3MF

John Ball who?

At work, we were trying to figure out who was John Ball and how did he get a zoo named after him? My first few searches didn't turn up anything so I shot an e-mail off to a local librarian for some help. They gave me this scoop:

John Ball was a teacher, lawyer, explorer and legislator. He was born in New Hampshire in 1794. He donated the original 40 acres of land to create John Ball Park. He left the land to the city of Grand Rapids upon his death in 1884, to be used as a park.

They also sent me to the accessKent website for more information. There is an autobiography posted online where you can read about his trip to Oregon with some fur traders if you're so inclined.

Never type .CreateParameter again

I though I'd share another one of the VBScript classes that I wrote that I've been using quite a bit of lately. I use SQL Server's stored procedures for nearly all my web application data access and I was getting sick of creating ADO connection objects and adding all the necessary parameters in with the correct data types (especially when the stored procedure had twenty-plus parameters). I did some searching to see if there was a way to automate the task. I found a way to query SQL server for stored procedure parameter information. I took that data, load it into an XML object, and create my VBScript code with an XSL transformation. I call it my VBScript SQL Server Coding Helper.

Airport configuration error

I was trying to check out my airport settings today when i ran into a problem. When i launched the AirPort Admin Utility, it listed my AP Extreme base station. However, when i clicked "configure'"and entered the password, an error message popped up informing me "an error occurred while reading the configuration." I tried powering down the unit and starting it back up, but i was still unable to log in. Interestingly, this quirk didn't seem to effect my internet connectivity.

I was beginning to wonder if my box had been hacked and someone changed the password. I followed the directions to perform a hard reset on the airport base unit. That would reset all of its settings including the master password back to the default of "public." So i got a paper clip, held down the tiny reset button for six-seconds and then waited about a minute until everything was up again. The unit again appeared in the admin utility, now with the factory default name, but i still couldn't connect. The "public" password did nothing.

Now i tossed the problem. into Google. Other people had experienced something similar and we able to configure the unit my connecting it directly to the mac rather than trying to administer it wirelessly. I gave that a shot. I unplugged the power cord on the base station and unhooked the network cable form the cable modem. I plugged the network cord into the ethernet port on my G4 tower and reconnected the power. After a second or two, it showed up in the AirPort Admin utility and i was able to get right in.

I'm not sure why it happened, but i'm pretty sure the reset wasn't necessary. My firmware is up to date as much as it can be for those of us not running Panther (base station: v5.1.1, admin utility: v3.1.1, OS: 10.2.8). Maybe it's because i have a regular airport card rather than an airport extreme card?

Coolest person in the world

Today i got to hang out with the coolest person in the world. She goes by the name Breanna and she's my ten-year-old cousin. She's super brilliant. She was spelling and defining works like "redundant" and "benevolent" for me. In the next beat, she's telling a blonde joke. Her smile ranks in the top ten cheeriest i've ever seen. If genetics get to the point where I'm able to pick out the characteristics of my offspring, i'd ask for another one of her. I would see her more often but i have to admit i'm a bit afraid of ten-year-olds. I'm not sure what they really find entertaining. I took her to opening night of Princess and the Pea at Circle. Its plot was perhaps a bit too simple for her, but by half way though she was caught up in it. After the show, i took her back stage and showed her the scene shop and dressing rooms. There was a reception after the show where we grabbed cookies and punch. We helped ourselved to a complimentary troll doll on the way out the door. I hope she had fun.

While I was at the theatre, i ran into Nikki. She found all my clues in the scavenger hunt i planned for her. I found out she had most of the crew helping her at one point. I'm happy that it all turned out. As much fun as it is to solve a puzzle, it's almost more fun to make a puzzle for others to solve. It's a completely different, challenging experience. I wonder if there's a way to get a job making these types of puzzles. Hmmm.

Tradition

I just got back from seeing the joint Herritage/Jewish Theatre presentation of Fiddler on the Roof. Fiddler is just a classic musical; the songs and story have become so familiar that the show just feels comfortable. I enjoyed this production but at some points the narrative scenes were dragging and i was thinking "stop talking and start singing and dancing." They did a nice job of pulling off the famous bottle dance. Ultimately i felt for Tevye as he dealt with a world changing around him, his daughters leaving the house, and the traditions of his village disappearing.

It's nice to not be involved in a show of your own so you can go and see other people in shows. My current freedom won't be lasting that long. I got an e-mail informing me that Lady's Not For Burning Rehearsals begin July 11. I really have to get serious now about learning my lines.

It's a wrap

Morning's At Seven is all done. The final performance was given to our smallest audience of the run. As soon as the last patron left the theatre, a team of techies swarmed in with cordless drills and hammers to tear down the set. The next show, Princess and the Pea, opens on Thursday which is a very quick turn around time. Because i had nothing to do during the actual show, i put together a little surprise for Nikki, the stage manager for P&P. I put together a scavenger hunt. I hide clues around backstage, each leading to the next and ultimately to a hidden treasure. I just hope the clues stay there long enough for her to find them because i have no idea who will be in there in the next few days.

After i struck everything on my list, l left the theatre and headed over to my Grandmother's house. Her birthday and my uncle's happened to fall on this weekend as well. By the time i got there most of my relatives had left. To celebrate Father's Day, my dad picked up some mexican food and we went back to my parent's house where my sister and i handed over the unwrapped Shop-Vac my dad had requested. We then played a few games of cribbage, sequence, and dominoes.

Finally, i got my birthday gifts a little early. Though the actual anniversary of my birth isn't until Thursday, we celebrated early because my sister starts a new job in Ann Arbor tomorrow and my parents will be out of town the last half of the week. Actually, my parents being out of town on my birthday is nothing new. My dad always seemed to have a softball tournament in another part of the state the week of my birthday when i was younger. My parents dropped my sister and me off at our uncle's house. I still give them grief for that.

So this weekend, i wrapped another show, another holiday, and another year of my life.

Where am i

In Morning's At Seven, Carl has a where-am-i spell. He becomes confused and overwhelmed by the world because he can't answer the simple question of "where am i." It seems I too am experiencing a where-am-i spell. While Carl's spell was more philosophical in nature, my dilemma is purely geographical.

I thought i lived in the City of Walker. I paid them lots of money in taxes and they gladly accepted it. Yesterday i got a letter from the city of Grand Rapids telling me i own them lots of money for taxes because i live in Grand Rapids. It seems everyone wants a cut of my money. So i went onto the Walker web site to see if i could find a map with city lines. Sure enough, i'm just a few feet outside of Walker. In fact, as you can tell from my ridiculously exaggerated illustration, they went out of their way to not include me.

No i have to re-file to see if Walker will give me back my money they undeservingly took so i can pay off Grand Rapids before they rough me up. I enjoy filing federal and state taxes, but every year these damn city taxes mess me up.

I guess this is just an example of how crazy borders really are. Mankind was fought for centuries to determine where exactly where someone's land ends and someone else's begins. When I look at a map, it's covered with lines partitioning off cities, counties, states and countries. But when i'm driving around, there's nothing to really tell me when i've move into a new territory. Borders are more of a concept than an actual thing in most cases. At some point, someone arbitrarily choose where to draw the line.

MovableType upgrade and downgrade

The following events take place in the hours shortly after midnight Saturday night. It's the story of how a web page ruined my weekend.

I had a problem posting to this weblog this weekend. I saved an entry but it did not show up on the home page. Further investigation showed that the entry made it to my RSS feeds and the individual archive. The only thing that wasn't working was the home page. I made sure i didn't accidentally set the type to "draft" and republished. Still no change. Just to make sure it wasn't a permissions thing, i deleted the main index page and rebuilt the whole site. No change. I started fiddling with the "date posted" field to see if maybe it was some weird sorting thing. That made no difference. Finally i figured maybe it was just some bug in MovableType (i was running version 2.65, which is slightly behind current release).

I went to the MovableType home page hoping to get version 2.661 as i didn't think i was ready for 3.0D just yet. I didn't see a separate download for it and i did some search and thought i read that the 2.661 version would come with 3.0 so i choose that download. To get the file, you first have to register with TypeKey, SixApart's fancy new authentication system. Ok, whatever, i filled out the form to register. It kicked me to a login screen to actually get the file. I put in my username and password, and, several seconds later, i'm presented with a single-line "site error" message. That's odd so i try again. Same thing. I check my email and see a new item from TypeKey with a link to verify my email address. I clicked the link only to discover that was another way to get my friend the "site error" message. It was not a pleasant reunion.

I was now a bit mad. I walked away from the computer for a while hoping it was a temporary server fluke. After about ten minutes, everything seemed to be working without a problem. I was able to successfully download the MT 3.0D upgrade package. I moved all the files over to my web server without much hassle. I ran the mt-upgrade30.cgi script; it bombed. Another google search turned up an explanation that my error was caused by my MTBlacklist plug-in which is not compatible with 3.0. I was aware of that but forgot to get rid of it. I renamed "Blacklist.pl" in my "plugins" folder to "Blacklist.disabled." I ran the upgrade script again with no errors. I thought i was finally done.

I go to login to my newly upgraded admin area, but nothing seemed to be happening. I enter my username and password but i kept coming back to the same login screen. No error message or nothing. If I entered an invalid username, it would give me an "invalid login" message, but when i entered what i believed to my correct credentials -- nothing! Grrrr. I jumped back on to the MT Support forums to see if others were experiencing the same thing. I found a few threads that mimicked my symptoms. It seems to be a problem with certain versions of IIS and come redirect/cookie thing, but apparently the only workaround is to go back to version 2.661. What's up with that.

OK, so version 2.661 -- that's what i wanted all along, but i never saw it. It was definitely not in in the 3.0D download. Where was it? I thought this would be another quick google search, but no. People said you could download if from TypeKey but I didn't find it anywhere. Finally i found someone who posted a direct link to the page where it can be found. (If you can tell me how to navigate to this page i will be impressed.) I found my link to download MovableType 2.661. I went ahead and copied the files over to the web server, hoping that is all that would be required to downgrade. I know that the upgrade cgi script updates the database, but apparently it shouldn't cause a problem with going back to 2.661.

Now i'm back to my more familiar admin login page. I enter my username and password, click the login button, and - bam - "invalid login." At this point i figure either Ben or Mena is just out to get me. So what could be wrong now. Well, back when i was trying to login to my 3.0 install, i clicked the "recover password" just to make sure i was using the correct account. It failed on me because it tried to send it to me using (the default) SendMail which wasn't active on my web host's server. Apparently, that feature doesn’t just send you your password, it resets your password to something new. The only way to get the new password is by e-mail (which i wasn't getting). So i dug through the config file to see if i had any other email options. I was able to move it over to user SMTP and set it up with my mail server. I retried the link, got the new password, and was finally able to log in again.

I was now running 2.661. I clicked the "rebuild" button to fix my home page. I clicked my Safari bookmark to see the final result of all of my hard work - and - nothing. My new entry still hadn't shown up. I spent all those hours playing with my MT installation for nothing.

New plan of attack: maybe it's my template. Normally, my blog main page will show all entries from the last nine days. I changed it to just show the last ten entries (again thinking it might have something to do with the date). Another rebuild, then back to the main index. Again nothing changed. There weren't even ten entries on the home page like my template said. I then changed the title tag in the template. But still nothing changed. I deleted the main index, refreshed my browser, but it was still there. I had no idea where this piece of history was coming from.

After all that, it turned out to be some crazy IIS page caching problem. It had nothing to do with MovableType at all. We had something similar happen at one point at work which is the only reason i stopped there. I contacted my web host who disabled ASP page caching and that seemed to fix it.

Lesson learned.

Final curtain

As i arrived at the theatre today i learned that Norma passed away around 2:00 AM this morning. She died at the age of 75. He had influential roles with every theatre company in Grand Rapids. It was quite a surprise to me. The show went on. Before hand, Joe Dulin, Circle's managing director, gave a thoughtful curtain speech informing the audience of what had happened and they gave out a gasp when they heard the news. After the show, there was a large gathering at the Cottage Bar, a regular theatre hangout. It was there we watched the tribute that aired on News 13. This is definitely the most unexpected thing that's ever happened to a show i was involved in.

The first time i ever had any contact with her was when i was in Complete Works at Civic. Ryan spotted her in the audience before the show and thought she would be perfect as a volunteer for the part where we call someone up to play Ophelia. I had my reservation because we had an agreement not to bring actors onto stage. Regular folks become intimidated when you drag them onto stage so you can maintain some degree of control over them; actors will always fins a way to make the scene about them. When it came to Norma, that could be more true. She upstaged us even continued to heckle us when she returned to her seat. I never forgave Ryan for his "great idea." I didn't get to see what a great actress she was until i started crewing Mornings at Seven.

I'm glad she found something that she loved to do, and did it until the day she died. That's a great example to set. In a now erie line form the show, Arry (the character Norma played) tells her brother-in-law Thor what she want on her tombstone:

Home is the sailor;
home from the sea.
and the Hunter,
home from the hill.

Petals around the rose

Got some time to kill? I suggest trying to solve the mystery behind the Petals Around The Rose. It's an interesting puzzle that apparently even challenged Bill Gates. It took me several tosses to figure out. After i had a theory that worked, it almost took me just as long to figure out how it got that name. Good luck!

Play along

We learned today that late last night Norma was taken to a hospital in Ann Arbor. They said she was diagnosed with a ruptured aorta ... or maybe it was a dissected aorta, or was it a severed aorta ... no that sounds to severe. Anyway, based upon the way they described it, i would just call it a leaky aorta. Apparently she had been bleeding internally since Monday. I wouldn't have thought that sounded possible because there's only so much blood and it would have to have been a really slow leak. Anyway, she's stable now but it doesn't look as if she will be returning to the show.

In place of last night's performance, the cast had a rehearsal with Bernice Houseward whom they called in to fill the role. They went over blocking and such. They ran through her scenes again before the show today. She performed tonight with the script in hand and probably will continue to do so at least though the weekend. Luckily, everything went very smoothly and the audience seemed to follow along and have a good time.

The show did not go on

It was just about call, as everyone was showing up at the theatre, that one our of actors suddenly fell ill. Norma Brink, the Great Dame of Grand Rapids Theatre, started having severe check pains. A call to 911 prompted the arrival of a fire truck and ambulance who quickly wheeled her away, but not with out her protest of course. She still wanted to do the show.

The director of the show came down as well as the managing director of the theatre to talk to the cast. Collectively they decided to cancel the show. They called someone down to rehearse blocking with the rest of the cast just in case Norma is not able to return tomorrow. The theatres around here never cast understudies so it's surprising this doesn't happen more often.

I hope everything turns out OK and she can return quickly. She's wonderful in the role of Arrie. I hope this show does not turn out to be her last.

Nutritional Facts label template

In cleaning out my files, I came across an image i had originally created for a poster for one of my old improv team's shows. I was going to have an "entertainment facts" label on the poster and i wanted to make it look like ones of those nutritional facts food labels. I wanted to get it just right so i tracked down a government web site with the label guidelines. I quickly realized there are many acceptable variations for this familiar label. I threw together a basic template in Illustrator. It uses the fairly common Franklin Gothic and Helvetica Black\Regular fonts. I never actually ended up using the image, but maybe someone else could. You can grab my illustrator file. It's probably not all that easy to edit because Illustrator 9 sucks at laying out styled, tabular data (or i'm just not good at doing it). I wonder if the newer versions are any better.

The day after the Tony's

I watched the 58th annual Tony awards last night. It's my chance to pretend i'm in New York actually seeing these wonderful shows. The live broadcast had its share of awkward moments. I wasn't a big fan of Hugh Jackman as the evenings host. I think you either have to be female or gay to appreciate him. He sang a number from The Boy From Oz that was more obnoxious than anything. For fun, he brought Sarah Jessica Parker on stave for an improvised moment of spontaneous entertainment. She was so worried about having a wardrobe malfunction of her own that she wasn't playing along. It was a wreck. I thought it was nice that Mrs Huxtable was the first African-American woman to win the Tony for a Leading Actress in a Play. Her acceptance speech matched her appearance: elegant and composed. All of the musical numbers were well done. A list of winners is available on line.

One of the great numbers from last night was Defying Gravity from Wicked. I've been meaning to by the soundtrack to the show for a while and last night's performance gave me the extra motivation i needed. I'm a bit disappointed after my first listen. Many of the numbers seem a bit muddy, or unfocused. There weren't many other songs that jumped out at me. The other frustrating part is that the CD jacket offers no context for the songs. The numbers themselves don't tell the whole story so if you don't know the plot (like me), it not easy to tell what everyone's singing about. I need a nice play-by-play (like they have in the Rent CD jacket); anyone know where to find one?

I'm sure i'll enjoy it after a few more listens (or after i actually see the show). I guess i just got spoiled by instantly loving Avenue Q. That would probably explain why Q won best musical, score and book.

Return of the couch

The show has almost made it trough opening week. The final dress performance was awesome, opening night was OK, and things picked up again yesterday. There are still parts that make me laugh every night.

I get a bit bored backstage because there's not a whole lot that i'm responsible for doing. My only real task is to ring a phone once during a scene in the first half of the show. To pass the time, i've been going over my lines for the show i'll be in or i'll snack on the backstage food (which seems to be quickly disappearing). I would chat with the rest of the crew on comm, but the headsets are right next to the audience where you can't really talk. If i don't find a distraction, i wind up thinking what i could be doing rather then spending three and a half hours, six nights a week at the theatre.

While i've previously mentioned things the theatre is lacking, the one thing i'm glad to see is the return of a couch to the green room. When i first started doing shows at Civc there was this cozy sofa just off stage that everyone wanted to get their butt on. It wasn't in the best shape, but it was wonderfully comfortable. It has since been replaced by boring chairs. Now at Circle, outside of that twenty second window where i'm actually pushing the Tele Q button, i can nap on the couch. It is not nearly as comfortable as the old Civic one, but there's plenty of room for me to lie down on it.