was supposed to be the end of class). The teacher often went over, so when the watch would beep we'd all chorus, "Lunchtime!" And now whenever we here a watch beep we yell that.

which is not really related to your problem but is funny anyway. Here's my way to stop annoying beeps:

1) Place item on flat surface.
2) Whack as hard as possible using hammer.
3) Buy a new item.
4) Repeat.

And yes, I do have students and am in the learning process at the same time. I've been playing piano for nine years, so I felt I was ready to do some beginner lessons- especially since my future job will be piano teaching and performance, with a little violin teaching hopefully thrown in.

It's really fun- I love teaching! The only less-than-fun part is keeping order. I usually have no problem- my students are sweet kids- but there's one little boy who CANNOT sit still. I have to have him do 5 jumping jacks after playing each song, AND have his mom sit in the room. sigh.

[Wolf]

Dear Great Thread of Randomness....

I am watching The Biggest Loser with my mom, because last time my Nana was here, she made us watch it, and now apparently my mom is into it. I've decided that I really hate the trainers. The woman is a witch, and the guy looks like the bad guy from Holes- and a creeper.

I activated my new phone today- the new verizon envy3. =) It's freaking wicked awesomeeee.

To Everybody Else:
I go back to school the 19th! Not really looking forward to it, I gotta be honest. I want to transfer, so... going back to a school I don't want to be at, well, you can probably figure out how I feel.

Garrett- YES, YES, YES! CONVERT! WHOOO! LOL. I've decided I'm going to watch all my DVD's again, and I'm currently up to the 2nd dvd of the 3rd season. ^_^

Estar- is there a button somewhere? I know it sounds ridiculous, but start pressing buttons! lol. Cuz to me it sounds like you were leaning against something or such, and pressed something by accident. So.. haha. You can also take it to a watch or jewelry place, and if they're nice, they'll just point it out to you. =P

SilveredBlue- for like, the first time, I can think of nothing to comment on... but I figured that I really can't resist the urge to say I miss you. =) I really do have to get on the computer more often. A few big posts and I feel like I miss everything! hahaa

[SilveredBlue]

Aww, it's nice to be missed.

re: The Biggest Losers. I cannot watch that show anymore. The poor woman trainer has a very very large set of nostrils, doesn't she? But being mean is her job, so I don't blame her for that.

But the problem for me is all the cryyyyying. I hate to watch it, because I feel all embarressed and squiggly for the criers. And then they all make long, oh-so-sensitive-and-insincere speeches when they vote out the others. I'm like, "Just get it OVER with already. We KNOW you don't mean it and blah blah blah."

And watching people sweat seems like an invasion of privacy and gross at the same time. I would hate to ever be on the show and have people watch me excersise. Ugh. I'm lucky my genes keep me in the right size jeans.


Bad pun...eheheh.