For those of you that work with AD on a part time basis - like the millions of IT generalists out there - the Directory Services team has posted a nice entry on how to get better at it.
It's a 4600-word blog entry on the areas you need to be well-versed in if you want to be designing and administering Active Directory. It's very thorough; he mentions "The process of building the depth of knowledge required may take years to acquire. With some help and guidance I hope to reduce this time to several months." That's the truth - this sort of thing would have been really handy for me years ago. <cranky old man with bad dentures doing a Walter Brennan impression> "When I was learning about AD, I had to listen to PDC '99 session audio tapes over and over again. There was no documentation." </cranky old man with bad dentures>
On Saturday, I received an extraordinary gift from Sean Robinson, one of our newest black belts at the Okinawan Karate Club of Dallas. He presented me with a bamboo bo (six-foot staff) hand-worked in great detail with martial arts sayings in both English and kanji, figures demonstrating waza (martial arts techniques), and artwork from my life like my name and that of my extended family, other hobbies such as archery, music - even some Irish bits!
I'm very touched and grateful to Sean (hey, us Seans Of The Correct Spelling have to stick together). But I'm especially grateful to Sean's father, Van Herron. Van is a martial artist and teacher of some 40 years' experience, and he crafted the bo as a favor to Sean. He is a member of that generation of Vietnam-era veterans who grew up in martial arts while stationed on Okinawa; some the finest martial artists this country has ever seen toiled as students in small dojos there at the same time as Van. Sean, you must be in hock to him for a loonngg time!
I've taken a number of photographs of the bo here, where you can see all the details. Take the time to read the sayings; there's a lot of good thought there.
I've also done an experimental Photosynth of the bo, which is a 3D representation created from regular 2D photos. It's 77% "synthy", which is pretty good, but it could definitely be better.
Every once in a great while, the complicated scheduling that makes up our lives just comes together perfectly...and who are we to not take advantage of the gift?
Trinity Hall is a terrific Irish pub in Dallas, down in Mockingbird Station hard by Southern Methodist University. Built by Irishman Marius Donnelly, he imported all kinds of hardware from there, so it does have the look and feel of a traditional place (and I've been fortunate enough to have sampled quite a number of them). The place plays a variety of live music, though its background sound system rock doesn't seem to match the atmosphere too much. And they do serve the Guinness at the right temperature!
On Sunday afternoons the place completes the transformation to a rural pub by playing traditional Irish folk music (aka "trad"). Unfortunately, up in Plano I can count on making it down to central Dallas on a Thursday night or Sunday afternoon maybe once a year. I don't know about you, but once in the throes of weekend projects it's a bit impractical for me to nip off to the pub a half-hour away on freeways for a quick pint. Not to mention the aforementioned projects mysteriously don't get done upon return, either.
Enter the GDYO, the Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra. My talented but unmotivated son was accepted to play with them, and so we must take him down to SMU on...every Sunday afternoon. Oh. Darn. As it happens, his rehearsal and the Trinity Hall session overlaps from 5 to 6 PM, so I can catch an hour's worth of playing. After that, the session's over and the Celtic Cinderella turns back into a piped-in pop-music pumpkin.
So, on Sunday afternoons it's off to the coal mines for me, abandoning whatever worthy project I'm working on at the time - thinning papers out of the filing cabinet, folding clothes, excavating a dead rat out of the insulation above the master bedroom closet - to take Connor off to SMU.
And if you should happen to find yourself at Trinity Hall between 5 and 6, the odds are good you'll find me somewhere near the band with a Guinness or Smithwicks and a plate of chicken curry, tapping my foot with the rest of the patrons as the session players turn out "The Hut On Staffen Island".
George Lucas is quoted as saying that the video of a movie is only half the experience; the audio is the other half. I was reminded of this when we saw Leo Kottke in performance last Saturday night.
For a Leo concert experience I'll reverse that quote. For you unfortunate people that have never heard of Leo, he is quite simply the grandmaster of the finger picked twelve string guitar. (Yes, I know about the late Michael Hedges, who was fabulous. Leo once said "that guy has an octopus for a left hand".) Sometimes it sounds like there are two people playing.
He has an instantly recognizable style: Technically outrageous, very rhythmic (watch his performances below; his whole body bounces up and down to his playing) but beautifully melodic.
For the other half: He's just this regular guy from MInneapolis that walks out on stage in jeans and a button down shirt or blazer with two guitars. When he's not playing a tune he has this rambling, digressing monologue with himself about the tune he's about to play, what happened to him the other day, what it was like being beaten up as the new kid in town, working in a morgue, unknowingly telling Bob Dylan what he really thought of Bob's music...the list goes on. And while he's talking to you, he's absentmindedly playing random bits with a technique that most guitarists would give both thumbs to have. He has a surprisingly gravely voice - he once described his singing as "geese farts on a muggy day" - and a very dry delivery. He's hilarious in a really unique way. He's not trying to be a comic; he's just really funny. His "LIve" CD does a pretty good job of capturing his live performance.
He performed an hour and twenty minute set with no break, playing a selection of tunes from his 40-year career. And he doesn't look that age either :). Two of my favorites are "Little Martha", and, especially, "Rings". I didn't embed it into this entry because it deserves to be seen in its own window (and be sure to switch to high quality). This is a good distillation of Leo, and he often closes with it: Monologue, humor, spontaneity, singing, musicality, technique, and sheer love for what he's doing.
He never comes to Dallas, that hotbed of folk music and college kids (not), but if he should make it to your town (like Sacramento or Denver or Olympia), don't miss him.
