The other day I got in the elevator after locking my bike up on P1, there was already someone in the elevator who has pressed their floor (I think it was 4), so as usual, I pressed my floor (higher than 4) , the doors closed and we were merrily on our way. We got to the 4th floor, the doors open... and no one moves. I sort of glanced over at her in a "I'm not leering" kind of way, but got no reaction. The doors close, at which point I assume that she's forgotten something in her car and needs to head back down to get it, so she's just going to stay in the elevator and go back down. But just as the doors are opening at my floor, I see her snap back to coherence and press 4 again.
Should I have alerted her that 4, the button she pressed, was probably where she wanted to get off while the doors were open? Should I have coughed to get her attention? Or should I have just assumed she knew what she was doing (as I did)?
-kdh
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
How to waste a day 20 minutes at a time
Warning: don't follow this link unless you have some time to waste: ted.com. I don't remember how I ran across this site, but I know that I had seen it before without exploring the whole site. Basically, the site is a collection of talks and performances taken from a conference that brings together 'experts' from the worlds of "Technology, Entertainment, Design", although I think it covers more than just those categories.
I particularly like watching the talks that cover the areas where have an innate interest in the subject (admittedly, it's often anything to do with numbers or the environment), but I haven't really run across any that I didn't find fascinating.
Here are a couple of my favorites:
-kdh
I particularly like watching the talks that cover the areas where have an innate interest in the subject (admittedly, it's often anything to do with numbers or the environment), but I haven't really run across any that I didn't find fascinating.
Here are a couple of my favorites:
- Benjamin Zander talks about music and passion.
- Hans Rosling plays with world statistics in a really cool way
- Erin McKean (a lexicographer) talks about the history and future of the dictionary
-kdh
Monday, July 7, 2008
44th!!!
Well, we've returned from Nashville where my quartet finished 44th. We were pretty happy with out performance although we were singing in a pretty tough spot, first out of the gate in between previous champs "Realtime" and this year's eventual winner "O.C. Times". As for the scores (76.9%), I think we had hoped they would be a little bit higher, but we're not really worried about them all that much.
I always find internationals has a strange ambivalent effect on me. On one hand, watching great quartets is inspiring and motivates me to get better at this hobby. On the other hand, I watch the top 10 (or even top 20) quartets and think that I'll never be that good, no matter how hard I work. Oh well, such is life, I guess.
I always find internationals has a strange ambivalent effect on me. On one hand, watching great quartets is inspiring and motivates me to get better at this hobby. On the other hand, I watch the top 10 (or even top 20) quartets and think that I'll never be that good, no matter how hard I work. Oh well, such is life, I guess.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Scotland
Sorry for the long absence... May was "no blogging month", right?
I spent the last week in May in the UK on vacation. I was there for two singing engagements with the Northern Lights that fell on two successive weekends, and the week in between was spent driving up to and around Scotland with my friends David and Jordan. The singing stuff went really well, it's always an amazing experience to sing for such an appreciative audience.
I didn't take any pictures of the singing events, but i do have pictures of the trip to Scotland.
I spent the last week in May in the UK on vacation. I was there for two singing engagements with the Northern Lights that fell on two successive weekends, and the week in between was spent driving up to and around Scotland with my friends David and Jordan. The singing stuff went really well, it's always an amazing experience to sing for such an appreciative audience.
I didn't take any pictures of the singing events, but i do have pictures of the trip to Scotland.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Elevator fun
Susanna and I were heading up to our apartment from the garage last night, but realized after already having pressed "10", that we needed to get the mail, so we pressed "L" and got out at the lobby, where someone got into our elevator as we got out. We got our mail fairly quickly and didn't wait long in the lobby for another elevator to take us to 10. When we got to 10, the same guy got in the elevator as we got out! He must not have realized that 10 had already been pressed, and automatically got out when the elevator stopped only to find out that he was on the wrong floor probably only after the elevator doors had closed and it had zipped away to his floor.
When we passed him as we were getting out of the elevator on 10 he probably would have recognized us as the cause of his problem (it was late and there weren't many people around), but we made it safely to our door.
-KDH
When we passed him as we were getting out of the elevator on 10 he probably would have recognized us as the cause of his problem (it was late and there weren't many people around), but we made it safely to our door.
-KDH
Monday, April 21, 2008
Nashville Bound!
I was outted by Karen on her 'blog, so I guess I'd better post here... it's been a long time.
This past weekend my quartet,"Chameleon", qualified to represent Ontario District at the international convention in Nashville, TN this coming July. It's pretty exciting and will me more than a little nerve wracking. I've sung in front of 10,000 people before at these contests, but always with the safety net of a chorus behind me and 8 or 10 other guys singing the same notes that I am singing. This year will be different: I'll be the only person singing my part... and I'll be one of four on stage, not one of 40.
The experience of going to "internationals" will be different on a couple of other fronts too. First, my chorus (TNL) is not going this year (as we decided to take a year off and we are going to the British Association of Barbershoppers' annual convention, in the U.K.). It will be strange not competing in the chorus competition, and not having rehearsals all through the week... it will be strange, but nice! Besides the extra free time, it will be strange not having a whole bunch of guys (and their families) to hang out with all week. Another chorus from Ontario (the Capital City Chorus from Ottawa) will be going, and they are good friends of our quartet, but it's still not quite the same.
Anyway, I'm pretty excited about the opportunity to sing at internationals... should be fun.
-KDH
This past weekend my quartet,"Chameleon", qualified to represent Ontario District at the international convention in Nashville, TN this coming July. It's pretty exciting and will me more than a little nerve wracking. I've sung in front of 10,000 people before at these contests, but always with the safety net of a chorus behind me and 8 or 10 other guys singing the same notes that I am singing. This year will be different: I'll be the only person singing my part... and I'll be one of four on stage, not one of 40.
The experience of going to "internationals" will be different on a couple of other fronts too. First, my chorus (TNL) is not going this year (as we decided to take a year off and we are going to the British Association of Barbershoppers' annual convention, in the U.K.). It will be strange not competing in the chorus competition, and not having rehearsals all through the week... it will be strange, but nice! Besides the extra free time, it will be strange not having a whole bunch of guys (and their families) to hang out with all week. Another chorus from Ontario (the Capital City Chorus from Ottawa) will be going, and they are good friends of our quartet, but it's still not quite the same.
Anyway, I'm pretty excited about the opportunity to sing at internationals... should be fun.
-KDH
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Toilets (part 3: gender ratio)
At my workplace, we occupy two floors of an office building. On each floor there is one bathroom for men, and one for women. In the men's room, there is one toilet and two urinals, in the women's room, there are three toilets. Now this seems reasonable... the problem is, our office (as with many offices in our industry) is populated with mostly men. I don't know the exact numbers, but my guess would be that in total, we have about 40 men (maybe 50) and 6 women. So, as you can see, each woman at our company, has her own personalize toilet stall (I've never been in the women's washroom... but I wouldn't be surprised if they had name plates on the doors to the stalls).
It has gotten to the point where when the men's stall are full, there are guys who have availed themselves of the facilities in the women's washroom... and were caught by our HR person... who happens to be a woman.
We have suggested that perhaps on one of the two floors we could swap the signs on the doors so that the men's washroom has three stalls on that floor and the women's washroom had urinals, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen. For the most part, it's just a minor nuisance but there are times where it moves up to a minor pain when one of the (two) mens' stalls has a problem, so now we are down to 40 men, 1 toilet.
I do realize that a similar but opposite problem happens at sporting complexes all over the world, but unless you are going to a hockey game every night, it probably doesn't effect you as often!
-KDH
It has gotten to the point where when the men's stall are full, there are guys who have availed themselves of the facilities in the women's washroom... and were caught by our HR person... who happens to be a woman.
We have suggested that perhaps on one of the two floors we could swap the signs on the doors so that the men's washroom has three stalls on that floor and the women's washroom had urinals, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen. For the most part, it's just a minor nuisance but there are times where it moves up to a minor pain when one of the (two) mens' stalls has a problem, so now we are down to 40 men, 1 toilet.
I do realize that a similar but opposite problem happens at sporting complexes all over the world, but unless you are going to a hockey game every night, it probably doesn't effect you as often!
-KDH
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)