1st Sunday in Lent

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of
God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable
to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you
may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and
perfect.
[…]
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;
love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing
honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to
strangers.
-Romans 12:1-13 (NRSV)

Encourage one another and build up each other.
-1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NRSV)

Prayer
Thank you, God, for your amazing love and for sending people to
encourage us when we need it. Help us to be channels of support and
encouragement for those around us. Amen.

16 El que se bendijere en la tierra, en el Dios de verdad se
bendecirá; y el que jurare en la tierra, por el Dios de verdad jurará;
porque las angustias primeras serán olvidadas, y serán cubiertas de
mis ojos.
17 Porque he aquí que yo crearé nuevos cielos y nueva tierra; y de lo
primero no habrá memoria, ni más vendrá al pensamiento.
19 Y me alegraré con Jerusalén, y me gozaré con mi pueblo; y nunca más
se oirán en ella voz de lloro, ni voz de clamor.
19 Y me alegraré con Jerusalén, y me gozaré con mi pueblo; y nunca más
se oirán en ella voz de lloro, ni voz de clamor.

Isaiah 65

2 Thessalonians 3:13

And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.


New International Version, ©2010


http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Thessalonians+3:13&version=NIV

2011 Federal Holidays

Federal law (5 U.S.C. 6103) establishes the following public holidays for Federal employees. Please note that most Federal employees work on a Monday through Friday schedule. For these employees, when a holiday falls on a nonworkday -- Saturday or Sunday -- the holiday usually is observed on Monday (if the holiday falls on Sunday) or Friday (if the holiday falls on Saturday).

Friday, December 31, 2010*	New Year’s Day
Monday, January 17	Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Monday, February 21**	Washington’s Birthday
Monday, May 30	Memorial Day
Monday, July 4	Independence Day
Monday, September 5	Labor Day
Monday, October 10	Columbus Day
Friday, November 11	Veterans Day
Thursday, November 24	Thanksgiving Day
Monday, December 26***	Christmas Day

* January 1, 2011 (the legal public holiday for New Year’s Day), falls on a Saturday. For most Federal employees, Friday, December 31, 2010, will be treated as a holiday for pay and leave purposes. (See 5 U.S.C. 6103(b).)

** This holiday is designated as "Washington’s Birthday" in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees. Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law.

*** December 25, 2011 (the legal public holiday for Christmas Day), falls on a Sunday. For most Federal employees, Monday, December 26, will be treated as a holiday for pay and leave purposes. (See section 3(a) of Executive order 11582, February 11, 1971.)

Taken from http://www.opm.gov/Operating_Status_Schedules/fedhol/2011.asp

Time offsets to UTC in MySQL

The offset from UTC is given in the format ±[hh]:[mm], ±[hh][mm], or ±[hh]. It is appended to the time. The offset from UTC changes with daylight saving time, e.g. a time offset in Chicago, would be "-06:00" for the winter (Central Standard Time) and "-05:00" for the summer (Central Daylight Time).

The following times all refer to the same moment: "18:30Z", "22:30+04", "1130-0700", and "15:00-03:30". Nautical time zone letters are not used with the exception of Z. To calculate UTC time one has to subtract the offset from the local time, e.g. for "15:00-03:30" do 15:00 − (−03:30) to get 18:30 UTC.

The offset can also be used in the case where the UTC time is known, but the local offset is not. In this case the offset is "-00:00", which is semantically different from "Z" or "+00:00", as these imply that UTC is the preferred reference point for those times.

SELECT CONVERT_TZ('2004-01-01 11:30:00','-07:00','+00:00');

Make WinXP’s NTP client poll more frequently (hourly)

At the registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\NtpClient

Change the value SpecialPollInterval to 3600

3600 seconds = 1 hour

Save and restart the Windows Time service:

net stop "Windows Time"
net start "Windows Time"

Taken from: http://dossy.org/2007/02/make-winxps-ntp-client-poll-more-frequently/

Dizzy Gillespie on Music

"...and all about how music can transport people spiritually."


Dizzy Gillespie in Carr, I., Fairweather, D, Brian P, The rough guide to Jazz. page. 291.

Using back references in SED

Today I have several CSV files, everyone with a header at the first line and a date at the first fields with the format mm/dd/yyyy. It was necessary to change that field into the format yyyy-mm-dd.

Here there is a Perl solution and also a SED one:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
while (<>) {
        chomp;
        if (/^[^0-9]/) {
                print "$_\n";
                next;
        }
        my @Fields = split /,/, $_, 2;
        my ($Month, $Day, $Year) = split /\//, $Fields[0];
        print "$Year-$Month-$Day, $Fields[1]\n";
}
__END__

sed -i.bak 's/^\([0-9]\+\)\/\([0-9]\+\)\/\([0-9]\+\)/\3-\1-\2/' *.csv

Yesterday on my way home I realized that the Perl script was horrible, a one-liner should be OK, like the one below:

perl -i.bak -pe 's!(\d+)/(\d+)/(\d+)!\3-\1-\2!' *.csv