Month: March 2008

Taste Testing

Today I went out with two ladies from the Alumni Association Executive Committee (of which I am also a member). We had to pick up a few items and order some things for the upcoming banquet. We have an all-school alumni banquet every May honoring the 10 year class, 25 year class, 50 year class, and 75 year class. Any alumni can come and sometimes we get large groups of the 20 year class or some other group in addition to our “honored classes.” It’s actually fun being on the committee, though I’m mostly there as the person who knows Access (the Micro$oft Database program).

One of the main reasons we were out today was to see the caterer’s and try the dishes that we were hoping to serve at the banquet. Our caterer this year (for the second year running) is Christopher’s Restaurant from Kettering (a ‘burb of Dayton). Heh, catering from Kettering – reminds me of a One Foot in the Grave joke. Anyhoo, when we got there, the chefs sat down and talked with us, and served us a nice meal of the items we’d picked. After a starter of salad (with their excellent dill house dressing), we had Chicken Francese and Harvest Pork Tenderloin, both of which were excellent. We also tried their mashed potatoes with leeks and shallots and their California medley. Two of us decided that maybe the medley wasn’t what we wanted for the banquet and so we switched to baby carrots for the actual event. While the head chef was talking with us, he was bragging about their homemade soups. I asked if they made cream of broccoli and he said they did and were serving it that day. He brought me a cup of soup (and my two co-tasters their homemade mushroom bisque) to show off. Very creamy, very tasty. They also decided to show off with their desserts and asked what we wanted. As soon as they said “bread pudding” I knew what I wanted. And this HUGE piece of bread pudding with sauce and ice cream was brought to me. And it was the best bread pudding I’ve had this side of New Orleans. Next time judiang and elsaf come to visit, I’ll see about making the detour south so they can check this place out. The actual restaurant is in a strip mall and doesn’t look all that special, but the food was exemplary. And the folks working there are wonderful. I’m still full from the late lunch (I was expecting a taste, not a meal, and was pleasantly surprised by the quantity of food they offered).

PS: Happy Birthday gregmce!

Spring Break ’08!

Although I had today off (being Good Friday and all that jazz) I didn’t feel like I’d started Spring Break until just a few minutes ago when I finally finished the third Data Analysis Exercise for my stats class. But it’s turned in, my proposal for my statistics final project is turned in (though originally I turned in a StarOffice file instead of Word document – whoops!) and I can now think a bit more about Spring Breaking!

I did sleep in today (well, til 8am – went to bed at the usual time last night since I was so tired) and talked dad in to buying Chinese Buffet for my lunch today. We also had a short stop at Walmart after lunch. But for the most part I’ve been in my library working on statistics. I’d been putting it off to get teaching stuff done last week and this week. The third quarter ended yesterday, so I’ve been trying to get caught up on grading. However, I have all of the quarter exams to grade and several retests for chemistry to grade (I had an Amnesty Day since some of the test scores this quarter were pretty low on average – I blame all the days off due to weather – or maybe lousy teaching, heh). Hopefully I’ll actually do them rather than let them sit there until Sunday night of next week. Heh. (One of my seniors predicted that and I suspect he’ll be right, procrastinator that I am.)

Anyway, back to statistics. I actually like doing the Data Analysis Exercises – number crunching has always been good to me. Indeed, I understand the exercises more than I understand the reading assignments. Well, at least I can use the tools to do the exercises and maybe understand what the numbers mean once they’re crunched. StarOffice Calc has been a godsend to me (as MS Exel would have been had I had it installed on any of my computers, which I don’t – ha!) but so have some nice websites which do statistical calculations which Calc can’t do. OpenEpi has been wonderful for ANOVA and t-test results. And today I found an Effect Size Calculator to calculate Cohen’s d. Joy joy. 🙂

I usually like to visit judiang during Spring Break since it always falls close to her birthday, but with my college work (much of which needs completed this next week) calling to me, I’m having to bow out of the visit. 🙁 Judi’s making me feel guilty, which she doesn’t need to since I already feel guilty. But all that guilt will probably result in a nice present for her, so she wins in the long run. Heh. Anyhoo, I’m sure she and elsaf will have a lovely time, if Elsa’s able to make it up there.

Tomorrow morning I’ll use one of my 15-day City of Heroin cards I got for Christmas to start up the addiction again. My only concern is that the game will completely sap my break such that I don’t get my college stuff done. I shall try to be strong. However, I’m itching so much to play again that I’ve got to do it. 🙂 I’ve already decided that the first toon I play will be my archer on the Freedom server – Pointed Stick. 🙂 Those 15 days have to last me until the end of the semester (April 28th or so) when I use the 30-day retail code for World of Warcrack. Ah, I’ve missed my little Elf and Dwarf hunters. (Not hunters of elves and dwarves, but hunters who are elven and dwarven.)

If I can tear myself away from CoH long enough tomorrow, I also intend to go to Fairborn for my Indian Fud/DWM run. Should be a nice day, even if the weather isn’t nice. (Of course, if the weather is really crappy, I’ll go to Fairborn another day of Spring Break.) Other plans for the break include FINALLY cleaning out closets and getting stuff together to take to auction, cleaning the house completely, reading, doing more college work, hanging out with the kitties, and whatever else I happen to think of doing. 🙂 Should be fun!

Now *that’s* more like it, Miyazaki!

After my disappointment with Porco Rosso (the animation, as usual, was beautiful, but I didn’t care for the story – particularly the ending), I was pleased to find Howl’s Moving Castle more to my taste. As usual, the imagery blew me away, and this time the story drew me in as well. The movie’s quite long (especially compared to Rosso, which I watched twice in one night – once in Japanese, once in English) but I didn’t really notice until near the end (when my body was saying “hey, isn’t it close to bedtime?”). The English-speaking voices look like they’ll be fun, so I’ll probably watch it with the English language track another night this week. (I always like to watch Anime in the original Japanese with subtitles. Depending on the English-speaking voices, I may watch it in English as well.)

I think I’m coming down with a cold, so I’ll hit it with Nyquil-clone tonight and hit the sack early. Here’s hoping I can nip it in the bud! Really don’t want to be sick during Spring Break, which starts this Friday for us.

Happy Pi Day

Since mom & dad had nothing in the house to eat (other than some things in the freezer) they decided we’d go out for lupper (we all slept til noon once we got home, so it was 3pm before we got to eat) at Frisch’s then go to the grocery. And we picked Frisch’s cuz they have nice pie choices. Although we were full after lupper, we ordered the pie to go. Mom and I got coconut cream pie (which turned out to be big ass pieces) and dad got pecan.

When I got back, I cleaned some and eventually mom called around 6:30 – it was time for pie. I returned to their place and we ate our pie and watched TV. A nice denouement to the day’s activities. (So, do the day/month/year countries have Pi Day on April 31?)

Last Train to Clarksville

Just got back home and it’s the time I’d be starting my first period class. However, I’ve taken a personal day today to pick up mom & dad from the train station in Cincinnati. The train ended up being 2 hours late – it was supposed to arrive at 3:17am, but wound up arriving after 5:20am.

I had hoped to sleep a bit before going off to pick them up, but I couldn’t fall asleep. So I got up at 1:30am, headed to Meijer for some Pepsi (caffeine) and Munchies (to kill the burn of the Pepsi), then turned on my Tilt to direct me to the Amtrak Station. It did a very nice job until the very end when it overshot the station. (The station is now also a museum and stuff, which really threw me off at first.) A short trip around the block thanks to the GPS and I got there just as dad called to say they were 45 minutes away. The 45 minutes got more time tacked on while I sat in the station playing Bejeweled 2 and other games.

When the train was finally set to arrive, they let us all go down to the platform to wait. Then those of us meeting people got to do so. The folks were surprised to see me there on the platform (we’re so used to airport security). Time for hugs and then out to the car. The GPS got us safely north, though it was nearing 6am by this point so the traffic had picked up considerably. The caffeine did its job, as well as the excitement of seeing the parental units again, so I was wide awake for the drive back. We stopped at Waffle House in Troy for breakfast and then I took them home.

Now I think I’ll try to sleep some. I’m very tired, but still wired from the caffeine.

The GPS Works!

I needed to get a few essentials this evening, so I decided to let my new Smartphone get me there. And it did a nice job. It did take me the more trafficy way, but it probably doesn’t know the short cut that I know. Heh.

The only thing I wish it had were some male voices. I now have it set to the female British voice, but I really liked the male British voice (Daniel, I think it was) when we used that Garmin device in Vermont. So, anyone got any spare .vpm files they’d like to send my way? 😉

I also got a phone call from the folks. They were on the train (en route for home, taking Amtrack on a sleeper train) waiting for a derailment ahead to be cleared. They were clearly enjoying themselves, which I think is great.

Surprisingly it’s only been the last few days when I’ve really missed ’em. Perhaps because I know they’re returning soon and I’m getting excited to see them again. I think I did a lot better on the missing them state of things than I originally thought. Guess maybe I am growing up! 😉

What’s Your Ringtone?

One of the nice things about my new phone is that I don’t have to buy ringtones anymore, I can make my own from MP3s. So I got to thinking about what ringtones I wanted for my main contacts. judiang was actually online when I started my quest and when I asked which song from my collection she thought should be her ringtone, she chose “Linus and Lucy.” Gee, pick a quiet one, why don’t you? 😉 Still, I upped the volume on it and it’s set as her ringtone. Some folks were easy to pick for, others not so much. I knew that Amy’s ringtone had to be a Heart tune, so I picked “Crazy on You.” Dad’s got the Muppet Show theme. It was another day before I’d decided that mom’s should be “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival.”

Later I got to thinking, what would I like my ringtone to be for other people? Should I go for something whimsical like the Sesame Street theme, or something that expresses one of my favorite things, like the Pink Panther theme? Or do I pick music from one of my favorite groups like Chumbawamba (“Just Deserts”)? My default ringtone I think will be excellent for getting my attention (MacKeel’s “Star of the County Down”) so maybe I want my ringtone for others to be equally attention grabbing. It’s a heady decision when you think about it.

Little Trina Two Topic

Sheesh, this week I seemed to have only talked about two things – my new phone/PDA/whatsit and the weather. This post is no exception.


The Aftermath

The day after Faux-Blizzard ’08 and things are looking pretty good. Before you become all impressed with my L33T shoveling skills, I’ll own up to the fact that someone came by my door this morning wanting to know if I wanted my walk & driveway ploughed. Hell yeah! And I had them do the parental units’ walk as well.

When I finally did get out this afternoon, the sun had done a great job on getting the snow in hand. I took some photos with both my camera and the phone for comparison purposes. The one thing I notice with the phone is that the sky had a lot more noise in it than my regular photos. (They both take 3 megapixel photos, interestingly enough.) When you shrink the photos down for e-mailing and/or LJ posting, however, the noise isn’t noticeable. (The above photo is a phone photo.)

The official measurement out of Dayton International Airport was 13.2″ of snow. This came in second to the storm of ’04 when we got over 16″. #3 was an actual blizzard – ’78 with its 12.9″. Here’s hoping we’re done with the big storms this season. (Here’s really hoping that the forecast of 40+°F for Friday holds true – don’t wanna drive to Cincinnati in snow or ice.)

Blizzard 2008

OK, it probably wasn’t an actual blizzard, but it was missing a good chance. At any rate, the snow didn’t stop til after 4pm and we got between 10-12 inches here. I haven’t been out yet to experience it myself – maybe tomorrow.

I spent most of the day playing with my new toy – downloading games for it. Took me awhile to decide if I wanted Bejeweled or Bejeweled 2, but I finally decided on 2. 🙂 Also installed, euchre, free cell, sudoku, mah jongg, sokoban, tetris, and Galaga. Most were free, so yay. Still need to put some songs on as potential ringtones.

I’m currently rewatching Porco Rosso (I watched it in Japanese first and when the ending arrived, I was like WTF??? So I’m rewatching with the English soundtrack thinking maybe it’ll make more sense. Heh.)

Tomorrow’s plans are to do laundry, clean house (heh, we’ll see) and maybe grade papers. Perhaps I’ll shovel. Should be a good day regardless. 🙂

Last Post on the Tilt – probably

Well, there’s a big ol’ Winter Storm going on now, which is why we were released 2 hours early. So I might as well enlighten you, dear readers, on why I chose the AT&T Tilt as my new best buddy cell phone/PDA/etc.

I have a Dell Axim X50 from work which I use religiously. Ever since I got it, I discovered that I could actually remember meetings & things if I had them on a nice little PDA. But the trouble is, it’s (a) old now and (b) a work item, so putting personal things on it (like, say, my DVD collection) wasn’t good. My tax refund was nice (well, it sucked they took my money interest free for so long, but there ya go) so I decided to start pricing PDAs. The major thing is that the had to have Windows Mobile 6 (because of my DVD database software, DVD Profiler). When I researched Win Mobile 6 devices, I found out that they were either phones or GPSs. I didn’t want one of those! Or did I…

trinalin rationalizes the purchase of an AT&T Tilt

So I did some research. For my DVD Profiler Mobile to work, the device not only needed Windows Mobile 6, but the Professional Edition. It only works on touch-screen devices. Suddenly my choices dropped considerably. I decided to research WM6 machines with touch screens. And since I had NO intention of going with some 2+ year contract and $40+ a month for a rip-off service (for a little as I use my current cell phone), I started reaching Pay As You Go options.

I currently have a Cingular GoPhone as my cell. And AT&T (which bought Cingular) turns out to be the best service for this area. (Oh, and I found out why my phone didn’t work in Vermont when elsaf & judiang‘s AT&T phones did – the Pay As You Go service doesn’t work in Vermont.) So now I was looking through the WM6 devices from AT&T. I researched whether the SIM from my current phone would work in the Tilt, and from what I’d read, it would.

The Tilt also has an in-built GPS in it (nyah nyah iPhone holders), but I wasn’t sure I wanted to use the $10/month service that AT&T was touting. A bit more research and I found out that the GPS in the phone plays nicely with both Garmin XT and Tom Tom software. It also works with Google Maps (though you need a Wi-Fi or data connection for that). I priced Garmin & Tom Tom and decided to go with Garmin cuz I knew the interface somewhat. (Though if my phone sends me through the Holland Tunnel again, I may have to visit the honchos at Garmin and yell at ’em.) Now the Garmin software locks itself to the microSD card that it’s on, so I researched that and found out a way to transfer the stuff to another card. I have an 8GB microSD card on order (my last hold-out on phone customization) which I’ll add the Garmin software to (it arrived the day before the phone did) when it does show up.

As you saw yesterday, there’s also a camera feature in the Tilt. When I was at the Lake and realized I’d left my camera at home, I thought “If I had one of those cell phones with a camera…” which is probably the moment when I decided to research WM6 cell phones. The phone also has wi-fi capabilities, which will let me use the data features without using up all my GoPhone money.

I had one major thing holding me back from doing this – Outlook. I do not like Outlook. I may grumble about FirstClass at work, but hell, it sure beats Outlook. I didn’t want to install Outlook on my home computer. (It’s installed on my work computer, but once I clear out my old PDA, I’ll uninstall it. Ah, how nice.) Earlier in the year I’d researched an Outlook Alternative and discovered BirdieSync. It allows WM’s ActiveSync to synchronize with Thunderbird and it’s calendar plug-in Lightning. So I switched over from Pegasus (*sniff* I’ll miss you ol’ friend!) to Thunderbird and installed Lightning. It was rather nice to combine both of my address books (my e-mail one and address/phone one) knowing I’d be able to use ’em with my phone. I also entered all of the March dates from my old PDA into Lightning.

Yesterday the phone arrived. The first thing I did was put the SIM card in from my old phone. Then the battery. And then the moment of truth – I turned it on. It did its first time calisthenics, then I used it to dial my home phone. My phone rang. Ooooh! Then I phoned it from my home phone – the cell phone rang. Oooh! My Tilt is Pay As You Go! 🙂

Now it was time to update the ROM and then customize it. For those of you with a Tilt (or HTC Kaiser or TyTN II) or pondering it, I’ll share with you some of my research findings.

trinalin customizes her AT&T Tilt

  • Upgrading the ROM to the latest version from HTC. The whole time I was doing this I was thinking “Don’t go out, power! Please don’t go out!” thanks to the flickers we’d had earlier in the day.

  • Preventing the phone from installing all of the crapware. I did this after I upgraded the ROM. I was able to see what the instructions meant by the “3 second countdown” since I’d watched it the first time I turned it on.

  • Installing HTC Home. The AT&T Tilt got rebranded by AT&T and thus lost some of it’s cool HTC Kaiser features. I really like the HTC Home look, though there were several others I tried as well.

  • Finding a nice Purple Theme for my Tilt. I’m still working on this, though I have two that are pretty good. Indeed, the first would be perfect if it didn’t put purple lines through the contact list (though the person who created the theme intends to update it, I believe). I’ll keep searching for one, but I really like the look of it thus far.

  • Getting ActiveSync & ZoneAlarm to like each other. I was getting frustrated when I kept getting errors while syncing. And eventually I thought “I’ll bet it’s that damn ZoneAlarm.” Sure enough, it was. These nice instructions have made it so that I no longer have to turn off ZoneAlarm to sync.

I’ll be adding games once the microSD card arrives. I’m really loving the phone so far. I’ve added my address to the GPS software and switched to the British voice (though, alas, it’s female. It was great listening to the male voice on the Garmin we used on our Vermont trip). Can’t actually use it to go anywhere yet since we’re in the midst of this snow storm, but when things clear up, I’ll test it out with the $10 vent-attached phone holder in my car. Hoping to use it next Friday when I pick the folks up in Cincinnati.