The upshot is, I still don't know how real people buy new cars

My slowly dying car has been experiencing, well, an acceleration of the process, so it was time.

I’ve been looking at cars, and the Honda Insight seemed to be the car for me.  Hybrid, cool color, company I trust. Went through the whole build-it-price-it on the web so I knew about how much it would cost me, with all the options I wanted.  I had a list of options I wanted and options I didn’t and even an idea of what I’d try to get them to throw in (once I spring for the $500 gewgaw, they can damn well throw in the $30 thingamabob, right?).

Only problem is that my friend Ken noticed that when you do build-it-price-it on the web, it only shows you the 2010 model.  So, it being the beginning of the 2012 model year, I was prepared to be upsold on the 2012. But okay. I’m prepared. I have a clue about how much should cost, now much I’m willing to pay, etc.

So I figure I’d walk in, we’d haggle over stuff for a couple of hours, and they’d say to come back in six months when the car actually arrived from wherever they arrive from. Well, six months, six weeks, six days, some length of time. At which I would have been prepared with a check for the down payment ‘due on delivery’.  This, it turns out, is not want happened.

Ken and I walk into the Honda dealership, and I do what I swore to myself I wouldn’t do. I walk up to the reception desk and say “I’d like someone to sell me a car, please.” I needed Ken there because I felt I was much less likely to have an anxiety attack in front of someone I know.

Anyway, this is how my new best friend Alex enters my life. Alex is a very sweet guy trapped in the body of an intimidating man in a suit. Alex really, really wanted to take me on a test drive because he’d never been in the Insight. It was cute.

So here’s where stuff turns surreal.  The production of the 2011 model year on the Insight, if there ever was one, was interrupted by the tsunami last spring. So basically, there isn’t a North American Insight in the 2011 model year, or the 2012 for that matter.

The last three Insights in Manitoba are on the lot. One, perhaps the last one in my color in Canada, is on the floor of the showroom.  So if that’s the car I want, that’s the car I’ll take. We looked at what was on it, and it was fine. No leather steering wheel cover, no fancy self-dimming rear-view mirror with integrated compass, whatevs.  It’s fine. So there’s basically no upsell. Alex disappears for a while and comes back with a number that’s actually less than the base MSRP of the model.  

So I let them sell me some undercoating and an upholstery repair/replace package and that sort of thing, and then the next thing I knew (well, it was 3 hours later) I whipped out a credit card to pay the down payment and they were talking about whether I wanted to drive away with it, wait until tomorrow (Saturday) or what. It was very weird. I had to talk them into letting me come in to pick it up on Tuesday (today) because I was totally not prepared to put it anywhere, given that I hadn’t yet even really begun to arrange what to do with my old car.

Speaking of which after dithering all weekend about green automotive recycling and contributing to the Canadian Diabetes Association or the kidney people or something, my friend Ken called at noon and said he found a wrecker/parts salvager who’d give me $300 for it, so that’s what we did, on the way to the dealership to pick up the new car. Which is a story in and of itself, but the point is, I know have a new car. And I’m hoping the roof of the parking garage doesn’t drip salt on it all night.

Slowly dying car update

More weirdness on the automotive front.

Managed to lock myself out of my car twice in the ast two weeks, which isn't the car's fault, but it's a good reason to be h8in' on the car right now.

The check engine light is back.  The shuddery stalling is also continuing.  The really odd part was last week, during the Fringe, when it got blazing hot and humid.


I was going to try to tell a chronological story about everything that went weird last week, but I really don't have a good memory for the chronology right now. So unordered list.

• Air conditioning stopped working (fan still worked, only on highest speed, but no cooling)
• No speedometer (or odo or trip) for a couple of days, in the most blazing heat of the week
• Close to overheating a lot
• Dash lights, headlights, and headlights-on-with-no-keys warning alarm all on, after trying to shut everything off

Now the CAA guy who came to let me into my car for the second time in (I think 10 days), noticed my coolant was low.  He also said that a lot of cars electrical systems were going crazy--the heat and the humidity doing things to circuits, switches, relays, etc. that were just not normal.

So the next day, I added some (premixed) coolant and it was still close to overheating for a day or so, but it was still blazing hot.  Yesterday, or maybe it was Saturday, the real heatwave had broken, and we were back to teens and early 20's in the mornings...and I had a speedometer, normal cooling, and even air conditioning.  Well, maybe not the air conditioning.

But lat night around midnight, I was out driving and for the halibut I put on the AC.  Felt cool (but always does), but the real give away that I was actually getting cooling was the condensation forming on the outside of the windshield just over the vents.  The AC was suddenly working again.

So this car is just possessed, by a spirit that really, really doesn't like the heat/humidity.  Lucky I have friends now clamoring to come car-buying with me.  Hopefully soon. I do not want to be relying on this car all winter.

Next step, check the automatic transmission fluid, just in case....

Adventures in Healthcare

I have atopic dermatitis (exzema, 'pre-asthma', chronic/recurrent bronchitis-rhinitis-conjunctivitis, the works). Certain things 'set me off' with rhinitis, bronchitis, rashes and occasional GI disturbances typical of allergic reactions, but rarely the same thing twice, and depending on lifestage things will express differently.  Right now it's my legs. When I was little it was coughing-sneezing-itchy eyes.

Anyway, I have had a persistent outbreak of something on my legs, particularly the left one.  So it's off to the allergist I go.  Gotta love Canadian health care.

So on Tuesday I see the allergist.  Get my arms prict with about 70 common allergens, no reactions all around. I get prescribed the world's strongest antihistamine/sedative (well, world's strongest is a gross overstatement, but the sedative effects linger into the following day in a not wholly unpleasant but not particularly work-productive way), a topical gluco-corticosteroid, and get taped with six more potential allergens and told to a) not shower and b) come back on Friday (today).

Well, the air conditioning at home is out, which you know if you've been following my Facebook entries.  And it's been freaking hot and humid.  So the no-shower thing is a no go.  Figured out how to shower without getting my patch test/tape stuff wet, yay.

Anyway, in this morning and the patch comes off, airs for 10-15 minutes and the doctor takes a look.  No reactions to anything.

So allergist has confirmed a) I'm not obviously allergic to anything I'm probably eating or coming into contact with on a regular basis, b) I have exzema, and c) what I've done all my life, which is to knock down any symptoms as fast as I can as they come up, is the right strategy.  Got a new prescription for a less sedating antihistamine for when I want to get work done. I can take the other one for serious flare ups when having to be entirely lucid the next day isn't a priority (like today, when I'm trying to read a thesis, and next week when I'm counting money at the Fringe 7 hours a day), and I will probably end up back on daily bendaryl just to keep everything down in between.

So no news is good news, like not having Celiac disease either. Which no one has actually told me yet, but I presume since that by now the test has come back and no one has called me saying "never eat wheat again".

So off to shower, anti-inflame and moisturize.

Huh.

So, you know how my car is slowly dying, which is why I need to buy a new car this year. Well, here’s some interesting stuff happening with my car:

Not only did the car survive the recent trek across the prairies (i.e. from here to Fargo, Fargo to Minneapolis and back, and then back home on successive days), it did so without the check-engine light coming on at all. The light that’s usually on pretty much all the time in the city didn’t come on after I stopped to buy a soda on the way out of town (and got right on the highway), and stayed off until I stopped and idled at the border a while. Then it went off at some point, and didn’t come on at all the whole rest of the way. It’s come on a couple of times since, but for the most part it stays off. Weird. Makes me think it was a valve or the EGR or something that got blown out and fixed magically by staying at highway speeds for a while. But what do I know?

Okay, now today. On the way home tonight, approaching two different stops, the car gave a kind of shudder. Well, not a shudder, more of a thunk, but physically, not sound-wise. If you follow. “That’s odd,” thinks I, “probably means something is going very wrong with the car. I really do need to buy a new car this year. Possibly tomorrow.”

Then, approaching the light at Stafford, it just died. No power. No break assist. Volt and other lights on. I have the presence of mind to slap on the hazard lights (the switch is located on the steering column, which is a stupid place for it, now that I think about it, since it means I reach through the steering wheel to get at it), and slam it into neutral and coast to a stop. Then I put it in park, which I probably didn’t need to do, and turned the key. Vroom vroom. Started right up again, no problem. Made it all the way home without shuddering again.

So I’m thinking the shuddering was something weird happening to the automatic transmission as it tried to downshift as I was coasting to a stop, until finally at Stafford, it just failed and the car stalled, just like it would if you get to slow at too high a gear and fail to clutch it to neutral. Which makes me thing my transmission is going.

Interesting side note, still no check engine light all the way home.

Weird, eh?

On the subject of sociolinguistics

Teaching "Language in Society" in the winter. Looking for a textbook. The one that came most recommended isn't going to work for me: too jumbled in its presentation, too may different boxes and insets and asides, and print way too small (and sans serif!).

So casting around for a new book. This class is for 2nd year undergrads, so limited background. I am tempted to go back to a reading course I offered a grad student a few years ago, with Sociolinguistics by Milroy and Gordon as the backbone, supplemented with other readings. UGs hate that, but I've been meaning to post my reading lists to my 'courses' area of my website. But anyway, for anyone who cares, that course looked like this:

• Milroy & Gordon (2003). Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation. (Blackwell)
  
• Preliminaries and points of view (to accompany M&G Ch 1)
  
  • Hymes, Dell (1971). On Communicative Competence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Excerpted in J. B. Pride & J. Holmes (eds), Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings (Hammondsworth: Penguin Education), pp. 269-293.
    
  • Labov, William (2003). Some sociolinguistic principles. In C. B. Paulston & G. R. Tucker (eds) Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings. Malden: Blackwell. Apparently excerpted from W. Labov (1971), The Study of Non-Standard English, Champaign: National Council of Teachers of English.
    
• Techniques, methodology and practical issues (Ch 3)
  
  • Milroy, Lesley (1980a). “Studying language in the community: The fieldworker and the social network”. Ch. 3 of Language and Social Networks (Baltimore: University Park Press), pp. 40-69.
    
  • Milroy, Lesley (1980b). “The quantitative analysis of linguistic data”. Ch. 5 of Language and Social Networks (Baltimore: University Park Press), pp. 109-138.
    
• Sociological factors (Ch 4)
  
  • Rickford J. R. (1986). The need for new approaches to social class analysis in sociolinguistics. Language and Communication 6(3), 215-221.
    
  • Eckert, P. (1989). “The whole woman: Sex and gender differences in variation.” LVC 1, 245-68.
    
  • Eckert, P. (1997). “Age as a sociolinguistic variable”, in F. Coulmas (ed) Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 151-167
    
  • Labov, W (1990). “The intersection off sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2, pp. 205-254.
    
• Cases – Phonology (Ch 6)
  
  • Labov, William (1982). “The social stratification of (r) in New York City department stores”. Ch. 3 of The Social Stratification of English in New York City (3rd printing) (Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics), pp. 42-59.
    
  • Dubois, S. and B. M. Horvath (1998). Let’s tink about dat: Interdental fricatives in Cajun English. LVC 10(3), 245-61.
    
  • Eckert P. (1998). “Gender and sociolinguistic variation”. in J Coates (ed) Language and Gender: A Reader, Cambridge: CUP, 64-75.
    
• Cases – Grammar and discourse (Ch 7)
  
  • Sankoff, David, Henrietta J. Cedergren, William Kemp, Pierre Thibault & Diane Vincent (1989). “Montreal French: Language, class, and ideology”. In R. W. Fasold & D. Schiffrin (eds), Language Change and Variation (Philadelphia: John Benjamins), pp. 107-118.
    
  • Schiffrin, Deborah (1999). “Oh as a marker of information management”. In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (eds), The Discourse Reader (New York: Routledge), pp. 275-288. Excerpted from D. Schiffrin (1987), Discourse Markers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    
• Sign Language
  
  • Ann, Jean (2001). “Bilingualism and language contact”. In C. Lucas (ed.), The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 33-60.
    
  • Lucas, Ceil, Robert Bayley, Clayton Valli, Mary Rose & Alyssa Wulf (2001). “Sociolinguistic variation”. In C. Lucas (ed.), The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 61-111.
    

Rob gets political

Well, the old country has a budget agreement, for the moment, and the new country is in the middle of an election. So I have a question for Mr Harper, leader of the incumbent Conservative party. Actually, for all the fiscal conservatives who want me to believe that cutting corporate taxes is for the purpose of creating jobs.

Dear Mr Harper,

If corporate tax cuts (to the largest and most profitable corporations, many of which benefited from public bail-outs and which already enjoy very low tax rates) is meant to 'trickle down' and create jobs, why not tie the corporate tax rate(s) or engineer a corporate tax credit tied directly to job creation.

For instance, how about for every 1% (or something) increase in full time equivalent jobs (regardless of level or pay scale) they add and keep for at least 8 months of the tax year, they can have a 0.5% (or something) credit on their tax bill. This will compensate all and only those companies that actually create jobs, and stimulate them to increase the number of employees at the lowest, (entry-level, and presumably the most attractive to the corporate bosses) pay rates. This way, adding 50 employees at $40,000/year will gain them a much better tax break than hiring four executives at $500,000/year. And presumably the tax break makes up more than the difference in their additional benefits (and don't try to tell me that the four getting $500,000 don't get much better benefits than the 50 at $40,000 combined).

As it is, the plan is to reward the greedy and allow them to hoard their money, to the detriment of potential employees and the public tax coffers.

I'm not saying my plan doesn't need some serious number crunchers to make it work, but if the idea is to create jobs, how about actually creating the jobs, instead of giving more money to the rich and hope they create jobs?

Prolix

I'm also getting some pressure from some quarters to start in with Twitter. 140 characters is a little limiting, but sometimes limits actually fuel creativity. If Blogger had actually blorfed on me completely, I'd definitely be going that way. Meantime, not so much. Although I'm considering "blueteddytweets" and "robjudgesyou" as handles.

Let's talk about distractions

Okay, so on the subject of posts that didn't, here's my thoughts on Mass Effect 3, slated for a 'holiday 2011' release.

What is great about the first two games in the series is that you can import characters/stories/histories from ME1 into ME2, and that effects how the second game plays out. If you kill someone in the first one, they're not in the second one. There's a Big Ethical Decision you have to make in the first one that affects who appears in the second one. In addition to your relationships with recruitable party members, there's other characters from the first game who play important parts in specific quest lines (or not, depending on whether you played the first game and how you interacted with them). We're told if you romanced one character in the first game and someone else in the second, this will have consequences in the third.

The second game is also littered with 'cameos'. Either characters who appeared in the first game popping up, or contaacting you by e-mail, to add depth to the story.

So here's my question, for those of you familiar with the series: Who do you want to see in ME3? and in what capacity (i.e. recruitable, quest-important, cameo appearance, or incidental contact)?

We've pretty much been promised an appearance of some kind by the Rachni Queen, if and only if she survives the first game. I'd like to see David Archer, the autistic mathematical savant who can talk to the Geth (robotic enemy race) appear as a recruitable, although he ended the second game pretty damaged and I don't know you you write/animate an interactive autistic character. Not that you can't, I just don't know how.

I'd like to see Kaidan/Ashley (recruitable in the first game and important cameo in the second) reappear as either a recruitable or a quest-important character, considering the history between the player character and those two. Thane, presumably, is not available, but it might be nice to see his son again, in some capacity.

There are others, but those are the ones I can think of at the moment. Your thoughts?

Busy, not bizzay

Okay, I'm going to see if it's somehow the content of my attempted posts, as opposed to their length, by posting on something completely different.

Good news, I'm cooking again. In the sense that every weekend for the last couple, I've made soup. This is good. Trust me.

Bad news, I'm swamped. I need to do some research for a conference presentation in May, on a project I should have finished more than a year ago, and have barely started. But right now I'm swamped with coursework, since I'm making up a course based on a new textbook. And I have 24 letters to write recommending or not recommending admission to the graduate program, or rather informing the applicants of the decision. It's not up to us to actually admit anyone.

THe good news on that front is that tonight the Brier (Canadian men's curling championship) isn't on regular cable, so I can't watch unless I want to stream So maybe I'll take myself somewhere and write e-mails to applicants, instead of going home and eating soup. Which is what I've done for the last week or so, except for the odd night when I decided I deserved a taco salad or a burrito.

well this just sucks

Short posts publish fine. Longer ones, with actual content, not so much.