What's everyone up to right now?

[Anomalocaris]

Just found out my bank has been surreptitiously (ok, it was on the monthly statement had I bothered to look) charging me a $10 monthly fee on 2 accounts for the last 4-5 month on the thin pretext of my not meeting any one of the three conditions required to not be charged a fee. Will have to have a confrontation at least twice as unpleasant as the bank would prefer today.

[Gwaithmir]

Taking my meds. 

[Draconic Aiur]

relaxin

[Angrboda]

Relaxing with a mug of vegetable beef soup. Gonna watch the news and then head to the grocery store to pick up a 12 pack of hard cider. I was at a different branch earlier today, but forgot to take care of some bank business. Of course the branch I'm going to is one of the few that doesn't have a branch of my bank in it.

[Draconic Aiur]

try ginger beer from Australia!

FEELING ANXIOUS

[Rev. Rye]

Thanks, I figured I'd change it for the people who confused the name with diapers, I think Rev. Rye was the only one who got the reference.

You know, I thought I was being facetious, but, Holy Shit, my Starsky and Hutch reference was exactly what you were going for all along. I may have to un-ignore you (at least until we get into another debate that goes nowhere so fast that I figure that blocking you is the best way I can keep from fighting a brick wall)

---

Also, on the "Rev's autism spectrum disorder leads him on a wild goose chase in search of some ludicrously arcane information" stage of things, On Monday, I watched Fredrik Knudsen's return to Down the Rabbit Hole talking about the Hurdy Gurdy:



At 11:30, he talks about Guiraut de Calanso, a minstrel who claims that minstrels needed to play nine instruments, including the Symphonia/Hurdy-Gurdy. I wound up being intrigued enough by this that I decided to find out what the other eight were. Unfortunately, it took close to a day to figure out how "Guiraut de Calanso" was actually spelled, because there are limits to how well YouTube's auto-captions actually work, and it looks like Occitan is one of those limits. Eventually, I found the source, a poem called "Fadet Joglar." Unfortunately, there were two problems. The first was easy enough to overcome, that the full text wasn't readily accessible, but the part with the nine instruments was. The second raised a bigger problem: the text was in the original Occitan, and Google Translate doesn't do Occitan, either. It took a lot of trial and error, but I found a lot of commentary on that. Unfortunately, almost none of it was in English. Fortunately, I found a source that A) conveniently listed the instruments, and B) did so in a language I have an admittedly very small working knowledge of. And, so, here's the list (likely dumbed down, not taking into account the 191 subsequent years' worth of musical scholarship).

Percussion Instruments:

• Drum
  
• Castanets
  
• KEttledrum
  

String Instruments:

• Symphonie (Hurdy Gurdy)
  
• Mandore
  
• Monochord
  
• Rotte with 17 strings (a type of lyre)
  
• Citole (proto-guitar)
  
• Psaltery
  
• Lyre
  

Wind instrument:

• Bagpipes
  

Also, I just noticed that there's actually 11 instruments on this list, more than Calanso specified. I'm going to assume there's some redundancies in that German list (possibly noting that the Rotte/Psaltery/Lyre appear more or less the same, or that the Drum and Kettledrum are much the same category) Either way, I'm seeing some potential new musical instruments to experiment with (admittedly, mostly the hurdy-gurdy; and harp family.) I think I could make an interesting Velvet Underground cover album with the Hurdy Gurdy.

[Rev. Rye]

Found another text of "Fadet Joglar" with a prose French translation at the bottom of the page. Don't speak french, but Google Translate does. The final list (with Occitan word which may or may not be a verb form and the line they're on in parenthesis):

• The drum (Taboreiar, XVI)
  
• Castanets (Tauleiar, XVII)
  
• Hurdy-Gurdy (Simphonia, XVIII) [At least, that's what the research suggests at the moment]
  
• Citole (Citolar, XXV) [Most Recent Common Ancestor of the Guitar and Violin, it seems]
  
• Mandore (Mandurar, XXVI) [Possibly an early ancestor of the mandolin that shows up 300 years before any other reference to the instrument]
  
• Monochord (Manicorda, XXVIII) [Quite like my Diddley Bow, methinks]
  
• 17-string Rota (Rota ab detze ot cordas, XXXII-XXXIII) [Research tells me it's close to the psaltery]
  
• Harp/Lyre (Arpar, XXXIV)
  
• 10-string Psaltery (Salteri detz cordas, XXXVIII-XXXIX)
  

Most of you won't give a shit, I guess, but I felt the need to give my search closure.

Evidently, it's the bagpipe and kettledrum that didn't belong.

[Jackalope]

Suffering through a six hour mandatory course in introductory cloud computing.

[Rev. Rye]

At work, and it looks like we’ve got a strange new development: a kid is pretending he does not speak English, and only speaks in Arabic or Assyrian or some babble that isn’t actually either one. Sometimes a brother translates for him, sometimes he doesn’t.

What’s weird is The boss actually knows the kid and informed me that, yes, he does actually speak English. He’s just refusing to for some reason.

[The Valkyrie]

try ginger beer from Australia!

FEELING ANXIOUS

Bundaberg?