First there was the Cuban on1
Then there was the NYC on2
And now, there is the one and only Buffalo onPMT...

I can't hold this pose for more than 3 seconds rooted on my right foot but I can hold it for 2 minutes or more rooted on my left.


And, in a rinse-and-repeat of old news, I am still super-clumsy in the intermediate salsa class. I am just not fierce enough. Anyone know of extreme bare-hands/knife street-fighting classes in the city? I vaguely remember seeing a small sign quietly saying "extreme"-something between the Chinese eatery and the tattoo place on the west-sidewalk in the block between Utica and Bryant on Elmwood. Wonder what it was...

I just need a computing platform to perform many operations (~2000) on a small dataset in a reasonable amount of time without dragging my system to a standstill every time. Is that too much to ask? Apparently, it is. The options I have are dismal.

- Get a computing account at UB's center for computational research. This is easier said than done. There is so much bureaucratic red-tape and craziness involved in just getting a puny account that it makes sense at this point to accept that I will never be able to use their resources.

- Buy a laptop that will run linux and then R on top of it efficiently utilizing all the processing cores and the memory. This is a difficult proposition because R doesn't utilize all cores natively. It's a pain to figure out how to set up linux to utilize all cores with R and make the processing efficient - with my minimal level of expertise. So I am stuck with a spiked up CPU load and system freezes every time I run an analyses. Should I be spending close to $1.5k for such misery. In the end, maybe I will have to.

- Get a mac. NO. Their hardware is appalling. They get away with such mediocrity because of their sheep fanboy base that is blind to the fact that their hard-drives and memory fail with the frequency of a rainstorm in an Amazon forest. I like well-functioning software but if I have to be queuing up at some service center (however fanciful its name) for repairs or replacements every few months, I don't think I will ever wander close to such a product.

I wish things were not this complicated.

Can anyone be more perfect? She is like my fairy godmother in blue silk!!!



An early valentine to the one and only...

Roses are red
Your dress is blue
I love you, Celia Cruz.

You may be no more
But everyday you soar
Into my life, into my dreams
Make me dance till I split my seams

(PS: I really need that sewing machine..)
(Hem those jeans meant for a lanky teen)
(Okay, that was not part of this homage)
(But surely you can skip this part of the page)

Much love,
TP

The Raven is one of my most favourite heavy metal tunes (with some really awesome guitar riffs by Manni Schmidt) but it never fails to crack me up. Talk about condensing the essence of a long-drawn out poem in just five lines.

Edgar Allan Poe's classic "The Raven" reads:
Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious
volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping,
suddenly there came a tapping,
...
(... he keeps hearing the tapping at the door and window. No one's at the door but he thinks he hears a whisper saying "Leonore", the death of whom he is mourning. And then a raven comes in through the window...)
...
For we cannot help agreeing
that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing
bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust
above his chamber door,
With such name as 'Nevermore.'

---

But Grave Digger transforms these verses into the completely insane fast-tracked more dramatic heavy metal version:

Once upon a midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary
Lost my wife named Leonore
An angel now for evermore
Thunder, lightning crushed the sky
A raven stood before my eye
Flew into the chambers door
When such name as Nevermore

I wouldn't use this summary for poetry appreciation class, though. There are some minor factual inaccuracies. The bird actually flies in through the window and then perches on the door. It couldn't possibly have been standing. Everyone knows birds can't "stand". Additionally, it can't have been "before my eye" or his eye, or whoever's eye (maybe, just maybe (e:KeithT)'s eye?) unless they were as tall as the door-frame, on which, the bird clearly perched. They don't get any of this this right. Oh, and there is no mention of a thunderstorm in the poem. And while Grave Digger seems to think that the raven "flies, seeks and destroys", the raven in the poem just sits there lazily squawking "Nevermore", while the main character imagines all sorts of things, goes loony and starts shouting stuff. And I don't think Leonore is the wife. I am more inclined to think of her as some sort of mistress who the main character murdered and as a result, is easily guilt-tripped by the limited-vocabulary inert raven. It's Poe, after all.

But don't let these discrepancies spoil your enjoyment of this kickass song