The River Green

For the last month or so, I have been in association with Allegheny Family Network as a web designer. Marieke heard that AFN’s Executive Director needed to have the website updated. Being the wonderful, supportive wifey that she is, my contact info was given and I got a phone call the following Wednesday.

We set up a meeting for the next day. Since Neil was staying with us during his leave, I decided that he should make himself useful and give me a ride into Oakland. I had no idea how long the meeting would be, but on my way to the building, I ran across someone who asked if I was the web designer. He introduced himself as the ‘network guy’. It was a bit awkward shaking his hand because his right hand was considerably smaller than his left and was at the end of a smaller than typical arm. It took me by surprise because it’s not something you see everyday, but I offered my right hand when he offered his left and had sort of a pseudo shake. It was unsettling, not because of the non-typical appearance of his limb, but because I didn’t know what was expected of me in that situation.

I met Ruth, the Executive Director, and Ronn (yes, with two n’s at the end), the anointed ‘Database guy’ before the four of us sat at a round, glass table with faux flowers in the center round beneath. It was determined that the previous website was not appropriate for the direction AFN was moving in. I was asked to update it by adding recent newsletters and replacing some old information with new. My fee would be a modest sum (my typical going rate), and it should take no more than two weeks to complete- working at half time- so 40 hours.

Since the meeting went on for longer than i anticipated, Neil was a bit of a cranky pants when I got back to the car. I think all was forgotten when I bought us a bottle of Captain Morgan to celebrate my new assignment- the first in about a year.

When I discovered the next day the particulars of the AFN website, I was nearly shocked to death, for it wasn’t really a website at all, but merely a blog with a very fancy template. I also found that it was being held together by a small, very delicate thread. The first tug would cause the entire template to fail and the website would be virtually useless.

Back to Ruth’s office. I wasn’t looking forward to this meeting at all. Not that Ruth is by any stretch mean, but she is a little intimidating. She has a certain look that precludes even the remote possibility of bullshit on any level. My fear was that she would think that I was trying to scam her or otherwise not give her the benefit of the truth. When I found out that AFN paid nearly ten-thousand dollars for what I laughingly referred to as a website, I was doubly sure that she would banish me from her office.

I was relieved when she listened to my concerns and ideas for a solution with patience and even more so when she began offering her own ideas for a solution.

With a mutual understanding of what needed to be done in order to move the website forward into the realm of actual benefit to the organization, we decided that a new website was the best course of action. Ruth would need to get approval from the Board of Directors in order to proceed with drawing up a contract for the work to begin.

About three weeks later, Ruth informed me that the Board said yes and I was to return to her office to sign a contract so that work on the website could begin.

Labels: web projects , work

Season finale of Glee was on tonight. In other news it looks like Semi-Super Tuesday Primary elections for the mid-terms have shaped an interesting November. I’m not as into it as I would normally be. The tea is helping with that.

I met mom at Giant Eagle to get a book from her that she checked out of the Pitt law library for me. The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. It is the 16th edition, which unfortunately does not have the information I need- how does one cite Supreme Court Oral Arguments in APA style? I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it at all. Thankfully, she is going to photocopy a couple pages out of the most recent edition for me.

This is being written in bed, thanks to the fact that my laptop is so awesome. I had to throw that in there.

For the new school week, I hope to have more practice exercises done for my IT class and maybe this week my writing class will make sense. I haven’t yet written the midterm survey for that class, but it will be scathing. I can’t stand the fact that the prof for my Comp II class can’t write for shit. Or more to the point, her writing is shit. I find that she writes with the same cadence and lack of clarity similarly to the way a certain former GOP VP candidate speaks. It is annoying to say the least.

The coming weeks (maybe months) are not going to be comfortable at all. if there is a way to go without or make due, I can’t think of one. We’re headed to KMart to get the first of two necessities to help us get through. As a result of the predicament, I am now ‘in charge’ of the finances. Oh good, because I certainly didn’t have enough to do already. Ugh. Maybe I’ll feel more useful.

Nearly 2.5 hours after taking my melatonin pill, I am not yet sleepy.

Labels: classes , family , house , politics

As a special treat, and because we had such a great experience during our last trip, I bought Marieke and I tickets to the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concert performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. We shared the June 6 Sunday afternoon with Lucy and Greg, who were also attending the concert. The Ninth has always been one of my favorites. I remember playing it when I studied violin in elementary and middle school. In recent years, I have acquired several performances of the piece from a wide variety of sources. My personal favorite is the Bernstein version played live across the world on Christmas, 1989. He replaced Freude (Joy) with Freiheit (Freedom), in celebration of the demise of the Berlin Wall. In the days before the concert, I posted a series of 9th trivia on my Facebook status. Here is the collection of them:

1. At the end of the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven had to be turned around to see the tumultuous applause of the audience; hearing nothing, he wept.
2. Seiji Ozawa conducted the Nagano Winter Orchestra as well as seven choirs in six countries on five continents, performing the Fourth Movement from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in its entirety, for the 1998 Winter Olympic Games during the finale of the Opening Ceremony. The chorus locations were New York City, Berlin, Cape Point, Sydney, and Beijing, with two in Nagano: the Tokyo Opera Singers and the audience at Nagano Olympic Stadium.
3. Philips, the company that had started the work on a new audio format, the compact disk, originally planned for a CD to have a diameter of 11.5 cm, the width of the then popular compact cassette, while Sony planned a 10 cm diameter, even more compact but enough for one hour of music. However, Norio Ohga, Sony's CEO in 1979, insisted that the CD be able to contain a complete performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The longest known performance lasted 74 minutes. This was a mono recording made during the Bayreuther Festspiele in 1951 and conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. This therefore became the playing time of a CD. A diameter of 12 centimeters was required for this playing time.
4. For the final movement of his Ninth symphony, Beethoven set to music the "Ode to Joy" written in 1785 by Friedrich von Schiller. This poem expresses Schiller's idealistic vision of the human race becoming brothers- a vision Beethoven shared. In 1972, the Council of Europe adopted Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" theme as its own anthem. Herbert Von Karajan wrote an orchestral arrangement, without words, in the universal language of music, which became the official anthem of the European Union. The anthem expresses the ideals of freedom, peace and solidarity for which Europe stands.
5. During the 1989 student protests in Beijing, a recording of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was played over a makeshift speaker system to drown out the voice of the government telling the people to end their protest. It was chosen specifically for the ubiquitous themes of freedom and brotherhood.
   Leonard Bernstein conducted a version of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, with "Freiheit" ("Freedom") replacing "Freude" ("Joy"), to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall during Christmas 1989.

Manfred Honeck, the Music Director of the PSO, did a splendid job. The older gentleman seated next to me and I had a difficult time keeping our emotions contained and we both had damp cheeks by ovation time.

Labels: concerts , music