Beau and Elena's Wedding/La Boda de Beau y Elena

I had the huge and unexpected honor of marrying my friends, Beau and Elena, while we were visiting Spain. Beau and Elena were the people who we evacuated from Katrina with. Here is what I said:

...Y ya llegamos al final de la boda y el comienzo del matrimonio. Sólo os puedo compartir mis propias experiencias con vosotros.

...And now we've come to the end of the wedding and the beginning of the marriage. I can only share my own experiences with you.

Hace unos años conocí a una chica catalana. Era muy guapa. Nos reimos y lo pasamos bien juntos, y al final de un tiempo decidimos casarnos. No tuvimos ni idea de que haciamos.

About seven years ago I met a Catalan girl. She was very pretty. We laughed a lot and had a good time together, and after a while we decided to get married. We had no idea what we were doing.

Sònia y yo hemos experimentado, como decis, la prosperidad y la adversidad. Han habido momentos en los que nos hemos preguntado, "¿y porqué no me hubiera podido enamorarme de alguien de mi propio pais?"

Sònia and I have experienced, as you say, better and worse. There have been moments when we have asked ourselves, "why couldn't I have fallen in love with someone from my own country?"

Nos dijeron en nuestra boda que, como mínimo, uno de nosotros siempre seria extranjero.

They told us in our wedding that at least one of us would always be a foreigner.

El otro día pregunté a Daniel, nuestro hijo de cuatro años, "¿y porqué la gente se casa?". Me dijo sin dudar, "porque quieren". Lo he dado muchas vueltas y me he dado cuenta que Dan tenía razon. Nos casamos porque queremos, como de razones prácticas hay pocas.

The other day I asked Daniel, our four year old son, "so why do people get married?". He responded without a pause, "because they want to." I've thought about it a lot, and I've realized that Dan was right: we get married because we want to, since there aren't many practical reasons to do so.

Así que os presento el Señor y la Señora Lambert: dos personas, poco prácticas, que se casan porque quieren, y porque se quieren muchisimo.

So I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Lambert: two impractical people who got married because they wanted to, and because they love each other very much.

You may kiss the bride...

Mérida: Wedding

I'm in Merida, Spain, right now, at the house of Juan Carlos and Filo. We came here because I (get this) had to marry their daughter to a friend. The service went fine-- the bride and groom were Beau and Elena, the folks we evacuated from Katrina with. I'll post my comments from the wedding when I get to Barcelona.

Mérida is terrific-- the Spanish Ministry of Tourism is making a big mistake by not advertising the type of town like Mérida more. There are Roman ruins here from before the year 0.

Bikram Yoga: Two months

I've been practicing Bikram yoga since March 29, 2006. That's just over two months now. I've been going three times a week since then. I haven't written much lately, but things have been happening. For example, about three weeks ago my left knee popped when I got overly ambitious during the toe stand (Padangustasana). It's just now starting to feel pretty good again, and this morning I tried, cautiously, to get into the pose again. I didn't get all the way in, but nothing popped this time.

I've been doing maitenance for the studio's web page (http://www.bikramphiladelphia.com). That's been fun, and something I'm actually more or less good at.

I understand that yoga is slow-- it may take years to see changes. That's okay. I still see short term changes that I like-- I'm a lot more flexible, my balance is better, and I lost six pounds. That's all good.

35:57 Vine St/BF Parkway - The Roches, "Keep on Doing"

I haven't run much since I started doing yoga-- in fact, I think this is only the second time. This was a good run. It was pretty hot and humid out; however, I'm now one of those Bikram Yoga whackos so heat doesn't bother me much. No injuries, aches, pains, etc, either. Just a nice fast run.

I listened to The Roches, "Keep on Doing". I originally bought this album on vinyl when I was at the Naval Academy at Oceans II records (anyone remember that?). I pretty much got it because I had seen The Roches on Saturday Night Live singing the Hallelujah Chorus, and that was on this album. Now I pretty much skip that song.

The Roches are great. They do really tight harmonies, and on this album they were backed by Robert Fripp of King Crimson, which was just weird enough to work (I think one of them was dating Fripp). I really liked "Losing True" and "The Road to Fairfax County", but skipped over some of the sappier stuff. I guess I liked "Largest Elizabeth in the World" when I was in college, but it's stopped working for me. On the other hand, I never really got "The Scorpion Lament" when I was in school, but now I kind of understand it better.

I also listened to Will Farrell's version of the Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight". The funny thing is that the harmonies in this remind me of the harmonies of The Roches. I know it was a ready-made parody of itself, but I have to agree: "Afternoon Delight" is the finest composition in human history.

SQL Server: How to fix an orphaned user

I recently was sent a backup file to restore by a consultant. The file had logins I had already defined as users of the database. When I restored the backup, I was unable to sign in with a known user:

C:\>osql -S SERVER01 -d TestDB -U JSmith Password: Cannot open database requested in login 'TestDB'. Login fails.  

My login, JSmith, had become orphaned. This means that, although I had a login named JSmith, the internal representation of JSmith in my database did not match the internal representation in the backup.

There is a simple piece of code to fix this:

EXEC sp_change_users_login 'Auto_Fix', 'JSmith' 

If this works, you will get a message like this:

 The number of orphaned users fixed by updating users was 1.  

I did this and my login started to work again.