Opining Online

Why… does blogger just refuse to publish comments on some blogs lately? Not all… just some. And not when using IE, but Chrome!!

What’s up Google? Maybe I should just uninstall Chrome. I have trouble with YouTube with it sometimes too.

Thanks to C.G., I’ve just finished our 2009 taxes, federal and state. Unlike him, I was not inclined to do it by hand. Been there, done that, and no matter how simple our returns are now compared to previous years, I like the software approach.

The most complex year involved 4 non-resident state returns, including California which required several more pages and ‘forms” than the federal return. I’d have never figured it out without the software.

Isn’t it odd that I’m having trouble posting comments on blogspot blogs with Chrome, but none using IE?

This post – Yrs. faithfully - reminded me of the occasional odd electronic conversation I used to have with my youngest daughter in the ’90s. Remember the ’90s?

(Note: the memories he invoked have little to do with his essay other than the importance of the people doing the communicating. There’s much more there than what I reminisce about here.)

She used to send messages to me in my *office* via my printer from her bedroom. Yes, we had a home network facilitated by Cat5 cables (and Windows 95/98) strung from one end of the house to the other. These were not installed, they merely laid on the floor, also facilitating tripping and making vacuuming and mopping more fun. Not that I did a lot of vacuuming or mopping.

Believe it or not, we had 3 telephone lines into the house in those days. One was the primary voice number, it’s secondary line being the daughter’s line. The other was another “line 1″ for either fax or modem, mostly modem. A 56k modem which usually worked at 24k… because the lines were noisy. But we were wired, folks… wired.

My older daughter communicated through writing also, but not nearly as easily. There’s 6 1/2 years difference in their ages… and the ability to communicate a passing thought was much easier for the younger one than for the older, I think… because the younger one had the electronic advantage.

Now, through email and Facebook, we can all share our immediate thoughts much more easily and readily than ever before. Not to mention photos. I love digital photos!

Mr. Kinsell writes:

Properly used, the communications technology we now enjoy makes a whole lot of things easier and less time-consuming so that we can actually spend more time and energy on what’s really important.

Exactly. The key words there? “Properly used” and “what’s really important”.

Since I have so few commenters (though top quality) I am going to borrow some from others today.

1) Marginal Revolution’s qq linked to Neuroskeptic’s  War on “Interesting” which is a compelling, significant, worthy, notable, intriguing, fascinating, and relevant essay on the non-interesting aspects of interesting.  

2) Erin, another from Marginal Revolution, linked to Ceviche and Fish & Chips at The Language of Food. I hope Mr. Jurafsky keeps writing.

3) If you think you might be a coffee snot snob, think again because it just got harder and more expensive. Volokh commenter JKB links to this article on coffee’s Third Wave.

*Buying cheap cheese is worse than buying no cheese at all. When you have no cheese, you don’t waste time, energy, and other ingredients trying to make it edible.

*I hate the scrolling twitter widget. I hate anything on a website that moves unless I tell it to.

*History’s First Redneck Mummy (lower left panel)

*I love my battery backup, because I hate power outages.

*Am I the only person who cannot manage to order a Pizza Hut pizza online? I’m beginning to think they want to be able to say they offer online ordering, but are actively discouraging anyone from ever using it.

* New study reveals most children are unrepentant sociopaths (via Retriever). And then they grow up and design scrolling, flashing widgets for websites or tests for “security” that can’t be passed. For a more scientific view, see The Science of Success.

*Speaking of pizza — a quick perusal of our buying habits over the past year says that this family orders pizza on average of once a month, and that approximately 25% of these orders coincide with having company. Yeah, I am just that lazy.

*Is it the least we can do? Buy Local, Act Evil. Just a thought here… but, if I buy the best that I can for the least amount of money, is that not also ecologically sound? (Note: I’m not saying I do this — see cheap cheese.)

*Tundra. Just go, click, and scroll. That’s what I plan on doing for the next hour or so.

I published the previous post WAY too soon

And I completely forgot the graphic that prompted such musings:

Ever since this blog began, Wordpress has been begging me to update. Today, the update has been done, thanks to my friend Talina of Harvest of Daily Life.

While readers may not notice much difference, there’s a huge difference in the “backend” of the blog. Yeah, I had to look for the place to blog the upgrade.

I am grateful to not be nagged by Wordpress to upgrade. This reduces stress which is always a good thing. Plus, I’m glad that the upgrade protects me against attacks that I may never understand.

Never will I be a cutting edge blogger. It just ain’t my style. But I appreciate being up to date. Now if I can only get Talina down here to fine tune my hardware…

Actually, that’s not required. I’m much more capable of fine-tuning my hardware than I am software. And that hurts me to admit. Plugging in a harddrive has always been somewhat easier than being a servant to software.

Whether it’s true or not, I blame my brain tumor for now being unable to do what I did when it was actually harder than it is today. Yes, at one point I was one of them Microsoft Certified people. I used to teach people how to use software and now I can’t figure it out on my own. I really hate this, but it is now true. That I couldn’t figure out how to update my own website (with what I know to be relative simple tools) irritates the dickens outta me.

They are only simple if you understand them and I now lack that ability.

So… thank you VERY much, Talina.

I just wrote a post which outlined solutions to all the world’s problems and either Wordpress, GoDaddy, or Comcast ate it.

Or call me whatever.

I don’t like the new Yahoo homepage. The two things I use the most seem to be gone. Of course, I’m sure if I spend my valuable time I might find them again… but WHY should I have to?

Is this progress or change for the sake of change?

TV Tropes
If you have the least little bit, the teensiest smidgeon of obsessive compulsive disorder, don’t click there. They have categories and lists and sublists and… they are named so brilliantly you just have to click on them all. Don’t get sucked in, just click on “random item” at the top of the page.

Damn Cool Pics
From silly to awe-inspiring, with a few just a tad scary one thrown in for effect.

Ugliest Tattoos
They are all scary in some way, but some will make you laugh.

Awkward Family Photos
It’s amazing how much fun everyone was having!

I think I’ve wasted enough time on this post. Have a great weekend!

I need a color job and some 1950s undergarments to make this real… but here I am:

http://billysacheat.ruudreliable.net/

As noted in the post below, we have no AC. The unit is about 24 years old and well… it’s likely beyond repair.

Plus it’s the middle of summer in the south and getting someone out to look at it and repair/replace it means waiting a while. I think we’re lucky we found someone to come look at ours tomorrow.

But then there’s the weekend… please send cool thoughts our way!

See update here. 

See the first part here.

I ended the last post with my father being admitted to the hospital for further evaluation of his dizziness, low blood pressure, and slow heart rate. Simply being in the ER had made his arthritis flare up so severely, he needed narcotic pain med to tolerate it.

Up to the floor to a nice room furnished with a bed that was, if anything, more uncomfortable than the ER cot. It was also suffering from bad wiring so that it constantly had the call light on, which effectively translate into the call light not working at all.

Except for the ER hospitalist who admitted my Dad, every person we came in contact with was friendly and trying to do their best. It’s hard to do that when you’re dealing with malfunctioning equipment and equipment that causes unnecessary pain to your patients.

After the nurse fiddled with the call light for a while and tried to figure out why it was so warm in this room, she called maintenance. What else could she do? Well, obviously maintenance was overwhelmed as they showed up 30 minutes before my Dad was discharged the next day.

In the meantime, Dad says he feels like he’s smothering, but at the same time he’s cold to the point of shivering. He insists my brother and I go home that he will be fine. This is a tough thing for us to do (for reasons I won’t post about), but we do because we don’t want to upset him by arguing with him. He said if either one of us stays, we’ll just keep him awake all night.

During the night, the inflatable mattress that’s supposed to make this hospital bed more comfortable deflates in the middle section. I believe I’ve covered my Dad’s severe arthritis and do I need to point out that this didn’t help that pain?

Also during the night the smothering feeling my Dad was complaining about has become a general shortness of breath. So let’s recap this 86 year old man’s recent onset symptoms:

Dizziness
Low blood pressure
Slow heart rate
Shortness of breath

If I have any health professionals or anyone with strong Google fu, you’ll be able to figure out what at least one probably diagnosis is.

Enter the same obnoxious hospitalist from the evening before who writes on the discharge orders to discontinue the diuretic and heart medication (which has a side effect of lowering blood pressure) that my Dad has been on for years. The written orders do not say to taper off the heart medication.

No cardiology consult was requested and no interest shown in the addition of shortness of breath to his symptoms.

My Dad is by this time ready to leave. He feels worse than when he came to the ER. And he wants to make his radiation treatment. (I don’t think I mentioned earlier that he has Stage I NSCLC.) By now all Dad wants to do is go home. So we do.

By early afternoon, the shortness of breath is bothering him much worse and he goes to his storage shed to get a 3 year old bottle of oxygen (with 3 year old tubing) that I didn’t even know he had. This makes me very unhappy and I tell him he shouldn’t even try to use it because his blood oxygen saturation had been good. He says he that can’t be true because he can’t breathe.

Fortunately, the oxygen tank and tubing aren’t working. While he’s fiddling with that I suddenly remember that he has a lung doctor! Why yes, I am really, really slow sometimes. I look at the clock and tell my Dad that we can make it there before 5 pm. We’re in the door at 4:45 pm.

After the routine vitals, the RN comes in, a nurse practioner. She questions him, checks his oxygen saturation (96) and listens carefully and thoroughly to his lungs. Thanks to electronic medical records, she can see the results of his chest xray and other information from the ER visit.

It’s then that I fell in love with this woman. She said that the hospitalist was no more qualified to order discontinuation of his heart medicine and diuretic than she was and told him he should not change it until he’s seen his cardiologist. She explained that the cough he’d seen her for two weeks before and the current shortness of breath combined with the radiation warranted a prophylactic round of antibiotics and that a round of prednisone would get him feeling decent again until he could see his cardiologist.

She explained that he had multiple risk factors for fluid build-up and that discontinuing the lasix could be dangerous.

It’s a shame we can’t all take prednisone all the time. It’s a feel good drug like no other. And since Dad’s cardiologist is out of town all this week, it will sustain his energy until his appointment next week.

I’ll be going back to my Dad’s soon, but the thing I’m undecided about is exactly how to word the nastygram I want to send about the obnoxious hospitalist and his lack of follow-up and follow-through. Fortunately my siblings are better at that kind of thing than I am.

UPDATE — July 22, 2009 (read the comments for earlier update)

This morning, I got a call from the head of the customer relations department of the hospital. The first thing she assured me of was that none of their junior volunteers would ever be asked to deal with patient or family complaints, ever.

She was very nice, apologetic, and assured me that several departments would be hearing from her about our complaints about the facilities and explained that problems with the doctor would still have to be addressed by the VP of medical staffing, but that she would also forward her notes on our conversation to him as well as the hospital CEO.

See update to the medical story here. 

I left last Friday to go to a niece’s wedding in Arkansas with my father. She was married on July 4th in a beautiful outdoor ceremony near Little Rock AR. The photos on the site’s page do not come close to the majesty of the setting. They do justice to the facilities, but not the nature surrounding them.

My father mentioned on the drive up there that he’d been having dizzy spells which, at first, sounded like orthostatic hypotension. He’s 86 and I really thought that this was probably natural for his age.

However, the day after the wedding, he was more than tired. He was suffering fatigue. He had no energy and no appetite. I decided to stay another day or two. In all honesty, it wasn’t just that, it was also my innate dislike of leaving wherever I am. I’m pretty much at home anywhere and hate moving. Staying another day or two sounded great to me and I have the most understanding husband in the world.

Tuesday morning, my Dad was feeling dizzy sitting down and lying down. We eliminated the possibility of it being an inner ear infection because he’s suffered those numerous times and it certainly wasn’t that bad.

We got an appointment to see his PCP Tuesday afternoon. He confirmed my father’s suspicion that his blood pressure was low and they decided to discontinue two medications that might be contributing to his problem.

We go home thinking the problem is solved. Wednesday morning, 11 am — blood pressure is 106/51. Pulse is 37. (This machine had been previously ”calibrated” with an RN’s manual BP reading.) Checking BP again, the reading is 81/45 with pulse still 37. My choices are… call an ambulance (and first responders) or attempt to transport my father 40+ miles to the nearest ER.

I take my hat off to Little River County’s first responders. Before I was through giving the ambulance service all the pertinent info, a trained first responder was in the house. His BP reading was a bit higher, but he noted the pulse was irregular. Within minutes of his arrival another first responder (who also worked as an EMT for the ambulance co.) arrived and confirmed the irregular heartbeat and slow pulse rate, although the BP was within normal ranges by that time.

Keep in mind while reading all of this that my father is 86 years old.

When asked where he wants to be transported, my father names the hospital where his wife is getting rehab after a hip replacement.

His transport takes 45 minutes. During this time he is sitting up in a gurney. This means that his legs are, at best, a 45 degree angle to his torso. He is then transferred to a standard ER “bed” which is not capable of raising the knees or ankles to a comfortable position for a young person not suffering from near-crippling arthritis.

Imagine that you are 86 years old and that doctors have told you that your back/hip/knee/wrist pain is inoperable and that the best they can do is narcotic pain relievers. Imagine that you’ve always thought that you didn’t need pain medication, that your mind could overcome it.

Now you are put in the most uncomfortable position a human can be in for 4+ hours. Imagine that all your blood relatives suffer from painful arthritis. Imagine a doctor questioning you as to whether you are REALLY in pain or not… the same doctor who thinks your BP of 110/60 is fine even though you are in writhing pain.

At least this doctor listened to (or gave into) the ER nurse with 29 years experience who insisted that my father was experiencing REAL pain. She administered 3 demerol shots during the 10 hours my father was in the ER.

My father was admitted for “observation” overnight. I will post later (if I feel like it) about how that turned out.

Though it couldn’t have been said in a nicer way, I think my favorite bartender would like for me to get a life. Or something. Something like he way overestimates the blogging value of my accumulated sticky notes.

The most meaningful one (but one I actually threw away) was a series of question marks. I will reproduce it here for you:

?????

“WTF” would have been somewhat more informative. I think. Perhaps what I really need is to spend more time drinking in bars employing really great and wise bartenders.

As noted here, I seem to express myself better in comments on others’ blogs. I hope that’s a passing phase.

If you’re not reading Behind The Stick every weekend, you’re missing out. 

Amba is blogging hot right now. Just keep scrolling, you’ll find everything from anthropology to zoology. Her comments are very good too. Just skip any made by me.  

Art and Mirrors.

Men and Belly Button Lint.

Sippican Cottage (whose furniture I want) is running a series called Whose House. Check out the essays while you’re there, he’s always interesting.

Having trouble comprehending the magnitude of the bailouts, stimulus, and budget? Assistant Village Idiot puts it into perspective.

How the International Space Station Crew prepares and eats peanut butter and honey.

Lucy in the Sky with Lemons.

Let’s end on this note: Follodor and Farts.

An impending wedding! Congratulations to Althouse and Meade.

An impending birth! Congratulations to Talina and N. Do not worry about not having the perfect nursery setup. My father tells me that his youngest stepsister did fine with a dresser drawer as bassinet. It’s the love that matters.

Interpret the data for yourself, but to me it says that older folks who majored in the humanities know more about the fox and the grapes than anyone else. Now, before you start thinking that older folks who majored in the humanities are smarter than anyone else, consider that the grapes might have been sour.

I won’t even pluck my eyebrows.

Obviously, I have missed more, but this is where my attention span ends.

Since Saturday, I haven’t been online more than an hour total, and most of that was looking at proofs of my daughter’s latest family photo session. Realizing that I cannot afford 32 11 x14 prints is causing some stress!

Saturday, we had a family reunion on my mother’s side for the first time since 1994. My cousins have children and grandchildren I’d never met before. We realized we’d only been getting together for funerals for the last 15 years, and that we needed more. We had so much fun we’re planning another for next year.

All of my mother’s siblings have died. My father is the only one left of that generation in the family. We are fortunate that my oldest aunt started gathering genealogical information about the family when she was a teenager and kept at it until she was no longer able to travel. Her daughter went through one box (there are more) of her mother’s photos and distributed them to the oldest child of each sibling. What a wonderful gift that was!

My sister and I have taken the information my aunt gathered and put it into genealogy software and have continued the research. Everyone enjoyed looking at the wall chart my sister printed.

Little Sister is in the states for another week and a half, so I won’t be online much until after she goes home. I could be, but I have found that I really do not like using a laptop. My wrists are spoiled to my split keyboard and my eyes to my big monitors.

Family-wise, there’s a lot going on that’s not bloggable so I may be a bit distracted. Um, I mean more distracted. Possibly less intelligible too, if that’s possible.

Most of the people I know who drink beer don’t need any excuse other than beer exists. However, at least for the first link, having a beer or two makes some things more palatable. Or not.

“Could it be the worst food product ever?” The answer is in the comments.

What better place on the web to visit while having a beer than Behind The Stick? To make it even better, What are the odds? comments contain a nice list of movies to put on your Netflix list for future Friday nights.

There is not enough beer in the universe for this — The Ontology Of Voltron, not Transformers — to make sense to me.

Tea Party first. Save the beer for the after party!

Do you doubt sometimes whether drinking beer is useful? Do you doubt the aesthetic effects? Here’s proving you have nothing to worry about: The Beer Can House.