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When we first moved back to Lemon Grove, I bought Derek's first computer at a place on Clairemont Mesa Boulevard. I later bought a computer for myself and my first ink jet printer at that same place. Cry Wolf was in the same building that other store used to occupy but is only about a third as big. As you enter the store, you pass a big pile of life-sized and larger stuffed leopard toys and a couple of elegant long-haired black cats. We quickly agreed on what they'll do (replace the bad 80 gigabyte hard drive with a 250 gigabyte hard drive, not because Cathy needs more capacity but because that's the current sweet spot between the minimum 120 and the maximum 500 gigabyte drives, and attempt to recover what they can of Cathy's data).
I'm looking forward to hearing from them.
But that's our third computer fatality of the year so far and the second hard drive fatality, plus having the cable modem die on us.
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My mother thought it was simply that we hadn't found the right one. She tried all of them on me. The sugared ones would get tried once and the remainder of the package ignored. I complained about, but would eat, plain cereals like corn flakes, Cheerios, grape nuts and shredded wheat. Then I discovered I preferred them without the milk or sugar. The puffed cereals, in particular, made good dry snacks, as did popcorn.
Having found the rightful place for cold cereals, I tried a variety of substitute breakfasts. I liked pancakes, especially wrapped around sausages, but they were too much work most of the time. We raised chickens, so I had eggs whenever I wanted them ... but I couldn't be trusted to cook them myself because I couldn't break them correctly.
Then I found hamburgers. A simple patty of ground meat, not necessarily beef, between two pieces of bread. Usually I added nothing else. Eventually I got to the point of making my own patties. At first I used simple ground meats, then mixtures of meats. Then I started adding spices, dried herbs like oregano, onion or garlic powder.
We always had a cast iron skillet in the kitchen. It was natural to fry the patties there. But eventually I had to make my own home. In 1965, the people I worked for sent me to St. Paul, Minnesota, for a two month class in repairing computers. I had to set up a cheap food factory that wouldn't take much of my attention. I bought a cheap little coffee percolator and a cheap lidded saucepan. I bought a package of cheap ground meat in a family pack, for the price reduction. I bought dried sweet peppers, dried grated onions and garlic powder. I bought a package of oatmeal, to extend the ground meat, making my hamburgers cheaper.
I had rented a furnished apartment for two months for far less than I would have paid for a motel for that period. That provided me a stove, a refrigerator and a freezer; I had to rent a bed.
I mixed together the ground meat, oatmeal and spices, placed some between sheets of waxed paper, and smashed them into flat, but highly irregular, patties about the size of my saucepan. I immediately froze the patties formed from the entire package of ground meat. I figured I had enough for three or four weeks. I no longer remember if I was correct.
Frying the patties in a covered saucepan wasn't very effective. The meat got cooked but it required too much attention. With the lid off they had a tendency to overcook severely. With the lid on, they steamed. One day I added some coffee and cooked the patty at a low temperature. The meat cooked with no additional attention required and the coffee gave it a good taste. But I had added too much oatmeal and the cooked patties were swollen monsters that resembled round blimps. I discovered that with the oatmeal inside I no longer required bread on the outside. I gave up the bread and thrived on my swollen boiled patties.
When I returned home, I decided to continue making my own patties with oatmeal and cooking them in a variety of liquids. Fruit juices were too sweet and too expensive. Soups from powders didn't work well for me. Finally I decided to turn it inside out again. I got a package of nine-grain hot cereal and cooked it up with the ground meat inside. I got the same meaty taste and I could experiment with additional ingredients. I discovered that dried apricots, dried papaya, dates and a variety of seeds worked well. I also discovered that if I added a raw egg when everything was cooked and the heat turned off then the mixture had a particularly good taste. That became my standard breakfast for several years, until I started having intestinal problems and was told to give up whole grains.
Neuropathy means the nerves are dying. It hurts and you lose all sensation. I have neuropathy in my feet, in my intestine, and ... elsewhere. Neuropathy of the digestive system leads to poor digestion and frequent diarrhea. I had to give up members of the cabbage family, especially my favorite, broccoli. I could no longer eat apples or pears (the sorbitol they contain is a laxative they share with gummy bears). I had to give up the breakfast food I had spent so many years developing.
My breakfast now starts with some fruit, usually melon or papaya, followed after half an hour by a hamburger, a pair of hot dogs, or chicken patties. Sometimes I'll fix eggs or pancakes.
Sometimes, when my intestine is really disturbed, I'll just have some chicken broth, although that is usually a lunch or dinner selection.
I often wish I could return to my blimp burgers or my hot cereal mixture.
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- Mood:
stressed
When we first signed up for high speed Internet connection from Cox, they were charging $10 per month for the cable modem. The next time I visited Costco, I discovered that they carried cable modems in their computer department. I got a Toshiba for, if I recall correctly, about $90.
We've had slow Internet connections for the past two months, possibly much longer. I blamed part of it on my Windows computer, which turned out to have a bad hard drive. The Compaq computer with its original hard drive was even older than the Toshiba modem. It was no surprise it had died.
Then my Mac Mini started having slow connections due to a bad wireless card. I got that fixed, too.
The slowdown continued to get worse. It got to the point that I could play one or two games of Freecell between pages on multi-page sites. Freecell is a time-waster for me, something I use when I would otherwise just be staring at the screen, waiting. I'm not an expert. I'm not very fast at all, partly because I add extra problems to make it more interesting. For example, I try to arrange the suits in alternating black and red on the playing field, which is totally unnecessary but uses up lots of time.
So I called Cox. They sent out a technician today. The old Toshiba modem was, indeed, worn out. It was dropping connectivity frequently for periods of several minutes at a time. It was replaced with a new cable modem.
Two new problems were also found: the Yoggie power connection was loose, causing it to drop out; and the Apple Time Capsule wouldn't revert to DCHP, requiring that it be reset to factory configuration. But now I can get stuff off the net at a reasonable speed again.
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This year, work has been scarce. Delia and Cathy have been much more relaxed and in better health than in years past. They both wanted to take me to ... breakfast or dinner. Both of them had some work but it would be short and not oppressive.
We can rarely agree on anything the first time around. Delia wanted to work first, then celebrate; Cathy wanted to go from her work to partying with her friends.
Cathy wanted to take me to D.Z. Akins, one of my favorite restaurants; Delia wanted us to go anywhere but there because she considers their fare expensive and greasy.
I suggested a compromise: Delia could go to work while Cathy took me to D.Z. Akins for breakfast, then we could all go for dinner elsewhere. Delia, always the thrifty one, thought I would be getting too much of a good thing and decided to go with us for breakfast if we would skip going out for dinner. That worked for me.
Delia set out in her car, so she could go directly to work after the meal, and Cathy took me in her truck. Cathy decided to try a short cut but couldn't remember the name of the street she wanted to use, delaying us enough for Delia to arrive well in advance. When we got there, Delia was standing in an otherwise empty parking space, effectively reserving it for us. She also saved us a place on the waiting list, the restaurant being crowded.
Our wait was long enough that my back started to hurt. I sought a place to sit and all I could find was a bench outside. After a few minutes, Cathy followed me out. A few minutes after that, Delia called to say she had grabbed us a seat inside. I sat with Delia while Cathy looked through the gift store. Eventually we were summoned to a table.
I knew what I wanted, chicken livers (which totally disgust Cathy), so I didn't need to consult the menu. We munched fresh pickles until a waitress noticed us and offered to bring coffee. I then waited for Delia to decide what she wanted, in consultation with Cathy. She finally decided on a chicken liver omelette. Cathy mostly got a collection of side orders.
They had made a minor change in what a dinner dish like mine included, so I was able to get a matzo ball soup. I like matzo balls, so I jumped at the chance. I'd had their matzo balls previously and had found them small and tough; this one was large, soft and flavorful. The small bowl had room for the baseball-sized matzo, three strips of cooked carrot and a whole lot of small, short noodles. I usually had little problem finishing an order of chicken livers, but not after consuming a giant matzo. Still, I had to try.
Many places overcook liver, as my father had when I was growing up (his liver had approached shoe sole leather in both texture and taste). I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my livers were cooked perfectly and were juicy. There were a lot of them, too, and they were large.
I had known to order french fries instead of the cottage fries that are standard. Delia, seeing the profusion of giant fries on my plate asked the waitress if she could get french fries instead of what she had, so the waitress brought her a big plate of french fries in addition. Delia then embarrassed us by repeatedly asking if she would be charged extra for them, not understanding the negative reply.
I'm not afraid to admit I can't eat a whole serving of something. I felt comfortable when Delia and Cathy started complaining they were stuffed, so we got boxes to transport the surplus in. All Delia had left were a couple of pieces of liver and her cottage fries, which she hadn't touched, so she threw them in the box with my stuff. Being greedy, though, she also packed away a few of the fresh pickles from the crock on the table.
Heading for the exit, I got behind an old man who, even when he was moving, moved so slowly, slowly taking many short steps, that it was like watching the hour hand on a clock face. I gave up and sneaked out a side door, leaving Delia and Cathy to settle the account. It took them a while but I had found a nice place to wait, with both breeze and shade.
Cathy needed to drop off a package for shipment at Staples and wanted to make a visit to Sam's Club, which she had avoided most of the year. We went up and down every aisle, more for the exercise than to see everything. Cathy picked up a package of fresh baby spinach and about $120 worth of "other stuff she needed". I picked up some grape-sized golden tomatoes, a bottle of peculiar salad dressing and a three-can package of menudo.
As we neared the cash register area, my left knee gave out. I gave Cathy my card, told her to call me when it was time to sign, and went to the food court area to sit and, hopefully, recover. As it turned out, though, my left leg continued to bother me well into the following day.
When we got home, I sat while Cathy put stuff away. She left for her work. I didn't stir except to go to the bathroom once in a while. After a couple of hours, I got my restaurant box and nibbled on the french fries and the cottage fries. Delia arrived while I was snacking and she chewed me out for continuing to eat, even though considerable time had passed. She, it turns out, was still full from her breakfast. A few hours later, to a barrage of criticism of my eating habits, I finished off the livers.
My breakfast had lasted me all day.
- Mood:
sore
Cathy took Delia to an Hispanic market near Grossmont Center. The market had a special on their roast pork: for $10, you got a pound-and-a-half of roast pork that you can pull for yourself, a quart of beans and a quart of rice, corn tortillas, sauces, cilantro and halved limes. There were three sauces, which could be labeled hot, hotter and hottest (100, 300 and 1,000 Schofield Units, at a guess). Cathy pulled the pork and chopped some onion. We did not add cheese, sour cream, guacamole or tomatoes, nor did we miss them. Well, the guacamole would have been nice.
Place a tortilla on your plate, add pulled roast pork, add hot sauce, add cilantro and onion, squeeze on a few drops of lime juice, then roll it up and munch. Cathy and Delia each had three, but they also ate beans and rice; I had five tacos. I avoided the beans and rice because of problems I've had lately.
The two of them also bought some tasajo (smoked brined beef strips), which Delia and I both declined, and some chicharones. These weren't your ordinary denatured chicharones: light, fluffy, low-fat and tender. This was the hard crust of skin, meat and fat that were on the outside of the roasted pork. They were accompanied by roasted Mexican onions and roasted jalapeños that were about twice as hot as the hottest of the sauces, hot enough that I needed a couple of spoonfuls of yogurt to calm my tongue.
I used to complain that the jalapeños sold locally have been cross-bred with bell peppers to reduce their fire while allowing them to appear as real jalapeños. Most were mild with a few that had a little bit of bite. These were the real thing, hot enough to bring tears, make the nose run and burn the tongue. Cooking usually seems to reduce the fire of peppers but roasting with the seeds inside seems to enhance the spiciness.
We had almost half of the pulled pork and tortillas left over, as well as about half of the three sauces, and we ate very little of the chicharones. They should make a good breakfast tomorrow.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Primeval is a British science fiction series. The basis for the series is that anomalies, portrayed as areas of bright shards floating in the air, permit travel through time. Where an anomaly opens up, creatures from the past or future can enter our world. While we are ill-equipped to deal with dinosaurs and giant worms, we are even more poorly equipped to recognize changes that happen as a result of stepping into the past or future through an anomaly. Such changes happen, according to the story line, and our lack of ability to deal with them is mentioned but not belabored.
The various monsters are well portrayed and the computer graphics are superb. Somebody has done a lot of research to get things right.
The cast seems quirky to me but that may just be because they are British. They are appealing people, for the most part.
Royal Pains is a medical series.
Okay, I watch House because of its many connections to Sherlock Holmes. It's fun to try to spot connections to the fictional detective in the stories, especially the more obscure ones. For example, the character Sherlock Holmes was based on a doctor, Dr. Bell, and Dr. House is once given a very rare book supposedly written by Dr. Bell.
I expected Royal Pains to be some kind of sitcom about doctors. I watched it despite many misgivings. Its story line concerns a doctor fired from his position for allowing a very rich man to die while he was trying to also save a poor man, the doctor then becoming the darling of the Jet Set living in the Hamptons.
A few years ago there was a science fiction series, Babylon 5, that featured some very well characterized alien beings. The very rich, highly eccentric people portrayed in Royal Pains remind me of the beings from Babylon 5. They seem like real people but are obviously different in a variety of different ways, everything but visually.
Hank, the doctor who is the central character, combines the observational ability of Sherlock Holmes (or House) with the inventiveness of McGuyver. I don't find him all that interesting, at least when compared with the quirky billionaires.
The pilot episode was much better done than the second episode. I hope they can maintain the enchantment.
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Tuesday morning I woke with the clear memory of a dream of falling in the tub while showering and hitting my head, at which point the dream abruptly stopped. Wednesday morning I had much the same dream but confusion about the fall being an accident was added.
Diabetics tend to be more aware of death, and of possibilities for suicide, than the regular population. I have had reflections on suicide many times since it was determined that I suffer from diabetes, a subject I hadn't given much thought before. The older I get, the more I think about death.
The dream returned on Thursday. The fall didn't seem like an accident. I was exploring the idea of arranging a fall so my head would hit very hard. Friday and Saturday were much the same. The dreams ended abruptly in each case.
I had showered on Monday, before the dreams started. As the dreams continued I became increasingly reluctant to shower again. By Friday it had become obvious that I needed to shower but I was unable to force myself to do so.
I didn't mention my anxiety to anybody. They were only aware that I was in need of cleansing my body.
I showered Saturday afternoon without mishap. I mentioned my dreams to Cathy afterwards. There were no more dreams on Sunday, so I mentioned them to Delia at breakfast.
My family and I have a history of having dreams greatly influence our lives, particularly when they seem to come true in some way, as they sometimes do. I have also dreamed of former lives and, possibly, of future lives. It is more common for me to dream I am young again and working with people who I know have died or people who have had a great influence on my life. The dream I woke from this morning, Sunday, was of working on a ranch or farm with Bob Eggleston, a man I had worked with in Panama who I believe died of colon cancer a few years ago.
I feel I have real reasons to fear my dreams. But I mustn't let them rule my life.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
- Mood:
relieved
Parts that move are far more likely to die than those that don't. Of the parts that don't move, frequently failing parts include diodes, resistors and capacitors.
There are things you can do to limit the damage and inconvenience resulting from a major failure: redundancy and back-ups are good for protection.
I've been running two computers with different operating systems. One of them makes hourly back-ups. The other one could have shared the back-up capability if I had told it to. The one with no back-up had its hard drive freeze up intermittently. Then the other machine lost its ability to talk wirelessly to the Internet.
Both machines were down, the second failing before the first could be completely restored.
The machine with the bad hard drive, let's call it Winnie, was being used to read unimportant email and to print envelopes. It contained music I had painfully ripped, over several weeks, from my CD collection but now rarely played. All these functions can be performed on its counterpart, which we'll call Minnie. I haven't been particularly concerned about recovering Winnie. I'm contemplating replacing its operating system with something else, something not made by the same company. Even though it has an operating system like the one it had when it died, it mostly just sits there. I rarely turn it on.
Minnie, on the other hand, is a workhorse. I use it for everything from the trivial (Freecell) to the vital (income tax preparation).
It took two days for the experts to find what was wrong with Minnie and to repair it. Like Winnie, Minnie was returned with a bare operating system.
But I had back-ups.
I tried to restore Minnie from the back-up. The instructions were vague but stated I could restore everything from a single file to the entire system. I tried it. Not having instructions, I just guessed what to do from the prompts presented. It was rather like playing one of those old Dungeons and Dragons games where you have to guess what action to take, trying many alternatives in order to guess the secret combination that would result in winning. It got old very fast.
I called the experts. The first one misled me completely. The second told me, correctly, that I would need to have the disk from which I installed the operating system in the drive, then directed me in the simple sequence I would need to follow to begin recovery. With the disk in place, I had to restart the machine and hold down the 'C' key until asked what language to use. He didn't tell me I would need passwords I had almost never needed and couldn't remember. I even had trouble remembering where the passwords were written down (on my Palm handheld).
I managed to start the recovery process. After about ten minutes the recovery program said it would take another four hours. I went off to watch television, checking once in a while. Recovery finished in just under three hours. Everything seems to be working again except that I can't print anything on my printer. There were about 500 messages waiting to be read. Minnie is once more happily making back-ups every hour or so.
If I decide to rip my CDs again, I'll do it on Minnie. Or I'll just play them on my stereo, if I can find it and find a new place to install it. I'm a bit short of space, though. Maybe I'll just give the little stereo away. I don't listen to music much any more, especially on radio; I now find commercial interruptions highly annoying. I assume I can find most or all of my CDs and I can get a cheap storage container that doesn't take up very much space.
So I'm back in business ... in a limited way. I can communicate with the world again and I can resume writing my stories. Once a year I can do my taxes. I can play my PySol Freecell game when waiting for some process to complete.
It's almost like being back to normal, except for the bitter taste in my mouth.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
I cut the power to the Yoggie Gateway, then restored power after a few seconds. The reset and reload took about ten minutes. I still had trouble reaching the Internet but I could look at my Yoggie status. The system logs showed several kinds of attacks from a great variety of sites. The attacks were obviously coordinated.
Response time gradually improved to the point that we hardly noticed the attacks but the logs showed that the attacks continued all night long. None of the malware got through, though, as far as I can tell; that is, the Yoggie system reports say there are no infections.
Always one to throw good money after bad, I decided to have it fixed instead of replacing it. That is not a very sound strategy. New machines with significant improvements are becoming more affordable almost daily.
One option I seriously considered was to get a Shuttle box that I could use as the basis of a new system. I mostly work with words, not media, so my demands weren't great. I would like a new Shuttle with a bunch of memory and a DVD writer. I could even use the DVD drive from the old Compaq. I could get by with the on-board display on most basic Shuttles.
I would probably install Windows XP Pro on such a system, then load WUBI and use Ubuntu. The Compaq has been fussy about running WUBI/Ubuntu but I thought I wouldn't have any problems on a new machine.
Shuttles are small, low-power devices. A low power processor, like those found on netbooks and cellular phones, wouldn't be out of place.
I may eventually get another Shuttle, but this time I decided to have somebody remove the viruses I thought infected the machine.
The day after dropping the computer off for cleaning I received a phone call: I had a bad hard drive, not viruses. I asked them to replace the old 120 gigabyte drive with a new 320 gigabyte drive and to copy over as much of my data as they could. I didn't really need 320 gigabytes but it only cost $10 more than 160 gigabytes, which I also didn't need. I only had about 70 gigabytes of programs and data to begin with.
They said I could pick up the computer today, Saturday. I skipped breakfast and rushed over.
When I got there, the computer wasn't ready. The Compaq wouldn't allow any drivers for a drive as big as 320 gigabytes. They had tried three 160 gigabyte drives. Each seemed to install well but wouldn't boot. They finally found a 160 gigabyte hard drive that would boot after Windows XP was installed and tried to copy over my data.
It was going to take a while. There were several restaurants within a stone's throw: a Carl's Jr., a Rubio's taco place, a Chinese barbeque place and a natural foods place. The technician recommended the natural food place, Picasso Naturals, so I went off to break my fast with a very good chipotle chicken sandwich on a rye bun.
Now the old hard drive became fussy. Every time it warmed up, it stopped running. They could copy about ten minutes worth of data, then had to wait half an hour for the drive to cool off. They estimated that recovering my data would cause me labor charges between $300 and $500. It wasn't worth that much to me. I paid for the new hard drive and for the labor they had wasted, then left.
As before, I can use the repaired computer to do the few things that still require Windows drivers. I can use my chameleon system to copy, little by little, from the defective drive to a new drive, then copy that to the repaired system. With my entire network protected by my Yoggie Gatekeeper SOHO, I can remove all anti-virus software and all anti-spyware software from the repaired system, freeing up loads of space.
Tomorrow. If you're tired, put it off until tomorrow. I'm tired and in pain.
It will be a project. I'll pull the two machine KVM and install a four machine KVM I bought last year, then hook up all three machines (the Mac Mini, the Compaq and my chameleon). The space the Compaq occupied for so long has been occupied by a fan and a bunch of other stuff; it will have to be cleaned up. I have about three months of accumulated email to download. And Delia will be here with interruptions galore.
Eventually I'll get it all to work. But repairing old computers isn't worth it. It's better to just replace it all and forget about any data you haven't backed up.
- Mood: disappointed
I knew that installing the Yoggie would take at least half an hour if all went well. From my past history, I know that all never goes well. Cathy would not have tolerated an Internet down time of fifteen minutes, so I had to wait for her to leave.
The first thing the Yoggie does is to download new software from the Internet, a process they say takes from ten to fifteen minutes. I plugged in the power, then the Internet connection from my cable modem, then the network. Nothing seemed to happen. I waited half an hour with, apparently, nothing happening. Then I cycled power on the cable modem. Nothing. The lights on the cable modem didn't blink. I cycled power on the Yoggie. Lights started blinking, which is a favorable sign.
I waited half an hour, then powered up my Mac Mini. There was an error message waiting from the wireless router: DHCP wasn't working. That was a good sign because the Yoggie is supposed to take over the DHCP function. I was given the option to disable DHCP on the router, which I selected. That led to several error messages from my email programs, which I ignored for the moment.
I started up a browser, Flock, planning to go to the Yoggie site specified in the instructions. It went there automatically. I registered and entered a new password. The status display came up, showing that my system was at high risk: there had been 58 firewall events in the roughly ten minutes I was on line. The count is now up to 152 (eight hours later) but the risk is now rated as being low. There have also been six IDS/IPS events, whatever they are, and zero malware events.
My email programs were now working without protest. A few messages got flagged as possible spam and one message got flagged as a possible phishing attempt.
Very nice! My system was protected after only ninety minutes. It usually takes me three days with standard anti-virus or anti-spyware software.
The SOHO Gatekeeper version of the Yoggie system is designed to protect a small network with up to five computers. Let's see. I have a Mac Mini on which I do most of my work. I have a Compaq running Windows XP that I mostly only use for hardware that lacks Mac drivers, a rapidly diminishing category; that machine has been broken for a couple of months. I have a chameleon system with removable hard drives on which I can run Windows, Linux, BeOS, DOS and a bunch of other stuff; it hasn't been plugged in for over a year. There is the laptop Cathy uses. Finally, I have an old Windows 98 SE system in a Shuttle box that I built for Delia but that Cathy took over; it hasn't been turned on for several years. Five computers.
I like the idea of my computers being protected by something external to them.
I think that's what I now have.
- Mood: pleased
I haven't plugged it in yet. I took my Windows computer in for repairs and haven't gotten it back yet. Despite always using anti-virus and anti-malware systems. They didn't help much: I just received a phone call from the repair shop and my hard drive is dead. They'll replace it with a slightly larger drive at a reasonable cost. The bad drive was 120 gigabytes. I have a couple of 160 gigabyte drives lying around, if I can find them. The sweet spot now seems to be 320 gigabytes, much more than I need but little more expensive than the smaller alternatives. But that computer was constantly being taken down by some kind of infection.
I used to try to fix things myself but I'm getting too old, and my experience is too old, so I decided to have a professional do it. The last time I killed an infestation of worms, it took me about five days ... and at that time I had a space in which I could work comfortably. My tools are now scattered, I'm not sure what I'm doing and I get constant interruptions. Being in the basement had its advantages that having half a room upstairs lack.
It is now cheaper to use a general purpose computer rather than using a specially designed piece of hardware. Most routers made in the past few years are thinly disguised computers. Cellular phones spurred the development of cheap low-power computers that led to devices like Apple's iPhone; netbook computers are based on those same computers.
<aside>I've used a Palm handheld for many years, not always the same device. I've found their size leads to easy portability, they are capable of useful functions, and I can synchronize them with my computer. For many years, I could only synchronize with Windows computers, but now my Mac can do almost anything with my Palm that the Windows machines can. What I find frustrating is that the people writing and selling Palm software are absolutely paranoid about protecting themselves from their customers, to the point that the software becomes useless. It has reached the point that I'm seriously considering getting an iPod Touch now that it will run my favorite diabetes software, Diabetes Pilot. I expect Apple to announce a new version of the Touch in September and will make my decision then.</aside>
The device shouldn't require much in the way of configuration. Paranoia prevails, however, and the manufacturer complicates things unnecessarily. You have to register the Yoggie with the manufacturer and with the provider of the security software. You can optionally install unnecessary drivers from the CD that comes with the machine. The unnecessary complication is made worse by misleading instructions. You should be able to just plug the device between your cable modem and router and have the defaults take care of everything else. But they never seem to learn to keep things simple.
Speaking of plugs, there aren't many. There are plugs for Internet in and out, for power, a USB for portable wireless connection, and a memory card slot. Even the wall wart used for power is unnecessary since the device can be powered from its USB connection.
What I've said above only applies for protecting a network. The Yoggie Gatekeeper can also be used to protect individual computers by connecting only the USB connector. That's sort of pointless, as Yoggie produces much smaller, cheaper devices that look like memory sticks that are designed to protect either Macs or Windows machines. The individual protection mode works by intercepting Internet signals within the computer.
Protection consists of anti-virus, anti-spyware, mail spam control, phishing prevention, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, a firewall and a VPN client. Okay, they also have parental control, which I should use to keep Delia from destroying my system.
If you ever think your system has been compromised, you can restore everything to factory condition by just unplugging for a few minutes and plugging back in.
- Mood:
blank
The woman (I didn't ask her name, nor did she volunteer it, though she knew a bit about me) had no memory of what happened that evening and was looking for information. The papers for the impoundment of her car gave our address, so she checked with Google and learned that I had recently renewed my Amateur Radio license (I've been tempted to get a cheap transceiver and become just active enough to know what's happening; besides, the renewal was free). She said she had driven by our house five times before finally stopping. She asked me what had happened.
Having been napping, I didn't have my pants on. Also, Rocky is curious and I didn't want to have to go chasing after him (he still got past me but came back in when I told him to). Anyway, I opened the door just enough to see her and for her to see that I wasn't ready to receive visitors.
She appeared to be slightly older than Cathy. She appeared to be in good condition, certainly not overweight. Her neck-length hair, sort of a beach blond, had been brushed but was a bit on the wild side. She appeared a bit hostile initially. When I cooperated, she became more friendly.
I gave her a thumbnail description of the events of that evening, not as detailed in my posting. She relaxed visibly and appeared satisfied. She did tell me the police had arrested her for public drunkenness. She had a taxi waiting, so she didn't want to stay long. She indicated she wanted to shake hands, said thanks, and left.
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It's more than just the neuropathy in my feet, which frequently has me staggering like a drunk. I blink, therefore I fall.
This morning I got up feeling pretty normal. I could sense that it was a bit cool out but I could ignore the chill. Then all of a sudden I was freezing. My skin got cold and I felt chill at the core of my body. I tried covering myself with a small blanket while drinking a cup of hot coffee. I kept getting colder and colder. Finally, near noon, I went back to bed and covered myself up.
We were supposed to visit some friends, Don and Anita Bohensky, whose anniversary is just a couple of weeks after ours. We were just going to have a small lunch for the four of us. Don and Anita have been taking turns showing flu symptoms, even sharing their illness with other family members. They had been symptom-free for about three weeks, but Don started coughing today. While Anita and Delia were on the phone, trying to decide whether or not we should get together, I let Delia know of my problem. Delia had her usual reactions: panic and suggesting that I should rush off to a doctor. After all, people have been dying from swine flu both to the north and to the south of us. The celebration was postponed.
After nearly two hours, I started to warm up. My skin is still cool, as are my feet and my spine. My head had started to hurt, along with my neck and back, but a lot of that has passed. I am not planning to venture outside today.
I hadn't eaten anything, mostly because I didn't feel hungry. At 15:00 Delia heated some chicken broth with a chicken breast in it. Until recently, I almost always managed to eat my breakfast before noon. Eating that single breast of chicken made me hungry, so I cooked myself some hash brown potatoes a couple of hours later. Now I'm sipping some ginger tea. I'm still not completely warm.
I'm a mess. I'd dearly love to be able to soak for a couple of hours in a tub of comfortably warm water. I can't because I can no longer get up out of the tub by myself. Tonight I'll probably dream of being a lobster at a clam bake. That would be a comfortable dream.
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I mentioned the problem to my diabetes doctor, Dr. J, who explained that the esophagus is a series of three muscle tubes that work together. Swallowing starts with the brain telling the topmost tube to contract and then relax. The second tube tries to copy the first and the lowest tube copies the middle tube. When something impinging on the nerve inhibits or stimulates the transmission, the top tube starts spasming, with the other two, confused, trying to synchronize. When the tubes are spasming, it can feel like you've swallowed a chunk of wood or rock; it can easily be confused with a heart attack.
That happened to me recently. I took a swallow of an electrolyte-enhanced vitamin water and my esophagus went into spasms. It felt like I had swallowed a pointed wooden block, the kind you give to kids as toys. Knowing what was happening, based on Dr. J's explanation, and having had less severe swallowing and coughing problems recently, I quickly ruled out the possibility of a heart attack. I tried to relax and take some deep breaths. Apparently that was the right thing to do, as the discomfort quickly passed.
Why have I been having arthritis problems recently? Because the weather is unsettled, going from cold to hot to cool again in less than a week. Everything in my back hurts, particularly in a band near the upper part of my shoulder blades. My knees, hips, wrists and neck have also been giving me problems, so I know I've been under the weather.
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Delia didn't want me to go outside. She was afraid of whoever might be in the car. Rocky, on the other hand, has not been feeling well and needed to do his thing. I put him outside despite Delia's protests and stood there watching. After I had been standing for about ten minutes, somebody got out of the car. From the long hair I assumed it was a woman. She seemed to be wearing blue jeans, a white tee and a gray sweater. She started walking westwards, away from the car. When she fell three times in rapid succession I asked Delia to call 911. Delia had the call in progress before I asked.
Because Delia was so nervous, I remained inside until emergency vehicles arrived, which wasn't long. First came the ambulance, with the fire truck right behind. I walked to the edge of the road and pointed out the fallen woman. Three firemen went to investigate; a woman from the ambulance asked if we needed any help. I told her it was only the fallen woman in need of aid.
A deputy sheriff came over. Delia continued talking to the paramedic while I spoke to the deputy. We explained the little bit we knew. The woman appeared to be responding to questions, which was a good sign. They packed her into the ambulance and the fire truck and ambulance drove off. By this time there were three police cars in front, with one deputy checking out the car. A tow truck arrived and they removed the car. They asked us no further questions, so I came in and poured each of us a shot of bourbon whiskey.
Cathy had called while I spoke with the emergency dispatcher, so when everything calmed down I called her again to let her know what was up.
None of the neighbors came onto the scene. They may not have been aware anything was happening.
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I've had an open sore on my left foot for the better part of the past year. Sometimes it has been unbearable. Apparently the three major bacterial families in the sores have been evicted and the foot is showing signs of healing. I'm still supposed to apply saline compresses twice daily but I've been taken off of all forms of antibiotic. I need help with the compresses, of course, and with applying protective covering to the sores, because I can't see the sores themselves. I am too inflexible to get myself into a position where they would be visible.
I had been told to stop walking and to avoid driving or even riding in cars. Long car trips are still out of the question, but the doctor says I can start taking walks again, short walks only, if I elevate my legs immediately after taking a walk.
Another reason I frequently miss classes is that about a one day in every three I have diarrhea. Even something so innocent as bread has been known to trigger problems. Unripe fruits are guaranteed to bring on the ailment, so I'm very careful about the few fruits I consume. I can eat about one salad a week without problems, and I love my salads. Some foods like broccoli or apples, once favorites, have to be avoided at all costs, although lately I've been able to consume small amounts of cooked cabbage with relatively few problems.
I also suffer from migraine headaches and migraine aura. I've had headaches incapacitate me for four or five days at a time. They are frequently triggered by not eating, by fasting. When I feel the aura or other signs of an impending headache, I have to take a bite of food and a bit of coffee, then retire to a quiet, dark place until it passes.
But the really big problem is pain in my back and body due to my arthritis. Sometimes the pain is triggered by the weather but most of the time I have no idea what causes it.
Yesterday I was feeling good. It appeared I would be able to attend today's class.
I had diarrhea from 4:30 to 6:30 this morning. I have no idea what triggered it. I've been very careful with my diet, to avoid such problems. My intestines are still unquiet but I haven't had any more problems so far. When my alarm went off at 7:00, though, I discovered I had a headache and that my upper back and shoulders, particularly on the right side, were hurting. When I did finally get up, after 10:00, the pain was still sufficiently intense that I had problems getting dressed.
In other words, everything but my infected foot was bothering me.
I've missed the last OASIS class I had scheduled, one I particularly wanted to attend. I'm undecided about taking any more classes in the future. I like taking classes because they're interesting and inexpensive and some, like Richard Lederer's classes, are highly entertaining.
Without the classes, the only reason I'll have for leaving the house will be to visit my doctors. And I dislike going to the doctors.
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Nothing happened.
I looked at the label on the bottle. It wasn't liquid plumber, it was a generic look-alike that cannot be used with standing water.
Troy, our neighbor across the street, is a plumber. He is Cathy's friend and he agreed to help.
I think he tried plunging the drain with a plumber's helper with no effect.
He tried my hand-cranked snake until he got tired, then he got his motorized snake. He told me he found oakum, a tar-soaked twine used by plumbers and those who have wooden boats. I learned about oakum when my cousin Glenn was making a yacht for himself in Morro Bay.
Troy is now in the garage, trying to snake out the drain from the cleanout.
Cathy's dog is in a full panic because of the strange noises.
The water isn't going anywhere yet. It's just getting deeper in the tub.
[Update: the problem was fixed the following day. The plumber says that the 50+ year-old cast iron pipe is so corroded inside that the inner surface is extremely rough and catches anything passing through, especially hair and fibers. We should replace it with plastic drain pipe.]
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The weeds in front of the house got high enough to conceal the dog. It isn't raining, making it a good time to remove the weeds, leaving just dirt. If it rains, mud will replace the dirt . . . but we're pretty much past the brief time when mud might dominate.
When we remove the weeds from the front yard, it is time to also remove the weeds from the back yard. This year we had a problem: bees. As in a swarm that buzzes, stings and makes honey. They settled in since last May, the last time we trimmed the area. To remove the weeds, we must first remove the bees. The lowest price I found on the Internet to do so was $175. Delia, of course, figured she could do better and got the gardener to agree to do it for $50 with Delia buying the poison.
These are honeybees. They may be killer bees. I once killed off a nest of bumblebees, but they stung me several times, too. Somebody at the hardware store told Delia, while she was buying yet more poison, that honeybee colonies cannot be killed off once they've made honey. I doubt it, but Delia is already lamenting the money she expects she has wasted.
It's all my fault, of course. It's always all my fault.
And representatives of the City of Lemon Grove, seeing the gardeners at work, came around to inspect what they were doing and have threatened that if the weeds aren't cut down to the dirt level they will be back with a crew to finish the job. They did that once before. The crew they brought in didn't do squat and they charged us more than three times the going rate plus fines.
The weeds have to go. The bees have to go. The weeds will grow back by May and will have to be removed once more, as in previous years.
Maybe I should get a little tractor and ride around scraping the yard down to the dirt level all year long.
That might be fun.
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Not all giving works, though. We must give to somebody we like or something we believe in.
Just giving doesn't cut it. We need the emotional connection. The simple act of giving by itself isn't enough. We have to believe either that our gift will be appreciated or that it will do some good.
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