🎭 Theatre Writeups, 🛣️ Highway Updates, 📰 Musings on the News, and other 🗯️ Rants and Roadkill Along the Information Superhighway
Well, I’ve hit another tipping point on the iPod Classic. I have 30169 music tracks on the iPod; 30363 total tracks. As of right now, my playlist of tracks played less than 8 times is at 15083. This means I’ve reached the point where over half the tracks on my iPod have been played over 8 times, and most of the rest (all but 300) have been played over 5 times.
We return you now to your regularly scheduled internets…
When I graduated high school (back in the 1970s), I wasn’t the type to go to New Years Eve parties. Even today, I’m not the drinking and dancing type, partying until the wee hours. No, instead, back then, I would gather together with a bunch of friends and we would play Diplomacy (or Machiavelli) until the wee hours. During my college years, this morphed into an annual gaming event — sometimes on New Years, sometimes on New Years-and-a-half — when we would play not only Diplomacy but other games popular in the UCLA Computer Club at the time. The activity has continued off and on during the years, and in recent years has been more focused on modern German games (Ticket to Ride, On The Underground, Tramfabrik, etc.), lighter games such as Fluxx, Cat 5, or Coloretto, and even word games such as Scrabble. There has also sometimes just been more conversation than anything else.
You can probably guess where I’m going with this, as New Years Eve is a few weeks away.
To my real-life (that is, we’ve met in person) friends reading this who will be in Southern California over New Years… we’re doing the somewhat annual New Years Eve gaming party again. This will again be a potluck (remembering that we do have Gluten-Free folks in the household). It will start around 3pm, but we understand folks arriving later as it is a workday. If you are interested, please drop me a note (commenting with your email address will work) and I’ll get you the particulars, if we still have space. I’m also doing this as an announcement on Facebook for those FB friends who are interested (if you are a friend on FB and didn’t get and invite and are interested, let me know and I’ll add you — I tried to guess at who might be interested and who was local, but I can easily miss some).
Note: As of this morning, I’ve updated the Livejournal Crossposter plugin on WordPress to crosspost to Dreamwidth instead of Livejournal. Dreamwidth will then crosspost to Livejournal. Yes, this means a longer footer on Livejournal. That’s life.
I’ve also enabled commenting on Dreamwidth. This is solely due to problems with OpenID comments on the WordPress blog on Dreamwidth’s end of things: it doesn’t seem to be able to handle the OpenID interaction with the Social Login plugin. I do encourage readers to comment on the WordPress blog. I’ve provided a lovely themed button at the bottom of each post to make that easy for you.
Note: At the present time, I’ve opted not to import my posts and comments from LJ. I’ve got the posts already imported into the WordPress blog, so I don’t need to do the import for backup reasons. As for the comments, I’ve been alerted to some concerns regarding ownership and accessibility of comments when they move from LJ to DW, so I’ll leave them at LJ for the time being. Note, however, that if LJ decides to change the meaning of “permanent” when they do their account change, then I may change this decision.
There will be some side effects of the WP-DW-LJ side of things. Primarily, I”m limited on icons at DW being a free account. Given that I’m embedding my icons in each post for WordPress, I’m just going to use the default icon and let the post itself provide the icon.
I’m still looking for plugins to improve the commenting form on WordPress, and to help me move those images hosted on Livejournal Scrapbook into my WordPress media gallery. Suggestions are welcome.
Now, to go and adjust all the clocks around the house…
I’m pleased to report that Van Nuys HS came in 12th in the statewide academic decathalon (my daughter, Erin, was on the team). You can find the full results posted at the California Academic Decathalon Site. Here are the top scores overall:
1 52327.4 Granada Hills Charter HS LAUSD
2 51279.7 El Camino Real Charter HS LAUSD
3 49203.0 Marshall HS LAUSD
4 48122.5 Olympian HS San Diego
5 47943.6 Franklin HS LAUSD
6 47105.2 University HS Fresno
7 46440.2 Edison HS Fresno
8 46252.7 West HS Los Angeles
9 45813.9 Oakdale HS Stanislaus
10 45555.4 Taft HS LAUSD
11 44865.3 Redondo Union HS Los Angeles
12 44525.5 Van Nuys HS LAUSD
13 44328.4 Valencia HS Orange
14 43848.4 Beverly Hills HS Los Angeles
15 43593.7 Westminster HS Orange
Erin won a silver in Art, and VNHS won individual gold in Essay and Speech!
This evening, I rushed from work to the LA Convention Center for the awards ceremony for the LA Unified portion of the Academic Decathalon. I’m pleased to report that Van Nuys High School came in 6th! Erin received a bronze and a silver (I forgot the categories) and two honorable mentions… and the Van Nuys team will be going to the state championships!
Oh, you want to know the full scores? Here’s the info from the LA Times:
Granada Hills Charter HS took the top place out of the 63 teams that competed in the school district’s regional competition. Scoring 51,913 points out of 60,000, the school had one of the highest scores among the nation’s regional-level competitions. Also high scoring–and invited to the state finals from LAUSD–were: Marshall High School (49,648 points), El Camino Real Charter High (48,649), Franklin (47,812) and Taft (43,074). Also heading to Sacramento will be Van Nuys (41,771), Palisades Charter (40,837), Hamilton (40,760), Garfield (40,382), Bell (39,821), Los Angeles (39,690) and San Pedro (37,626).
For Los Angeles county schools not in LA Unified, West High School in Torrance — for the fourth time — claimed the highest score (45,132 points). Finishing second was Redondo Union High, which edged out Beverly Hills. Also placing well were Palos Verdes Peninsula (sixth), South High in Torrance (eighth) and Torrance High (ninth).
I hope all our friends in Sacramento and Davis will send good thoughts to the Van Nuys team when they compete in March!
[Facebook Users: Read This Post. This is how you pick your birthday song!]
OK, Folks, it’s February 1. That means its time for the Birthday Poll. But things are changing. Fewer folks are reading and participating on Livejournal, and I’ve moved the blog to WordPress (and birthday posts don’t go as well there). Plus, there are all the folks on Facebook.
So here’s what I’m going to do: If you are active on Livejournal, you’ll get a song on Livejournal. If you are active on Facebook, you’ll get a song on Facebook. You’ll only get a song if Facebook or Livejournal remind me of your birthday, so at least have the month and day visible in the profile. I don’t care about the year. Further… you’re going to get the “Birthday Cake Polka” unless you respond to this post or the Birthday Song Page with your song preference. This blog is set up so you can sign in with your Livejournal or Facebook IDs. Note: For this post, I would really prefer if you comment on the WordPress original, although I’ll accept comments posted elsewhere.
Here’s the song list. Feel free to suggest additional songs; they will be added to the Birthday Song page. One song got deleted this year because the page with the lyrics disappeared; there is a new song in “Happy Birthday, Erwin”:
Music: Infidels (Bob Dylan): Jokerman
Remember: Please comment on the WordPress post or the Birthday Song page .
By “we”, of course, I mean my daughter. The Van Nuys High School Academic Decathalon team got a very nice write-up in the LA Daily News. You may be wondering where my daughter is in the article. She’s the “Erin Ireland” quoted at the end. You see, the reporter, upon hearing her name, asked her to spell it. She said “Erin, as in Ireland”… and … you can see the results. We’ve sent in a correction. I should note that she’s been working her tush off on this competition — on top of her 4 AP classes, she’s studying all hours of the day (with multiple multi-inch binders of material). I hope Van Nuys does well.
P.S.: Don’t forget that I’m still looking for information on HTML Editor recommendations. No one responded yesterday.
P.P.S.: Don’t forget today is Boardgaming at Temple Ahavat Shalom in Northridge.
Music: Cabaret (1966 Original Broadway Cast) (Lotte Lenya): So What
This is a reminder that the TAS Men’s Club Men of TAS is hosting doing a family gaming (i.e., boardgaming) afternoon on Sunday, 1/22, at Ahavat Shalom in Northridge. The event is free; we’ll have some snacks available for a nominal charge (plus we’re likely to order in something if there is enough interest).
If you are into boardgaming, word games, or other non-electronic games… and you aren’t gamed out by the Games Day on Saturday, then I encourage you to come on over. I’d love to see you, and we can use people who know games to help teach games.
So remember, boardgaming at TAS on Sunday, starting around 1130am. Exit Route 118 at Reseda, go E on Rinaldi to Chimineas, make a right, and we’re on the other side of the bridge.
Music: Company (2006 Broadway Revival) (Company): Opening
