1. TV? What's that? (I haven't watched first-run TV in seriously 15 years.)
2. Where was that set? (Many shows I've seen, particularly but not limited to westerns and soap operas, I have no idea where they were set.)
3. But that state's huge! (It's embarrassing when I can't, off the top of my head, come up with a show for a state with more than 15 electoral votes.)

mood

-

nostalgic

There's a theme here.

Monday I generated a Genius playlist based off The Manhattan Transfer's "Birdland". A couple tracks that hit surprised me, more because I hadn't heard them in ages, including Joshua Kadison's "Picture Postcards From L.A.". I went looking for more, and I discovered my phone was missing a lot of tracks from certain albums. I fixed that last night, and now I have five particular albums swirling in a playlist.

• Joshua Kadison -- Painted Desert Serenade
• Marc Cohn -- Marc Cohn
• Martin Page -- In The House Of Stone And Light
• Bruce Hornsby and The Range -- The Way It Is
• Don Henley -- The End Of The Innocence

I'm not sure what the theme is. I feel like I should send it to witchy1.

I am considering buying a car sometime in the near future, and I would like to have some idea of how feasible a purchase would be for me. I have read your Auto Loan Rates page, but it only lists the minimum rate. I suspect I would not qualify for the minimum rate, so I would want to know what my rates would be.

I would like to purchase a new vehicle with MSRP of $19425. I would like to know what interest rates I could expect for a 48-, 60-, or 72-month loan.

I also understand that there are certain loan discounts which could be applicable. The vehicle I am looking at is EPA SmartWay ceritfied with 39 MPG Highway, I am an Illini Advantage PLUS accountholder, and I would configure automatic payments on my loan; I believe each of those three would entitle me to a ¼% discount on the loan rate.

(I have two reasons for this request. One is that my 17-year-old car is dead and that my wife's 9-year-old car is not in outstanding condition, and we really would like to look at buying a new vehicle. The other is that I teach a General Ed math course at Parkland, and I'm asking my students to do a project right now involving some of the consumer math that we have covered. This is exactly the type of thing I am suggesting to my own students to research, so it would be appropriate if I did the same.)

Thank you for your assistance.

mood

-

awake

Jenni said that Comcast mucked about with our internet speeds, and we were supposed to power-cycle our modem.

Okay.

I figured once I did that, I ought to run some speed tests. Apparently if I want to show off, I should hit the Flash test server in Toronto.

Speed Test #97722628 by dslreports.com
Run: 2011-07-09 11:25:04 EST
Download: 6609 (Kbps)
Upload: 3455 (Kbps)
In kilobytes per second: 806.8 down 421.8 up
Tested by server: 56 java (Parsippany, New Jersey)
User: 2 @ dslreports.com
User's DNS: comcast.net
Compared to the average of 989 tests from comcast.net:
* download is 43% worse

Speed Test #97722648 by dslreports.com
Run: 2011-07-09 11:27:19 EST
Download: 23643 (Kbps)
Upload: 1243 (Kbps)
In kilobytes per second: 2886.1 down 151.7 up
Latency: 17 ms
Tested by server: 68 flash (Chicago, Illinois)
User: anonymous
User's DNS: comcast.net
Compared to the average of 990 tests from comcast.net:
* download is 103% better, upload is 64% worse

Speed Test #97722706 by dslreports.com
Run: 2011-07-09 11:33:49 EST
Download: 5573 (Kbps)
Upload: 3639 (Kbps)
In kilobytes per second: 680.3 down 444.2 up
Tested by server: 54 java (Los Angeles, California)
User: 2 @ dslreports.com
User's DNS: comcast.net
Compared to the average of 991 tests from comcast.net:
* download is 51% worse, upload is 5% better

Speed Test #97722733 by dslreports.com
Run: 2011-07-09 11:35:31 EST
Download: 3878 (Kbps)
Upload: 746 (Kbps)
In kilobytes per second: 473.3 down 91 up
Latency: 34 ms
Tested by server: 5725 flash (Washington, District of Columbia (Virginia))
User: anonymous
User's DNS: comcast.net
Compared to the average of 992 tests from comcast.net:
* download is 66% worse, upload is 78% worse

Speed Test #97722753 by dslreports.com
Run: 2011-07-09 11:37:04 EST
Download: 7768 (Kbps)
Upload: 904 (Kbps)
In kilobytes per second: 948.2 down 110.3 up
Latency: 29 ms
Tested by server: 5726 flash (Denver, Colorado)
User: anonymous
User's DNS: comcast.net
Compared to the average of 993 tests from comcast.net:
* download is 32% worse, upload is 73% worse

Speed Test #97722793 by dslreports.com
Run: 2011-07-09 11:41:09 EST
Download: 22514 (Kbps)
Upload: 10297 (Kbps)
In kilobytes per second: 2748.2 down 1256.9 up
Boost: 650156
Latency: 177 ms
Tested by server: 5685 flash (Toronto, Ontario)
User: anonymous
User's DNS: comcast.net
Compared to the average of 995 tests from comcast.net:
* download is 94% better, upload is 198% better

mood

-

sad

I've known this entry would come. I've thought about it a few times in the last few weeks, the fact that some morning soon I'd have to write it.

It's kind of embarrassing, now, that I have so little to say.

We saw my grandmother twice last month. We saw her at home on Mother's Day, and then on a Saturday two weeks later in the hospital. She was doing well both days; we picked two of her good days of the roller-coaster that has been her last six weeks or so.

The last thing she said to me as I left was, "I love you, Jason." I think she suspected she might not get to see me again; I suspected the same.

I have been privileged in my life to have known all four of my grandparents, as well as one great-grandparent. Grandpa (Weldon Nelson Nygren) died in March 1989 at age 68, when I was 12; he's the only one I never knew as an adult. Papa Joe (Joseph George Benda) died in March 2003 at age 85; Grandma JJ said at the time that she didn't want to live as long as he had. Grandma Jeff (Daisy Fay Jeffery), Grandma JJ's mother, died in February 2005 at age 93. Grandma (Ruby Nygren) died in December 2005 at age 80. Grandma JJ is the last to go, in June 2011, four weeks short of her 83rd birthday.

I feel like I'm writing an obituary to say she's survived by all six of her children, 11 (or 14, depending on who is counting) grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. It's still true.

Now is not the time to think about the future, the family politics that will by year's end shape the future in ways we do not yet know. Nor is it time to dwell on the past. Our family's matriarch has done all she can, and now she has left us. Her legacy lives on, of course, in each of us. We would never be who we are without her.

She did a good job.

mood

-

stunned

I've played two games now of Power Grid on the Japan board. The first game was a two-player game with a modified deck (added 12 cards from the green deck, then removed 20 at random) on the middle three regions. I lost, $104 to $67; we both powered 21 cities the final turn.

The second game I played was a 5-player solitare game with the standard (grey) deck. The game suddenly ended on Turn 8, and I felt like the final turn belongs in the Annals.

( Read more... )

Purple finished in first place with 10 cities powered and $18.
Red finished in second place with 10 cities powered and $14.
Green finished in third place with 10 cities powered and $10.
Yellow finished in fourth place with 10 cities powered and $0.
Blue finished in fifth place with 7 cities powered.

mood

-

surprised

It appears I have access to A Few More Icons now.

I have no idea who caused that, but thank you.

mood

-

surprised

Observe the behavior of the following two functions:


Considering I was interested specifically in the behavior of these functions on the interval [6,11], this was quite surprising for me.

mood

-

blank

It's 19:00 on Wednesday, 02 February. According to the bulletin board at the park, there's a neighborhood meeting now. I would have thought that if they'd cancelled it, they would have posted a cancellation notice on the sign. Jenni assumed that it wasn't happening, and so didn't try to go.

Our street looks pretty good. Queensway west of Campbell looks really good, which bodes well for CUMTD service tomorrow. Queensway east of Campbell, not so much. Wellington looks like our street looked nine hours ago, except there's also a Pontiac sideways half-blocking the street. North of the Pontiac, the street actually is in good shape for a couple hundred feet.

Parkland will be open tomorrow. The world will attempt to return to normalcy here in Champaign County.

Looking at my phone, I see the Jets have the ball in Indianapolis territory. I relay this to Jenni, noting that the Jets could take …

… the lead.

Jenni's response: "The [perfect fifth jump up in pitch] lead!"

Cue me laughing very muchly.

If you don't get the joke, go listen to Episode 30 of the Red Panda Adventures from Decoder Ring Theatre. And don't skip the commercial.

Just occurred to me that I'm definitely the only married person in this bar.

That quote last night, from an old friend of mine who was at Joe's Brewery in Champaign, sticks out to me as an attestation of how different I am. I'm disinclined to go to bars to begin with -- not opposed per se, particularly since the Smoke-Free Illinois Act of 2007 (*hugs the 95th General Assembly*), but disinclined. But beyond that, even if I went to a bar, I would never notice whether the other bar patrons were married or not. I don't know that about any random group of people.

It reminds me of the day in 1997 when Dr. Dorene Huvaere asked me what the racial demographics of the class I was observing at Joliet West were, and when I told her (honestly) that I had no idea, she was appalled. I tried to explain that since she'd now asked me to look at that, I'd pay attention next time, take notes, and report back, but that wasn't good enough; it was something that I needed to have already inherently noticed. At the time, I was appalled by that, because I felt like she was viewing the world through racially-stratified lenses. I don't think that was really the case (though I still dislike this instructor, mostly over this incident); I think it was just that I'm different.

I was asked once, indirectly, if I had a particular autism-spectrum disorder. I'd never heard of it, and I looked it up (which is how I found out it was an ASD). Though it bothered me that she felt like I projected some sort of disordered persona, I can somewhat understand why she would say that. I don't pick up on a lot of things that it seems many people take for granted that everyone just "sees". This has been the demise of more than one friendship I've had on multiple occasions, where someone just can't deal with me "not getting it" anymore.

I thought about an old former friend this morning, from about the same time period as the one from the bar, and I wonder if I drove her batty. I note that my life seems to have a long history of other people misinterpreting my relationships, usually third parties, but occasionally seconds too, I think. Most of that comes from people seeing things through their own worldviews, as one would expect, but then not realizing how different I am.

I have no idea why my friend knew he was the only married person in the bar, or even why that might have been the case at all. Really I never will.

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 12oz package cranberries

Mix sugar and water in a deep skillet; heat just until boiling, stirring frequently to ensure sugar is dissolved. Add cranberries to pan; continue to boil for about 12 minutes, stirring frequently to ensure even cooking. (NOTE: individual cranberries may explode during cooking.) Pour mixture into blender with metal or glass carafe (caution: mixture is HOT and sticky; use heat-resistant scraper). Process until smooth. Pour into glass bowl or other serving dish (caution: mixture is HOT and sticky; use heat-resistant scraper). Cover with paper towel and allow to cool at room temperature, then refrigerate (if desired) before serving.

This is basically the recipe off a bag of Ocean Spray cranberries, the one for Jellied Cranberry Sauce, except it's put in a blender instead of strained. The flavor is similar to (though richer than) a typical jellied sauce, though the texture is much different. For years I could only get this at holidays when my grandmother would make it, until one year when she had me make it instead. Now I make it frequently. I think I'll go make some now.

1 lb boxed pasta
1 lb frozen peas
4 cans tuna
Mayonnaise to taste (about .6 cups)
Spices to taste

Boil pasta until done (slightly overdone is preferable). Put frozen peas in colander, draining pasta over peas. Rinse colander contents with cool water. Drain tuna and put in large bowl; add pasta/peas and mayonnaise. Suggested spices include granulated onion, granulated garlic, red pepper, paprika, or dry mustard.

1 lb boxed pasta
1 lb frozen peas
4 cans tuna
Mayonnaise to taste (about .6 cups)
Spices to taste

Boil pasta until done (slightly overdone is preferable). Put frozen peas in colander, draining pasta over peas. Rinse colander contents with cool water. Drain tuna and put in large bowl; add pasta/peas and mayonnaise. Suggested spices include granulated onion, granulated garlic, red pepper, paprika, or dry mustard.

This table is a little different than the previous ones I've made. Rather than pull the information off the web site (which doesn't give difficulties by instrument or album), I went into Rock Band 2 and manually copied the information. This actually has occasional discrepancies with the web site. Also note that while the green tracks are playable in LEGO Rock Band, the difficulty levels within LEGO Rock Band are not the same.

This table is a little different than the previous ones I've made. Rather than pull the information off the web site (which doesn't give difficulties by instrument or album), I went into Rock Band 2 and manually copied the information. This actually has occasional discrepancies with the web site. Also note that while the green tracks are playable in LEGO Rock Band, the difficulty levels within LEGO Rock Band are not the same.

I had an unpleasant conversation this afternoon with dimplezusa about some of this.

Very unpleasant.

I wonder how I survived all that. I really do.