Shannon, my oldest daughter, is in a musical titled "Once on This Island" as part of the local youth theater company "First Stage". I had never heard of the show when she mentioned they were going to do it last year and the story didn't sound very compelling so I didn't really get into it very much. Plus, Shannon doesn't like to sing around the house so I hadn't really heard any of the music for the show until last night.

Yesterday evening the First Stage kids did a sneak peak preview of the musical. It was sort of a cliffs notes version where they sang a medley of the music and acted out some parts of the show. This cliffs notes version is what they will be performing in Atlanta this weekend as part of the Junior Theater Festival and last nights sneak peak was their first "public" performance of the show.

I've now seen about eight different First Stage productions plus I was involved in one (Scrooge). The kids try really hard to put on good shows and I think, for the most part, they succeed. With each show however I've had some issues -mostly the boys singing voices aren't on par with the girls - and many of the kids are hard to hear during their speaking parts. The volume is both a product of the fact that these are mostly small kids who just can't project their voices well yet and the acoustics of the venues here all generally suck. A bunch of awesome volunteers work to help by providing mics and a sound system - but It's just not quite the same hearing them over the speakers (accompanied by interference from people who forget or choose not to turn off their cell phones) as it is to hear their voices pure and without any enhancement.

Thus it was with great trepidation that I went into the basement of a church last night to see the short form version of "Once on this Island". There was no set beyond four wooden boxes. The cast of kids was basically the same cast I've seen in a few of the other shows. The basement was loud and echo-y as the kids prepared to start and the parents all talked. Honestly, I didn't think I would enjoy it even though my daughter was in it.

Then the parents and leaders all stopped talking and the kids started to sing. The weird echo-y vibe was replaced by really nice acoustics for the kids singing voices. The cast as a whole choir sounded great; they were loud but well balanced; they were easy to understand; and their voices all seemed to harmonize together really well. I was a bit stunned.

Then the lead girl started to sing. I hadn't really heard her sing before (though she was Chef Louie in "The Little Mermaid" I think so she had a solo there). Her voice last night was excellent. I mean, she sounded like a kid who would be singing on Broadway for 98% of her songs. She was stable, had great range and control, and her tone was perfect. Plus, she had a pretty naturally animated face that didn't oversell the acting parts. She was really really good.

The girls in First Stage have always been more abundant and better singers than the boys. This is still the case. There are three boys in the cast and about 30 girls. But the talent gap is closing thanks to the obvious work Teddy has been putting into his singing. His voice has dropped some which partly explains it - but his control and his confidence are so much better now. He really surprised me - he sounded excellent. He's only about 14 so I imagine he was be killing it by the time he graduates. His vocal growth in the last two years has been astounding.

Some of the kids in the cast are a little sick which was had a negative impact on their voices - but even with those minor problems this cast sounded really good. The performance I saw last night was easily the best ensemble performance I have seen in a First Stage show. All of the kids (with the exception of the sick ones) sounded better than I have heard in the past - and the rest of the cast did a great job with the chorus, the dancing, and their acting as set pieces (the choreography was really clever and made great use of just four small wooden boxes).

I am really glad I got to see the show last night and I can't wait to see the full length performance in March.

I'm happy OSU won the national championship.  I'm white.  Now that I have those disclaimers out of the way I think I agree with the this article which details how we, as a people via discourse and media coverage, frame riots in America and our hypocrisy in doing so.

In Columbus there were 89 small fires started (couches, trash cans, etc) and "jubilant" fans who were celebrating were blocking emergency crews from reaching some of them.  There were also various acts of vandalism.  Some pepper spray was used to control and disperse the crowds.  There is an ongoing investigation into the use of the tear gas.

In Ferguson Mo the citizenry gathered to protest after the shooting death of Michael Brown.  One fire, that destroyed a store, was started.  I have no idea how much tear gas was used the first night of the riots there.  I haven't found evidence that there is an investigation into the use of tear gas there.

I do know that the OSU fans have not been labelled as thugs who are destroying their own community while I often saw or heard that same type of descriptor used for the people of Ferguson.  Perhaps this is because the OSU event just lasted the one night, or maybe because it was in celebration and not protest, or perhaps it has to do with the racial make-up of the crowds, or, maybe, it is a combination of the.  

Should the motivation, cultural makeup, or duration of the riot have anything to do with how we label the rioters?  Should we let celebrators off the hook when we try to hold those fighting for social justice accountable?    It seems that, perhaps, we should be more forgiving of those who feel they are aggrieved by discrimination or corruption than we do those who take a sporting celebration too far.  At least the former are attempting, in their own way, to improve our society while the later are just forgetting, albeit momentarily, what it means to be part of society.

David Brooks makes some good points and reminds us in doing so to look in the mirror and recognize our own hypocrisy:

David Brooks - I Am Not Charlie Hebdo

This is a great speech by Christopher Hitchens in defense of Freedom of Speech.  It's a bit long but entirely worth the listen.

Hitchens starts at the 20 minute 15 second mark: http://youtu.be/QIyBZNGH0TY?t=20m15s

Lisa has been using Republic Wireless for about six months now and, truth be told, it just hasn't been working out for her.  We love the idea of Republic Wireless and we certainly loved the price but in our area it just couldn't deliver a decent experience while Lisa roamed around for work.

Prior to switching to Republic we had been using AT&T but it was costing us a small fortune each month.  Going to Republic cut our bill by more than half!  However, AT&T had a far better coverage area near us than Republic (who uses the Spring network).  Verizon also has pretty poor coverage in most of the places Lisa has to travel for work so AT&T seemed to be the only choice for Lisa when we decided to quit Republic.

Then I heard about Cricket.  Cricket is a cheaper way of using the AT&T network.  Basically, for unlimited text, voice, and 10GB of data it is about $60 and that includes all the taxes and fees.  It's a pretty good option considering the same deal through AT&T was going to be well over $100/month.

So I convinced Lisa to switch from Republic to Cricket.  However, there was one requirement - she had to be able to port her number.  AT&T wouldn't release her number when she switched to Republic and the process of switching numbers was a huge pain in the ass.

Republic registers your phone numbers as a land-line because they use a Voice Over IP (VOIP) system to provide their unique service.  It turns out Crickets automated number transfer system can't handle land-line to cellular.  Thus, you need to work take an intermediary step in order to get your number to cricket.

I bought Lisa the new 2014 Moto X which works on the AT&T network to start with.  Next I needed to port her number to a different carrier that could support land-line to cellular but I couldn't get locked into some contractual thing.  The trick was going to AT&T and buying their Go Phone Starter Pack ($25).  They were then able to port my number to from Republic to AT&T.  It takes a few days because it isn't cellular to cellular but, once it finished processing, I could then go to Cricket.

Not so fast!

Cricket has a webform you have to fill out in order to switch your number and one of the required fields is last four digits of your social security number.  They use this number, along with a bunch of other fields such as your AT&T account number and PIN, to authorize the number port.  However, AT&T doesn't collect a social security number when setting up a Go Phone service.  Thus, when Cricket tries to match all the numbers the website fails and reports that your PIN is invalid - even when it isn't - the problem is the last four of your social security number.

Calling AT&T won't help and calling Cricket won't help either.  Instead you have to enter 0000 as your last four numbers.  Neither Cricket nor AT&T seems to know this.  I got lucky and found it as a possible suggestion on a forum.

Once I figured this out the port took a few seconds to a minute at the most and the MotoX was on the Cricket network and her phone rang when I dialed her ported number.

#cellular-service #cricket #att #verizon #republic-wireless #sprint

Dave Chappelle telling truths and making you laugh at the same time.  He sets this all up perfectly.

Here is a photo of me from about a month ago without a beard - my normal look.

Here I am today with about one months growth:

I think I prefer the beardless version of me.  What do you think?

Flickr has this cool new thing - Park or Bird which will identify if your photo is in a national park and/or if it contains a bird.  It looks pretty neat and the sample photos provided all work perfectly (as you'd expect for sample photos provided).

Curious about the ability of the algorithm to work with a different photo I searched through my photo archive to find one with a bird in it and tried it.  Uh, oh - park or bird failed to recognize the presence of a bird in the photo.  I guess they still have some work to do with their algorithms.