The Longest Day of 2008

The gift of time is very precious.  Only a supreme being can grant you additional time.  Or, so it seems, so can the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service.  They are the organization responsible for deciding when to add, or subtract, a second to a day, traditionally December 31, to account for the slight slowing of the Earth’s rotation.  These additional seconds are called leap seconds.

This year a leap second will be added on December 31.  The last leap second event was on December 31, 2005.

The sequence of seconds goes like this:

                          2008 December 31,     23h 59m 59s
                          2008 December 31,     23h 59m 60s
                          2009 January   1,      0h  0m  0s

Notice that there is a second 60 in the sequence.  This is the leap second.  Normally you would roll over from second 59 to second 0 while advancing the minute.  But you get an extra second in your day!  86,401 instead of the usual 86,400.

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The BABY man page

Computer geeks are funny people, it’s just that our humor is often borne of technical subjects. We’ll, Rick Garriques has a tremendous sense of humor, as evidenced by this satire of the Unix man pages. The stress of bringing a new child into the world can get your creative juices flowing like few other life events.  Even if no one else understands it, I still say “well done, Rick!”

Update: I found this page which appears to be an earlier version by Joe Beck.  Both are funny.

BABY(1)                  USER COMMANDS                    BABY(1)

NAME
     BABY - create new process from two parent processes

SYNOPSIS
     BABY sex [ name ]

SYSTEM V SYNOPSIS
     /usr/5bin/BABY [ -sex ] [ -name ]

AVAILABILITY
     The System V version of this command is available with the Sys-
     tem  V  software  installation  option.  Refer to Installing
     SunOS 4.1 for information on how to install and invoke BABY.

DESCRIPTION
     BABY is initiated when one parent process polls another server
process through a socket connection (BSD) or through pipes in the
system V implementation. BABY runs at a low priority for approximately
40 weeks then terminates with heavy system load. Most systems require
constant monitoring when BABY reaches it’s final stages of execution.

Click here to read the rest of the man page.

World Premier of “Ye Sons of USC” by Sam Spence

Sam Spence Autograph

On June 15, 2008, I had the honor of performing under the baton of the legendary Sam Spence. The occasion was the world premiere of a USC fight song composed by Sam and performed by male voices from the Southern California Master Chorale under the direction of Dr. Sheridan Ball. Orchestration was provided by the Golden State Pops Orchestra directed by Steve Fox. Afterwards, Sam was kind enough to autograph my music. He is truly a gentleman.

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Cypress Masterworks Chorale at the 10th Annual International Choral Festival

The 10th Annual International Choral Festival was held on May 4, 2008 at the Founder’s Church of Religious Science in Los Angeles. I was performing with the Cypress Masterworks Chorale. Youtube member gene27 videotaped the three numbers that we sang and posted them on Youtube. I have occasionally heard a (bad) recording of one of my performances but I have never seen myself in action (damn, I look good in a tux! I just wish I could sing as good as I look!).

Anyway, here are the three songs. At the end is a bonus video of a number that Meritage did the previous year. Both groups are under the direction of Dr. Sheridan J. Ball, Cypress College. If you go to Youtube and enter the search term “Sheridan Ball” you will find some videos of the groups he has conducted.

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