Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Clare T. Rampling's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
8:41 pm	FINALLY!!! Senator Al Franken can take his rightful place among the other senators!!! I must take a few minutes from my ridiculously energy-sapping and too-busy life to post this: I was SO VERY HAPPY to hear this afternoon that: Norm Coleman has conceded. The former senator called Al Franken this afternoon to congratulate him on his victory nearly eight months after election day. The concession came shortly after the Minnesota Supreme Court issued a ruling naming Franken the winner in the protracted contest. [from the Minnesota Independent] UPDATE: Gov. Tim Pawlenty says he will sign the election certificate declaring Al Franken the winner of the 2008 race for the U.S. Senate. “I will be signing the election certificate today as directed by the court and applicable law,” said Pawlenty. [from the Minnesota Independent] I got an email from Al thanking me (personally, I'm sure) for my help.   :D Current Mood: pleased (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
12:30 am	Cotangent, Secant, Cosecant?!! Has anyone run into the Cotangent or Secant or Cosecant functions since learning them in High School? Does anyone use them for anything? I do seem to remember a few mentions from calculus that fussed about secants, but why do we have special names for these things? I'm supposed to teach these, and motivate their use, but I'm not motivated about them myself. Help?? OK, I do remember when I was a cheerleader that we had a cheer that had a line that had the lines "Secant, Tangent, Cosine, Sine/ Three Point One Four One Five Nine" -- but I was hoping for something a tad more practical. ;) Current Mood: curious (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
5:47 am	California Voting TODAY; YPM for info & endorsements I was bouncing around looking for websites to 'splain to me what's up with this li'l election we're having today. I happened upon yesterday's LAist post entitled A Guide to Voter Guides: The May 19th Election. Ahhhh, that helps!! Looking through their list of Voter Guides, I found the promising-sounding Young Progressive Majority, who offers "an extensive easy-to-read guide to the six propositions, City Attorney, Council District 5, State Senate 26 and Community College District seats 2 and 6.". Here's a direct link to their PDF for this election. My current leanings are: 1A-1E NO, 1F YES, LACCD2 Angela Reddock, LACCD6 Nancy Pearlman (whom I met personally at the big anti-Prop-8 rally & march at LA City Hall). I'm a bit waffly about 1C, if anyone wants to convince me before 10am or so. (I don't get to vote for City Attorney, Council District 5, or State Senate 26.) Current Mood: awake (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 18th, 2009
3:12 am	A Hate-Addicted Collection of Punchlines! I'm not generally a fan of Mike Malloy, though I do agree with him here and there, and sometimes even like a few of his rants. Anyway, I ran into a commercial for his show (on KTLK 1150AM Progressive Radio in LA) in which he describes Republicans as a "Hate-Addicted Collection of Punchlines"! Somehow that turn of phrase seemed just about right to me lately, and I managed to remember to make a note of it later when I heard the commercial repeated. And now I pass along the phrase for y'all to ponder and/or appreciate. Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
4:07 am	Please help!! Need LOLcat Capshun!!! I've been tasked with the urgent errand to find an excellent LOLcat Caption for this photo (from Grey Gardens, the documentary). I believe the room is allegedly a kitchen. Unfortunately no fab captions are leaping and pouncing into my mind, so I must ask you all (human or feline) for your kind assistance. PLEASE HELP!!! Best caption wins Bragging Rights! P.S. In case you didn't notice right away, do take a look in the upper left of the picture.   =^..^= Current Mood: amused (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
9:22 pm	Have new Dreamwidth account Thanks to the kind help of joedecker, I am now on Dreamwidth. Anyone wanna friend me there? (This should be posted on Dreamwidth and LJ.) I'm not 'moving' my stuff or my postings there, just want to keep my options open. Current Mood: curious (1 Comment |Comment on this)
9:02 pm	Dreamwidth favor? So I see lotsa people are doing the Dreamwidth thing, and I wanna be able to play there too. Anyone have an invite code they might be willing to pass on to help me out? Current Mood: curious (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
7:54 am	Some cool articles about Rachel; Al Franken makes progress Ever the fangirl, I've found these articles about Rachel Maddow: Rachel in New York Mag: "The Dr. Maddow Show", Nov 2, 2008 Rachel in Bitch Mag: "The Rachel Papers", Spring 2009 (thanks to my sister, and to a search on eBay) And regarding one of my other political obsessions, following Al Franken's progress to FINALLY being named senator: Coleman Suffers Legal Blow in Minnesota Senate Contest — March 31, 2009 ABC News' David Chalian Reports: The United States Senate moved an inch or two closer to getting its 100th senator. But just an inch or two. Former Sen. Coleman's campaign made clear today that there will be an appeal to the full Minnesota Supreme Court before any definitive resolution comes to the five months old Minnesota senate contest. So the wait continues for Minnesota to have two United States senators representing the state. In a late afternoon ruling, a three-judge panel in Minnesota delivered a severe blow to Republican Norm Coleman's attempts to return to the United States Senate in the ongoing recount there. The panel ruled that less (and perhaps a lot less) than 400 absentee ballots should be opened and recounted. That would almost certainly not be enough for Coleman to pick up enough votes to win. After the official state recount, Franken had a 225 vote lead. (more) And another story concludes: Court Leaves Coleman With Little Hope — April 1, 2009 Politico: Ruling By Three-Judge Panel Helps Democrat Franken, But Republican Likely To Appeal To Minn. Supreme Court After seven weeks of reviewing a hand recount, millions spent on legal fees and a tough legal ruling Tuesday afternoon, Norm Coleman still looks like the loser in the Minnesota Senate race. (more) (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 5th, 2009
4:14 pm	Rachel Maddow interviews Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins ("Left Behind" authors)   Feb. 25: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, authors of the bestselling Bible-inspired book series "Left Behind", sit down with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. Direct link to video interview (9:40) Wow, those guys are so out there! Scarrrrrry!!! And Rachel is so very respectful of them, yet still illuminating much of how scary they are. P.S. OMG she looks so great in a black turtleneck!! P.P.S. Great article about Rachel on Alternet. Special note to my sister: note her clever use of her oven in her apartment! Current Mood: awake (7 Comments |Comment on this)
12:05 am	Magic Squares amuse more people than I'd've guessed! One of the more amusing bits of my pollworking yesterday to me started around 1pm, while I was on the phone talking with jusdisguy, I heard the woman next to me (the other regular clerk) say to the student "Hey, you want to try a fun puzzle?". I could see that the woman had drawn a 3x3 grid, and was working at filling in the numbers, which she hadn't completed yet. I leaned over, and while I was talking, wrote down the 3x3 magic square. I ended my phone call, and she said "Wow, how did you do that?". I laughed and showed her the easy little pattern to make any odd-dimensioned magic square. She was really amazed! The student was also watching, fascinated too. Then FOR THE ENTIRE REST OF THE EVENING, these two played with magic squares, with the woman writing out all the odd ones up to 11, and the student writing out a 13 and a 25 magic square! I explained to them how to multiply the central number by the order of the square as a shortcut to find the square's sum, and they were amazed further. Me, I was very, very amazed that this little obscure bit of math trivia that I'd learned when I was maybe 10 years old (and somehow remembered all these years) suddenly popped up and became relevant and incredibly popular and amusing for an afternoon! Such unexpected fun!! The woman made a point to give me extra thanks at the end of the evening for the magic square info! Funny part of that was before I went on my lunch break, I mentioned to them that you could make a 4x4 magic square with the numbers 15 and 14 in the two middle squares of the bottom row. I seemed to remember that there was some old painting that had this square in it, painted in 1514 (Whee, that's really true!). I said that I didn't know any pattern for even squares, though there might be some. Anyway, I left them to figure it out while I went for lunch. When I got back they hadn't figured it out, so I had to. Silly me! I'm lousy/slow at arithmetic, and so this had me doing lots of tiny sums. Luckily I made some good guesses about symmetry, using lots of pairs of numbers that added to 17 (to make sequences that added to 34), and managed to finish it reasonably quickly. Phew! Was fun, though, despite all that oh-so-hard arithmetic. ;) I later found that there is a pattern for Magic Squares of order 4p ("doubly even"), and another "medjig method" for even squares. UPDATE: Better explanations for even magic square patterns at Wolfram MathWorld. Current Mood: amused (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
11:53 pm	Pollworking March 3rd -- Good experience this time, finally! Yesterday I worked as a Pollworker for my third time. I didn't really feel up to asking for an Inspector position (person in charge of the Polling Place) this time, so I just signed up as a regular clerk, and hoped I'd get a decent group of people. Pays $105 for 2 hour training (last Friday) plus 6am-8:45pm pollworking (Tue March 3rd) (money sent in 4-6 weeks -- a looooooooong time for a broke person!). ( Pollworking Details -- Easy this time!! ) Current Mood: accomplished (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
12:42 pm	Real action towards POSSIBLE 710 finishing, finally!! I've been a HUGE proponent of completing the 710 freeway in Los Angeles, like, forever!!! Infrastructure: Purrrrrrr! [R.Maddow mp3]   So, I am so happy to find (from a blurb on LAist.com) a link to a CBS2.com story that says: Workers Begin Drilling For 710 Tunnel Study ALHAMBRA, Calif -- Workers Tuesday started drilling for soil samples and began conducting underground seismic tests in Alhambra as part of the State Route 710 Tunnel Technical Study. The study will examine the possibility of building a tunnel to complete the route between the northern boundary of the 710 and 210 freeways, Maria Raptis of Caltrans said. Information gathered during the study will reveal soil and sub-surface conditions, and determine the feasibility of building a tunnel to complete SR-710. The study is not an environmental assessment. [...] For future reference, that article mentions the website www.710TunnelStudy.info for future updates. YAAAAY! Oh, whee! The 710TunnelStudy site has a newsletter! Just signed up. :) Current Mood: hopeful (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 4th, 2009
5:02 pm	CNN: "Panel to declare Franken winner of Senate race" Thanks to a timely tip from eeekster, I am conveying Breaking News from CNN: Panel to declare Franken winner of Senate race From Chris Welch, CNN MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (CNN) -- A state election board on Monday will announce Democrat Al Franken has defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, state officials told CNN Sunday. The canvassing board on Monday will say a recount determined Franken won by 225 votes, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie told CNN. However, Coleman's campaign, which contends the recount should have included about 650 absentee ballots it says were improperly rejected in the initial count, has indicated it will challenge the certification. So, yeah, of course there will be challenges and lawsuits, but... YAY!!!! Say it with me:   Senator Franken!!! UPDATE: Franken Win Certified, but Senate Will Delay Seating (Washington Post) -- I disappointed he won't be seated right away! I really hope his senate seat won't be left hanging during Coleman's lawsuits.... "After 62 days, after the careful and painstaking hand inspection of nearly 3 million ballots, after hours and hours of hard work by elections officials and volunteers across the state, I am proud and humbled to stand before you as the next senator from Minnesota." Current Mood: excited (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
8:16 am	Letter TO ME from Al Franken -- things look good!! Just got this letter from Al. He calls me "Friend"; it's his pet name for me. So sweet! Dear Friend, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your support and your patience during this long recount process. Today I've got good news to report: it looks like we're on track to win. The state canvassing board has completed its job of reviewing all the ballots - and at the end of this important step in the process, we're ahead. ( rest of the letter ) I'm feeling SO HOPEFUL about Al winning! The top three things I wanted this last election were Obama winning (YAY!), Prop 8 losing (DAMN!) and Al Franken winning (ANTICI... PATION!). So I've been balanced at ~50% happy about my top three for what feels like ages. Maybe they'll finally have this last straggling recount finished within the coming week!! This up-to-the-minute article from CBS says: Franken now holds a miniscule[sic] 47 vote lead [...] The counting process must end by Jan. 4th, and the Canvassing Board has suggested it could declare a winner as soon as next Tuesday, January 6th – the day the new Congress will be sworn in. UPDATE: The AP reports as of 3PM PST today that: ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Democratic candidate Al Franken now holds a 50-vote lead over Republican Sen. Norm Coleman in Minnesota's Senate race, but wrangling over inclusion of absentee ballots continued Tuesday and any final determination of a winner was still days or weeks away. By this time next week, the state board overseeing the recount expects to declare a winner in the bruising campaign between Franken, a former "Saturday Night Live" cast member, and the incumbent. But even then, the race won't be over if the losing party challenges the outcome in court. Current Mood: awake (5 Comments |Comment on this)
3:04 am	"Infrastructure: Purrrrrrrr!" (Rachel Maddow) As background to this post, I've always been a big enthusiastic supporter of infrastructure maintenance and improvement. A genuine fan of the topic. So I was more than delighted to find that it's one of Rachel Maddow's favorite issues! I was in my car earlier today (Monday), listening to a replay of audio portions from The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC) on my local Progressive Radio station (KTLK1150AM), when I heard the audio portion of: Rachel's "Talk Me Down" segment from Dec 23. At (what I later discovered was) 1:22 into the segment, Rachel says sexily: "Infrastructure: Purrrrrrrr!". Wow, I instantly wished I could get a clip of that and save it or put it in my phone or something! So I thought I'd try to remember it later and try to look it up and find out some way to clip it. Tonight, hanging out with jusdisguy (after seeing Milk -- essential & well-done & important viewing of course), I mentioned my desire for an MP3 clip of Rachel's infrastructure purr. So after he left, I mused about finding a link to the video segment and posting to LJ to ask if anyone knew how to get an MP3 (or even .wav) audio clip off an MSNBC video link.... But what I ran into instead on The Front Page of Rachel Maddow's MSNBC Page was a little section marked New Ringtones by Popular Demand, and a link on the front page itself to: Infrastructure: Purrrrrrr!     (mp3 clip/ringtone) Wow, listen to it!! Score!!! Rachel rocks my world, yet again!! AND, a tad shockingly, I'm not the only freak out there who wanted a clip of that! :D P.S. Anyone know how I could've made the MP3 audio clip myself, if I had to? Or even a video MP4 clip? P.P.S. X-posted to maddowrightnow. Current Mood: pleased Current Music: Rachel's Purrs (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 27th, 2008
7:38 pm	WHAT ARE THESE CUTE LITTLE COLUMN THINGS? Please Help!!! For Xmas, my sister gave me a box of a dozen Cute Little Column Things. She knew I wanted some various-sized columns to display stuff (such as Geomag sculptures), and ran into these. These are smaller than the main idea of what I wanted, but I had no idea you could find ones this small! So these are gonna be display columns for small cute objects like Lucky Cats (Maneki Neko). Cool! Meanwhile, a mystery remains. My sister bought these at a thrift shop, and we have no idea what they were originally for! It seems to us that they wouldn't work as wedding cake columns, since they have no facility for connection to layers above or below. They came in a box (labelled "Liu Giftware") of one dozen columns, each ~2¾" high. So, WHAT WERE THESE ORIGINALLY MADE FOR? ( I've put five large pix behind this cut ) Current Mood: curious (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, December 14th, 2008
1:30 am	Got new phone! See icon. AT&T Tilt. For my birthday! :D Just now working on learning how to use it.... Current Mood: excited (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
3:20 am	Rachel on the cover of The Advocate Been meaning to post this.... My sister pointed out to me that Rachel Maddow is on the cover of The Advocate, in the December 2, 2008 issue. Click to read the full story. So cool!!! P.S. Apparently I needed a new icon, duh! x-posted to maddowrightnow Current Mood: awake (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
2:11 am	Prop 8 Protests THIS SATURDAY! Come with me to LA City Hall! This coming Saturday, is going to be a HUGE protest against Prop 8. The website JoinTheImpact.com is coordinating protests ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY @ 10:30am PST! I'm planning to go to Los Angeles City Hall at 10:30AM. If anyone wants to go with me, or meet up there, comment here or email me or call me. I know there's supposed to be one in Pasadena too, but I somehow imagine the one at LA City Hall to be bigger. * x-posted to no_on_prop_8 * x-posted to los_angeles Current Mood: determined (Comment on this)
1:55 am	Prop 8: Rachel on protests; Keith Olbermann Special Comment Sorry can't seem to embed Rachel. Click here for her video talking about protests against Prop 8.   (4:27) Here's that excellent and emotional Special Comment from Keith Olbermann. Yeah, I'm linking it too. Do watch it if you haven't yet!   (6:35) * Click here for better quality Olbermann video on the MSNBC site * Click here for Olbermann transcript Current Mood: enraged (Comment on this)