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Grex > Health > #89: Sindi Keesan's Lymphoma Journal Part 3 |  |
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twenex
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response 300 of 475:
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Feb 26 18:36 UTC 2004 |
/snicker.
Including the hall and vestibule, there are 12 rooms in mine.
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keesan
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response 301 of 475:
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Feb 26 23:14 UTC 2004 |
Do closets that you can walk into count as rooms? Enclosed porches? Hallways
with or without stairs?
Klg, thanks for the egg information. I still think they used the 'grade B'
category to hold all the brown eggs that were not 'large'. I looked at the
dozen eggs and they appeared to be mostly extra large and some mediums. The
store sells brown eggs only in large size. None of them looked misshapen or
stained. I fried one and it had the highest yoke and least runny white I
have ever seen in any egg, meaning it was quite fresh.
So a fertilized egg is nonkosher?
Today I walked to my apartment for the first time since July. I cleaned up
a bit and organized. Jim had for some reason put the frying pan in the
basement and the kitchen chair on the porch when our Chinese friend was
staying there. I formatted a few 5 1/4" floppy disks and threw out the high
density ones to make a lot of space. Anyone want them before Tuesday?
I found the tax info I needed to finish taxes this weekend. Jim found a
Macintosh computer and mouse and keyboard, and the neighbor gave him a Mac
monitor for a friend who likes Macs. He also gave him a 640 monitor for a
grexer that we gave a monitor to, which died. We walked halfway back with
Jim carrying two monitors (one to dump, one for the friend) and then stopped
at my nurse's house and she had bought a 17" used model so then Jim carried
her monitor back here (the one we had lent her). Lots of exercise today.
I carried the floppy disks and tax info and a couple of books on Win95 and
Internet for Dummies for the friend we made a computer for to do internet.
What we really went for was my Slovene dictionary but I forgot that.
Jim also found a 26" aluminum bike wheel which he carried with the monitor.
I still need a replacement TTL monitor but he could not carry any more today
so will get one on his bike Tuesday. A big day! I got exhausted carrying
a bag weighing no more than 10 pounds. Got to do this more often.
We stopped and talked to the nurse's mother (while Jim was installing Windows
Entertainment Pack for the nurse), who used to grow and can a lot of
vegetables and fruits from her own garden. She still has the energy to cook
but not much else right now. I am thinking about whehter to plant a garden
this spring (after Jim digs it). Another sign of spring - two squirrels
chasing each other in circles.
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keesan
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response 302 of 475:
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Feb 28 01:47 UTC 2004 |
Good thing that the agency that was going to send me the Slovene translation
forgot to even call or email me about it and I did not need the dictionary.
They were going to call back about it a few weeks ago and also forgot. There
is a shortage of Slovene to English pharmaceutical translators in the US, when
you really need them.
Today was warm and sunny again so we went for a walk to the and the hardware
store, where Jim determined he could put three 220V space heaters on one 15
amp 220 circuit. He is inventorying the collection to choose the right ones.
On the way back the owner of the 1200 square foot house to which a 2900 square
foot addition with full basement and double garage is being built came out
and let us look at the cement-fiber shingle siding, which Jim would like on
his own house (after he finishes the wiring and ventilation and insulation
and roofing and garage door). She let us carry back some 4' long wide boards
from the dumpster, where Jim also found 4 somewhat stale and sickeningly sweet
looking donuts.
I felt strong enough to carry back a 6' 2x4, one block. Tomorrow we can walk
them over to my apartment for exercise.
Assuming the big job will actually arrive Monday (when I scheduled lunch with
a friend who had wanted it to be Friday but I had a job coming), I need to
finish taxes this weekend. I added up $111 worth of drugs (the rest was
covered by insurance) and over $10,500 of medical expenses including
deductible, insurance, dentist, bed pad, parking 19 times at the hospital.
If I put all my earnings (after expenses) into a ROTH IRA, I can deduct half
of what I put in the IRA from my federal income taxes (to equal nothing) and
pay only Social Security tax (which I may never get back).
The hospital refunded $38 to the insurance company for overbilling me for 3
antinausea pills when they only gave me 2. Probably 1 would have worked.
They billed me about 20 cents less for 1 instead of 2 benadryls.
Jim must have seen the Mikado too many times. He figures that the main part
of getting his wiring and ventilation done is drawing up the plans, and it
will then be as good as done. It does seem to be taking forever to choose
the wattage and length of heater, and locations which will not conflict with
furniture or electric outlets or ventilation (left over from the furnace era
25 years ago). He might wire in two boxes in each room so he can move the
heater if someone wants to put furniture there. Or have two heaters in each
room and turn one off if it is blocked. He wanted to put the ventilation in
the floor but I pointed out that things fall in it that way, such as dust.
I had been hoping in a few weeks to get back to working on my house, now that
he had 6 months of free time to work on his while it was cold. I offered to
buy him new siding for his house when (?) mine was done. Now he wants new
roofing that is photovoltaic. I pointed out that finishing the wiring would
save him about $100/year in insurance costs, which is more than solar power
is likely to do even if did not cost anything to install. Insurance companies
don't like the idea of fuse boxes, or 60 amp service.
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keesan
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response 303 of 475:
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Feb 28 05:01 UTC 2004 |
I made supper - frozen green soybeans, sliced wood ear, frozen mustard greens
with red stems, dried lily flowers, garlic, ginger, toasted bought tacos.
This tasted less odd than yesterday's supper, maybe because I left out the
cinnamon. Things are tasting a bit better than I last remember. Blueberries
tasted awful a month ago and today they were good in my oatmeal. The oatmeal
is also tasting better.
My hair has not been falling out for a week or so. I still have a small number
of 2" long hairs dating from an early Sept. haircut, but the others are all
about 1/2" except for a few baldish spots.
We have (maybe) chosen the locations of the heaters for all of downstairs,
which requires moving 2 or 3 of the return air vents that Jim already put in,
rather than moving some of the electric or phone outlets that he added. He
had put them in outside walls which interferes with insulation so wants to
move them anyway. The kitchen heater will go under a short built-in table.
In Japan they put the heat (charcoal) under the table and put a cloth over
it and everyone's legs, but he is not considering a cloth. It is supposed
to keep the window over the table from fogging up and dripping. Jim was last
seen making multiple copies of one heater drawing and moving them through
walls. He picked out the best location for a heater in the room I am using
and then I pointed out that my furniture arrangement would block the heat.
No way you can outguess all your tenants but he will use the other wall
instead. People have put queen size beds in the 9x10' room so he wants to
leave wall space for that possibility.
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rcurl
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response 304 of 475:
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Feb 28 07:20 UTC 2004 |
They use open charcoal heaters in Japan? Burning charcoal emits copious carbon
monoxide. Many people have been put to sleep- permanently - by using charcoal
for heating or cooking indoors.
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keesan
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response 305 of 475:
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Feb 28 14:30 UTC 2004 |
Traditional Japanese houses had sliding rice paper screens as walls and were
pretty drafty.
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rcurl
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response 306 of 475:
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Feb 28 21:12 UTC 2004 |
Just don't try it yourself.
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keesan
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response 307 of 475:
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Feb 28 22:21 UTC 2004 |
I don't have sliding rice paper walls.
Today's hike was to the downtown library to renew my card, followed by a
picnic at Zingerman's. Day-old bread and older pears from market. I looked
at heaters and grills at Kiwanis. They had one used 3' plug-in heater for
$10 and one grill for ventilation for $1. Jim wants to plan out his basement
finishing job before doing the ventilation. This may never happen but it will
be as good as done. He offered to start back to work on my house tomorrow.
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drew
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response 308 of 475:
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Feb 28 22:34 UTC 2004 |
I don't remember there being a basement in the house that I saw. Does Jim have
a second house somewhere nearby?
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jmsaul
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response 309 of 475:
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Feb 28 23:58 UTC 2004 |
Re #304: It's more of a problem in Korea than Japan, but a number of people
die from using charcoal heaters every year.
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keesan
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response 310 of 475:
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Feb 29 04:26 UTC 2004 |
The only thing we burnt recently was two tacos that Jim was trying to cook
in the toaster oven. They caught on fire so he took the oven outside.
Jim's house is a 1.5 story with a full basement. We are building a house
without a basement under it on Felch St. The side porch has a basement under
it and will be used for the water heater and dehumidifier. My apartment has
a basement bathroom and two dead washing machines in the basement. That is
one reason I am staying at Jim's house, where there is a bathroom on the same
floor as the bedroom. I am still slow on stairs and when I get out of hte
hospital needed help to climb even one step. The new house will have a
bathroom on each floor.
I just discovered that for Michigan taxes you can subtract the cost of health
insurance but not the cost of health care from what you pay taxes on. You
can also subtract what you put into a medical savings account . Where do I
get one of those and how much can I put in each year? If I can put in $8000,
it will save me $320/year on MI taxes.
Jim's taxes should be easy since I did not pay him anything this year - just
apply for the property tax refund.
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gelinas
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response 311 of 475:
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Feb 29 04:41 UTC 2004 |
Last I heard, Medical Savings Accounts were donated to the government at the
end of the year. Roughly.
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keesan
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response 312 of 475:
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Feb 29 04:46 UTC 2004 |
I know that I will be paying $8000/year in medical expenses this year and
next, and nearly that much for three years after that. CAT scans are about
$3000 each, talking to the doctor probably another $500 a shot, multiplied
by 4 with a slight discount negotiated by the insurance company. For this
year (2004) add two infusions at $7000 each minus a discount. Luckily my
deductible is only $8000.
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klg
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response 313 of 475:
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Feb 29 05:01 UTC 2004 |
MSAs are tax-deferred accounts that allow you to save money for
medical expenses. Here's how they work: Your employer (or self) would
take the money currently spent on your health insurance and deposit a
portion into your newly established Medical Savings Account, up to
$1,400 for an individual (or $3,375 for a family). The other portion
would be used to purchase a catastrophic policy that covers medical
expenses after you meet a deductible.
Using your MSA funds, you pay for your first $1,400 worth of medical
bills directly. MSA funds can be used to cover any medical expense
that is currently tax deductible. The list of medical expenses is very
broad. It includes (this is a partial list, the entire list includes
over 100 deductions): acupuncture, anesthetist, chiropractor, contact
lenses, dentist, eye glasses, medical doctor, psychologist, registered
nurse and surgery.
You have two options for handling unspent MSA funds:
you can save money (tax-free) for future medical expenses and the
interest that you accrue is also tax-free; or you can withdraw money
from your MSA at the end of the year, but would need to maintain a
minimum balance.
Nonmedical withdrawals would be fully taxed and subject to a 15
percent tax penalty.
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keesan
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response 314 of 475:
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Feb 29 16:15 UTC 2004 |
I don't quite follow. I am supposed to split up the amount that I currently
spend on medical insurance and use part of it to pay for medical insurance
and put the rest in a savings account? Or I can use part of $1400 to pay for
my medical insurance and the rest into a savings account that I use to pay
for part of the deductible? I pay about $1000 for my insurance which would
leave $400 to go into a savings account which hardly seems worth the bother
of saving $16. Or do you mean that I can put $1400 a year into a savings
account (on which I don't pay Michigan taxes when I spend it the same year)
and then also pay health insurance? My insurance will probably be up to $1400
pretty soon - if i don't change policies every couple of years the premiums
get a lot higher because there is nobody left except sick people who cannot
change policies.
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mary
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response 315 of 475:
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Feb 29 18:54 UTC 2004 |
Will you be able to change policies now?
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klg
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response 316 of 475:
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Feb 29 21:36 UTC 2004 |
You are referring to the willingness of a new carrier to insure an
individual with a personal history of cancer?
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keesan
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response 317 of 475:
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Feb 29 22:31 UTC 2004 |
No I cannot change policies, even within the same company, and have my
preexisting condition covered. I was just looking for some way not to pay
state taxes on my medical expenses.
Today we walked to my apartment and the building site again and got
congratulated by almost every neighbor on the block plus one that was out for
a stroll (she moved a few blocks away) and two that were visiting their father
(they moved to Detroit area with their mother). We met a new neighbor with
a 5 year old and introduced her to an old neighbor with a 5 year old, plus
the 4 and 6 year olds who were visiting. We got a tour of someone's
remodeling project. The doctor who was visiting her mother next door promised
to buy me some ice cream to help fatten me up. We practically had a block
party on the sidewalk. We challenged two neighbors to finish their projects
before we got the porch glazed. (Then they will have time to help us!).
We offered a replacement side door to one neighbor, which we had given to
another neighbor who got a different one. I don't know why people keep
putting in wooden doors, which rot because they are at ground level and get
snowed in.
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keesan
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response 318 of 475:
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Mar 3 16:31 UTC 2004 |
Monday we were invited to the latest incarnation of Country Kitchen Buffet
(Hometown Buffet - we have been to one in Chicago with Chinese friends who
thought it was great) and I sampled lots of foods and could eat most of them.
I tried the 'cherry pie' to see if it would be sour, and it was peach pie.
They have the largest vegetable selection I have seen in any restaurant
including baked sweet potatoes, mixed fancy greens salad (or spinach, romaine,
iceberg), cabbage, squash, green beans, zucchini, potatoes, onions, carrots,
bean salad, sugary baked beans. No turnips.
I took a short walk around in a circle to keep from getting stiff after
Sunday's long walk.
Tuesday we pushed my limits again by walking to the Dental School (at least
2 miles each way, no rest) to an excellent lecture on how whales evolved from
small four-legged creatures with long tails, to rather different creatures
with either sonar or baleen, and wide tails instead of hind legs. They could
see ridges where the blood vessels that supported the baleen used to be, in
whales that still had small teeth. I made it back. Jim also wanted some
exercise so he carried a 14" color VGA monitor back half of the way to see
if it works. Today I am really sore and stiff, so will go for just a short
walk. I need to climb more stairs and do more crouching so that it won't be
so hard to get back up.
My feet are less numb. My fingertips are all still numb. The edges of my
palms hurt a bit less but it still hurts to sit or to lie on my left side.
When I injured my left heel similarly, it took 6 months of wearing padded
shoes for it to start to clear up. I can't go 6 months without sitting!
My tongue still feels a bit burnt but things are tasting better. Rice and
potatoes are tolerable but not good tasting, and the rice is still scratchy.
My eyes and nose are still a bit watery. My inner lining still needs to heal
some more too. My voice is worse some days than others but I can sing today,
tho I don't sound the best.
Yesterday we saw snowdrops up in two south-facing yards, including Jim's.
THe probably means we are due for some more snow soon. There is also a
2-year-old kale that survived in Jim's yard.
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keesan
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response 319 of 475:
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Mar 4 18:20 UTC 2004 |
Wed we took me for a long walk and then I noticed in the Observer that a
friend of ours (paleontologist) was giving a talk about Biodiversity at the
Exhibit Museum, so we walked to that. She gave us a ride home. I never knew
until this week how many different muscles were involved in walking. Even
my heel muscles are tired. I have to be able to walk to the hospital May 18
unless I can get back to biking by then.
People have been phoning and emailing me about work. I turned down 75 pages
of badly faxed bad handwritten medical Polish, but agreed to edit a client's
translation into English of a school transcript. Last night the scanned and
emailed copy arrived - ten attachments labelled things like 'English-1'. No
file extension. The translation agency employee must be new to the business.
I had told her (just in case) to send a monochrome image, and NOT a jpeg.
These files were 300K, sort of large for 1-page mono gifs or pdf files, so
I emailed asking the file format. Tiffs. They sound like pretty low
resolution tiffs to me. She also offered jpegs instead. I wrote back
explaining how jpegs are not the thing for scanned BW documents, and to please
scan again, at 300 dpi (or HP Deskjet 500 printer setting - are there scanning
programs that don't offer at least one of these choices?), in monochrome (not
greyscale, or photo, or color....) and it should end up about 50K/page - does
that sound right?
I quit working for one company that accepted jpegs from their clients.
It would take me about 40 minutes to download all these tiffs, which are
probably too low resolution to be useful anyway.
I asked for gifs or pdf files. Monochrome.
I would have her fax, except the fax machine here is old and sometimes
interprets faxes from other machines sent on 'fine' as 'standard'. We have
a Canon all-in-one printer-fax-copier that is prone to paper jams. My Deskjet
500 is much higher quality and does not jam paper (or feed through 10 sheets
at once).
I will wait for mono gifs, and write e-mail-less friends in Slovene and
Macedonian, to let them know cancer therapy can work. One has a sister who
was treated for stomach cancer, the other a 'boyfriend' about to be treated.
I just learned from last night's lecturer that a mutual friend's mother has
untreatable brain cancer and can no longer talk, or eat. I have never heard
of any malignant brain cancer that was cured. I am lucky.
One photo at the lecture was of a species of periwinkle (Vinca) used to
produce the anticancer drugs vincristine (the one that makes my hands and feet
numb) and vinblastine.
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keesan
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response 320 of 475:
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Mar 4 20:59 UTC 2004 |
I checked for my mono gifs, and the woman at the agency decided to send a test
attachment to make sure I could handle the format. The first mail was missing
its attachment. The second one had a 168K .dat file? What is a .dat file????
I asked, for the third time, for a monochrome pdf or gif file. I also
suggested she just try faxing the ten pages, tomorrow, so that Jim can find
the other fax machine (the thermal paper one that interprets 'fine' from other
machines as 'standard', instead of the plain paper one that jams paper) and
plug it in first. It is rather complicated not working at my office where
I have a working fax machine with fax-phone switch. The problem with being
semi-retired temporarily. I will move back when it gets warmer, or at least
work there when I can bike again.
I thought I had seen all the unexpected things that a scanner could produce.
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keesan
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response 321 of 475:
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Mar 4 21:09 UTC 2004 |
I did some reading on the net and it is possible she tried to scan this
document and turn it into a digital photo format. We are going to try faxing
tomorrow morning and give up on the scanner.
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rcurl
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response 322 of 475:
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Mar 5 06:32 UTC 2004 |
My scanner software scans lineart, halftone and grey, plus several color
formats. What is "monochrome"? I thought "grey" was monochrome.
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scott
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response 323 of 475:
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Mar 5 14:23 UTC 2004 |
"single color", of course. Perhaps they included a synonym or two to prevent
confusion and increase apparent choices?
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keesan
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response 324 of 475:
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Mar 5 17:05 UTC 2004 |
Lineart is monochrome - no shades of grey. Halftone might be one shade of
grey. Jim looked up in 'his' (library) scanner book and .dat is not one of
the formats you can scan to. Black on white documents scanned in 16 million
colors (24 bit) are still legible (if not made into jpegs) but they will be
12 times as large as 2-bit.
I have to get back to biking so I can work at my office with a good fax
machine. Someone else is mailing a pile of insurance documents here.
Today I got a spam offering me a $300 computer (marked down from $700) to all
nurses, health care workers, teachers and students. I must be one of those
since I spent some time in the hospital. The computer has a fax/modem and
a network card and it is also internet and network ready. It even has a
keyboard and a 'scroll' (?) mouse. All you need to do (if you read closely)
is add a monitor and software. Too bad I don't need a 2GHz cpu or 20G hard
drive or 128MB RAM. What are currently manufactured computers offering?
We just got Scott's two 233MHz boards (with 64MB RAM) into cases from two dead
computers given to us by another grexer, and don't quite know what to do with
all that power. Jim will compile on them with gcc and djgpp until he learns
to write in nasm instead.
Someone steered me to a statically compiled version of links-ssl which WORKS!
It is 400K UPX compressed, and was compiled with diet-libc. What is that?
You can use this links to access grex via backtalk, or webmail, or other sites
where you need to log in (such as driverguide, I presume, or ebay, or the
Opera forums). I can use it with my 2M RAMdisk linux by copying it into /tmp
and running it from there.
ftp://foobar.math.fu-berlin.de:2121/pub/dietlibc/bin-i386 has this
links-ssl (it says it is text but that is what UPX-compression must look like)
and sftp and several other programs, all cheaper than the above computer.
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