Friday is Vesak Day! That probably needs some explanation. Vesak Day is the celebration of the birth, the enlightenment, and passing to Nirvana of Gautama Buddha. It's a public holiday; with the election, the third in 12 days; and for the first time in four years I'm actually in town for it. Somehow the past three years I've had one reason or another to be back home for it. The Holiday Movie Schedule includes: Nico the Unicorn; Joe Versus the Volcano; MVP 2: Most Vertical Primate; Killer Bees; Rat Race; and Toy Story.
Killer Bees certainly sounds like a great movie: ``A town is attacked by deadly killer bees after a truck accident causes their release. The town sheriff must mobilize everyone to safety, but no one will believe him except a woman who is an expert in beekeeping. Will the townspeople change their mind before it's to ... '' Here the cable box description cuts off, but have you ever regretted a movie featuring an expert beekeeper warning of danger? Still, MVP 2 sounds like it could be maybe the best recent entry in the genre of monkey-themed movies for children: ``Jack the chimp sneaks away for a moment to watch the ZFL [ Editorial note: ? ] hockey draft only to realize that he is the first round selection of the Seattle Simians. Jack suits up and is originally met with much resistance from his ragtag gang of mates. However, his natural ability earns him a spot ... ' Here the description ends, but I'm sure the story only gets better.
The former department secretary who'd been bugging me for grades solved the problem of getting the homework averages uploaded. Her answer: print out the list of students and their averages as calculated by a spreadsheet, and she'd enter the scores by hand. I'm glad she volunteered this solution. I'd have refused to type it in by hand and instead sat at the computer centre quixotically demanding they fix the online system. Meanwhile the computer centre explained that why my spreadsheet didn't work was because I had as a column label ``UserID'', as the export gives and as the sample spreadsheet they provide does, when it should have been ``User ID''. You can see how it would be asking too much of the server to process both column labels. I said I'd call back if there were problems with that, but since the secretary was entering scores already there wasn't much point to trying it out.
Trivia: On 12 May 1890, Giants rookie ``Silent Mike'' Tiernan hit a home run from his game in the (second) Polo Grounds into the Players League game going on at the ball park (then Brotherhood Park; it was to become the new, final Polo Grounds) adjacent to it. Source: The Jersey Game, James M DiClerico, Barry J Pavelec.
Currently Reading: In Quest of Spices, Sonia E Howe.
