Props to me and thanks to my guests for being the first customer ever on my server to exceed bandwidth limitations!

webmin@*******.net wrote:
> Your website has exceeded its bandwidth limit :
>
> Domain name: mountyscorner.com
> Accounting period: 30 days
> Bandwidth limit: 1024 MB
> Bandwidth usage: 1025 MB over the last 30 days
>
> Please note that usage by all sub-servers is included in this total.
>
>
>

Thankfully I’m on good terms with my server admin, who keeps a slush fund of bandwidth laying around for just such occasions. 1gb/month isn’t enough, I guess.

Gavin Lewis, not yet one year old, has his own webpage.

I’m sure his dad has something to do with that. Belated congratulations to my voice teacher and his wife, the Drs. Grant and Camille Lewis, on the birth of their second boy!

I’m still not awake. Yesterday would have to be the day where I stayed at work from 10:30p to 12:45a to patch 30 systems. Why not? Not like I needed sleep or anything. On the other hand, sleeping in until 9 this morning was a blessing. But I’m still yawning as I’m watching yum update my (technically not mine, but whatever) newest Linux box - a dual-booting IBM R31 running WinXP SP2 and Fedora Core 5. I would have to say that the newest incarnation of bleeding-edge Red Hat reminds me of an1me (intentionally misspelled so that on-campus people could still read this post) - all bubbly, frothy, and more or less overblown. But that’s the default theme, so I’ll almost certainly change it.

While yum does its thing and I get packed into my cubicle by an underling moving four dozen outdated dinosaur-era computers into my area, I thought I’d update you folks with a few more BJ Bloggers on the list. First up is Monica Raab, who wonders, “Where Do the Mermaids Stand?” I have no answer, other than that their physiology might make it difficult to stand at all. (Everyone hates a literalist, right?) The other one came from a comment left this afternoon - I completely forgot about checking the update queue until I saw the comment - by Jeff Gray of RootsRain. Jeff noted that he thoroughly enjoyed Chamber Singers’ concert last week, and as I looked at his website, I thought, “You know, I’ve been here before…” Turns out it was submitted a while ago. Apologies to both Jeff and Monica for the late entry…but you’re in now!

Speaking of concerts and such, Chorale + Soloists + Orchestra is giving our semesterly concert this Friday, 6:30 and 8. I’d point you to the write-up from Artisphere’s website, except they apparently don’t have one. See, originally we were supposed to be singing downtown - Peace Center or something similar - and people from all over town could come and listen. But there was some scheduling incompatibility (which might not be a strong enough word), and so we’re donig it on-campus. Ah, well. We’ll be performing Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass (otherwise known as Missa in Angustiis, and it’s a federal offense to say the Latin name as if you were Jar-jar Binks…or at least it should be). The orchestra is phenomenal, as is the featured soprano soloist, Melissa Dickerson. Yours truly has a few measures, but I’m only singing by myself for three beats on a middle G. Still, you should come, because it’s a wonderful classical piece, and because I said so.

This was the reaction of my 8am teacher this morning when he heard that I was stranded in Florida “on extension.” Let me back up.

The Quartet was in Englewood and Tampa, Florida, this weekend. This weekend was one of those Murphy’s Law weekends - just about anything that could go wrong did. The trip was fine - we got into Englewood, a 12-hour drive, at about 8p. Set up, practiced, practiced some more, retired to bed, practiced yet again. And again. Remember: as “King Gustafson” (yes, there’s a story, and no, I’m not retelling it, at least not online) says, “Perfect practice makes perfect.” So we practiced in a semi-perfect fashion for another hour, then called it quits. Sunday AM went great - good singing, people saved, great morning. We go to leave that afternoon and find that all the engine coolant is dripping out onto the church’s nice lawn. Terry seems to be the kind of guy who’s genuinely happy when he’s covered in engine grease, so he had it patched up pretty quick. We hit the road for an hour ride to Tampa. Same story - pulled in, set up, practiced a bit, then moved the bus out of the street. This is important because we left behind a prodigous amount of transmission fluid in their parking lot. (We seem to have developed a pathological habit of leaving key engine components on other people’s property.) What was described by the mechanic as a “small” leak (defined as one that has the potential to get a lot bigger) turned into a nice-sized hole. We ended the service in Tampa at 8p Sunday; by 11p Terry had washed his arms with GoJo at least three times. (He must have been ecstatic by that point…all that engine grease!) Southerners take note - Duct Tape can’t fix everything - it didn’t fix our transmission fluid hose. Nor did a clamp. And what stores are open Easter Sunday night at 10:30p? So he resigned and called it a night. The plan was to get up with the dawn and hit up as many stores as necessary to replace that pipe; fix the engine; and leave Tampa sometime Monday morning. Hearing this, I called a classmate of mine and told him to tell our 8a teacher that I wouldn’t be there and why.

Of course I couldn’t miss a whole day of classes. I mean, I could, but I had so much to get done. Plus Mark, our bass, needed to get back. I started calling around - no red-eye flights from the airport; earliest flights at 6a the next morning, and then only to Atlanta, and then for $300 per person. Scrap the flying idea. So Mark and I came up with the brilliant plan to get a rental car. Of couse we didn’t want to kill ourselves financially, so we told the folks at Budget to get us the cheapest car that still had cruise control. We ended up with (don’t laugh) a Chevy Cobalt, a piece of garbage on wheels masquerading as a car. AC didn’t work, no power, cramped…one of us would drive, the other would curl up in a fetal position in the backseat and try to sleep. We left TPA in our new Texan wheels (Don’t mess with Texas!) at 1a Monday and swapped driving every two or three hours. The two good things - the whole package deal (one car, two drivers, comprehensive liability insurance) came out to less than $50; and the car got about 39-40 mpg - we only tanked up once on the road. (Speaking of stopping on the trip, we had breakfast at [again, don’t laugh] a Baroque-themed McDonalds in Suwanee, Georgia [motto: “A Great Place to Drive By”]. I kid you not - there was Arcangelo Corelli playing on the speakers, set against the ornate bookcases and fireplace [yes, fireplace]. There were also Gothic chandeliers. Even the bathroom was European in design.) We finally arrived in Greenville around 11:30, and by 12:30 I felt human again.

I mentioned that I passed along advance notice to my American Hymnody teacher that I wouldn’t be there. Greg (the classmate) dutifully reported my every word. My teacher’s response: “On extension? In Florida? Suuuure. That’s almost as good as, “My dog ate my homework!” I heard about all this later and stopped by to see him. As soon as he saw me he started laughing. I managed to convince him that, yes, I really was on extension, and yes, our bus really did break down. Uncle Fred, if you’re reading this, I swear this all happened. Honest.

So life returns to normal. Well…maybe “normal” is too strong a word. As Calvin said, “I’m sure I’d know normal if I saw it.”

Chamber Singers just got done with our concert - Light in Darkness: A Good Friday Meditation. Props to Peter Crane for the wonderful poster; mad props to all my friends for their excellent singing and glorifying of God through song. We started off with O Nata Lux by Thomas Tallis (PDFs and a MIDI file of the piece can be found here at the Choral Public Domain Library). It’s a wonderful piece with some biting dissonance.

(Music buffs - you’ll notice two sections like that. The first is in measure 12 - a soprano C# against a Tenor II C natural. It happens again in measure 22 - this time it’s a soprano F# briefly against a T2 F natural. Taken in isolation, you wonder what’s going on, but only if you look at it vertically. Read the lines for each by themselves and you’ll hear that they are perfectly acceptable melodic lines. Remember there was no such thing as a chord in the Renaissance era - their music was all horizontal, and any “chords” that you see were secondary - byproducts of counterpoint, if you will. Nowadays we read our music vertically - these four voices sounding at this time make this chord. Back then, things were completely different.)

After that, we performed Morten Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna (Eternal Light), a Requiem setting that is absolutely gorgeous. I’ve written about that piece before, but let me say again it’s a wonderful work. Very exhausting, but still refreshing to hear and perform. I want to post down some of the words, because behind the Latin (which some may find a little too snooty for their tastes) is a very engaging and personal text. The third movement, O Nata Lux (same text as the Tallis) is beautiful:

O nata lux de lumine, Jesu redemptor saeculi, dignare clemens supplicum laudes preces que sumere. Qui carne quondam contegi dignatus es pro perditis. Nos membra confer effici, tui beati corporis. (O born light of light, Jesus, redeemer of the world, mercifully deem worthy and accept the praises and prayers of your supplicants. Thou who once deigned to be clothed in flesh for the sake of the lost ones, grant us to be made members of your holy body.)

Again, the Veni, Sancte Spiritus is very encouraging. It’s also long, so I won’t post all of the Latin and English. It employs repetition to drive home it’s points:

Veni, pater pauperum;
veni, dator munerum;
veni, lumen cordium.
Come, Father of the poor;
come, giver of gifts;
come, light of hearts.

In labore requies;
in aestu temperies;
in fletu solatium.
In labor, thou art rest;
in heat, the tempering;
in grief, the consolation.

Lava quod est sordidum,
riga quod est aridum,
sana quod est saucium,
flecte quod est rigidum,
fove quod est frigidum,
rege quod est devium.
Cleanse what is sordid,
moisten what is arid,
heal what is hurt,
flex what is rigid,
fire what is frigid,
correct what goes astray.

Absolutely stunning. And despite the inward-looking nature of the text, the music is not particularly contemplative. Rather, it is joyful and almost waltzing (yes, it’s in triple meter). Why? Because we know that God wants all these things for us, and we eagerly await His help, both now in our frail human form, and again in our final glorified form. Hallelujah!

I’m travelling to Florida Saturday, so I need rest. I’d love to launch into a speech about how modern Christians are doing themselves a disservice by turning their backs on “Catholic” texts and forms, simply because at one point (several centuries ago), they only appeared in Catholic settings. Texts like these are Catholic in the truest sense of the word, the sense used in the Apostle’s Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic [ie. universal] church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.” They are universal - if you’re a believer, then it means something to you, whether Rome happened to claim it for their own purposes or not. But enough of that.

My title (”This time last year”) reflects something JAnton mentioned to me this evening after the concert. He reminded me that, after Concert Choir’s concert this time last year, I wrote that I was hoping to “sabotage” my audition so I could stay in Concert Choir (read it all here). That, of course, didn’t happen, and I’ve been greatly blessed and grown by being in Chorale and Chamber Singers. I’ve also been duly reminded about the fact that my thoughts are on public record, and however much I meant them at the time, it’s entirely possible I don’t mean them now. But I won’t edit history to sanitize the future. Think of it this way - you can trace my thoughts and how they change through the years.

To all, a good night. I’ll say “hi” to Tampa Bay when I get there tomorrow, if any of you happen to be from around there.

Let’s face it - the Internet is a pretty rough place. Your computer is constantly being bombarded by the outside world. A recent estimate on campus put the amount of spam coming into the 5000-odd email accounts at nearly 80% of all messages received. That’s a lot of spam! And it’s not all ads for misspelled pharmaceuticals with random spaces and the o’s changed to 0’s. That includes phishing scams (”Confirm your account information! To Eastern European scumbags!”) and virus emails. And, as bandwidth gets cheaper, more and more people are exposing their computers to internet-accessible storage. That means more security risks.

Geeks in particular use specialized communications programs to access their computers across the internet. Two of the most popular (free) programs out there are Remote Desktop and VNC. Remote Desktop is bundled with Windows - connect, and you’re logging onto your computer from anywhere, just as if you were in front of it. Users looking at your home computer probably see absolutely nothing different. The other connection software is called VNC (http://www.realvnc.com/). In this case you’re taking remote control of your computer, which means your actions are transparently visible on the other side. Trouble with both of these is that they send your computer login information across the internet “in the clear” - no scrambling or nothing. Someone who really wanted to could get into your computer and do all sorts of stuff.

Luckily you have me on the case. Well…me and a bunch of other people. The fruits of my labor this afternoon involved assembling an easy-to-use encrypted VNC connection that ensures no one will be able to read the information you send or receive. HT to Jared Sutton for the idea and a few key helpers. He wrote a package to connect Remote Desktop securely, but the glaring problem was that you had to type your password in clear text - didn’t send “in the clear” but anyone passing by could see. I found a way to get around that. My efforts were for VNC, not Remote Desktop…tomorrow, maybe, I’ll tweak his for him.

The process involves installing a program called SSH onto your home computer (if you’re running Linux, it’s already installed). Windows users can download and install OpenSSH for Windows - download the package, run the installer, then FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THE LAST DIALOG BOX to complete the setup. Once that’s done and you’ve started the service (”net start sshd” in a command window), you can download the Secure VNC Client (.EXE, 417kb) and run it. You’ll be asked for the computer name you’re connecting to (an IP address will work just as well), the username on that computer (the one you set up to run with OpenSSH), and that user’s password (which won’t show as you type). It’ll then establish a connection to the computer with that username and password and start a port tunneling session. This is key - the VNC viewer isn’t actually connecting to your home computer. It’s connecting to the computer you’re currently using, which is shuttling all the information through an encrypted “tunnel” to your home computer, which sends information back along the same path. So in reality nothing’s changed, except that you’re now sending your passwords as encrypted information, much harder to read.

If you’re interested, I can send out the source code to this little project. Current limitations include the lack of proxy support and the assumption that all your traffic’s going over port 5900 (when it could be going across 5901, 5902, etc.). So email me if you want to tweak it, or if you want to see how VBScript can be juggled to prompt for a masked password without using HTML.

Hey, Firefox users! Check out that little thing at the top right of your browser window. Bet you never even saw it. See that thing? Got one of those Google “G” pictures next to it? It’s (unimaginatively) called the Search Bar, and it’s pretty powerful if you’ve got the right tools. There are all kinds of search engines at your fingertips - Google, Amazon, eBay, and pretty much any other search engine.

This afternoon I was trying to track down the exact passage used in the liturgical song text “Christus Factus Est” (Philippians 2:8-10 [+/-] And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,), and I wanted to quickly search BibleGateway (http://www.biblegateway.com/). This made things easier - I found a slew of Search Bar addons here that will allow you to instantly search any version on BibleGateway. I’ve got my ESV plugin installed now, so all I do is put in “name that is above” (“…nomen quod est super…” from the song) and I’m given the search results for that passage. Nifty stuff. You may want to snoop around Mozdev.org on your own time, too - there’s some really good stuff there that’ll make Firefox browsing, as phenomenal as it already is, even better.

You read it here first. And you’ll read it here again. You who read often know I “call ‘em as I see ‘em.” A month ago, when a hilarious cartoon came out on Sharper Iron that essentially caricaturized all the less-than-savory elements of this quirky movement we call “Fundamentalism,” I noted that some people (who are otherwise great balanced people) were getting offended on behalf of the really unsavory elements in the movement. In a nutshell, it looked like this: “Oh, that’s really funny! Wait…won’t the easy-believism crowd get offended by the ship’s name? You mean they’re not offended? They’re laughing, too? Well, then we’ll just get offended for them!”

So today in my morning routine of checking email and reading a few comic feeds while I pour coffee, I stopped by SI just to see what the latest bombshell to hit narrower Evangelicalism might be. And wouldn’t you know, there was a dead-horse debate going on about inter-racial dating bans! At BJU! Who’d've thought? This debate (which I’m not linking to, so don’t ask - find it yourself!) could be summed thus:

White Guys: BJ banned inter-racial dating, and that was wrong of them. They should apologize to the world for being [present-tense] racist.
Bunch of non-Caucasians: Why? We’re not offended. They’re certainly not racist now - a quick look at http://www.bju.edu/ will show you that. Note the black guy on the front page. Note the minorities on every other page. We’ve gotten over it; why can’t you?
White Guys: Well, even if you don’t care, I still do.

Yes, BJ has gone from “racist white supremacist KKK haven” (as some would like to paint it) to your average mildly “integrated” school. C’mon - this is the Deep South. Everyone says racism is gone, but who believes it? The best anyone can do is accept anyone that comes down the pike and hope that more than just white people will come down the pike. But I digress. My point was that there seems to be an emerging trend in our little trickle of Evangelicalism, and that is the strange habit of getting offended on behalf of people who maybe should be (but aren’t) offended.

No, really, admit it - you see it, too. We’ve gotten so caught up looking after the needs of “the little guy,” making underdogs all over the place; and in the process we come off as wildly condescending. Almost something like, “You’re too ignorant to be offended,” or “If you knew more about what was going on, you’d be offended, too.” How Christian of us. For some reason (please don’t be offended; I certainly won’t be on your behalf if you’re not), I can’t get out of my head the image of a parent scolding a child for making fun of a mentally handicapped brother or sister. Really. Seems like here we are, the guardians of thinking Fundamentalism, and we’re going off scolding others like us for making fun of people we don’t think are offended enough. An insult against them is, strangely, an insult against us. Now, I’m not saying that people who don’t agree with me are mentally handicapped…just idiots. But it makes me laugh to see the “targets of oppression” not caring at all, while everyone else goes into a frothing rage. Kudos to the handful of people in that thread who should have been offended but let it go. They accepted the school’s statement six years ago that the rule should never have been there at all and probably didn’t give it a second thought.

Keep your eyes out for this new trend. Hopefully if it gets pinpointed enough it’ll stop, but I’m not holding my breath.