World Readable: a personal blog about anything that comes to mind for anybody who cares to read it.
This afternoon we caught a matinee showing of the just-started US tour of “The Addams Family” musical at the Straz Center.
It was an enjoyable, funny show and our whole family had a good time watching the antics of the Addamses and the Beinekes. I didn’t find the music/songs to be as earworm-worthy as those from “Wicked” or “Rent” but they were still pretty good. As a comedy goes, though, I found myself laughing a lot! If the US tour is coming near you, I recommend you check out a showing.
I learned my lesson last time and decided to hold off a few days before upgrading to the new release of Ubuntu 11.10, Oneiric Ocelot.
That was a smart decision since the upgrade took just under two hours this time instead of over eight. I did have one (self-induced) snag during the ‘do-release-upgrade’ step. I was trying to copy some text and accidentally used Control-C in my screen session which killed the process! Luckily I was able to resume it with a ‘dpkg –configure -a’ command and I haven’t noticed any problems due to my screw-up (yet, whew!).
I also had fewer post-upgrade problems this time than with Natty. In fact, both issues were related to the newer version of Perl in Oneiric. They were easily fixed by re-building ZoneMinder and MRTG so I was back in business relative quickly.
Since I run Ubuntu on my server I don’t normally see (or care about) any of the user-facing changes like the Unity interface so I can’t comment on those features. The only real change for me is the new 3.0 Linux kernel.
Up next in April? Precise Pangolin.
Lisbeth Salander, the brilliant computer hacker who was shot in the head, is alive, though still the prime suspect in three murders in Stockholm. While she convalesces under armed guard, journalist Mikael Blomkvist works to unravel the decades-old coverup surrounding the man who shot Salander: her father, Alexander Zalachenko, a Soviet intelligence defector and longtime secret asset to Säpo, Sweden’s security police.
“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest” by Stieg Larsson is the final book of the Millenium trilogy and I finally finished reading it this past weekend during my trip up to Ohio.
“Hornets’ Nest” picks up immediately where “The Girl Who Played with Fire” ended: Mikael Blomkvist has found Salander miraculously alive after being shot in the head and buried at a remote farm where she tried to kill her father and half-brother. Lisbeth and Zalachenko end up in the hospital under police guard while the authorities try to piece together the events that occurred in the second book. Meanwhile, The Section, the secret division of the security police is mobilizing to protect its secrets and its past history. Once again Blomkvist and Salander are at the center of a political, legal, and far-reaching scandal that threatens both of their lives and the lives of their associates.
In “Fire” we learned about Lisbeth’s backstory and history with Zalachenko and The Section. “Hornets’ Nest” unravels the inner workings of The Section, its history inside Säpo, the players involved, and explains how the conspiracy started and continued into present day. It gets a bit complex and at times I found it hard to keep everyone and everything straight, but Larsson does a good job of intriguing the reader and keeping the plot moving forward at a good pace. Even the big courtroom scenes at the end, which are mostly expository, are riveting to read. It’s not until the final pages of the epilogue when everything finally falls into place and is neatly wrapped up.
Having cancelled Netflix recently, I won’t be able to watch the third installment of the Swedish movies, but the US version of the trilogy starts in December.
We got to “sleep in” a bit this morning, compared to the last two days. By 8:15am, we were checked out of our hotel, picking up breakfast at Starbucks, and back on the road to the Cincinnati airport (in Kentucky).
The travel gods were looking out for us again (plus it was early Sunday morning) so we encountered no traffic or issues on our way. By 10:30am we were checked in, through security, and at our gate. One two-hour, uneventful flight later and we were back in sunny (warm!) Florida.
By 2pm we were back home and ready to relax. My daughter and I had a great time on our trip but tomorrow it’s back to work and school.
The day started early again as we got up at 7am, grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel, and the headed out into the chilly, windy morning over to the University of Dayton Arena for rehearsal with the alumni band. Practice ended a few hours later after we rehearsed the pre-game and halftime shows with the student band on the football field Welcome Stadium.
I’m up in Dayton, Ohio on a weekend trip with my daughter for the 2011 UD Band Alumni weekend. I haven’t been to Bandcoming since the 100 year anniversary back in 2005 so I’m looking forward to seeing some old college friends and spending a weekend with my daughter.