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Grex > Health > #89: Sindi Keesan's Lymphoma Journal Part 3 |  |
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| 25 new of 475 responses total. |
keesan
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response 275 of 475:
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Feb 20 20:40 UTC 2004 |
What is packet writing? This DVD drive came in the same computer with a CD
RW drive so it probably does not write CDs.
I phoned the neighbor to go for a walk and she pointed out that it had started
to rain, so we had an interesting conversation about her medications. They
have reduced one from 3 to 1 time a week and she no longer has to go to the
bathroom every hour, which was a real pain at night. She walks up and down
the basements stairs in bad weather to get exercise, part of her strategy for
never ending up in a nursing home again. I ought to do the same. She is 85.
Her problem is she cannot crouch, or get up if she falls.
I am still getting congratulatory emails from people I notified of my test
results, and today from someone who I hope is not offended that I forgot to
write. The greeting was from him and a mutual friend with whom I took the
train from Prague to Italy, and their mamas, who I am glad to hear are well
enough to send greetings. Another from my uncle who is in Jamaica. If we
can ever get a house finished I should go visit everyone while we are all
able. My friend from high school has not yet told me whether it is okay to
let her parents (one is in a nursing home) know that I am better, because we
never told them I was sick. This sort of thing does not seem to get into
etiquette books - who to let know you are sick, whether they will be offended
if you don't let them know, etc. (Someone said he was offended - I did not
want to worry him.)
I have only told 5 translation agencies as I don't mind being on vacation a
bit longer, at least until I finish taxes. This year I get to deduct medical
expenses. 19 trips to the hospital through December. $2 parking. I just
cancelled the car insurance as I hope to be biking again by May.
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twenex
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response 276 of 475:
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Feb 20 20:45 UTC 2004 |
One of thelessons life can teach you is htat somehow, somewhere, you are
going to offend someone. And it is not ok, but extremely hard to avoid if you
don't want to live your life alone in a box.
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drew
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response 277 of 475:
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Feb 20 21:12 UTC 2004 |
Fedora takes up a bit over 5G, according to du.
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keesan
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response 278 of 475:
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Feb 21 02:35 UTC 2004 |
I think the friend who said he was offended was actually joking. He calls
a couple of times a year to chat in Serbian. He and his wife moved here from
Bosnia after she was a nurse during the war. My brother has not written back
because he did not get my mail - I suspect his mailbox is full. Another
translator sent me instructions to stay warm and rested and eat properly, and
not to get stressed by too many translation deadlines. This seems to have
worked for her as she is still in remission. A friend who had bypass surgery
wrote back telling me he needed a translation of my PET scan results, and that
he had been feeling well enough to go on a trip to New Zealand. My friend
staying with her daughter in Florida wrote that her boyfriend (in his
seventies?) in Vermont is upset at her for exchanging e-mails with another
man. She is in her 80s and says they are just penpals. Good thing he is not
jealous of her writing me every week.
Why does Fedora take up 5G? Can you install a minimal version of it instead?
Tonight we exercised me by walking around in the rain. Jim returned the sink
cartridge and we blew the money on some lo mein and tofu and vegetables and
got soaked walking back. He has become enamored of some line voltage
thermostats now. It is always dangerous to go to the hardware store. But
rainy Fridays are a good time to get attention if you want to take apart one
thermostat to see what the low temperature setting is.
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twenex
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response 279 of 475:
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Feb 21 02:37 UTC 2004 |
Arch Linux is a nice distro. it is very minal and has nice package management.
Or Debian, which comes on eight cds (binaries only) or 14 with source, but
which takes up only 100-odd megs if you don't install anythign but the base
stuff.
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drew
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response 280 of 475:
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Feb 21 04:20 UTC 2004 |
Re #278:
Part of the reason is that there are a lot of applications included. Yes,
you can do a minimum installation, which should fit in about 512M. It would
not include X, nor tools to recompile the kernal.
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twenex
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response 281 of 475:
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Feb 21 04:23 UTC 2004 |
Minal=minimal.
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gull
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response 282 of 475:
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Feb 21 04:39 UTC 2004 |
Re resp:275: Normally, writing a CD-RW or DVD-RW is an all-at-once
proposition. You burn all the files you want on the disc in one go, and
if you want to change the contents you have to erase it and start over.
(Well, technically you can add more files by starting a new session,
but there's a lot of wasted space when you do that.)
"Packet writing" is a different writing method that most drives support,
where they can write to or erase small chunks of the disc. This lets
you treat it sort of as if it were a giant floppy disk, instead of
having to gather everything up ahead of time and copy it all at once.
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keesan
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response 283 of 475:
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Feb 21 15:33 UTC 2004 |
Like writing one file at a time instead of an entire image?
I can't imagine what takes up 512M without X, unless the libraries used for
compiling have become really immense. Mine take up about 120M. With X and
a lot of useful applications (most of them non-X) I have about 400M, including
duplicates of some programs (used when making slackware packages), a lot of
downloaded packages plus their installed versions, various files used to test
programs. The 'basic hard drive version' with X was about 12M, Opera another
12M or so installed. Perhaps Fedora programs are written in C++?
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ryan
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response 284 of 475:
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Feb 21 17:47 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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keesan
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response 285 of 475:
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Feb 21 22:36 UTC 2004 |
My swap memory (32M disk space) is never used as I have lots of real RAM -
64M - and don't run X programs very often and if so, only one at a time.
We just got back from the house tour in Ypsi and the winery tour in Tecumseh,
and I had a chance to talk with my nurse's mother, who has been treated three
times for cancer. Two weeks ago she finally got off of parenteral nutrition
(through a port, to help gain weight) and just after that learned that she
has a recurrence and can't have radiation again. Feb 12 a new monoclonal
antibody was approved for her type of cancer.
We stopped to put some games on the computer we made for her daughter and the
monitor made a funny smell and is now displaying one thin vertical line. I
asked someone to return a possibly unused monitor, and if they are using it,
does anyone reading this have a 14" monitor they don't want, color VGA, 800
res would be nice. We gave away our last three spares in the last year.
We lent her our dim test monitor for a while.
Also does anyone have Windows Entertainment Pack (Win3.1) on a floppy disk
so we don't have to look at all our old hard drives and try to get it off of
one for a friend who wants hearts and solitaire? I think you can use it with
Win98.
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keesan
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response 286 of 475:
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Feb 23 17:31 UTC 2004 |
Yesterday was the longest I had gone without chemotherapy since August, and
I noticed that my voice was quite a bit stronger. It might help that I seem
to be getting over my most recent persistent cold (as evidenced by starting
to sneeze a bit). My hands and feet are also less numb. My sit bones and
also the outer corners of my palms where I sometimes lean them on a table
while typing are still pretty sore. Hot flashes every 45 minutes - possibly
not quite as hot but hard to tell.
This is all really minor stuff. The friend's mother was telling us how she
had an infected port, then an infected PIC line, and all sorts of other
complications and surgeries, and she had to take 12 kinds of medicine every
day (mostly vitamins because part of her digestive system is gone), and she
could not drink with meals because it would wash out the food, but had to
drink lots of fluid with her pills. I suggested mashing them all in
applesauce. The pills are supposed to be taken with food (some of them) or
not near mealtimes. Pretty complicated. Two weeks after getting off of TPM
(total parenteral nutrition - which is food injected into you) she found out
she had a recurrence. I tried my best to cheer her up by explaining a bit
about chemotherapy, and her daughter then mentioned that they had finally come
up with a monoclonal antibody for that sort of cancer a week ago. There is
now another antibody for a different protein marker on lymphoma cells, which
is still being tested on experimental animals. I hope I don't need it, but
it is nice to know there is a backup other than the route where they give you
chemicals that destroy your bone marrow and then try to restore it.
We went for nearly a 2 hour walk yesterday. I am enjoying having sore
muscles. This time we crossed Liberty and looked at all the additions to
houses - some were wider, some had a second story added, or half a second
story on just one side, or some odd combination that looked about to take
flight. Some had windows upstairs twice as large as the ones downstairs.
One had been added onto on both sides, then had two perpendicular gabled
sections added in front, one of which was twice the height of the rest of the
house (20' living room). We stopped at one open house and were rather
surprised at the asking price considering the previous owner (recently
deceased) had done the addition with a husband (who left afterwards). There
were not a lot of straight lines, none of the trim matched, an exterior window
had been made into a pass-through half the size without removing the original
trim on the kitchen wall (they filled in two sides of the window opening with
oak floor boards, left the rest as is). One window had sash cords. The
fiberglass batts were dangling down from the attic rafters. Jim noticed a
wet basement. $360,000 asking price.
Today I have officially come out of retirement and have a translation to do.
Jim is talking about working on the heating system.
I phoned my brother to tell him his email was not working. He had received
my email but saw no reason to answer it. I got a very nice email from the
wife of a Czech friend (in good English) explaining that they went to look
at my website photos and noticed that I had posted something about being sick,
so they wrote to find out how I was. Got to update that website!
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keesan
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response 287 of 475:
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Feb 25 21:07 UTC 2004 |
Still getting congratulatory emails from friends, one of whom is trying to
get his insurance company to pay the full $608 for his ambulance. They are
claiming the customary fee is $291. He sent them a newspaper clipping listing
another large ambulance company as charging $605, and asked if they are
averaging in these two companies with other companies charging less than zero.
My insurance company has been very good about everything, except they would
not pay for my bed pad until after I got bedsores without it, which I decided
not to do.
I phoned a non-computer friend with my good news and we ended up also talking
about her skin cancer of a few years ago, which was removed under local
anesthesia. She decided not to go back for annual checkups because they were
not nice to her, which she thinks is because she has Medicaid.
I did two translations this week. I could not figure out the name on the
birth certificate (handwritten) or the ending of the place name, and when I
looked up the latter with alltheweb search engine, my second hit listed 15
families of the same name in that place that intermarried. Life is not the
same with the net for help. I would not go back to precomputerized
translation either - fedexing documents back and forth (pre-fax days),
whiteout and paste-on strips to type over, backspacing 1/2 spaces. I started
with a pad of paper, progressed to a manual $5 typewriter, then a $150 used
electric typewriter with interchangeable keys (for [ and Greek).
Jim is doing a CAD drawing of his walls in preparation for wiring in his
baseboard heaters (which cannot be under an outlet or in front of a vent).
I used the net to look up info on thermostats, which turn out to be cheapest
by far when ordered locally - $20 instead of $26 plus $5 shipping.
We finished a computer for a friend and convinced her that it is okay to use
her 'new' 24-pin printer with it, it takes the same paper with holes in it
as the 9-pin star that she likes. She read about this in the manual. I
tested it out by playing freecell until I started winning. Also found two
DOS hearts games (about 100K each) for her. The two Win9x games were 2-3M
and I think they have action figures and probably sound included.
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gull
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response 288 of 475:
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Feb 25 21:51 UTC 2004 |
Don't skimp on thermostats. Cheap thermostats allow wide temperature
swings, which are highly annoying and waste energy.
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keesan
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response 289 of 475:
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Feb 26 00:59 UTC 2004 |
We ordered one with a positive off (double pole, 4 wire) and a heat
anticipator. The heaters have thermostats on them, but I notice that in
colder weather you need to turn them up in order for the other end of the
room to also get heat, so a wall thermostat will keep things more stable.
We got one with a 45-75 degree range. Jim had one housemate once who turned
his thermostat all the way up and left it that way all the time, so we don't
want thermostats that go to 80. 45 lets you heat unused rooms without having
to turn off the heater.
I noticed that the Opera ad banners tried to sell me Honeywell and
White-Rodgers thermostats when I looked at Qmark brand, and when I took at
look at Honeywell (none were for baseboard heaters, just furnaces) the ad
banner tried to sell me yet another brand.
JIm is trying to plan his heating so that incoming ventilation air helps to
move the heat around the room, meaning the heaters should be above or next
to the intake vents and the thermostats near the outflow vents. We have a
week to figure things out before the first thermostat arrives. He has a
choice of fan-forced, radiant, glass radiant, cover, embedded wire, and a few
other things for the bathroom. We have decided against ceiling heat in most
rooms, but after a shower it might be nice on wet hair. Floor heat is not
really suitable since he already has floors. He thinks heated walls would
be nice but he has walls already too.
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rcurl
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response 290 of 475:
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Feb 26 02:13 UTC 2004 |
You might consider a programmable thermostat (if you haven't already). They
cost a little more but they save energy by automatic turndown at night.
I didn't think it mattered what kind of heat you have. All they are are
switches that go on and off - though they do have to be compatible with
the voltage on the line.
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keesan
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response 291 of 475:
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Feb 26 03:16 UTC 2004 |
Jim does not want to buy 7 programmable thermostats for his house, and he also
prefers to leave the temperautre at around 57 all the time rather than turn
it down at night and have condensation on the windows. If someone wants a
warmer room they can turn up their own heat. Assuming he can find another
compatible housemate.
Today wewent for another walk and looked at the baby rats at the local pet
store. Non-baby rats come in small, medium and larger, for $4, $5 and $6.
You would think the younger ones would cost more since they will live longer.
The smallest babies are pink and hairless and look more like amphibians.
They had pet food for sensitive skin and for sensitive stomachs, and imitation
bones made out of corn starch withfood coloring, or potato starch, or
watermelon or peach pulp (with some binder). A doggie car seat belt.
Allsorts of toys that cost more than the $3 hamsters. Go blue sweaters for
your dog or cat. Cockatiels were $20 off.\
Excuse the sticky space bar on this computer. I was tring to get it to dial
with a newer kernel and older library and pppd - no luck.
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rcurl
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response 292 of 475:
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Feb 26 05:52 UTC 2004 |
We have one programmable thermostat for our 11 room house (including
baths) - works just fine. What is intended to be accomplished with 7
separate thermostats? I would think some could at least by combined into a
common unit.
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rational
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response 293 of 475:
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Feb 26 05:56 UTC 2004 |
11 rooms?! You're rich.
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anderyn
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response 294 of 475:
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Feb 26 13:55 UTC 2004 |
Baby rats are more food for snakes, etc.
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gull
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response 295 of 475:
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Feb 26 17:09 UTC 2004 |
I don't turn down the thermostat in my apartment unless I'm going to be
gone for a couple of days or more. The markings on it are so vague and
inaccurate that it takes an hour or two of fiddling to get it back in
the right spot again, so it's just not worth messing with it. It's a
very cheap Honeywell unit. The classic round Honeywell thermostats seem
to be better.
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keesan
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response 296 of 475:
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Feb 26 17:16 UTC 2004 |
There will be one thermostat per room, and one baseboard heater per
thermostat. What is the point of having the heat in one room controlled by
the thermostat in another room?
One electronic thermostat could be set to turn the heat down 5-15 deg using a
photocell, presumably when the light was off and the sun was down and you did
not live near a streetlight, but there was no way to turn it down below 59
in the daytime.
At Kroger's we stopped to get me more juice (grapefruit, with nothing much
added to it) and looked at the eggs section. 97 cents for 18 large eggs and
we wondered why anyone would pay $1.55 for Grade B Medium eggs but bought a
dozen anyway and were automatically charged 69 cents. They were brown and
looked to me like X-Large - maybe anything nonstandard goes into the 'Grade
B' cartons, of any size. Does Grade B mean they are older?
You could also get 'cage free' eggs, or low cholesterol eggs, or 'vegetarian
fed' eggs which were kosher and high in vitamin E. Are there non kosher eggs?
What are chickens eating nowadays, pigs? If so, does this make them
nonkosher?
I did not see any green eggs. Someone at market was selling green eggs
claimed to be low cholesterol.
Rice is tasting better, tomato sauce still quite sour, same for apple sauce.
I cooked yesterday - some sort of small Indian bean (mung?) with onions,
garlic, carrots, cinnamon, paprica, sliced wood ear, and fermented black
beans, and some tomato paste. It tasted odd.
Jim just came in to measure the walls to see if his space heaters will fit.
We have 4, 6 and 8' baseboard hydronic heaters which can be rewired for
permanent use, and an assortment of possible bathroom heaters. The hydronic
heaters sold new for wire-in use can cost up to $200. Cheaper new ones start
at around $30 and clank.
I have a big translation arriving tomorrow. The agency is expected about one
box of documents and will send me as much as I can keep up with. End of my
vacation.
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keesan
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response 297 of 475:
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Feb 26 17:18 UTC 2004 |
We are buying only thermostats with temperature markings. One marked L M H
was $4 cheaper but would need calibration.
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klg
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response 298 of 475:
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Feb 26 17:52 UTC 2004 |
Per the USDA
Grades
A grade shield on the packaging indicates the eggs have been graded
under federal supervision, as most have. Some states do their own
grading; they can display a grade but not the USDA grade shield. In
order of decreasing quality, grades are AA, A, and B. All ungraded eggs
sold to consumers must meet B standards. Restricted eggs do not meet
B standards; their disposition is regulated to prevent them from
reaching consumers, although two types of restricted eggs, checks (the
shell is cracked but the membrane beneath is not broken), and dirties,
may be sold to factories equipped to process them properly.
All graded eggs must be clean and have sound, whole shells. Grade B may
show some staining, provided it covers less than 25% of the shell, and
the shell may be misshapen or have thin spots, ridges, and other
textural defects. There are no color requirements.
The main difference between the grades is internal, and mostly reflects
the freshness of the egg. The air cell in a grade AA egg must not be
more than 1/8 inch deep; in a grade B egg it is over 3/16 inch deep.
The egg white should be thick and clear; the yolk firm and well-defined.
Candling placing a very strong light behind the egg can reveal more
about the egg than one might think. For example, if the egg white is
thin, twirling the egg will make the yolk move nearer to the shell than
it would if the egg white were thicker.
Quality is more obvious once the egg is broken. The yolk of a grade AA
egg is tall; the white doesn't spread out much, and there is more thick
white than thin white. The yolk of a grade B egg is flattened, it has
more thin white than thick white and will spread out to cover a larger
area.
Per the Union of Orthodox Rabbis:
VI. EGGS
The eggs (or other by-products) of non-kosher birds or fish are not
kosher. Caviar, therefore, must come from a kosher fish and this
requires reliable supervision. Commercial liquid eggs also require
supervision. Eggs of kosher fowl, which contain a bloodspot, must be
discarded, and therefore eggs should be checked before use.
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rcurl
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response 299 of 475:
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Feb 26 18:35 UTC 2004 |
Re #293: you can get 11 rooms in any house: just add more walls.
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