Tag Archives: music

Family Member Legacy

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Do you keep up with technology news?

How about privacy laws?

Well, if you haven’t, I’ll summarise a bit of the clash between technology and privacy laws.

You see, many of us have online personalities — that is, we conduct business and personal transactions through the exchanges of electronic bits in place of face-to-face discussions, handshakes and pen-to-paper contractual agreements.

For instance, if a person had once handwritten (or typed) letters of correspondence, leaving the proverbial/ubiquitous/superfluous/euphemistic/cliched paper trail, a researcher or law enforcement person could request or confiscate the pages for historical purposes.

It’s not like one could go to the post office and request a copy of the information that was sent from one person/entity to another.

Enter the information age! [imagine supersonic jets swooping past and videophones embedded in everyone’s eyes, with some sort of thumping soundtrack]

Now, much of our online equivalent of letters and parcels is stored on computing devices somewhere out there.

Call it the cloud or server farms or data centers or Joe Bob’s Internet Service Shoppe.

Regardless of where, your former/current online life lives on in perpetuity, whether intentionally or accidentally.

For instance, as many of you know, my father is working his way through the stages of ALS bulbar option, with an added task of encephalopathy/dementia, meaning he has little to no clue about accessing his former online life.

Which brings us to the bottom line.

I am not a government.  I am not an academic researcher.  I am not a novelist looking for an interesting person to chronicle and fictionalise (well, maybe I am some of that but not in this moment).

I am my father’s son.

I want to carry on my father’s legacy, including online correspondence as well as making sure any outstanding electronic monetary transactions are concluded successfully.

I simply want to give my mother access to her husband’s (my father’s) email account with Yahoo!.

The employees at Yahoo! Customer Care have been kind enough to tell me that they take my father’s email account seriously and will not just give out his access information to any Jane, Jill or Joe Bob.

The very bottom line?  If you have an online presence and lose your cognitive ability, make sure ahead of time that someone you know/love/trust has your account access information readily available.  Otherwise, it takes a court order to gain access.

That’s a legacy I’m chasing today, through legal channel surfing.

I’ll leave you with Ode to Joy (Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee) to close out this romp through the hoops of the online world.

Great News for Marching Band NASCAR Fans

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Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes before you hear the performer(s) sing/play the pregame song before your favourite sports activity?

Well, here’s a bit of info for those who will watch an upcoming NASCAR-affiliated race [courtesy of a marching band parent]:

Dear Parent(s) and Students:

Late yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from the Denny Hamlin Foundation requesting the Lancer Band’s help. For those who do not know, Denny Hamlin is a Manchester graduate (Class of ’99) and currently the driver for the Fed Ex #11 Joe Gibbs Racing NASCAR Sprint Cup Team. Each year prior to the NASCAR race at Richmond International Raceway (RIR), Denny hosts a celebrity charity race to benefit the Denny Hamlin Foundation that donates money to Cystic Fibrosis and other children’s charities.

Denny has asked the Marching Lancers to perform the National Anthem at RIR prior to his race and the Late Model Stock Car race held on Thursday, April 26.

Each Marching Lancer- brass, woodwind, percussion, guard, and twirler- is invited to participate.

This is quite an honor and Denny really wants it to be a hometown-feel type of event hence him asking for his high school band.

Thank you all for your support and patience! The people at RIR, the Denny Hamlin Foundation, and NASCAR, are extremely excited about the Marching Lancers performing Thursday night. We are the only high school in the country that will perform the National Anthem at a major NASCAR race this season. We are extremely honored!

Here are some important details:

…we will travel via school bus to RIR.
We will perform the Anthem twice.
6:55PM- Perform Anthem for Late Model Stock Car Race
8:25PM- Perform Anthem for Denny Hamlin Short Track Show Down

After the second Anthem performance we will move in to the stands to watch Denny race. We are his special guests for the evening.

Students need to bring a jacket/sweatshirt. We will Not change out of our pants.

Students MUST BRING EAR PLUGS to be worn during the Anthem (to counteract sound delay of PA system) and for the race. It will be painful without hearing protection. Regular foam earplugs will work fine. Students will not be allowed to wear headphones during the Anthem but can do so during the race.

Bring the earplugs for tomorrow’s rehearsal, too, so you can get use to wearing them while we play.

Bring money for dinner at the concession stand.

Have black socks, white gloves , and marching shoes.

A friend recommended…

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A newfound friend some of you are familiar with, Claire Lynch, challenged me to write an app that would make communicating by Morse Code faster than texting.

Claire, I never imagined you’d influence my dreams.

I woke up from a night of coding in my subconscious — experimenting with the length of time that designates a pause and when it’s a pause, exactly what kind (space between words, space between sentences, etc.), as well as the definition of dots and dashes when one is “clicking” a touchscreen device like a mobile phone or tablet PC.

Of course, I haven’t got out to any Android or Apple app store to see if the app in question already exists.  Create mine first and let the competition wait with bated breath.

Mashup of the day [NSFW]

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[Warning:  the links below contain words/ideas/images currently subject to categorisation as inappropriate for family-oriented audiences]

Here’s the story that led me to this mashup.  Word.

Make sure you listen to it accompanied by Delibes “Coppelia/Slow Waltz and Final Gallop” performed by the Royal Opera House – Covent Garden, Mark Ermie, Conductor, on satellite radio or digital TV.

The Recruit

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The song ended.

Shirts clinging to their warm bodies, the dancers stepped off the floor, Reid giving a couple of hard smacks of his black-and-white spectator shoes before plopping down onto a plastic chair.

“Whew!  Whatta number, huh?”

His wife nodded, taking a large sip of water.  “You bet.  I’m going outside to cool off.”

“You do that.”  He twirled his matted, moussed blond hair into a double ducktail curl, then pulled his goatee down to a point.

He turned to Lee, sitting a couple of chairs over.  “So, Lee, you been to the site yet?”

“Huh?”

“interpunk.com.  You know…  I can see you don’t remember.  So you can find some patches to sew on your denim jacket!”

“Yeah.  I mean, no.”

“But dude…”

“The site’s ‘hot.'”

“No way.”

“Way.  After you mentioned the site, I called a few friends who set up an IP trace.  I can’t go near it, there’re so many eyes on it, it’s like it’s on a big stage with lots of spotlights.  I’d be caught in a few nanoseconds.”

“Tough, dude, tough.”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna modify your jacket anyway?”

“And ruin my good looks?”

“Your ‘good looks’?  Right…”

Lee ran his right hand through his carrot-red hair, shaking out beads of sweat.  He looked around and no one seemed to be in earshot.  “Did the message get through?”

Reid gave him a comical ‘Are you kidding?’ look — scrunched-up face, raised eyebrows, pursed lips and slight smile.

“Good.  When’s the drop?”

Reid’s wife, May, walked back in.  “It’s cold out there!  Must be close to freezing.”

Reid nodded.  “Uh-huh.  And?”

May threw a glove in his face.  “And… you can sleep outside in the car tonight!”

They laughed and May turned to grab a friend, Joe, to dance a Lindy Hop while Reid and Lee continued talking.

Reid wiggled his eyebrows.  “Well, there are some complications.”

“I don’t care.  Are you or are you not going to make the drop?”

“When was the last time you delivered something via dark matter conversion?”

“Never.  But that’s not my problem.”

“Maybe not but I thought your people were going to help me.  I detailed the whole thing in a product description for you on the website.  Can’t you spoof an IP address or something?  Isn’t that your specialty?”

“Normally, yes.  But they’ve put an electromagnetic spectrum sensor array around me so that any way I try to get a signal through, they know it.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah.  Why do you think I’m using voice right now?”

“I don’t know.  I thought you wanted to revert to old-fashioned ways, kinda in line with the ragtime dance show theme tonight.”

“I’d much rather we use our wireless head implants.  You know that.  Much more secure and less easy to detect visually.  But the sensor array is sensitive enough to pick up those wavelengths.”

“Funny, isn’t it, that they can detect all these fancy ways you’ve created to communicate with us but they can’t follow a simple conversation?”

“They don’t believe I’d risk the effort.”

“Crazy.  Hey, I think your wife is nodding at you to hit the dance floor.”

“Yeah.  Look, just make the drop.  For appearances, if nothing else.”

“No problem.”

“And make sure the new kid goes along.  The attrition’s getting so bad that we gotta keep fresh blood on the fast track training cycle.”

“Man, chill.  It’s taken care of.”

Lee nodded, stood up and walked over to where his wife was chatting with some girlfriends of hers.

“You ready?”

She held out her hand.

Lee spun Karen into his arms and out to a walking Charleston move until they found an open spot on the dance floor, where he absentmindedly thought about a painting titled “Hearing Damage” by a friend of his.

Will the real news anchor please step forward?

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Hey, why should microbloggers use their real names if national TV broadcasters don’t?

Ask Lana del ray, lana del sol, lana del rey, manta ray, or whatever a singer’s sugar daddy’s publicist’s agent calls her these days.

BTW, our inside sources at the Vatican say that, after watching the Super Bowl, they have removed the singer commonly known as Madonna from their Public Enemy No. 1 list and replaced her with certain members of the U.S. Presidential Administration who, unfortunately, the Vatican cannot secretly have hoped were aborted by their mothers long ago.

After their great tickertape parade through the leaning towers of heroes in Manhattan, the NY Giants held a quiet buffet dinner to give out post-season awards.  This year, the newest one, the Welker Award, was handed to the receiver who did the worst job faking a dropped pass in a crucial situation.  We aren’t allowed to divulge the winner, however, due to concerns the Patriots may try to hire that player in the offseason.

While on the subject, a special edition candy bar will hit the stores soon.  Nestlé has announced that the jersey numbers of the Patriots’ Hernandez and Welker will adorn the end of Butterfinger candy bars.  Buy ’em quickly — only a limited run has hit the streets!