Bit late, but it's been niggling for 2 weeks now. Couple of Saturdays ago my main choir ran a 'come and sing' day. The work was the Mozart requiem and it was very successful.

I tend to act as platform manager for events like this (I can project my voice and be heard) and as an ex-chairman of the choir, I tend to do 'meet and greet' of guests and the audience etc.

Whilst we were assembling before the concert a lady approached me that as far as I know I have never met. She said, "Oh, you're xxx aren't you?" To which I said "Yes." Then she said: "Didn't you used to be the moderator of xxxforumxxx?".

The answer to that would be yes, but not for about 6 years (private forum with moderator teams).

I have no idea who the lady is. My name she would have got easily from anyone at the event, but how she linked my name to having modded a forum for a while back in the early 2000s beats me. Why go to the length of telling me this but not saying anything else? Odd.

There, it's been bothering me.



Confused Tenor Viol

EDIT: Unless of course one of you has sussed me out!

Gah! I am authoring a stupid report. I've looked at it many ways, a colleague has looked at it many ways...and it comes down to the fact that I have to create 30 separate data tables and join them together.
The system in question has no way to join them all at once, so I have to join 1 to 2, then 1+2 to 3, then 123 to 4, etc. So I end up with 29 joins
Each join makes the report slower and slooower and slooooooooower and sloooooooooooower to run.
Each time I do a join, I run the report to check I've done the join correctly - otherwise I'll get to the end, it won't work, and I'll have to work through 29 joins to find the dodgy one (two, three...) Unfortunately, it's now taking me about 30 seconds to do the join, followed by 15 minutes to run the report to check it.

Still, they're paying me to do it I suppose

What on earth are you using as your RDMS?

You need a decent database that permits multiple indexes and allows up to 256 joins... and several million quid to buy the machine..... Apart from that it's easy (I wrote a quick query last week whilst someone was at my desk - only 4 tables to join, but about 15 billion rows of data - ran in about 15 seconds.....)

Most of our data sits in Oracle, and then gets extracted to SAS datasets. Each of which are easy to play with. And usually we deal with everything this way.
Unfortunately the one crucial bit of data this report relies on is not stored in the Oracle database - I have to go to the reporting database associated with the front end...it has to be done with Cognos Reporting Studio, and it's made a huge amount more complicated than necessary because of the way the front end (clinical trial) has been designed. Usually our trials are built with data extraction in mind; this one was co-built with another organisation, who regard getting the data out as our problem, not something that should rule the initial design (fair enough - but you do want the data out, don't you?), and who now want ludicrous metrics reports on fourteen million different aspects of this, that and the other. Which nobody else cares about, so no system is set up to do, and I just have to do it

OK - I get the picture I recognise most of those tribulations!

I was just typing something in Google and the screen flipped upside down! It pretty much turned the right way up again instanly but it's left me a bit unnerved. Is this something to wory about?

No, nothing to be bothered about unless it happens again.

Thanks - that's a great relief! Thought there may have been a virus or something...

My director came in to have a chat with us this afternoon. He sat in colleagues seat and when the phone rang he kind of panicked like a trainee or new starter might when learning the ropes. He had to ask us what the procedure for password resets was! We all found it very amusing.

The reason he was checking was to check everything was in order as we have auditors coming in a couple of weeks. He was happy apart from a couple of little things that I am tasked with remedying tommorow.

Sometimes Google does silly things like this that trigger when a certain key combination is pressed.

For example, try going to http://google.co.uk and type in "do a barrel roll" then press the search button (has to be done from the main page)

My car insurance company has just emailed me with some "Top Tips" (WHY does that phrase ALWAYS bring me out in weals? Ronnie Barker and his Saw Tips were vastly more pleasing....) on staying safe when driving in the icy/snowy weather :

1) try avoiding any steep hills

I won't bore you with the rest....

Bx

Ah, corenfa, what have you started? I'm going to have to devote a LOT of research to this phenomenon...(easily amused, that's me )


Is 'Avoid unnecessary journeys' in there? Usually leads to people asking who would go and just drive randomly about the place for no reason whatsoever...

This reminds me of when I phoned up NHS Direct at 3 o'clock in the morning in agony with food poisoning and they told me not to eat any hot or spicy food.

You can even buy packets of nuts with allergy advice 'May contain nuts'

I've just found Google Gravity. All the links, images, etc. from the Google homepage all collapse down to the bottom of the screen, and then you can drag certain elements around the screen with your mouse. Plus you can type something in the search box and the top links and images search results will appear from the top of the screen, and you can keep doing that as many times as you like until the whole screen is completely filled up. You can have hours of fun with it...

Car Expert

a perfect time wasting thing, that!

Manchester via Sheffield? Via Leeds? Via York? Via Nottingham? Via Chiltern to Birmingham and transfer to New Street?

*thinks*

I'd go for the Chiltern Line option. Ok it's a bit slow but I really like B'ham Moor Street station. Well I do now when I lived in Brum I'd avoid it if on my own even in day light. It's only a short walk from there to New Street.

I'm also pondering this weekend. I need to be in Solihull at 9:30 tomorrow morning and am not sure I can face that cold start at 07:15. I'm more worried though by the snow. Dad lives at the bottom of a steep hill I may struggle to get the car out on Sunday. Public transport may help for the gig on Sunday, but won't be practical for the rest of the weekend.

I'd go for the chiltern line too. You will get to see the big bronze bull at the bullring en route to new street

Just in case anyone else is travelling north via Birmingham tomorrow, just check the trains before you go. There is currently a derailed freight train causing hassle on the main Euston to Birmingham line. They said earlier that it might not be clear by tomorrow.

That would have been a challenge last year. We were in Helmsley N Yorkshire when there was the Big Snow and we had to return home. The only sensible route was down Sutton Bank which is quite the steepest hill I've been up or down. However, the gritters had been out in force and all was well.

Boy am I glad I'm not visiting Canary Wharf today as was on the agenda earlier in the week....

There are some really cute pictures here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gal...494&index=0

Via Sheffield. There's loads of trains between Sheffield and Manchester. No point going via York because you'd then have to go through Leeds to get to Manchester from there.

Check out the prices - you will probably find that they vary wildly according to route. Goodness knows why, but the variation is often quite amazing.

I like February. My Charlie and Lola calendar has clarinets on it.

This is what I eventually tried to do : but overhead wire problems at Bedford meant East Midlands Trains were having issues too, so I wandered to Kings Cross and got a Leeds train. And then a chat to louise1712 diverted me there

Niece number 1 used to like Charlie and Lola when she was younger


I've discovered I like port

I hope you waved to BB2 as well.

So do I Louise Particularly Vintage. Though there is some good LBV (late bottled vintage) available.
But as with most things , you pay for what you get.

My husband says that this is true with port, moreso than with some other alcohol where you pay for "branding" (e.g. champagne)
I only know this because a colleague wanted to buy someone a bottle of port for Xmas, and my husband was able to provide an 'introduction to port' that I could pass on to her, as a port was to her (and me) a completely unknown area!

I am about to take 21 kilograms of parcelled-up sheet music to the post office to send to the people who responded to my offer.

There are now 3 pieces of piano music and 7 vocal scores left out of around 150 items to start with.

You deserve a medal for services to music education! I would have asked to see the list but postage costs to Europe put me off!

Someone told me yesterday they were going to the theatre to 'The Virginia Monologues'. I didn't like to correct them

How many juniors made it to church yesterday? In our church choir only one - and not my daughter, who preferred to stay at home and play in the snow! In fact the congregation in general was so diminished that the choir shifted position to be closer to the select few.

And how many older folk? We did have one 14 year old, but like many churches, we have a high proportion of over-80s, many of whom sensibly decided not to risk slipping on the snow and stayed at home. We usually have a congregation of 50-60, but yesterday only managed 28!

How's the hernia?

I have the morning off teaching as the school is on fire

My school (Keighley Boys Grammar) was severely damaged by fire in March 1962, just before I took 'O' Levels. Some of our books were water damaged from the fire hoses. Some wonderful pics on the photos section of http://www.kbgs.com. A complete new school (Oakbank) , out of town was completed by Easter 1964 when I took 'A' levels, but I left the following Christmas

Nothing too serious I hope?

SB

Not next door to Hugh F-W's cottage, by any chance?

No... but Hugh F-W's cottage is only about 1 hour away! The smoke was coming out of the room I teach in! I wasn't there at the time!

band librarian, mmmmm

Have you got loads of space for the music?

And do you have dicatatorial aspirations... Or are you planning to use winsome charm to melt hearts and ensure that music is returned on time? Both techniques work I have noticed

Nope, but I don't need it, the church hall does



and neither, as far as I know the music stays in the pads where we rehearse apart from the odd part being borrowed for practice.

I've just walked past the "non-demoninational inter-faith room" Presumably we're not allowed to call it the 'prayer room' any more.

I wonder if I can slip in there for 20 mins for a thoroughly non-religious relaxation exercise? I'm pretty sure I have something that would pass as a non-denominational inter-faith in my head...

Edit: my mistake, it's the inter-denominational multi-faith room...

Oh dear! Whoever thought of that one needs rapid redeployment to a different department.
I don't really see anything wrong with 'prayer room' myself . (Spiritual needs requisition dept.? Quiet room? Contemplation room? This is going to bother me all day )

I bet they will find some multi-purpose catch-all reason why you can't use it.

Nip in quickly before they think of one!

We do actually have at least one quiet room on each site...at my old site it was inside the suite of rooms belonging to (wait for it...) Health, Safety and Perfomance Services (HS&PS - occupational health to the real world!), I have no idea where it is on the site I'm on today as a one-off special, or on my "Tuesday site". They hide them well.
They are supposed to be for people who aren't well, e.g. I've used one before when I've had a migraine coming on - see if an hour's nap can stop it coming

Since we got folders we are not allowed to take music from them home.
We get our own practice copies.
The reasons we got folders were partly to do with unreliable attendance meaning that if someone didn't turn up but there was someone new to play the part there would be no music and then there were those who actually turned up to rehearsal without the music!!