Wonderful Town was Wonderful!

This weekend we caught West Valley Light Opera's Wonderful Town, a musical based on the play, My Sister Eileen, about two young ladies that move from Columbus, Ohio to NYC in 1935. I'd never seen the show before, so found myself in for quite an unexpected treat!

The sets by Stephen C. Wathen were, as usual, incredible, truly bringing you into the seedy little apartment in Greenwich Village. The street scenes were vibrant, the club was intense, and I even found the velocoraptors hiding in the trees in the opening drop. (Stephen's sets always have a dinosaur hidden in them somewhere for those of you with keen eyes).

Afton Bolz as Eileen Sherwood absolutely glowed with the uber-cuteness factor, even though she played being oblivious to the fact very well. Her light soprano voice balanced very well with Leslie Hardy Tamel's (Ruth Sherwood) rich alto in the amazingly well put together song "Ohio". These two actresses really brought me into their story, making it an absolute delight of a production!

K. Michael Riley was outstandingly sleazy as newspaperman Chick Clark, making my skin crawl every time I saw him make a move on poor naive Eileen. A part well played!

Jennifer Smith (Helen) and Jay Steele (Wreck) played off of each other very well, as a "living in sin" couple in NYC, always drawing attention during the cast-wide pantomime scenes, and pulling off lots of delightful shenanigans.

Other standouts include Caren McCreight as the NYC Tour Guide, Matt Tipton as a drunk *and* a police officer (and many other roles, as far as I could tell!), and Reggie Reynolds as Violet (a ne'er do well).

My absolute favorite part of the show was in the police station when all the Irish cops sang "My Darlin' Eileen" to a lovely girl they insisted was Irish. Jeff Henson as Officer John Lonigan really stole the show with this song, with his rich velvety voice and perfect Irish accent.

The show runs for two more weekends - it's well worth the ticket price! Please go out and support the arts!

On a related note, I'm very excited about rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast starting next weekend!

June, I hardly even knew ya...

Wow, what a month!

First, and most importantly, Mark & I tied the knot on June 2! It's a lot of work planning a large event from across the country, but it all just turned out so perfectly! We were married in Foster Park's Bridal Glen in Fort Wayne, IN - we couldn't have pulled it all off without the amazing help of all of our family and close friends.

After we got married, we ran off to NYC and Sonoma, CA to honeymoon for a couple of weeks. It was relaxing not being online, riding our bikes and enjoying long leisurely dinners with just the two of us.

In the middle of June, I returned to the office to find a backlog of several thousand emails. I've made a dent into them, but if you sent me something & never heard back - please try again!

I've been busy with work related to FIPS-140-2 certification of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework and fringe work related to making SUNWcry and SUNWcryr more accessible to the masses. I'll write up more about that once I know where we stand.

After all of that, I decided I'd captain Team Salty Dawgs again for the American Lung Association's 2 Rock Breathe Easy ride. It nearly killed me, but I did nearly reach my fund raising goal. Just a bit more & I'd be there. I do appreciate all the incredibly generous pledges I did get this year - the overall generosity of Sun employee's never ceases to amaze me!

I did the ride last Saturday - 66 miles in 5 hours and 10 minutes of ride time (6 hours and 16 minutes including breaks), 12.8 mph was my average speed, and I burned about 2500 calories. I'd really like to improve that time for next year so that I can get back in time to enjoy the post-ride festivities! As of now, I'll just try to get rolling about 40 minutes earlier ;-)

Calling all potential captains!

The campaign for this year's Breathe Easy ride is ramping up, and I will not be able to captain Team Salty Dawgs this year, due to the timing of my impending nuptials. I may still do the ride for fun, but won't have the time to organize a team or do fund raising. I haven't had much luck recruiting a captain for this two time top fund raising team - so thought I'd try to find folks via this blog. Anyone available to do a GREAT ride on June 30, 2007, willing to find some teammates and raise some funds for lung disease? I'll take things over again next year, but need a little help this year.

Any takers?

Small parts vs small actors

I got a question about the size of my recent role in Saratoga Drama Group's Bye Bye Birdie, which I thought I'd talk about here. Gloria is definitely a cameo role - I was only on stage as Gloria for about 4 minutes, but I made it as big of a part as possible while I was on that stage! Many folks commented on my character after the show as being "naughty", "obnoxious" or "funny", so I obviously did make an impression.

My middle school director, Miss Nichols, always said, "There are no small parts, only small actors", which is a hard thing to hear when you're a heartbroken 12 year old who just found she only got a bit part in the school's big show, but my experience as an actress has shown me that it is true!

If you were to look at my acting resume, you'd see my stage life is filled with bit parts and character roles, and I have found they can be the most fun! You don't have to learn as many songs or lines, yet it's possible to make your character just as big (or bigger) than any of the leads. It's about realizing that every role in a show is important, or the author would not have put it there in the first place.

In addition to my role as Gloria, I also played a teenager and a parent in various scenes. This required I actually step into a different role and focus on who I was. Even though my teenager role had no lines, I still had a name (chosen myself) and a undying lust for Conrad Birdie. Audience members who did not know me did not realize I had been multiple characters - the best compliment I can get as an actress! Even though I literally came back on as a teenager only moments after my Gloria scene, I blended right in - although I'm sure this will be the last time I'll be cast as a teenager - I am getting "long in the tooth"! :-)

Years ago, I did HMS Pinafore, and instead of being a standard sister, cousin, or aunt, I was cast as a sort of escort/guard to Sir Joseph Porter. Another woman, Connie, and I were dressed in military garb, had jet black wigs, and very stark makeup. We followed Sir Joseph Porter around, serving him tea, and other odd things. Connie, like me, knows there are no small parts, so the two of us worked together to synchronize our movements and both dove completely into our roles. Nearly every night during notes, though, we got told by the director that we actually had to pull back - we were stealing the scenes!

A good friend's mom actually won an award for best actress in a community theater group for a role in which she had only ONE LINE! I did see the show, and I did agree, she was outstanding. She showed every emotion with just expressions, never needing to speak. Her "background" character was fascinating and compelling, telling an entire story with just her eyes.

It is important to keep this in mind, whether you're a lead role or just in the ensemble - you are there for a reason! Step up to the plate and become that character. The entire show will be much more enjoyable for you and the audience if you do.

There is a great website, StageAgent, where you can go to look up role sizes, vocal ranges, and amount of dancing required. Check it out!

Telnet vulnerability FUD is making me crazy!

Sun did a pretty awesome thing this weekend. A vulnerability was reported on an OpenSolaris alias, not even the correct place to report a security vulnerability, an engineer who happened to be reading his email on the weekend saw the post, reproduced the bug in house, fixed the code, got code review, tested and integrated a fix into Nevada (aka OpenSolaris) within HOURS. On a weekend. We have folks that are on pager call for handling this type of stuff, but since this was not sent to that alias, we were so lucky that several other engineers were watching an open alias for this & responded & fixed it on their day off.

The next day, Monday, the fix was integrated into the Solaris 10 patch gate, with official T-Patches on their way, yet I'm still seeing articles like this from News.com which make it sound like we're still trying to figure it out. And gets the facts wrong (I believe the Sun rep was misquoted, but I don't know that for a fact). The article mentions that only as of last month did we start shipping with SSH enabled by default. *UGH* We've been shipping with SSH enabled by default since Solaris 9 - for YEARS now. I think what they meant was that as of last month, Solaris 10 Update 3 started shipping with ONLY SSH enabled by default. That is, telnet, rlogin, etc are all disabled by default. It was part of our huge security initiative, Secure By Default.

There are several workarounds to this problem:

• Disable telnet on your S10, S10U1 or S10U2 system
• make root a role
• Disable telnet to root for non CONSOLE logins (default, btw, since the initial release of Solaris)

Solaris 9 and earlier are not affected. This was unintentionally introduced into the Solaris 10 & Nevada code base when a major project integrated into Solaris 10.

I am mystified as to why we didn't immediately release a SunAlert with the workaround, but I know those folks were waiting for the IDRs to be available - and they are now. Official patches will be available Real Soon Now. I'll keep poking a sharp stick at folks to try to convince them to do better OFFICIAL communication, but what we've got going with OpenSolaris on the discussion aliases is very cool.

Fiesta del Mar is now a limited time engagement

Woe is me, the best Mexican restaurant this side of the Mexican border now has a limited lifetime in Mountain View, its home for the last 16 years. Normally, I would not be so up in arms about a restaurant closing, but this little place has always made us feel at home, has the most polite and friendly servers and clientelle, unlimited home-made salsa & chips, and delicious hearty entrees that cause a Pavlovian reaction just thinking about them - and this restaurant has done nothing wrong!

A friend of mine noted that this is just capitalism at work, and that my objectivist college background should enable me to see past the loss of this fine establishment, and rejoice in the redevelopment of this into office space. While that may be true, I just can't get past how this closure seems inherently unfair. The business itself is thriving! Customers come from as far away as Dublin & San Francisco on a regular basis. Even when visiting on a Tuesday night, an hour long wait is not unusual. The staff will happily make you a pitcher of margaritas to bide your time until a table opens up, where they will promptly serve you - all the while engaging you in conversation or teaching you some Spanish, if you're so inclined.

This would be different if the business was failing and someone was coming into Mountain View to revitalize this space, but that's not the case. As a resident of this fine city, I think it's imperative that we try to keep local flair and flavor, to continue to bring visitors and revenue into the city.

I'm not sure what I can do, but I hope to figure it out soon - any advice?

Close call!

Riding our bicycles in today, we were nearly involved in what could have been a very nasty accident! Mark & I were waiting at the red light at Middlefield and Shoreline, in the bicycle lane on eastbound Middlefield. We were chatting away, and missed when the light turned green. That slight, and unusual, delay saved our lives. The car sitting next to us, a small Toyota, started driving just after the light turned green, but just before us. Mark & I casually entered the intersection when suddenly a blue van came RUSHING southbound on Shoreline - running a very red light at about 40 mph. Because of our minor delay at leaving the intersection when the light turned green, the small Toyota was hit by the van instead of us. Even then, I was suddenly faced with two cars coming towards us - out of control. I screamed and totally froze - crashing metal at those speeds that close is too much for my little helmet to protect against. We were very lucky that the little Toyota wasn't a bit further in the intersection, or the severity of the impact would've certainly sent the crashing cars just that much closer to us and I wouldn't be able to write this now.

Please, please, please drivers - don't run red lights. Is it worth nearly killing two cyclists to get to work on time?

Shaken and fortunately not stirred.