Jeffrey

After only three hours of struggling, I managed to get my xbox connected to the internet!  Really, it wasn't meant to connect to hotel-style wifi where you need to log into a browser and accept the terms/conditions before being granted access.

The basic instructions are here: http://sacramentocomputerhelp.com/xbox360answers.html#troubleshooting.  At first, I seemed to have to reshare my wifi connection every time I turned on my xbox, but that seemed to disappear later on.  I'll have to see if that's really the case.  I was able to get general connectivity fairly easily, but it only gave me three tabs, and didn't give me any of the cool stuff like marketplace or netflix.  This was due to error 80072ee2, which basically indicates that it doesn't have access to all the ports it requires.  A handy post from Microsofot told me what ports Xbox required.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908874/

I tried opening the ports through internet connection sharing, but that didn't seem to be the problem.  I then tried a port scanner and found that several of the ports were blocked by what I thought was Wayport (the wifi internet provider at the apartments I'm staying at).  I looked around a bit and found a list of ports that they claimed to be blocking and I should have been fine.  I then remembered that (duh!) my computer has a firewall.  So I opened the ports in the firewall, but no luck there either.

Finally I did the unthinkable and just turned off the firewall.  Yep, that worked.  So I sat down and watched an hour of netflix while (theoretically) zillions of hackers compromised my system.  

I'll have to play with it a bit more tonight to see if I can put the firewall back up and still have everything working. 

Work is sending me to the Bay Area for the next two weeks (8/17 - 8/28 to be exact).  I'll be staying in Mountain View.  Anyone want to meet up at some point?

Puffin is on a diet to see if she has any food allergies. That set me on a quest for a wheat free, egg free, dairy free, soy free, corn free, potato free, sugar free Bread. Because, you know, I like challenges.

( The details... )

I had my eye exam today.  Nothing terribly new.  A bit of astigmatism in my left eye, otherwise everything is the same as it was 3 years ago.

Except for the technology. 

Three years ago they would use a little machine that 'puffed' into your eye to test glaucoma.  Now they use a machine that actually touches your eyeball to measure the pressure inside your eye.  It's non-contact tonometry vs. contact tonometry.  And with contact tonometry, you get special drops that contain an anesthetic to numb your eyeball so you don't feel it when the machine touches your eyeball.

Anyway, either the machine, or one of the components of the drops (Flourescein, a fluourescent dye, and Proparacaine, an anesthetic) resulted in some side effects.

After the exam, I spent about 30 minutes picking out frames for glasses.  Then I drove to work.  While driving to work, I started feeling a little nauseous.  I thought it was just my stomach, so I decided to stop and a grocery store and get some bland food to settle it.  It got worse once I got into the store.  I eventually got to work and figured out that a) light was really bothering me (duh, my eyes were dilated), and b) whenever I focused on something new, I would get nauseous.  Well, in the car I was mostly focusing on the car in front of me, so it was sort of mild.  Once I got to the store, I was focusing on this or that, looking around, etc, so it got worse.

I called the doctor, but got put through to his voicemail.  I then drove home, which wasn't too bad.  When I finally got onto my couch (after getting a sleeping mask to keep the light out) I started feeling a little better, until a big wave of dizziness hit.  It eventually went away.

Finally the doctor called (after about 2.5 hours) and he said sometimes people react to Flourescein/Proparicaine drops.  Usually it's in the form of fainting, though, but nausea is one of the ways it can manifest.  I'm glad nothing else happened to make it worse when I was driving home.

So, um, yeah, fun with eye exams today.  First time I've ever had a reaction like that. 

In a surprising burst of activity, yesterday I got the ball rolling on a mortgage refinance (courtesy of Mr. Obama's "Making Homes Affordable" initiative), scheduled a dental appointment (it's been 3 years, basically since I bought my new house and haven't gotten around to finding a new dentist), and scheduled an eye exam (um, same reason as dental).  Part of that was brought about because we've had a lot of layoffs at work and I just want to get some of these things out of the way before I lose my insurance.  Not sure what inspired the loan refinance, other than I've wanted to do it for close to a year now.

Today was the dental cleaning.  They have some new technology that I hadn't seen before:  ultrasonic scaling (to remove tartar buildup) and digital x-rays.  I got to see my xrays displayed on a monitor on one of those dental arms that comes out of the ceiling.  Judging from those, most of the teeth in my mouth are made up of > 50% amalgam. 

I go back tomorrow for a scaling/root cleaning to help prevent periodontal disease.  And after that, they want me to replace several teeth (five, I think) with crowns.  Of those five, one had a continued cavity growth underneath an existing filling, and there was less than 30% of the original tooth left (or so the chart says).  A second is next to a 'food trap' (I always get chicken stuck in there... gross!) so when they make the crown, they can try to eliminate the food trap.  The other three seemed to not be for a particular reason, but all were noted that less than 30% of original tooth remained.  It was noted that this was long-term treatment plan, like maybe over the next three years. I guess if there were something seriously wrong, they'd insist on fixing it right away, yeah?

I'm fine with the scaling/root cleaning, but I now feel like maybe the dentist is having me do unnecessary procedures with all of these crowns.  Or maybe they are necessary... at some point..  Sigh...  I sort of feel like I might want to get a second opinion on that. 

Anyone free for dinner and/or games?

Okay, I've made this recipe twice and both times turned out great!  I tweaked it a bit by adding:
1T powdered milk
1t molasses
2t honey
1T flour

Tastes like the bread from Cheesecake factory.  They add caramel color, so it doesn't look the same, but boy does it taste great!

:)  Enjoy!

I really like this game.  I've played it once with M&M and Swami, and once with those three plus Puffin (yeah, we know it's only a four player game, but we're still learning).  I've also played two solitaire four-player games so that I could try to figure out a strategy. 

So far, my record is 1-3.  The one game that I won was a solitaire game without the Medic.  The first game was a loss due to running out of player cards.  The other two losses were for exceeding the outbreak limit.

Any strategy tips?

I finally bought tix today.  I'll be staying with Countertorque from Mar 27 - Mar 31!

I've tried off-and-on throughout the years to make some decent deep-fried chicken tenders - with no success.  I like the ones you can get at Chili's and Red Robin, although both are very different.  I usually manage to get really doughy things that remind me of doughnut holes with chicken in them.  That's just wrong.  Oh, and half the time I over cook them because I'm afraid of undercooking them.  Any suggestions with that?

At each semi-yearly iteration, I usually try several different recipes, then give up and go back to the breaded variety.  That's fine for stand-alone tenders, but what I'm really aiming for is Sweet and Sour Chicken.  That's the ultimate goal.  First step is figuring out how to do the tenders right, then to figure out two sauces:  a lemon poppyseed dipping sauce (replicating Chili's or Red Robin's), and a sweet and sour sauce.

So, um, help?

I decided to make some bread last weekend.  I pulled out my almost-new (only used twice in many years) bread machine, found the PDF of the manual online, and decided to make some french-style bread.

Result:  A bread-like substance that was somewhat edible on the first day, but inedible on day 2.  The bread didn't rise much, and the top looked like a bunch of unrisen dough.  There were small bubbles throughout the bread, so there was some yeast activity, but clearly not enough. 

After a bit more reading, I trashed almost all of my ingredients and decided to start over.  I had old flour, old yeast and I forgot to let the yeast warm to room temperature before adding it to the machine.  So right now the bread machine is working on some wheat bread.  Hopefully it'll come out better this time.

Note: Edited for correctness - I had the beta end date incorrect

• 70 - weeks with a Kindle
• 106 - total # of ebooks downloaded
• $668 - total cost of ebooks paid by me outside of the beta program
• 22 - # of ebooks downloaded free of charge because of beta program enrollment
• $187 - value of ebooks downloaded during beta program
• $297 - money saved by me due to the price difference between ebooks and regular books at the time of purchase
• $10.16 - average price of ebook when only hardcover is available
• $6.26 - average price of ebook when paperback is available
• $76 - total premium paid by me because I bought an ebook while only the hardcover version was available (the Kindle price typically falls after the paperback is released).
• $2.03 - average premium paid by me because I bought an ebook while only the hardcover version was available.
• 2 - # ebooks no longer for sale on Kindle
• 11 - # ebooks for sale at a higher price on Kindle
• 31 - # ebooks for sale at a lower price on Kindle

Random, unordered list of things that have been up with me.

• First flowers of spring!  I have a mini crocus, a daffodil and something else that bugs really like to eat, but I can't remember the name of, all in bloom.  I'll try to get pictures later.
• Swami, Churlish and I played the "Endless Set List" (58 songs) on hard in Rock Band last Saturday.  It took about 6 hours (with lunch and breaks thrown in) to finish.  We didn't even have to redo any songs!  I think we had about 7 three star songs, and the rest were four/five stars. I now have a new achievement for it.  You can take a look at my achievements at this really cool website called www.trueachievements.com which basically screenscrapes from xbox.com and helps you to track your achievements, and see which other achievements might be easy for you to get.  My gamertag is UniformWinter.  I really like the site, and ended up donating.  Also been playing a lot of Ticket to Ride, an XBox live adaptation of the board game.  I've never played the board game itself, but I really like this game.  I'd recommend it to anyone who likes train games.
• I finished the last of the sparkling wine that treiza</lj> sent up from CA.  The final bottle was the Domaine Chandon Sparkling Red, a combination of Pinot Noir and Zinfandel.  I really enjoyed it.  It was unlike any champagne/sparkling wine that I've tasted before.  Probably because it tasted like a red, but was fizzy.  Very nice change of pace. 
• I took the train up to Vancouver last week for work.  I was originally very confused because my boss told me to take the train, because it was cheaper.  It had cost me $30 in gas two weeks before to drive up and back, so I couldn't figure out why it would be cheaper.  It turns out that we get $0.50/mile, so my car ride cost them $145, while the train tix were $60.  Anyway, went up for customer meetings, which went fairly well. 
• Swami and I played games at M&M&m&m's house last Friday.  We went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant, then M and Swami put m&m to bed and the games commenced.  &M likes Trans America, so we played a couple of games of that.  Then I sort of begged and got everyone to play Pandemic.  I hadn't played it before, but had gotten two strong recommendations.  Everyone liked it and we had a good time playing, although we lost.  I want to play again. :)
• I'm not buying a Kindle 2.  I had one ordered before the official announcement (even got an email from Amazon saying that they were upgrading my Kindle order to a Kindle 2).  Once I was able to look at the feature set, though, I decided I wasn't paying $359 for it.  Here's what it's got going for it:  Replaced the annoyingly clickable next/prev page buttons with something else [small plus, but I already know how to hold mine, thanks], replaced the scrolly wheel thingy with a little eraser-style joystick for navigation [whatever, that's certainly nice, but the old way works], added text to speech [um, I read, thanks], added more memory [nice!], took away the SD card slot [hey! no fair!], and have a slightly faster page refresh [that extra 50 milliseconds will surely be the death of me]. 
• I've read a lot of books.  At some point, I'll try to give mini reviews.  Plus I want to do a breakdown of my Kindle spending to see if I got my money's worth.

I volunteer every year at with MathCounts to help out with the chapter and state competitions. I usually end up working as a proctor (giving the tests, answers questions, generally making sure that no one cheats) at two chapter competitions and at the state competition. This year the two chapters that I usually help at are having their tests on the same day, so I'm only going to one. We're expecting 200+ kids including ~80 alternates. This is more than we usually have, so the coordinator asked me to run a parallel scoring computer to track just the alternates. I was going to just proctor (actually, backup to the head proctor in case he/she was unable to fulfill his/her obligations), but got this job instead since I've done this for so many years and am pretty technical.

Should be fun. If you've got any interest, I'm sure local chapters could use volunteer proctors or graders. Usually the tests are given on Saturdays in Feb/Mar around the country.

( Recipe )

Actually, I'm rather amazed I could remember that recipe from scratch. I guess I put points in that somewhere along the line.

When I made the rice, I had bulk wild rice and didn't know what to do with it. I finally found some packaged wild rice at a store that recommended 1C of rice to 4C liquid, cook for 60 minutes. I did that and it hadn't soaked up much liquid. I cooked for an additional 30 minutes and it looked done, although it had only soaked up about 3C liquid. Made (oddly enough) about 4C of wild rice, plus 1C extra liquid. I used 2C of the rice, plus added the liquid to the soup. I also bought some wild rice mix. I actually ended up using 7/8 C wild rice and 1/8 C wild rice mix. I think that ratio turned out very well.

The chicken base (can't remember exactly what it is called, it's sort of a paste) came in a jar and was near the broth at both stores that I looked at.

Overall, I feel like the soup is a bit runnier than what I would like. I"m debating whether that means I should add more thickener (will that alter the taste?) or less liquid. I guess I could try less half & half. It was a nice consistency before I added the half & half to the soup.

The taste is good (maybe needs some salt, but I think everything needs salt). Mouth feel is good. Color is a bit too light. I was hoping for a darker yellow. Decreasing the half & half will help with that too.

Is there a difference between Stock and Broth? Which one should I use (since I don't really remember what the recipe said, but I definitely used broth).

We have 6 inches of snow here in Seattle. My flight to MN was canceled earlier today. Second attempt at 4ish Sunday. Just got back from Swami's house where we had dinner and played Left 4 Dead. It's still snowing. Have to call Ordway Theatre tomorrow to see if they'll switch my tix for White Christmas (2pm show). Saw the Nutcracker Ballet last night. Puffin and Mouse King in photo.

I was really impressed with this number. Nationwide voter turnout has been hovering around 55% during presidential election years.

I'm guessing the WA state turnout has something to do with the wide availability of vote-by-mail. All but two counties are entirely vote-by-mail.