short takes (pretty random)

[cellio]

I awoke today to frost. Apparently the temperature got down into the upper 20s last night. I'm used to light-sweater season, as opposed to jacket season, lasting more than four days. Perhaps it will return. (In case you're wondering, the four seasons are T-shirt season, light-sweater season (also known as sweatshirt season), jacket season, and mega-jacket season. They are not of equal durations; T-shirt season usually lasts about 5-6 months.)

I found this rant about Usenet interesting. And not solely applicable to Usenet. Thanks to autographedcat for the link.

Template for a badly-written poll: "Does X change your opinion of Y?" Sure it can, but neither "yes" nor "no" actually tells you anything else useful. If what you mean is "does X make you less inclined toward Y?", say that. (A current instance of this is a CNN poll, where Y is Schwarzenegger and X is his comments about Hitler.)

We had a very good On the Mark practice Wednesday. Robert, Kathy, and I will be performing at Darkover (without Ray, who can't make it), so we've been juggling some things around to make them work with just three people. We've also added a couple new pieces that we can just plan for three from the start. Things are sounding good, and we've still got more than a month and a half to practice. Kathy's been taking voice lessons and that's paying off, too.

I got a call from Tree of Life yesterday -- their cantor is sick and could I do services tonight? Normally I'd jump at it, of course, but I always spend Shabbat Shuva (the Shabbat between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur) in my own congregation. Among things, it's when my grandfather's yahrzeit [1] is commemorated and I prefer to be there for that. I don't wish their cantor ill or anything, but maybe I'll get another opportunity some other time. (Hey, people take vacations, maybe.)

I'm leading the Torah service, and reading Torah, tomorrow morning. The Torah reading is in good shape; it's a short and easy parsha and I've had a while to work on it. Leading the service should go ok; this is the only part of the Shabbat morning service I've never led [2], but it should be fine. It's not as if I haven't heard it bunches of times. If I can learn the Yom Kippur haftarah blessing for Monday, which isn't exactly familiar territory, I can lead a Torah service.

Caffeine intake is down to two cans/day. I should be ok for Yom Kippur. But I am so breaking the fast with a liter of Diet Coke!

Footnotes:

[1] Anniversary of someone's death. Ok, properly the anniversary of a Jew's death, and my grandfather wasn't Jewish, but since the ritual is for the living I don't have a problem with having his name read on the list. I don't do anything else blatant, like sponsoring meals in his honor or stuff like that.

[2] I've also never led Musaf, but Reform congregations don't do Musaf so this is rarely an issue.

Comments

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

I found this rant about Usenet interesting. And not solely applicable to Usenet. Thanks to autographedcat for the link.

1998. Wonder what he's doing now.

[cellio]

I believe he's geekosaur's cousin, so maybe he knows. :-)

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

I did sort of wonder given the last name. On the other hand, moments after making the actual comment, the drive to go back to the rant site and poke around trying to answer my own question became overwhelming :-)

There's the whole associated Usenet II site, but the home page is datestamped '97 or so. There's little evidence there of something that really got traction. I found a personal webpage with more recent datestamps that still listed him as maintainer of record for a number of Usenet technologies, so he does seem to still have his hand in it. I think it's comforting, in my cynical old age, that there are folks who haven't completely given up on such things even if pragmatically it's been a lost cause for a while...

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Not sure what you mean about the YK Haftarah blessings... same nusach as all the other times, no? I'm chanting Jonah so I'm just doing what I always do.

[goljerp]

I'm guessing that she means that there's stuff you say on Yom Kippur that's different than the "normal" Saturday Haftorah blessings.

[cellio]

goljerp is correct; it's the unfamiliar text that I'm trying to not trip over. I don't want to stumble in front of 900 people. :-)

In addition, I didn't really know the Shabbat haftarah blessing to begin with; we've only recently started doing haftarah on a regular basis (another consequence of the schedule change), and I didn't learn it as a kid.

(So as it turns out, a nusach change wouldn't have hurt me all that much, but I'm in a weird situation.)

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Huh, I never noticed that stuff for YK shacharit haftarah before. OK, I get it now.

[goljerp]

I almost led Psuke this morning, as the person who was supposed to lead it showed up 25 minutes late. I chickened out at the last minute (well, 10 minutes after the last minute, because someone from another minyan came in and stole, er, took our Torah scroll that was rolled to the very end of Deuteronomy, so I had to roll another one to the right place. On the plus side, I think this was the easiest Torah rolling I've ever done, because it's impossible to overshoot too far and the portion is easy to locate. (For those of you following along, it's impossible to overshoot too much because I was rolling to Deuteronomy 32, and there are only 34 'chapters' of Deuteronomy. It's easy to locate, because it's a poem which is written in the scroll in distinctive half-column script.))