My beautiful wife is trying to bring John and Mary’s computer back from the grave.

Now the word on the street (and by street I mean rushisaband.com) is that Rush could be playing “YYZ” and “Closer to the Heart” at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies.

Pretty Please?

There is a very strong rumor that during tonight’s opening ceremonies for the Olympic Games in Vancouver, BC a certain trio of Canadian prog-rockers is going to make an appearance.

Word has it that there will be a musical performance featuring various Canadian musicians. Included in this will be Rush performing (what I can only imagine is a snippet of) “YYZ”. The only thing that stands between this possibility (it has not, and probably will not, be confirmed by anyone) is that Bryan Adams is also rumored to be performing. Crud.

This lead to a dream last night. Yeah, still occasionally remembering dreams. I dreamed that Jen and I were seeing Rush in concert. We were on the floor of the arena rather close to the stage. Good seats. It is not all that uncommon for Rush to follow the enormous Neil Peart drum solo (which runs for about 8-10 minutes or so) with something quiet. They have taken to doing a short acoustic tune or two on recent tours.

This show was no different. Only the song they chose was a cover song. An unusual cover song. It was Pink Floyd’s “Southampton Dock” from the album The Final Cut.

For my money, that album is the single most depressing recording ever published. It is a lose story of a WWI veteran who has reached old age. He is having battlefield flash backs and feeling incredible survivor’s guilt. This theme is interspersed with Roger Water’s thoughts and commentary on the (then very recent) war over the Falkland Islands.

The song is very short and very quiet, consisting basically of a voice and some orchestral accompaniment. The lyrics are painful.

They disembarked in 45
And no-one spoke and no-one smiled
There were too many spaces in the line.
Gathered at the cenotaph
All agreed with hand on heart
To sheath the sacrificial Knifes.
But now
She stands upon Southampton dock
With her handkerchief
And her summer frock clings
To her wet body in the rain.
In quiet desperation knuckles
White upon the slippery reins
She bravely waves the boys Goodbye again.

And still the dark stain spreads between
Their shoulder blades.
A mute reminder of the poppy fields and graves.
And when the fight was over
We spent what they had made.
But in the bottom of our hearts
We felt the final cut.

Far from something you’d expect from the guys who rocked the Olympic Opening Ceremonies.

If that is a representation of my frame of mind yesterday, then let’s hope today is a better day.

It should be. We are thinking we might get some baby visit time tonight, not to mention tons of baby visit time tomorrow, and there are those opening ceremonies with the chance of Rush getting some global television time, and of course it is Red Sox truck day.

Yeah, it might be better today.

Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday we were inundated with panicked news reports about the massive snow storm we were going to get slammed with all day Wednesday into Thursday morning.

The snow was supposed to start accumulating by noon. When noon came it was snowing but not sticking.

We were supposed to have a couple of inches by 3:00pm. When 3:00pm came it was snowing but not sticking.

By the time the evening commute started it was supposed to be a white out with high winds and many inches of snow. The drive home was going to be treacherous with terrible road conditions and danger everywhere. When the commute came it was snowing but not sticking. I made it home in near record time.

The snow was supposed to continue piling up until after midnight and the total accumulation in Methuen, in the region of Eastern Massachusetts that was going to have the easiest time, was supposed to be about half a foot. When we got up this morning there was no snow on the ground, which was exactly how it looked when we went to bed.

To put it plainly, the local weather reporters whipped us into a panicked frenzy over this fearsome storm (the Governor of Massachusetts actually told people to stay home yesterday and some groups in my company were telling people to leave the office and telecommute from home by noon) and were 100% wrong in all of their predictions.

The channel seven weatherman told his twitter followers that they screwed up. The channel 25 weatherwoman went on the air this morning with a paper bag over her head.

Yes, they dropped the ball. Yes, the panic for most of the state was unnecessary. Yes, they should be ashamed of themselves.

But…

At least this screw up was beneficial to most of us. It could have been the opposite. They could have predicted sun and clear skies only to have reality dish us six feet of wet snow. When you look at it from that point of view suddenly their screw up doesn’t seem so bad.

The other day I posted the links to the Olympic Mens’ Hockey rosters and the game schedule.

Today I will share this link with you. This is from nbcolympics.com and it will ask you a couple of questions and then give you a listing of all mens and womens hockey games and the network carrying the game. Given these three links, you are pretty much ready for the Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament to begin.

Go USA
Go USA
Go Bruins
Go USA

Speaking of the Muppets, have I posted this one yet?

Beeker’s rendition of Beethovan’s 9th Symphony. Brilliant beyond words.

The Muppets are totally taking over youtube and I Love It!

It’s going to snow today. Here is weather.com’s forecast for the town of Framingham for the next six hours:

Snow will fall at varying intensities. Some of the snow will fall heavily especially by noon. Cloudy with temperatures steady near the low 30s. Winds NE at 15 to 20 mph. Snowfall of 1 to 2 inches through 3pm.

Oh. Good.

I went to the WCVB website to see what they are showing for their forecast for the Boston area and they have a very swanky looking page set up with images for the next five days that you can embed in other pages…

(you know I can’t resist an embed)

Not a very impressive embed after all, is it.

Unfortunately they didn’t leave enough room on the page to show the actual text forecast for today. Half of it is buried underneath a Flash advertisement. Nice going dickwads.

Heading on over to the WBZ Radio website we get a little more information, although you have to click through four or five links before you get the actual forecast. The images with the snow coming out of the clouds are nice and all, but on a day like today what we really want is the predicted snow fall amounts. When snow is the top story I shouldn’t have to click through a multitude of links to get that information. It should be displayed prominently right on the home page. But that’s just me.

Day
High: 35°F RealFeel®: 29°F
Becoming windier; a little snow at times this morning followed by wet snow this afternoon, 3-6″

Night
Low: 25°F RealFeel®: 4°F
Cloudy and windy with snow tapering off, accumulating an additional 1-3 inches

So the Boston area (based on WBZ) can expect about 4-9 inches of snow today. We’re North of Boston and the “experts” are saying the further North you go the worse it will be. Of course my work is a whole lot closer to Boston than my home, so my commute might be exciting.

At least while suffering through the storm on my journey home to my loving wife and step kids I will be able to take heart in the fact that the Bruins have won two consecutive games. After losing 10 in a row, two straight wins feels like a big deal. It feels like we’re on the brink of the cup! (we’re not)

Here are the highlights:

We had the game on the tele last night but I muted it when we started working on our C# goofiness. Did I mention I used the framework Jen set up to display data read from a database on a web page and then enter new data onto said web page and store it back into the database? Did I mention that that is wicked cool?

Anyway, if you’re like me and were dumb enough to go to work today please drive safe (and don’t hit me). If you are sitting at home please don’t be a dolt like me: Stay at home.

First you add the field to the .aspx page. Second you update the Dao.cs file. Finally you update the stored procedure. Then you can enter data onto a webpage and save it into the database.

It’s been a long time since I’ve chair danced over a submit button. (insert techno dance groove here so that I can dance in my chair… well, it’s a couch actually but you get the gist I think.)

My wife is a fountain of developing knowledge and she’s sharing some of it with little old unworthy me.

I love her.

Nerd Alert:

What would it look like if you flew past a black hole? How about if you flew into one?