tubaart

Geez. Somebody kick me when I go a month without updating.

I've been crazy busy, work, photo stuff (SG and otherwise) home, etc. Don't know what I've been doing, really, but it sure felt busy. lol

First, before I get into anything else, everybody come to our concert this Thursday! The ShowMe Brass, a 9-piece brass ensemble in which I play tuba, are putting on a free concert this Thursday at 7:30 PM at the Linn Memorial Church on the Central Methodist University campus in Fayette, MO. It's gonna be awesome. For those few of you ( ) who might be a little far away to attend, we recorded last week's rehearsal. We were down a player (a cornet player is in the Air Force reserves and was at drill), but even so things sounded good (in my totally unbiased opinion. :whatever. Here are a few samples. Sorry they're kinda big - 2-3MB each. MP3's.

Down by the Riverside
The Old Rugged Cross
Amazing Grace (dixieland)
Come Sweet Death
Concert Suite - Song
Salvation Army March

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A while back my main off-line storage, a 600 GB RAID-5 networkd storage device, went flooey. It was in the middle of a copy when it died. TWO of the four disks died simultaneously. RAID-5 protects you from any single disk failing, but not TWO! I didn't lose any shots entirely -- I still have all my originals (I'm a belt and suspenders kind of guy. ), but I did lose some shots I've worked up, including, I think, some SG sets I guess that's what I get for trying to save money buying a used system off eBay.

So... I've ended up spending money I don't really have to replace my off-line storage. Newegg has the Buffalo terastation 2 TB (2,000 GB! :eek network storage server for just $900. A lot of money, but a LOT of storage space. I've got it set up as RAID-5 so I have about 1500 GB of storage space. Hopefully I'll have better luck with this one. Problem is, this puts of the Canon 5D even longer.

* * *

Some of you may have heard of VISTA, the VA's hospital information system. It's a completely integrated hospital system (a real rarity!) that has been evolving and improving since the 70's. Unlike some things at the VA ( ), VISTA is well thought of by those both in and out of the government. A version of this software is also used by the tri-service hospitals of the DoD and by the Indian Health Service. The really interesting thing is that VISTA is available for free... You (well, those of you who are US citizens, anyway) paid for it, and so you have access to it under FOIA. It's written in MUMPS, a rather obscure but fascinatingly powerful database language. Turns out you can get a version of MUMPS free, too -- an open source version from Greystone. That version of MUMPS just happens to run on Linux, another free open-source bit of software (the operating system). That means that, for the cost of the hardware (ordinary server-class PC's) you can run a state-of-the art hospital information system.

The problem has been that it takes a certain amount of expertice to install and maintain VISTA, and people who know VISTA or even MUMPS are hard to find. Well, now a bunch of current and former VA employees, including several of those who have been key developers for VISTA, are coming together as a non-profit corporation to continue developing and supporting VISTA, lending their expertice to those who want to run VISTA, and providing installations for under-served communities, both here and abroad. I've been tapped to chair the board for this non-profit, and we should be incorporating in the next couple weeks. Hopefully we'll be up and active within a couple months. How cool is that?

Ok, well that's enough for now! Congratulations for anyone who stuck with it this long.

I'll end with a hot shot of our missing band member (she'll be there for the concert). This is a recent shot -- she's about 5 months preggo.