I’m posting to mark my uncontested election this month as president of the Syracuse Astronomical Society (SAS). I ran a strong campaign for change, because we needed change. It was important to have change. Change.

Yeah, I didn’t buy it either. I bought the snacks instead, which went over well (after the election, of course). The one thing I did change, however, was the old website, which now has a more “immediately-accessible” look to it. Anyone maintaining a phenomenal memory and paying very close attention will note the striking similarity between the SAS site and somewhereville.com before I jumped ship to WordPress.

If, by odd chance, you’re within some indeterminate range of Syracuse or Tully, found my site and DIDN’T know about the SAS and our public observing schedule, I urge you to check the group out. We’d love to see you. Well, we’d love to see your dark, featureless outline and know you only by your voice. And, please, don’t take it personal if people treat you like you’re brand new even after a second or third visit to Darling Hill Observatory. I’m usually easy to find, set up on one of the concrete pads with nothing but a drum throne and my tripod-mounted Nikon Action 10×50 binoculars. Meeting schedule times (including public viewing) are available at the SAS website. I’m endeavoring to remain organized enough this year to post a biweekly message on the SAS website, keeping track of all of the astronomy/space science news that passes through digg and ./ every day, as well as keeping track of all of the non-SAS meetings of astronomical interest that are occurring in the area (such as the running Sky Chart exhibit in Shaffer Art Gallery on the SU campus). The next message will include information about our membership in the NASA Night Sky Network, which may have also led you to this site en route to the official SAS website.

…and what better way to throw in a Sun Ra reference?

www.nikonsportoptics.com/product.php?group=14&subgroup=147&product=7218
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman
symposium.syr.edu/schedule.html
www.syracuse-astro.org
www.elrarecords.com
nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov
www.syracuse.ny.us
www.wordpress.org
www.tullyny.org
www.digg.com
slashdot.org

Good Greek Americans everywhere (Spiro Agnew notwithstanding, are there any other kind?) lost the first great trend-setter of American Greek Orthodoxy on January 18th 2007, with the Syracuse community and St. Sophia’s parishioners fortunate enough to have benefited from 55 years of his presence and experience. Father Michael Harmand, an efficiency expert who knew the value of coffee hour. A thespian who didn’t need to say a word to get a standing ovation. A drummer who, in his late 70′s, could bring a Greek Fest drumkit to the verge of rattling apart. The church function wasn’t official until he took his seat, the food wasn’t blessed until he told you to “dig in!”

Of all of the instances I’ve known where non-verbal communication was most obvious and appropriate, the one that will stand out first among all in my mind occurred between my younger brother and I at every service we found ourselves sitting next to each other during Father Harmand’s “retirement” (and we’re talking well into 2006). With Father Harmand’s first utterance, a glance, a smirk, and an affirmative nod would pass between the two of us. I imagine the same reverential exchange occurred as the house lights dimmed between every small-time R+B band that ever spent a gig’s pay to buy tickets to see James Brown in his prime. That exchange was the acknowledgment of being in the presence of a one-man institution. The appreciation of knowing that we were in the presence of the man in charge.

In the interest of public record and google-able access, I’ve pdf’ed the obituary from the Syracuse newspaper, downloadable HERE.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brown
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiro_Agnew
www.syracuse.ny.us
www.syracuse.com
www.stsophias.org
www.goarch.org

The following is a workaround to avoid the use of the Gaussian 03 interface in Windows, specifically the batch control file (bcf) queuing method that freezes progression when jobs crash (nothing less productive than having the first job in a queue of 50 stall on a Friday evening).

The procedure calls the Gaussian 03 executable directly from its folder (which should be C:\g03w in a default install) and requires specifying the path as part of the batch process. With the new path and the GAUSS_EXEDIR set (so g03.exe can find and access all of Gaussian’s sub-programs), a batch file can be generated to run jobs automatically that, when the job fails, progresses to the next file in the series. Create a file like the following and save it as a .bat file in the directory containing the .gjf files. Then, just double-click on the .bat file to run.

path=%path%;C:\g03w;
set GAUSS_EXEDIR=C:\G03W
g03.exe file1.gjf file1.log
g03.exe file2.gjf file2.log
…

www.microsoft.com
www.gaussian.com