May 2008 Archives
Aborted departure
We had a strange event at work today. One of the contractors in the IT department was due to be leaving the company today, as his contract had finished. And in response, the team had clubbed together to buy him a small gift.
The idea was to gather in the staff canteen at 3.30pm to pass on the gift, say goodbye, and have some cake. Except that at the 11th hour - or rather, at 3.15pm to be more exact - his contract was suddenly extended, and his departure cancelled.
But what to do? We had a large chocolate cake and a present - and everyone had already gathered in the canteen. So we went ahead and cut the cake, and even gave him his present - on the understanding that he wouldn’t be getting another one when he eventually did leave.
Oh, and we still all went out to the pub after work for what would have been his farewell drinks.
May 30, 2008
Rehearsal Weekend
This weekend the cathedral welcomes the visiting choir Exultate to sing its services on Saturday and Sunday, while the cathedral choir has one of its rehearsal weekends.
The rehearsal weekends normally take place twice a year; with the choir taking time off from its normal duties to prepare some of the more difficult pieces of repertoire for the coming months. It’s quite a gruelling processing, amounting to about 12 hours of rehearsal over the course of 2 days.
This time around we will be spending a significant about of time on preparing the Cloud of Unknowing by Francis Pott, for a concert performance at the end of term.
Installation
It’s an important night in the cathedral tonight, as we have the installation service for our new Dean, the Venerable Dermot Dunne.
Admission to the service is by ticket only, and we’re expecting a big crowd. There’ll be representatives from the diocese, and from across the southern province too - and a lot of extra seating has already been laid out to cope with the expected number of people.
Both the cathedral choir and girls choir are singing in tonight’s service at 8.00pm, which will an expanded form of Choral Evensong. Some of the music for the service was also chosen by the new dean.
- Introit: Bruckner Locus Iste
- Responses: Rose
- Canticles: Leighton Collegium Magdalenae Oxoniense
- Anthem: Purcel O God thou art my God
- Motet: Rose Surely thou hast tasted
- Voluntary: Langlais Fête
Broadband unavailable
Seems that NTL (or rather UPC) are having a bit of trouble with servicing my area at the moment. On Friday evening the whole network went down for about two hours, cutting off both my TV and broadband signal. And then this evening the broadband internet disappeared for another couple of hours.
I used to tell people that, once the NTL service was set up, that it was fairly reliable. I know my cable TV and broadband connection in Edinburgh was good, because for one period of time I didn’t have cause to contact them for about 3 years. But the utilities here in Dublin don’t seem to be all that resilient - what with all the power cuts too.
Terry threatens to quit
It’s very sad news that Terry Wogan has announced he might stop presenting the Eurovision Song Contest for the BBC, as it just wouldn’t be the same without him. His sarcasm and pithy comments really make the show, and I don’t think anyone else could do it half as well.
But having said that, I quite understand his frustrations with the skewed block voting that goes on between certain participating countries.
In the past few years some of the UK entries, for example, have been quite rubbish. But this year’s song Even If sung by Andy Abraham is really good. And while I’m not saying it should have won the competition, it definitely should not have come last.
Perhaps, with falling viewing figures, the BBC should consider pulling out of Eurovision altogether.
Asus Eee PC 900
I’ve been thinking about buying one of these Eee PC 900 laptops for the last week or so, because it’s so small and cheap, and would be perfect to carry around with me for a bit of casual web surfing and email.
I love my MacBook dearly, but it does get a bit heavy to carry after a while. Anyway, so I’ve been hunting around all the online retailers, and they all seem to be out of stock. And I suspect it’s down to the fact that a new model is about to be announced, and so the manufacturer has stopped making them.
The new model - the Eee PC 901 - is expected to be announced in early June, and sports the new Intel Atom processor, which is meant to be a lot more power efficient - thus giving the machine a longer running time when battery powered.
I spoke to a customer service representative from 20GB Linux White model will be back in stock in 3-4 days, they’re actually not expecting any more deliveries until mid June.
Half Term
There’s nothing happening on the musical front this week, as the cathedral choir are on a half-term break. We get a week’s holiday in the middle of every term, which is a welcome rest - especially this term, after a very busy Trinity Sunday (our patronal festival) weekend.
Last Friday we performed our annual summer concert called Let All The World In Every Corner Sing to a modest but appreciative audience. And then at evensong on Sunday we sang the world premier of Laus Trinitati, a piece specially commissioned from the famous organist and composer David Briggs.
A fair number of the music department seem to have taken this opportunity to get away for a few days, but I’ve still got my day job to go to, so I’m still in Dublin. However, I do have an excess of free time available on evenings and at the weekend, which is a novelty.
Another outage
Just eight days after the last one, there was yet another power cut in the early hours of this morning. According to news reports the outage also affected Christchurch, Temple Bar and Wellington Quay.
I have no idea how long the power was off, but it was long enough to wipe the memory from my bedside clock. Luckily, however, I didn’t need my alarm this morning, as I was woken by traffic noise. But I could have just as easily slept in by mistake, and been late to work.
This is a permanent error
I just discovered that, because of some changes I made to my accounts a few days ago, a lot of my incoming email has been bouncing over the weekend.
Due to an undocumented ‘feature’ of my domain host, I had somehow managed to set a couple of email addresses to forward in a perpetual loop to themselves; never quite making it as far as the mailbox.
Oh well, the error has now been corrected, and hopefully I didn’t miss anything too important.
Dr Flynn Medicine Woman
What’s the tradition? The first son inherits the family business, the second joins the priesthood, the third becomes a doctor, and the fourth a soldier? I’m sure it’s something like that.
Well, in my immediate family the first of the current generation (my brother) is something in marketing - so not exactly the family business, but we’ll let that slide. The second (me) works in IT for a living, but is also a ‘Lay Vicar Choral’, so that’s almost a priest (but not really). And the third - my cousin Sarah - has recently passed her final exams and become a fully-fledged medic. And we’re all really proud of her, as she’s quite an amazing person.
I’m not sure, however, whether the fourth of our generation is so keen of signing up for the armed forces though. Maybe that’s not going to happen.
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