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(08-07) 04:00 PDT South Kingstown, R. I. — Between each act at the Newport Jazz Festival, as the audience cheers and crews clear the equipment, bill Calhoun darts onstage with a fistful of tools and parks at the piano. He cocks his head, lowers his ear to the piano, taps ding-ding-ding on the keys, tinkers with a tuning pin here and there. when he’s done, he scurries offstage. It’s a routine Calhoun has perfected. He marks his 25th anniversary this weekend as piano tuner for the celebrated jazz festival, which since 1954 has hosted such luminaries as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Ray Charles. Calhoun generally has minimal interactions with the musicians, but his behind-the-scenes role is crucial to the festival’s success. when Dave Brubeck hits a note that rings just so, it’s of course a credit to his talent but also a testament to Calhoun’s craftsmanship. “The musician playing the piano has never played this piano before. They’re going to walk onstage, introduce themselves to the audience and then sit down at a piano that they have never played,” Calhoun said. “In a sense my job is to make it so that they have total trust in what the piano can do for them and how the piano sounds.” Performers who play Newport take turns on the festival’s rented pianos rather than bring their own, creating the need for an on-site tuner sensitive to the instrument’s notoriously fickle nature: Humid weather, common during the annual August festival, can knock the pitch out of whack. so can a pianist who pounds the keys especially hard. “I’m insurance that the pianos will be in tune enough and in good enough repair,” explained 55-year-old Calhoun. normally both he and the performers are too busy to greet each other, though sometimes they do. one time Chick Corea asked to meet Calhoun to feel him out and get a sense of the piano he’d be playing. He’s also met Dr. John – a pianist of a strikingly “gentle” style, Calhoun says, despite his “funny little meaty hands.” and one summer, he found himself huddled beneath a piano with Herbie Hancock and his manager, investigating the source of a terrific bam that occurred after a structural piece at the instrument’s base fell during the Grammy winner’s performance. “His manager looks at me and goes, ‘Are you the piano technician?’ I said ‘Yes.’ He goes ‘good’ and then he looks at Herbie and says, ‘Herbie, get out of here!’ ” Calhoun recalled with a laugh. As a boy, Calhoun was always more interested in trying to take apart his parents’ piano than in playing it, though he is himself a pianist and fond of bluesy jazz.

the Dartmouth College graduate taught high school science before deciding to mesh his interest in music and physics. He enrolled in the piano technology program at the new England Conservatory in Boston, then was hired at the jazz festival in 1986 after making what he calls a “ridiculously low” offer for his services. He’s been there ever since, also working the Newport Folk Festival when a piano is needed for a performance. Calhoun arrives at 7 a.m. and hangs with the sound engineers near the stage. He does full tunings and checks octaves at the start of the day, but between acts is when he really hustles – moving between performances on the festival’s three stages with a tuning wrench and pair of rubber mutes. He typically has a narrow window to test the strings that correspond to each note, check the octaves and finger the keys to make sure the sound is pitch-perfect. “He’s very good and very fast, which you have to be. sometimes there’s only 15 minutes between two piano players. He’s got to pipe right up onstage and make sure the piano’s in tune,” said Bob Jones, a senior producer with new Festival Networks, the festival’s production company. Calhoun is one of the festival’s many unsung contributors who return each year and are vital to behind-the-scene operations, said Tim Tobin, the festival’s operations manager. “They do feel as if it is a privilege to work for this festival because it is in fact the granddaddy of all jazz festivals,” Tobin said. “When you’re working with your family, they tend to stick around.” the festival celebrates its 56th anniversary this weekend with performers including Hancock, Brubeck and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Calhoun says he’s tuned the piano of virtually every Newport performer in the past quarter-century, though one notable exception sticks out in his mind. one summer Bruce Hornsby swung by Newport while on tour but enlisted his own keyboard player to tune his 9-foot Baldwin piano. it was, Calhoun politely suggests, perhaps not the best decision. “Let’s just say had I tuned the piano it would have sounded better, but you know, Bruce Hornsby didn’t seem to care one bit what it sounded like.” This article appeared on page E – 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle 25-year Newport Jazz gig keeps tuner keyed up

I am trying to make a ssh2 backup script for our call center application using a batch file. I know that ssh2.exe is the command line version of ssh and I know what I need to type but I can't get the batch file to fill in the password for the user I am logging in as. for example ssh2.exe hotdog@bddev.yv.aub.edu will connect to bddev.yv.aub.edu with username hotdog. The next process is going to ask for a password. I can't seem to get past this point.

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I am in a situation that is compressing me from each side and it feels like I am getting less and less able to cope with it. I am a college graduate and the only job I found as soon as I finished school was a CSR at a telecommunications company. This job is horrific. I feel so sick of it, that I cannot bear this pressure any more. I am a very sensitive, sincere, and compassionate person. So far, I have been cursed, called lazy, yelled at, and humiliated. This is a very non-thankful job. People call frustrated and never care what they say and how they treat the people on the phone. I wish, they could understand that employees in call centers are constricted by scripts, heavy rules, and no choice. It is not about how hard-working we are, it is about what our script tell us to do and what we are instructed. We cannot change the policy of the companies, we cannot lower the prices, we cannot modify the products and services. We are just the buffer between embittered customers and almighty wealthy company owners and dictators. It hurts me to be yelled at, no matter how humane I am. I love helping people with my heart, but this is not the job that allows me to do that. I have to be cold-hearted sometimes and always follow my script. I am more of a creative type of person and this job is killing me. I am applying for other jobs and I cannot get the success of being chosen anywhere else. Moreover, I have the restriction of working in a particular area, I cannot get any job (work in a cafe, for example). I live alone, far, far from my home. I am here because of my boy-friend, who turned out to be a different person. Now, I have no friends, no one, feel lonely, feeling disgusted of my jobs, and barely meeting the ends with my salary. How can I help myself? I am working hard to get a different job and it does not seem to be successful. I am skilled and hard-working. I am very loving, sensitive, and compassionate. It feels hard. I feel so stressed at work, sometimes I secretly cry at work. I hate thinking of tomorrow and having to go to work. I am lonely. I wish I could change my world. Well, I feel sad and very, very constricted. I wish I could be understood. And I wish, I could live in a a little happy world of my own, where I would be able to share my care and love with people and be appreciated. I wish I could ignore all the hatred I hear everyday on the phone at work. I wish everyone who read this all the best. Hope, you are feeling well.

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If everything you said to your spouse went in one ear and out the other and you were tired of their actions but didnt want to divorce them, just wanted them to listen to you, appreciate you and treat you with respect; how would you show them how you feel? For Example: (my life) My husband and I were out of employment for about a year and we have gotten really far behind on bills. I got a job at a call center after I had my baby and he wants me to quit! I only work 16 hours a week at $10 hour. We have 4 kids - 3 months, 3 1/2, 5 and 7 1/2. We also own our own business but we just barely started getting any business. it is still very slow. My husband is very lazy and will find any excuse possible why he shouldnt get a job. "If we get this many customers, we wont have to work for anyone else" or " We would be just wasting our time at a job when we could be spending that time on our business" when he actually means that I can be spending that time on our business. The problem is I am the only one who will get out there and advertise and campaign for our business. He thinks that he will get turned down because he is a black man. We are $2000 behind in rent and he made a deal that he was going to paint our landlords house for $15 hr to try to catch up when we didnt have any customers or when I wasnt at work, but he has only showed up for 2 days and only for a total of 5 or 6 hours. that was last week. We are $1000 behind in 1 vehicle, which is in repo, and $1400 behind in another, which is in repo, not to mention our regular monthly bills. I work a PT job - no appreciation I find local agencies to help out with the utilities that we cant pay - no thanks from him I clean the house spotless including windows, baseboards, ceiling fans, walls, etc, do laundry and cook daily (all before I go to work) - no appreciation from him - and he doesnt even keep it clean so it is filthy when i get off of work I do all the grocery shopping and watch all the kids until i have to go to work - no thanks from him I advertise and campaign for our business and clean houses for extra money - he says that is what I am supposed to do! Not to mention the new 3 month old baby that I also breastfeed. I take the kids to church and if i go anywhere they come with me. I enforce the rules with my kids and give them the love and attention they need and deserve while he does nothing as far as interacting with them. We have a contract with my mother to do her lawn and she paid us before services to do her lawn including bushes and flowerbed, mowing and weedeating and blowing. I do all of this every week myself both front and back yard and sometimes i have to do it with the baby in a carrier on my chest! How do I show him that this behavior from him has to change and that i dont appreciate it? He is also very mean and disrespectful to me even in front of the kids, and it even gets worse when he starts to drink. I love my husband (for better or for worse) and I dont want to divorce him but he wont listen to how i feel and he always tries to flip the script when he is tired of my complaining and nagging. HELP ME PLEASE!

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