GoDaddy MySQL Server changes

I have been hosting one of my website at GoDaddy for a long time (too long that I couldn't remember) and I setup my own instance of WordPress 1.5 back then (now it's a feature of GoDaddy web hosting and it's so much easier) and I seldom make any change unless it's broken. I visited my site just now and got a helpful error message saying WordPress cannot connect to the database (I used a host name in the secureserver.net domain) And I (re)discovered where the db server name was stored: it's wp-config.php. So I opened the database manager from GoDaddy to figure out the IP address of the db server and replace the one in wp-config.php. Voila! My site is back.

A weekend of concerts

One of the biggest attraction of New York City to me was the jazz scene. I used to live in the village and went to several shows per week. And some times on the same night as I would go to an early show. Then walked around the village to attend a 10pm-ish show. And finished off at the all-night jazz jam at the Small's. It's harder to do that in the Bay Area as places are more scattered. And there are not as many notable performances per night anyway. Well, 2/5 was an exception: guitarist Rez Abbasi and his acoustic quartet (RAAQ) played at the California Jazz Conservatory (formerly known as the Jazzschool) in Berkeley and smooth jazz veteran Euge Groove played at Yoshi's in Oakland. RAAQ's show started at 8pm while Euge's show time was 10pm. I could only leave home at 6:30 and the traffic on a Friday night was usually bad (~1.5hr to the Oakland/Berkeley area) And it seemed rather unpredictable for this Super Bowl weekend in the "host city" so my "strategy" was buying the Yoshi's ticket in advance and take a chance with the Jazzschool concert. It was a lucky day for me though as I arrived ~7:50. Found no street parking so I pulled into a nearby garage quickly and got to the concert at 8. The quartet was almost done with setting up at that time. It was perfect! (Turned out their flight from JFK was delayed by 4 hr and they rushed from the airport straight to Jazzschool!) I guess the school is good at booking great guitarists: I saw the "Seasons" quartet performed there before too. RAAQ got a lot of praises for their recent effort in "Intents and Purposes": an album-ful of fusion classics. To me, they did a double-twist by adopting those pieces to an acoustic setting but they were also "rocking" hard with their acoustic instruments! Then I headed to Oakland, which was a 20-min drive for the Euge Groove show. Gotta admit the atmosphere was completely different here. While the music of RAAQ sounded quite intellectual, Euge's music was very accessible with heavy pop, funk and some R&B elements. Very danceable too. To be honest, I was surprised by the large amount of black folks in the audience. After all, smooth jazz was a genre where "white guys" commercialized original black music and made good money with it. I guess all people care was enjoyable music: Euge was a very entertaining show man. And of course he's got his sax chops too. I have so much to learn! What a great evening with two of my favorite instruments :)

Then we attended the El Camino Youth Symphony's Chinese New Year concert. The program was a good mixture of "Western" (e.g. Chopin concerto) and Chinese music. Those with traditional CNY folk sound were fortunately not too cheesy. Even the "Yellow River" concerto from the Cultural revolution-era sounded semi-exciting, thanks to the extraordinary technique of the pianist Gwhyneth Chen. Her playing was so great that I had to buy her CD after the concert.