jeb007

No, no, no... I'm not having some sort of inappropriate relationship. I just happened to have went to the Chicago Auto Show on Saturday. Andrea had a bunch of work to do (I suppose that I do, too, actually) so she stayed home and I went with Ed. The roads around South Bend predictably sucked, and did even moreso Sunday. However, also predictably, the toll road and Chicago was fine.

We rather spoiled everything for ourselves by entering through the escalator that landed us square in premium import country. It wasn't as if we planned it that way, it was just the nearest ticketing and entrance gate to where the shuttle dropped us off. As such, we spent the rest of the morning and part of the early afternoon drooling over and comparing the likes of Acura, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, and Lexus. I haven't made up my mind, but I think Ed is tending to lean toward the Acuras now. The TSX is quite nice, and the TL is new and spiffy. I still think I would highly enjoy an A4 Avant. Mmmmm. The new LED lighting in the headlamps is sexy. The BMW 3 series has always felt fantastic to me (5 series even moreso, but mostly because they get the coolest features sooner) and I actually drove one on Friday. The new 335d, that is. Twin-turbo 3.0L diesel, reaching 0 to 60 in six seconds. Yeah, it was pretty awesome. Though, I wonder how much an AdBlue (for the urea injection system) refill will cost after the initial complimentary maintenance program is over.

The only things that really impressed me from the Big Three were (in no particular order)...

2010 Ford Taurus SHO
I was quite disappointed that we weren't allowed to sit in any of them. But, they look like they will probably be fantastic. Better styling, available all-wheel-drive, and lots of other good stuff. I almost sought out a SHO w/ manual transmission when I was in need of a car (the only Taurus I'd consider knowing their less-than-stellar transmissions).

2010 Chevrolet Camaro
Retro and mmm. What more can I say?

2010 Chevrolet Cruze
I hope that GM can actually pull off a good small car. Their last few attempts haven't been that great, at least initially, tarnishing their chances in subsequent years.

2010 Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon
Jeb want now. But really with the 2.9L V6 turbodiesel that Europe is getting. Sadly, we probably won't get it, though I thought I read they might be aiming at a V8 diesel that could be shoehorned in there if they use the CTS-V hood.

Chevrolet Orlando Concept
I'm mostly just happy to see that GM is thinking of a purposeful vehicle that people might actually buy and giving them a small displacement turbodiesel. Will it be able to make a dent in Jetta Sportwagen sales? Who can know, but they should hurry up.

2009 Dodge Challenger
Also retro and delicious. Would I get one? No, probably not. But I bet it's fun. Especially the Mr. Norm Super (100 units available).

I should mention that I like some Pontiac vehicles (I definitely would have bought a Vibe if I found it appointed as I wanted and in my price range), but they're probably all on their last life cycle as GM cuts back on models. So, no real news there, or for Saturn for the same reason, other than some nice additions to the Astra. I'm curious if GM might put the Astra in another product line.

Yeah, I guess that's about it.

It's almost Thanksgiving. But not quite. Weeks ago, however, my aunt had decided that we were going to have a Thanksgiving dinner today. My grandpa fell ill last Saturday (I think) and was in the hospital until Thursday. I was stuck in Philly, so as soon as I got back to South Bend, I took care of what needed to be addressed immediately (including a five min advisor meeting, heh) and skipped town on Thursday. Grandpa really wanted to come home, so we brought him home, and that's where he spent his last days. I spent a lot of time with him, and I think he knew I was there. But, I just wish he could get out words. I do like to think that because I was listening closely once that he said my name and "I love you." It could just be wishful thinking, I suppose, but either way, I know he does. And I miss him a lot. He has taught me so many things and had so many stories for me that I wish I could even remember half of them. I couldn't have wished to know a better person much less have him as my grandpa. Now he will rest next to grandma. I bet he would have liked to have a re-match at golf. He beat me by one stroke the last time we played this summer.

Well, I'm finally in my hotel room in Philly. Josh and I had quite a trip, somehow getting here at the same time. We were supposed to both fly out on a Northwest flight at 8:00. Mechanical failure left us with no plane, and we'd miss our connection in Detroit by the time we got one. So, we all had to leave the terminal and go rebook at the check-in counter. 'Cause that's how SBN rolls.

Josh ended up on Continental with a few other people. I was given the choice of staying on my current flight (whenever it left) and getting a later one out of Detroit or getting in a little earlier via United. I hesitated, but chose United. I missed the part from the agent next to me rebooking Josh that it was oversold, which I found out when I went to check-in there. *sigh* So, here I was again without a seat assignment (my original flight didn't give me one either).

It gets better... I was "pre-selected" for additional security screening. Who can tell what mischief i was up to in the time that I left the "secure" area. I mean, seriously, I've been through it once already. Anyway, that was fun. I was like "just get it over". About 10 min later, I was getting on my plane. The lady who did my check-in was also at the gate, and she got me a seat. Hooray! So, while Josh was preparing to fly off to Cleveland with Alex, and a few other people were on other Northwest flights, I found myself headed to Chicago. Yes, Chicago is the wrong way. But, at least it was Minneapolis. Or Atlanta. A hop and a skip 20 min flight left me at O'Hare where I grabbed a quick bite. I'm glad I did, as I'm currently starving again. Turns out, my second flight from Chicago to Philly was on US Airways. Because they've never had a fare anywhere close to the lowest when I've searched for tickets, and I'd never flown them, I had some preconceived notion that they were either really good, or really sucked. Well, they now charge for any refreshments. So, i didn't get any, making me very thirsty. (Obviously no services on a 20 min flight, either. :-P)

Oh well, I guess in the end we made it. And things went smoothly once we were actually on planes. I do wonder if I still have to foot that $15 checked bag fee for Northwest. You know, cuz I didn't fly with them today. 
 

So, I was amused that when I got up this morning, the TiVo was on the Travel Channel. And the show was called "Deep Fried Paradise". Mmmm. It's am hour long. I'm recording it to watch later. How fantastic. Interestingly, the Food Network is the next channel in the lineup here, which has Paula Deen on. She is apparenlty making a roasted turkey. C'mon Paula, let's fry! I guess her secret is butter, which I'm sure there will be tons of in her smashed potatoes. This show was frying turkey in Brooklyn when I first caught it on. Other things I've seen...

Chicken fried steak (mmm)
Chicken fried bacon strips (I should try that...)
Fried dill pickles (indeed delicious)
Fried burgers (we've fried a veggie burger at a tailgate when we were doing a turkey fry, but I've never fried a real hamburger)
Fried hot dogs (hmmm.)

OK, so I couldn't really think of an appropriate subject for this entry. I'm really just too tired and lazy to think, period. I plan to double (or triple!) the amount of sleep I've gotten in the last 43 hours. I've slept three hours (spread over two occasions) since I got up Thursday morning. Whee. On the bright side, I'm not pulling another all-nighter in the lab. I think that my data will work out well. So... yeah. I decided to knock out some, and get some new data. I think i might even have some other things to back it up with and make a nice presentation. Even if it doesn't deliver all that was alluded to. But, seriously, what conference presentation does? Oh, maybe a lot do. But not grad student ones. Hehehe.

Onto the real reason I was going to post something... on my way back into school, I heard a new song which I'm relatively certain I hadn't heard before. I kinda like it, I think, even if I don't "hate my life". Sure, the last few days have been tough, but it looks like it is working out. Andrea always says my radio station has angry music. This song doesn't have an angry tone... it's just depressing. And I thought I'd be screwed hearing it on the way back into work. Alas, I got good data (some has yet to be analyzed, but *fingers crossed*). But then I heard the same song as I pulled into the driveway. How odd. Approximately five hours later. Hmmm.

And I wondered if I was really the only one thinking this. I'm not disputing the final outcome, I'm just saying the media is so quick to proclaim victory. Don't they remember what happened in 2000? I'm actually surprised they waited to "officially" call IN, MO, NC.

Figures that I'm about to go to bed, and even though (nearly all of) the polls in Indiana have been closed for 5.5 hours, and Obama has been announced our President-Elect... Indiana is still not colored in. It's close. But it looks like it should go O.

It's delicious. And accompanied by fun online.

There is something that I've been wondering if it is pure coincidence or not.  Every YouTube video that people have linked in their Facebook, GMail status, or AIM status regarding McCain supporters saying something incredibly ignorant, whether it be general or specifically anti-Obama, seems to take place in Ohio. I guess Ohio is a big constituency, and hence a lot of electoral votes. But, seriously. Wow.

Here's one fun example. I'm also curious if any of these people knew they were being interviewed by Aljazeera English.

Mmmm. Yuengling Porter. AND Jack 'n' Zero.

"Casual contact" seems like it should be PC for being dirty. But, it's not. Still, I'm five, so it sounds funny. Alas, it just means "shaking hands, hugging, using a toilet, drinking from the same glass, or the sneezing and coughing of an infected person". Pssh.

So, tonight I'm half-ass paying attention to the Jeopardy Teen Tournament (Hey, I know most of these!) and I hear this question:

[Winter Sports and Games - $200]

In 2006 Michigan Tech staged one of these fun winter battles with 3,762 participants

I was in Houghton that day, but I didn't get up in time to go. If only I had went and brought 10 friends. Oooh, anagrams.

Anyway, off to game night. Glad I didn't miss that question!

Today I went down to Purdue to see if Rob's modification to this piece of equipment we have would suffice. He had not seen it work before, so when it didn't work at all the first time I hit "go", he didn't know what he really should have saw. Or, I guess that it should have been doing something at that point. The concept is simple. It heats a wire. Woo! Anyway, so I tried a couple more times, and it kinda sorta worked once. Then it didn't. Then the next time it started working, but the power on it went out before it finished and I got a "device not ready error." This thing is totally awesome, running in an MSDOS program on a Windows 98 computer, by the way.

Being that we are engineers (read: geniuses), we easily determined that it must have blown a fuse. Oh, look, there is a conveniently located fuse! It only took a few minutes to realize that you have to PUSH then TURN, not one or the other, to remove it. Gimme a break, it had a few Cyrillic characters on it and that's it. Interestingly, the fuse was labeled "6.3A". Haha, OK. It did indicate on the outside that it should be 6A, but whatever. It was also a smaller size, and not see-through. We tested it with a multimeter to determine it was dead. Then we had to go to Menards, and not seeing anything wrong with putting a 6A fuse that had a glass casing (see-through) instead, we were back in business. Awesome. Quite honestly, I had feared that the new material we used to make the enclosure was not allowing the photodiode to work properly (PC instead of acrylic). All is well now. And I'll be going to Argonne on Wednesday.

I took a Nissan Altima from the University motor pool (yay, I got what I really wanted!). No joke, with a very light foot, it tells me that it got 39.0 mpg average today. I wanted it because it has a large fuel tank (20.0 gallons) and hence I'd probably only have to fill up once for my Purdue/Argonne travels. Come to find out, the University gets tax-exempt fuel, so they will fill it up and charge us accordingly (~$3.70/gallon).  That's awesome, so I probably won't have to fill up at all (I hope).

After arriving home, I went out to my local VW dealer and took the new TDI Clean Diesel for a spin. Surely, it was good clean fun. It was a blast to drive, and didn't seem much like a diesel. I got a few looks (mostly because of the advertising stuck to the side of it, not because its noise stood out). It didn't have an "average trip MPG", or I couldn't immediately figure out how to display it. When I had instantaneous, I was satisfied enough. So, I don't really know if it would turn out better than my stint with the Altima or not. Probably, though.

So, yeah. A certain e-mail list which I don't have to read (it's merely for amusement, and I often put off reading it and forget about it, so it just fills my inbox) has been going to my spam folder for a while now. Today it didn't. Maybe because it has the best quote ever in it. OK, that's a lofty assertion, but it works for me today.

"I like life. It's something to do."
-Ronnie Shakes

Naturally, I couldn't just leave it there, so here are a couple more quotes from Ronnie for you.

"After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, 'No hablo ingles."

I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?

My doctor gave me two weeks to live. I hope they're in August.

Oh, and I don't think that Meredith Vieira enjoyed her little interview with McCain this morning. He really likes to keep talking when he has something he wants to get out. Not liking to be interrupted.

Soooooo inspirational! Thanks, horoscope.

You could find yourself feeling a little lazy right now, and you might end up waiting until the last minute to take care of a number of things today. Just realize that things should start going a lot more smoothly if you just get down to taking care of business right now. You can do it if you try.

I'll see what I can do. However, I think I'm more of a pawn today, going to Argonne.

In my effort to continue sucking at life, I have succeeded. Yes, that's right, i didn't post to LJ for the entirety of June. Wow. I rock. I've been thinking about posting for some time now, but just haven't done it. Seems I always end up busy with work, or am just exhausted. I ended up here tonight because I could use LJ as a place to point people per my comment on a blog. Weee!

Anyway, yesterday was awesome. I spent 14 hours with my advisor. Seven of which were in the car. Twice to Purdue in less than a week, and a trip to Chicago. Maybe I'll go there this weekend for fun. :-) On the research front... it looks like I might have to be doing some stuff to prepare for experiments at Argonne while my advisor is away. He's on vacation for one week, and then we have like four days set up to do experiments there. Of course, it's a Thursday-Sunday. Joy. So, naturally, I expect that I will be able to get this machine working, so we'll have to go. Maybe it will turn into a paper or something. Whatever, July is just going to be insane.

I'm sure I could have more, but I really need to get back to Dexter.

I feel like I haven't done anything on LJ for like a month. But, it appears that I read some posts that were from only a week ago. So, I guess it was really just the days leading up to the long weekend, and my having left my laptop at school for the weekend that added up to that feeling. How strange it was to not be "connected". Though, I did check for anything "important" on my GMail a couple of times.

Sometime last week (Thursday night?), I had a horrible dream. I was riding in a car with someone, and I told them to watch out for the people just wandering the street and crossing wherever they wanted. Why there was a mob that one would expect from a ND football game getting out wandering Main St in Mishawaka, I'll never know. I wonder if that has even ever happened? It's absurd. Anyway, there was one really close call with people crossing near Day Rd. Then, while the driver was looking at what some group were doing on the side of the road, *BAM!*. A guy near the car just walked right in front of us. And, he went under the car. I awoke soon after the point where I looked back through the rear window to see someone tending to his lifeless body. I don't really remember blood. It was so fast. It was hard to fall asleep after that (at 6:30am), and I nearly just got out of bed and stayed up. Earlier in the night, I had another dream where I lost a tooth. But, it was a little bit different. It was like loosing a "baby tooth", but I don't think it was. I had lost the equivalent tooth on the other side of my mouth not long before it (so I had recalled in my dream). My mom was in this dream, and she said, "Sometimes that happens when you drink a lot of cream." This statement makes no sense. Cream has calcium, right? And it doesn't have sugar. So, why would it cause tooth decay? Even though, I don't think my tooth was decayed at all, it was just time for it to go. Weird. (Strangely, I had actually upped my cream intake that week.)

Research has been going decently, I suppose. What I worked on last night after I convinced myself to do work instead of watch Dexter all night, proved to be "very good" according to my advisor. I'm glad that he agreed. :-) Today I spent the entire day on the SEM with samples for someone else. The SEM exhausts me. Perhaps because it is in the basement and it involves sitting at a computer the whole time. I dunno. It's taxing.

Well, off to see 21. Hope it's not totally stupid.

So... there is going to be a Guitar Hero competition at Summerfest 2008 in Mishawaka? Alrighty then. Better start practicing, I suppose. 

Today I noticed that we have a new LED billboard in South Bend. Wowee. I think they're kinda cool. I wonder how much electricity they use. And, I wonder how much additional revenue the company gets from advertisers because they can change the ad every five seconds or whatever. Next to this billboard, a Speedway station was getting new signs. You know, one with the digital display so that nobody has to physically go out and change the sign. So much for the rare occasion of filling up your tank as gas is going up $0.20/gallon because the sign isn't completely changed yet. Flip of a switch and "AAAHH!"

Speaking of automobiles and gasoline. I read a story from the New York Times that said the Energy Department expects gas to peak at a national average of $3.73 in June. Hmmm. I'm skeptical. What makes them think that oil futures for July are going to go down? Just because we hit a peak of $121.84 yesterday for June oil doesn't mean futures for July delivery won't hit $150. Besides, I'd place our local average at $3.73 already. (I've seen reports of $3.58 somewhere, but on my most common routes, it's more like $3.85 today.) In the comments to this article, someone from Cleveland mentioned electric cars.

oh and on electric cars...........
our Sunday paper ran a big story on the lovely state of Ohio and electric cars.
If you lived here you couldn't even get a license for the damn thing.
Can't decide if it's a motorcycle or a car.........
some guy in Dayton bought one and ended up selling it to a guy in Chicago
where IL seems to have worked this out..........
God it sucks to live in Ohio sometimes......

You'd think states would have things like this figured out. Maybe it's just the particular model that was trying to be registered. I have no idea. But, anyway, I got a small chuckle. And then a little bit of me died inside.

So, I noticed sometime, perhaps last week, that a bottle of Vault which I had purchased had a new top. "Hmm, interesting, I thought." Well, today I purchased a Diet Coke Lime which also had this new sort of top. My immediate impression was that it was less wasteful. My second impression was that it was more reminiscent of the caps of yore (glass bottles). Indeed the most recent bottle design is meant to evoke these feelings, and apparently that has transferred to the cap as well. A bottle from not all that long ago which I still have is the same design, but it has the old cap. I suppose they phased that in or something. I found it interesting that they apparently started this whole thing back in September. Like I said, we've had the bottle. Just not the cap, for whatever reason.

Because I am curious, I did a little investigation. Granted, it's not really a set of data, but I'm sure that roughly this will show the trend.

New cap (+ tamper evident ring): 2.51 g
Old cap (+ tamper evident ring): 3.05 g

New bottle: 24.85 g
Old bottle: 26.74 g

So, I guess that kinda boils down to about a 7% decrease in the amount of plastic in the bottle, and almost 18% decrease in the amount of plastic in the cap. As big as Coca-Cola is, I bet this is saving them a lot of money. Unless of course the production cost somehow is much more for this cap, which I doubt. I mean, everyone's costs are going up these days thanks to high oil prices and a weak dollar, so I'm guessing it is more a measure to help keep the price they sell their product at more steady. So a bottle of Coke won't cost $1.50.