A Lovely Weekend

What a lovely weekend it was.

The temperature Saturday officially topped out at less than 100, but the heat index rose well above that. My wife was gone to Iowa for the weekend with the Girl Scouts, camping. (Well, they had air-conditioned cabins, thankfully, but it was still "camping".) She had our daughter, and two granddaughters with her. The two grandsons still left home went with the Boy Scouts to Kansas City to Worlds Of Fun for the day, so once I dropped them off at the collection point at 7:00am, I didn't have to leave the house again until I had to pick them up 15 hours later. So I buried myself in the barely adequate air conditioning, did some laundry, fixed a child's wooden rocker for a friend (a little wood glue can work wonders ;)), watched some movies, etc. Nice and quiet, even if too hot.

Sunday, the fun began. First, no solid food for the next 24+ hours. Clear liquids only. And nothing with red/purple food dyes. Lime Jello was as solid as it got. At 9:30 I had to leave for the nursing home to supervise the Community Service kids. Hungry. And it looks like rain. I check the weather radar. Sure enough, a line of thunderstorms less than 10 miles away. Sorry, Cocoa and Cleo, I'll put you dogs out after I get home at lunchtime. You won't like it out there pretty soon. Sure enough, less than 3 miles down the road, big, fat raindrops start splattering the windshield. By the time I get to the nursing home, there's lightning all around, and the rain is pouring down. The storms continue off and on all day.

By quarter to twelve, I'm done at the nursing home, so I drive up to the 72nd Street Flea Market to pick up the bed rails for a bunkbed we bought for the grandsons a couple weeks earlier. I had put it together, and found three of the four rails were missing. We informed the lady we bought it from, and she had called back to say she had found them. But the Flea Market is only open Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday. I picked up the rails, dropped them at my daughter's and headed home. It had stopped raining for the moment, so the dogs went out back. By now I was starving. Broth was on the list of allowed liquids, so I heated up a can of beef broth and drank it down. By now, it tasted delicious. I went upstairs and killed time waiting for my wife to get home by installing KDE4.3 on my computer. About 3:00pm, I noticed I was getting quite a headache. I went back downstairs and checked the beef broth can. There it was, the 3rd ingredient was salt/sodium. I went back upstairs, relaxed a few minutes, and checked my blood pressure. 156/103. Not high enough to go to the ER, but high enough to give me a good headache. And I couldn't take my medication until Monday.

Finally, about 5:00pm, my wife got home. She's exhausted. Since the thunderstorms are rolling east, she had to fight through them all the way home. Plus, between sick Scouts, arthritic knees, and an uncomfortable bed, she figures she only got about 4 hours of sleep since Friday. During a lull in the rain, we bring in what has to be brought in from the car, and I let her lie down on the bed. Then I tell her it's time I started. She agrees, and reminds me I have to drink the whole gallon in three hours.

GoLitely is a special electrolyte mixture designed to clean your gastro-intestinal system of anything more solid than water. And not leave much of that, either. You drink an 8-oz glass every 10 minutes or so. Chugging is preferable to sipping. And it tastes awful. Like glass after glass of salty water. The instructions say you should notice the effects within an hour of the first glass. They are correct. After that, keep a clear path between you and the bathroom. If there is a second bathroom in the house, so your family can use one while you have complete access to the other, so much the better. GoLitely works by causing a massive influx of water from the rest of your system into your intestinal tract, which then gets flushed out. Repeatedly. "... until the watery stool is clear."

I managed about 3 liters before nausea wouldn't let me swallow any more of the stuff. My "stool was clear", so I decided that was enough. It turns out that most people don't finish a whole gallon. If you have less than a quart left, before you quit, you're doing good.

Monday morning, 7:00 am, my wife takes my to the endoscopy clinic. A pleasant nurse greets us, makes sure I'm the person their records show, that I'm there for a colonoscopy, etc. She has me change into a hospital gown (open to the rear, of course), and gets me situated on a gurney. Then she tries to start an IV, for administering the sedative and any other medication during the procedure. Now, I've never had a problem with giving blood, or having IVs started. Wrap the rubber band around my arm, pump my fist a couple times, and the veins stand right out for easy access. Not this time. After trying and failing, she apologizes, and says she will have the anesthesiologist do it, since he's more experienced. "It's really unfair. First, we dehydrate you, then we stick you in a cold room, and then we expect your veins to have blood in them!"

A little later, I'm in the OR, lying on my side, and they push the sedative into the IV. Next thing I know, it's a couple hours later, and I'm in Recovery. After I'm sufficiently functional, I get dressed and my wife drives me home, where I spend most of the rest of the day in bed.

Diagnosis: slight diverticulosis (common in over-50s -- a high-fiber diet keeps problems at bay), prostate looks normal, and a polyp was snipped out for biopsy. We'll get the results of that in two weeks.

R.I.P. Ellie Mae

This weekend, my old Basset Hound, Ellie Mae, passed away. She was twelve and a half years old. She was ours for over ten years. We had rescued her from going to the pound when her previous owner complained that he received too many "noise" tickets because of her barking.

She fit in well with the family, and got along fine with her new canine buddies. She was no noisier than any other dog in the neighborhood. Her only significant quirk was that she hated having her feet, particularly her toes, touched. This made nail trimming a real adventure.

She loved running in the back yard, complaining about the soccer players in the park beyond our yard when they kicked the ball too close to our fence. She also loved chasing squirrels and rabbits (and the occasional possum) letting them know this was her yard! I remember a couple of times she chased rabbits under our back shed, and managed to burrow so well after them that she got stuck, and I had to get the bottle jack from the van and jack up the side of the shed until she could wriggle free.

A couple of years ago she got into a fight with our lab/spaniel mix dog. They had had spats over the years, as siblings are wont to do, but never anything too serious. This time, though, her back legs and belly were quite torn up. Fortunately, a Basset has very loose skin, so most of the injuries were superficial skin tears, and little damage to the underlying muscles or organs. I helped her inside, to a blanket in the corner of the living room, cleaned her up, and nursed her back to health. Twice a day I carried her up the steps to the front door, so she could go out and relieve herself. Then back down to the living room. As soon as she could walk the stairs by herself, I started taking her for walks, to help her regain strength in her legs. It was during this time that she seriously attached herself to me.

As she was recovering, near Christmas, 2006, her other best buddy, another basset named Gypsy, died suddenly. That night, despite below-zero temperatures, she insisted on running instead of walking, and went over half a mile before I could convince her to slow down. I think it was a release of energy she had pent up, grieving for her friend. After that, our walks returned to walks, with the occasional jog-trot thrown in.

Fully-recovered from her mauling, she was spending most of her time with Coco, the lab, and Cleo, our son's new basset puppy.

Six months later, it happened again.

We have never figured out what triggered the fights. I do know that as she got older, Ellie never appreciated puppy exuberance. Up to the end, she would growl at Cleo whenever she bounced up to her. And Coco, despite being of an age with Ellie, has never outgrown her puppy-like exuberance. She doesn't know how to not bounce. I believe that Coco just wanted to play with Ellie like she played with Cleo: bouncing and rough-housing, and Ellie just wasn't having it.

Whatever the reason, it was back to nursemaid for me. This time it was over three weeks before she was back sleeping in her kennel. My wife and I also decided that she wasn't going to be allowed out with the other two dogs, unsupervised. My new morning routine was now to let Coco and Cleo out into the back yard, and then either hook Ellie up in the front yard, or take her for a walk, letting her back in when I left for work. In the evenings, when my wife and I sometimes sit on the patio in the swing, she would jump up between us, and insist on me giving her a belly rub.

Last Monday, I noticed she wasn't eating her regular dry food. She was drinking, though, and readily consumed the soft treats I gave her. Tuesday was more of the same, but now she was listless, and hardly seemed to have the energy to climb the steps to the front door. Wednesday and Thursday she rallied somewhat. Her eyes regained some sparkle, and she would even sit up when she heard my wife come downstairs. We tried plying her with soft dog food, but she never ate much of it. Water and treats were still good, though. Friday, she seemed to relapse, and when I came to put her to bed for the night, she couldn't get her back legs to support her. So I carried her to her kennel and helped her go in and lie down. I figured if she wasn't any better in the morning, I'd take her to the vet, knowing he'd probably just put her to sleep.

Saturday morning, I woke to hear her crying and barking. When I got down to her kennel, she was gone.

35 Years

Memorial Day weekend my wife and I will celebrate 35 years of marriage. We have been together for 2/3rds of our lives. And she is still my Sweetheart; the only woman I ever want to be with.

How does one celebrate spending so much time together? In our case, Friday night we will spend with a few thousand baseball fans, watching an Omaha Royals baseball game with our grandchildren. After the game, we will head out to the car, grab our tent and sleeping bags, and head for the outfield to join several hundred others in the annual Girl/Boy Scout campout in Rosenblatt Stadium.

Saturday morning, we have just enough time to pack and load the van, before we have to head down to Platte River State Park, where the oldest grandson will be joining some other Scouts from his troop for a 10-mile hike, as part of their preparation for going to Philmont later this summer.

We hope to round out the weekend by going to see Night at the Museum II, without any grandkids in tow. Then we can use Monday to recuperate, so we can make it through the rest of the week.

I Think I Have A.A.A.D.

Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is how it manifests:

I decide to water my garden.
As I turn on the hose in the driveway,
I look over at my car and decide it needs washing.

As I start toward the garage,
I notice mail on the porch table that
I brought up from the mail box earlier.

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys on the table,
Put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table,
And notice that the can is full.

So, I decide to put the bills back
On the table and take out the garbage first.

But then I think,
Since I'm going to be near the mailbox
When I take out the garbage anyway,
I may as well pay the bills first.
I take my check book off the table,
And see that there is only one check left.

My extra checks are in my desk in the study,
So I go inside the house to my desk where
I find the can of Coke I'd been drinking.

I'm going to look for my checks,
But first I need to push the Coke aside
So that I don't accidentally knock it over.

The Coke is getting warm,
And I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke,
A vase of flowers on the counter
Catches my eye-- they need water.

I put the Coke on the counter and
Discover my reading glasses that
I've been searching for all morning.

I decide I better put them back on my desk,
But first I'm going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter,
Fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote.
Someone left it on the kitchen table.
I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV,
I'll be looking for the remote,
But I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table,
So I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs,
But first I'll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers,
But quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

So, I set the remote back on the table,
Get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then, I head down the hall trying to
Remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day:
The car isn't washed
The bills aren't paid
There is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter
The flowers don't have enough water,
There is still only 1 check in my check book,
I can't find the remote,
I can't find my glasses,
And I don't remember what I did with the car keys.
Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today,
I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all day, And I'm really tired.

I realize this is a serious problem,
And I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail....

Don't laugh -- if this isn't you yet, your day is coming!!

PS: I just realized somebody left the hose running in the driveway....

(Found on the internet)

A little humor

My middle grandson (the one with ADHD and Asperger's) was musing the other day, as is his wont, and he popped up with, "What if you had a threaded rod stuck in your head?"


His older brother seized the moment, and without hesitation declared:









"You'd be screwed!"

Spring

I guess it's officially Spring: We had our first tornadoes yesterday, and by this weekend we'll be seeing snow....

Cancer

Well, the scary part is over.

Back last fall, my wife had a routine medical checkup. It included having a mammogram taken. When the radiologist reviewed the films, he saw a shadow he didn't like. He discussed it with my wife and her doctor, and they all agreed that a biopsy should be performed. So in early December, she spent a morning in the surgery clinic while they stuck some needles in through the side of her breast, and snipped out bits of tissue.

Just before Christmas, we got the initial word: not cancerous. So after the holidays, they went over the results. The radiologist wasn't happy. The mass was tough, fibrous. The sample they had gotten was much smaller than he would have liked. In his experience, over 80% of masses like that proved to be cancerous. He recommended doing another, surgical, biopsy, to get a larger sample. The doctor left it up to my wife. They could go back in, or, since the test came back clean, they could wait, and watch it to see if it changed.

In my wife's opinion, it was obviously something that shouldn't be there. If they went back in, was there any reason not to remove it completely? Both her doctor and the radiologist agreed that it would be a logical thing to do.

On February 9, she spent another morning in surgery. They removed a fibroid mass with a volume of eight cubic centimeters (about the size of a golf ball). It was rather deep, right against the chest wall, so it had been very difficult to feel. This time she had a couple of incisions, about an inch or so long each, again along the outside of her breast. More painful, and much more bleeding/bruising, that the needle biopsy.

This morning, she had her initial post-op appointment. The verdict: no cancer.

Amazing

It's awesome what getting a blog post picked up by a feed can do for your stats. On my computer blog, I usually get 10 - 12 hits per day. Sometimes, though, a post gets picked up by a feed service, and the numbers skyrocket.

Case in point, my post PCLinuxOS2009: My Experience, got picked up by tuxmachines. My hit count for the day is now 434. A huge spike! :D

Inauguration Day

Well, it's inauguration day. The day that "the Magic Negro"¹ gets sworn in as our President.

I see all this hoopla and hubub going on, the "religious" ecstasy of some (many) of his supporters. And I just don't get it. I see an almost desperate attempt to recreate the feeling of "Camelot", back in the early 60s.

As far as I can tell, it's the loony left "wingnuts", the ones who feel guilt and self-loathing for what 'the White man' has accomplished, attributing everything to 'people of color', and that white people stole it all. Guilt for what white people did to black people over a hundred years ago. Like electing a "Black Man" to the Presidency will wash all their guilt away.

And it's not like he's the first Black president! Heck, even Clinton wasn't the first!² (Note: I haven't verified the absolute accuracy of the following data.) Many historians say he is actually the sixth Black President. They cite Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Harding, and Coolidge as the others. The only difference is, none of them publicly acknowledged their ancestery³, but Obama does. Besides, he's the only one who looks black, even though, by blood, he is less black than some of the others.

I guess I can't get excited by him. He is still an unknown quantity. All I really know about him is that his politics are way too far Left, for my liking. I can't find anything he has actually said or done that gives me any warm feelings, whatsoever. As far as I can tell, he was elected to effect 'change'. My question has always been, change to what? All I can see is his socialist leanings.

On the other hand, he can't be worse than Carter. Probably not even worse than Clinton. There's a good chance he will be better than Dubya. I can't say I actually fear for my country, at this time.

But I will be watching....



¹Anyone who wants to think I'm a bigot for using this phrase is free to do so. They should just be aware that its meaning is not what they think it is. It refers to a Black man who, by electing him as the 'Messiah', will wash their sins away, and purge them of their guilt feelings. Just by being in power, he will usher in a new, Socialist order, that will cause all us good, American capitalists to put aside our quest to better ourselves, and instead, reduce our standard of living so that others, who don't want to work, can live the way we would like to.

²In 2001, Clinton was honored as the nation's "first black president" at the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Annual Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C.

³Coolige did acknowledge that his mother had "mixed ancestry".

Welcome to Vietnam!

This is a War Story, told to me by Terry Curry, one of my co-workers, who was an Air Traffic Controller in Vietnam in 1968.

---

You could always tell the new pilots to 'Nam. For instance, I was stationed in Danang, working one day, and this Braniff 707 comes on, and asks me to vector him in on a straight, 15-mile long path from due north. I told him this was not advisable (since it took him over North Vietnam), and that the recommended path was to come in from the east, and pop down hard and fast. He refused this choice, telling me he had a bunch of VIPs aboard, and he didn't want to jostle them that much.

"Now that you've announced you're a high-value target, I strongly recommend you let me vector you to a new route."

He still refused, and I didn't have a lot of time to argue. We were pretty busy. So I gave him the route he wanted.

No sooner had he settled into his route, when I got a call from a flight of Navy A4s coming back from the North, who had battle damage and needed to land, ASAP. Now, the A4 lands at 190 mph, while the 707 does 140. I thought a moment, and then had these guys come in over the top of the 707, and drop down in front of him to the field.

I'm guessing he got some jet-wash turbulence, because sure enough, a moment later the 707 was back on the horn. "What the hell was that? You didn't give those guys enough separation!"

"Were you touched?"

"I'm going to write you up! That was insufficient separation! You can't do that!"

"I say again: were you touched?"

"What do you mean, was I touched?"

"I mean, did any part of any of their aircraft physically contact any part of your aircraft?"

"No, but ..."

"In a combat zone, that's called separation. Welcome to Vietnam!"

For the next several minutes, all you could hear was the Navy pilots keying their mikes, laughing and hollering.

A little bit later, I got a phone call. "Curry, the commander wants to see you at end of shift. And somebody will be by shortly to collect the tapes."

Somebody picked up the tapes of that afternoon's activities, and when I got off duty, I went over to the squadron. The First Sergeant waved me on into the Commanders office. He was sitting there, with a piece of paper in each hand. One was the Braniff pilot's report on my 'poor performance', the other was a 'Mission Saved' letter from the Navy. He looked up at me as I entered.

"Only you, Curry, could pull off something like this on one mission. Now get outta here."

I turned to leave.

"Oh, and Curry, that 'Welcome to Vietnam' was a bit over the top."

A night with WinWeb Security

My travails of cleaning up a trojan ...

http://kzimm.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/a-night-with-winweb-security/

Linux - Stop holding our kids back

I hope most of you are familiar with "helios", and all he's done for Linux.

This post, dated yesterday, is almost scary: Blog of helios.

To think that a teacher, who is responsible for helping children learn and grow, can be so out-of-touch with reality. It saddens me.

Like one of the follow-on posts says, "I have rarely seen a worse, more damaging ignoramus...."

Bits and pieces....

Just thought I'd do a quick update here. I seem to spend more blogging time at my other blog, lately.

Mandriva is letting Adam Williamson go at the end of the year. That got me to post Mandriva ... :sigh:.

A report on a virus attack on military bases in Afghanistan prompted this.

And, finally, a bit about the Status of PCLinuxOS 2008/2009.

I guess, other than those bits, I've had nothing to say, lately.

Lovely weather we're having....

Halloween weekend we had record highs. Simply beautiful weather. Twenty degrees above average for this time of year. Halloween night I built a fire in our fire pit out front, and sat near it in a lawn chair while serving the kids that came by. No jacket necessary, even after dark. One week later (last weekend) we were twenty degrees below average. This week we have had rain, sun, wind, cold, mild. Today we should be about average for temperature(mid-fifties). Tomorrow we lose ten degrees, and probably get wet flurries of snow....

This weekend the grandsons are having a Scout campout. I'm glad they have zero-degree sleeping bags. And new coats, hats, and gloves.

Obama Wins!

And it's a sad day for America.

Still, I am very cautiously optimistic. As MaAb said after he killed his rival to become leader of his tribe, "Perhaps, to be high Ti-Er is to see things differently." (ST-TOS, "Friday's Child")

Game Companies are Becoming ‘Bazaar’

At the Civilization Fanatics Center, there is discussion going on about the latest Civ game issued: Civilization4: Colonization. There is much ranting and raving occurring, based on the perception of some customers that the game is ‘broken’.

I wrote most of this in response to some who argued that they didn't want to “pay to be a beta tester”.


More at Ramblings of a Professional Computer Geek.

"My God — It's Full Of Stars!"

Last weekend I helped drive a troop of Girl Scouts to a campout over in Iowa. The girls ranged in age from about six to fifteen. We got to the campsite after dark, about 9:00 PM.

While the leaders met with the camp director, to find out where we would be, I stayed back by the cars, to help keep an eye on the girls. One of the older girls got out of her car to stretch her legs. As she stretched, she looked up above the trees.

"Oh. My. God! Look at all the stars!"

She had grown up in the city, and had never seen the night sky in all its glory.

Polar Bears and Penguins: Just what is up with PCLinuxOS anyway?

Big Bear, another Omaha resident, has hit one out of the park.

Polar Bears and Penguins: Just what is up with PCLinuxOS anyway?

New Microsoft Ads ...

It's probably already been said, but I have to say it:

In a "Life Without Walls", who needs Windows?

Free? Or Freedom?

Linux (or Gnu/Linux, as RMS would have me say) is Free Software. That is to say, the Gnu tools, the Linux Kernel, and most of the rest of the software, is licensed under the GPL (the Gnu General Public License, sometimes called a copyleft), which is considered a “Free” license. (Technically, a given copy of the Linux kernel may not be entirely Free, as it may contain some proprietary binary “blobs” to aid in wireless network connectivity and certain video card drivers.) Indeed, several totally “Free” distros exist,and several popular distros also provide Free versions.

But what is Free Software?
Read More...