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Grex > Health > #89: Sindi Keesan's Lymphoma Journal Part 3 |  |
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| 25 new of 475 responses total. |
twenex
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response 146 of 475:
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Jan 30 15:33 UTC 2004 |
The illegality of the segmentation fault and the not-a-good-idea-ness of
putting a program in /tmp are two separate issues. A segmentgation fault means
the program is somehow broken.
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keesan
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response 147 of 475:
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Jan 30 16:43 UTC 2004 |
I am trying to run RealPlayer8 for Linux - I doubt that they would post a
broken program. Maybe it requires a Pentium II to run? We have a Pentium
II and I will try it on that next.
What I would really like is Pentium I 200MHz cpus to put in our existing
boards. The PII need special cases and we don't have those, but I think we
have one that we could modify to fit by adding a panel so yes thanks, however
our current prospective new owner of a computer wants a small case and we are
thinking of setting her up with the PI 166MHz that you gave us a year or two
ago, which will fit UNDER her 14" monitor instead of the 25" 486 that
she has on the floor next to the desk now. It will take a 200MHz cpu if we
can find one for it. Do you have any of those? Kiwanis throws them out.
I got 2 more hours sleep this morning after my last (awful tasting) prednisone
so am up to nearly 6 hours and feel relatively great!
Jim did his homework already. He switched yesterday from a morning class
taught by someone who is not teaching the way he can understand, to an
afternoon class. The first instructor is learning to use the new MS program
and posted the assignment at the 'blackboard' website. Apparently the second
instructor makes up all the assignments and supplies them and the answers to
the other two instructors. His first instructor also posted the answers, in
fact she posted an entire directory. Jim has been having an easy time doing
the programming but the typing takes him forever and I need to fix all his
spellings. He will just change the first line in this one - he thought about
changing a few spellings too. His favorite spelling is volumn which does not
rhyme with column.
I am still trying to compile lynx with zlib. I may have an extra space in
my script for configuring it. openssl is at least under control.
Jim is microwaving apples to make them taste better so I will continue to
force fluids. Time to start gargling salt-and-soda water for a week. If I
can avoid catching the flu for one more week (by not going near anyone) I have
it made. Assuming Jim does not pick up something in class, which is not until
next Tuesday. His new class is full (24). The old one was 12 and dropping.
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keesan
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response 148 of 475:
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Jan 31 14:19 UTC 2004 |
No more prednisone! It has been over 24 hours. Now I can spend a few days
being sleepy instead of nervous.
Today I got my first hate mail from someone at grex that I never heard of.
I forwarded it to uce (spam) before bothering to read it. Strange. I presume
the sender is rather young and does not know how to do 'forget'.
libncurses.a is only half-size. I wonder how long it will take to compile
ncurses in order to get that one file the right size. THere must be an easier
way to get the file. What is an .a file?
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keesan
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response 149 of 475:
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Jan 31 22:54 UTC 2004 |
I decided to risk walking into town today instead of waiting until Thursday
for my immune system to come back as it does not matter any more if I am sick
for the next month because no more chemicals. We had something due at the
library. It is still a tiring 1.5 mile hike up and down what feels like steep
hills. We bought one lunch at the Mysore vegetarian Indian restaurant, which
the cooks insisted had no hot peppers, in fact no peppers, only some cardamom
and a few other spices, and they even put it on a paper plate instead of a
styrofoam bowl, and Jim ate most of it because it hurt. It might have hurt
even without the hot peppers as my mouth is sore again, by I figure it should
sterilize as well as salt-soda solution.
After we got back Scott kindly dropped off two PII motherboards which
we need to put into cases. And I proved that you can undo the floppy disk
damage caused by writing a half-disk image to disk by writing a whole-disk
image to disk.
The hand with the two failed IVs still hurts but the bruise is fading.
It will be strange not to be on a three-week schedule any more.
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keesan
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response 150 of 475:
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Feb 2 17:51 UTC 2004 |
For two days I have felt like I am catching the flu - cold, achey, etc. But
I recall this happening in mid-cycle before. I thought yesterday everything
that was going to hurt had started hurting, until I woke up with a sore
windpipe. The entire lining of my respiratory and digestive tracts has
probably been killed (or cells in all of it anyway) and my body is now
cleaning up and I have to blow my nose a lot, and also wipe my eyes a lot.
I discovered that not only do I pull muscles at this time of cycle but I also
get muscle cramps when I sit on my feet. I have stopped sitting on my feet.
(The chair is too low for the table on which one of our computers sits).
Muscles also replicate frequently and muscles cells must have been killed.
Tomorrow I should start to feel better. Today I will go back to bed.
The hand with the 2 failed IVs is still hurting. The one with the successful
IV is fine.
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tod
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response 151 of 475:
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Feb 2 18:10 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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witzbolt
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response 152 of 475:
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Feb 2 20:34 UTC 2004 |
i'm ejaculating on your tits.
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naftee
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response 153 of 475:
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Feb 2 21:48 UTC 2004 |
tod has big tits
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keesan
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response 154 of 475:
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Feb 3 14:03 UTC 2004 |
Which file is it that I can edit to add someone to the ignore filter rather
than running the ignore command, which requires typing in all the old names?
Today my immune system must be recovering because I have stopped blowing my
nose continually and I am no longer freezing. Yesterday I had the heat turned
up (to at least 60), I was in bed under a pile of bedding, and wearing lots
of clothing (6 layers on top including three of wool) and I still needed to
run a heating pad. I have also stopped coughing. I think I can stop worrying
about getting deathly ill during this (last) cycle now that I have an immune
system again.
Jim's neighbor, who asked him to help with her plumbing, sent over a half
gallon can of chicken bouillon. The label shows carrots, tomatos, garlic,
onions, peppers and celery. The ingredients list shows water, salt, chicken
fat, onion juice, carrot juice, sugar, natural flavors, and some other
chemicals. One cup gives me 50% of my daily sodium requirement. I am
supposed to be gargling salt water this week as a disinfectant and this should
do it. I alternated sips of this with large swallows of water.
The nurse said to let her know if I had chills or fever over 101 F so I took
my temperature last night and it was 100.4F. I did not know you could be
chilled and have a fever at the same time. I feel much better today.
My mother, who was not doing chemotherapy but rather radiation for her
cerebral lymphoma, twice ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. One time
the neighbor found her on the kitchen floor. I really should not have gone
to the library Saturday but I figured if I got sick it would not interfere
with the next treatment as there is no next treatment (for a while, anyway).
It should be all uphill starting today!
Jim is going to take some chicken broth to my neighbor, who is expecting only
a USB keyboard. Sunday he helped us over the phone to get a Win98 computer
to dial and connect to UMich. We built it for my cancer center nurse to
replace her 486. I know you are not supposed to just move over working
installations on hard drive, but we did that and the only conflict was between
'two' sound cards so I removed both and reinstalled one and that worked.
Turns out this was set up for a network and had 3 or 4 extra 'adaptors' - VPN
stuff, whatever that is. The error message said something about network
protocols not being negotiated. I deleted ALL the adaptors and then added
dialup adaptor and TCP/IP. It worked. It crashes once in a while when doing
Opera preferences but that is probably normal. Just don't change more than
one preference at a time if you want to use Windows. Ctl-Alt-Del when it
crashes. What is 'Microsoft family logon'? It kept adding that when I added
dial-up adaptor. No families will be using this computer.
We moved over this hard drive because it had a bunch of sports games on there
and she likes basketball. I hope she likes these games. It would have been
quicker just to start from Win98 CD.
I put on IE 5.5 from an Earthlink CD and it added what it said was 70MB for
the 'minimal installation' including a bunch of things I had gone to some
trouble to remove (Outlook) and now if you use IE you get popup ads from
Earthlink. Then I used IE 5.5 to download Opera which can block popup ads.
The Netscape 4.04 on there kept going offline after accessing one website and
the home page could only be set to flashnet.
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keesan
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response 155 of 475:
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Feb 3 21:09 UTC 2004 |
I was reading what I wrote 3 weeks ago and it looks like my sense of taste
will continue getting worse until at least Friday. This morning oatmeal and
milk tasted edible, while this afternoon milk tasted bad. I had a raw carrot
and a preserved egg. The chicken broth tasted bad too but a lot less salty.
It came frozen and Jim must have thawed it partially and the part to thaw
first contains most of the salt. I see there what looks like a large block
of ice with fissures in it where the salty liquid thawed. Sort of like ice
melter. My tongue is now numb instead of sore. I wonder what I will force
myself to eat for the next few days.
Temperature down to 99.2. I would have hated to end up back in the hospital
with needles in my arms and not being allowed to sleep at night. Someone with
T-cell lymphoma whose treatment failed after 2 months said she had a lot of
fevers during therapy and I did not so maybe I am okay. I had a continual
high fever last summer before therapy. This was my first fever since that
and I would normally have ignored being sick for a day. Glenda is certainly
going through much worse than I am. I think what is worst is the uncertainty
as to whether this actually all worked. I do feel a lot better than before
therapy and am still alive. I would like to keep my own bone marrow though.
Will know more in 2 weeks plus a few days.
What do people eat when they are awaiting repeat surgery for diverticulitis?
My mother used to run a little newsletter for dialysis patients, telling
people how to soak canned tuna fish to remove the salt. This week I can eat
salt, in fact I can eat anything I want to eat, but I don't want to eat
anything, however I get hungry.... I don't know how people manage when their
therapy makes them nauseous.
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glenda
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response 156 of 475:
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Feb 4 03:35 UTC 2004 |
Since I don't have diverticulitis, I don't have any of the normal food
restrictions (mainly anything that remains recognizable in the stool: corn,
nuts, seeds, fruit peels, etc.) I had a perferated diverticulum, you don't
have to have diverticulitis for that to occur.
I do, however, now have food restrictions because of the blood thinners I am
currently taking for the blood clots. I have to watch the amount of vitamin
K I eat. This means not increasing or decreasing the amount I get. Vitamin
K is found in high concentrations in apple peels and green leafy veggies.
There are a few other things (they gave me a 10 or so page list of foods and
their vitamin K values, I haven't had time too really look at it yet). I have
to notify the anticoagulant clinic of any change in diet, exercise,
medications, bleeding, etc. I have to go in for blood draws every Mon, Wed,
and Fri until the blood levels stablize, then probably once every week or so
for the duration. Since I have been steadily loosing weight since the surgery
and that affects blood levels, I will probably have to have them more often
than what they would normally do.
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gelinas
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response 157 of 475:
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Feb 4 05:03 UTC 2004 |
I think fevers cause chills because you are so much warmer than the
surrounding air. Just as you shiver outside, to keep your body temperature
up, so do you shiver when you have a fever, to keep the temperature up.
Heat loss is heat loss, as far as the body is concerned.
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keesan
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response 158 of 475:
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Feb 4 09:46 UTC 2004 |
I was not shivering when I was chilled, just achey on any uncovered part.
Temperature back to normal yesterday.
The anticoagulant diet sounds pretty complicated. What does vitamin K do,
prevent clotting? Are they checking for blood levels of vitamin K?
Three blood draws a week sounds pretty time consuming but you are probably
not a coward about them like I am. I hope they cut back soon to once a week.
It is the little improvements that seem to make a difference. Is there no
home test you can do on your own blood?
I am almost certain that it is starches and sugars that taste funny to me.
Yesterday for the first time even milk (with lactose) tasted funny. Today
it was okay. Cheese was okay yesterday and that has the lactose (sugar)
converted mostly to lactic acid (which is also why lactose intolerant people
like my brother can eat cheese). Eggs have been okay. Grains and starchy
vegetables, many other vegetables (anything with sugar such as cabbage), and
fruits (bananas, strangely, have been okay) taste funny. I should get some
bananas if I feel well enough today. (I will need to get more than 4 hours
sleep first - woke up too hungry to get back to sleep at 3 am). Pineapple
has tasted okay before but yesterday was bad. Pickled peppers tasted so
strongly of vinegar that they did not taste otherwise odd so I made myself
eat one for supper with half a can of (very salty) mackerel (I know it is not
vegetarian, it is medicine at the moment). Lunch was one preserved egg and
a raw carrot. Not the way to gain weight but it is temporary.
Glenda, are you attempting to lose weight, or you don't feel like eating, or
you eat but don't digest it all? I hope you reach some acceptable weight and
can stick with it so you don't need all these blood tests for 6 months.
Most restricted diets seem to require you to eliminate certain foods. That
sounds simple compared to having to eat the same amounts of things every day,
such as what Glenda needs to do, and what diabetics needs to do. I cannot
imagine even having to eat at the same times every day, let alone the same
foods.
I have mostly stopped coughing (except for just now) and the platelet count
seems to be up again (no more blood when I blow my nose - that hit a low the
day after the neutrophil count's low). Since yesterday my head hurts but that
will probably end today. I felt queasy a bit over the weekend, only time
since I started treatment other than that I feel like gagging when I eat pills
in applesauce (benadryl/tylenol, prednisone, vitamins), so I am really
hesitant about forcing myself to eat things that taste bad right now. It is
nice I can handle milk again. I will attempt oatmeal in a few hours. Someone
is coming at 9 for computer lessons and maybe I can get a bit more sleep
first. Nice to have someone to 'talk' to at 4 am.
It is so nice I don't need to be fed with tubes down my throat, and that
eating does not make me throw up, and that I have no medical restrictions on
what I can eat, and my tongue does not hurt, and I do not have thrush, and
this may be the last time I have to deal with this all.
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slynne
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response 159 of 475:
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Feb 4 15:40 UTC 2004 |
I certainly hope it is the last time you have to deal with all this.
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keesan
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response 160 of 475:
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Feb 4 18:29 UTC 2004 |
I won't know for 20 years or so, but it would be nice if the test in two weeks
had good results so I can live a normal life for 3 months.
This morning the nurse showed up for her computer and I taught her how to use
bookmarks and download files and got her an unzip program for a volleyball
game that we downloaded and it needed some other program so we deleted it.
She will learn to play pinball instead. She likes volleyball in real life.
She says her mother has been treated several times for oral cancer over the
last 25 years or so, most recently with chemotherapy this year, and first with
just surgery. Chemotherapy seems to have the best cure rate.
We are planning to celebrate by going, with the nurse and her mother, to visit
a friend's winery where he is making pawpaw wine. The nurse took some pawpaw
seeds to plant and is interested in making wine and beer, also in the local
stone-fly count done on the Huron River by 50 local people this January.
There are all sorts of ways to meet new friends. I have met two friends in
the post office, one who worked at a school library and noticed I read
Russian. This is the first time I have met one by getting sick. The winery
owner was at a rock club meeting. One of the people in the post office liked
my stamps and I had bought the last of them so we traded and he invited me
to visit. He was a retired piano teacher and notary public.
What unusual places have other people met new friends?
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slynne
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response 161 of 475:
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Feb 4 18:57 UTC 2004 |
Hmmm. A friend of mine in high school ended up dating a guy she met
when he called a wrong number. That seemed pretty weird to me.
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keesan
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response 162 of 475:
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Feb 5 01:23 UTC 2004 |
I still get calls once in a while that want me to tell them the winning
lottery number. One of the local wine stores tried to buy out my number
because it ended in -WINE. Have not made friends with any of these gamblers.
Today I put a gallon jug under the kitchen faucet after I finally succeeded
in reducing it from a steady stream to a steady drip. After a couple of hours
I showed Jim that the jug had overflowed and since it was warmish and sunny
we hiked to Stadium Hardware bringing along a square o-ring that there were
two of in the bottom of a rigid plastic cartridge ('washerless system' - means
no rubber washers, just rubber rings to wear out). The plumbing expert said
we needed to bring the cartridge to identify it so Jim asked for the book and
they discovered you cannot buy the ring, just the whole replacement cartridge,
probably for more than the faucet cost new 20 years ago. So jim spent 60
cents on two rubber o-rings (rounded not squared) and if they don't work he
will replace the faucet. We bought a duplicate since they were on sale.
I am astonished that they are selling faucets for which you can no longer buy
the 'correct' 30 cent repair part, only an expensive 'component'. Next faucet
will be one that is reparable instead of replaceable.
I made it back despite really wobbly legs and a lot of sneezing and coughing,
and managed to get down potatoes and lettuce for supper. Things don't taste
as bad as two days ago. I am past the 2-day headache stage into the 2-day
diarrhea stage (somehow I recall the order being reversed last time). My
laryngitis and coughing are worse but I am feeling okay and am glad I don't
have Glenda's problems, or a broken wrist, or anything that really hurts.
I have discovered that RealPlayer8 will install on one Slackware computer but
not on a another, and that many other people have written the Real-Unix forum
to state that it won't work on their Sparc or SunOS or Slackware computers
either - segmentation fault. It appears to be more hardware than software
dependent. Now I get to test 15 or so computers to find out which one it
works on and hope it is a Pentium I because the P II's don't have a free slot
for a sound card (only a PCI card and I don't think you can use those with
linux, at least I don't know how, same problem as PCI modems).
Realplayer 7 worked for people, 8 does not. They don't offer 7 for download
now.
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keesan
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response 163 of 475:
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Feb 5 01:39 UTC 2004 |
Jim proudly brought me his cartridge to show how well the o-rings fit, but
it turns out they are not what makes the seal, that is inside the cartridge
which most people might not want to take apart. Unfortunately he had sprayed
a lot of solvent into the faucet while trying to unstick it enough to pry out
the cartridge and now this room still stinks. The hazards of living with
someone who can't wait to fix things (once it becomes obvious enough that they
are broken).
The bathroom sink is 1930s so it only needs a simple flat washer,
which is too simple to be interesting, so it is still leaking (a bit). I
think I should put 1930s faucets in my new house so I can fix them.
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ryan
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response 164 of 475:
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Feb 5 04:35 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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keesan
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response 165 of 475:
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Feb 5 16:42 UTC 2004 |
What is spystuff? Do I uncheck the parts about sending information to
broadcasters about my hardware? I replaced RealOne with Realplayer8 because
the RealOne menu was not usable without a mouse (you cannot do Alt->>). I
wish they had a version without the video player that was smaller.
I have been reading the Real UNIX forums trying to figure out why I get
Segmentation fault when trying to install on both Linux computers, but it does
actually install and load on the second computer (for which I don't know how
to use the onboard ESS sound, and there is no free slot to put in a sound
card). It turns out that lots of people are getting segmentation faults with
Sparc and Linux systems, also in the alpha RealOne version. There are all
sorts of other bugs in the unix versions. I don't see any Windows user forum.
They must put a lot more effort into the Windows version.
Opera acts really screwy (unusable) if I try to use Windows accessibility
features (arrow mouse) even though it brags about being accessible. But the
video is also all messed up so I should fix that before more testing. Anyone
know how to COMPLETELY uninstall Opera? An uninstall did not do it. It kept
all my preferences, for instance, and the video is still screwed up (after
changing from 1024 to 640 on a different card back to 1024 I still get some
text at 640 res, such as image alt tags, banner ads).
Today I am sneezing, blowing my nose, and coughing a LOT (I hope it is not
another 4 week cough) and Jim is sneezing. Apparently what put me in bed for
two days with a fever last weekend is the common cold. It is nice to have
my immune system back to what I hope is low normal. I am sure if I asked
nicely they would let me pay them $250 for a blood test and nurse evaluation
of the results. You can't have the results until a nurse looks at them.
Realaudio has posted both a version of Realplayer for Alpha and an Alpha
version of Realplayer (for linux) and ever other posting in one forum is about
how people cannot find the latter or have downloaded the former instead by
accident. Someone suggested they make things more obvious, after about 20
of these postings, but it has not happened. The Realaudio person who answers
these questions just keeps repeating that there is an Alpha version for linux
and a version for the Alpha CPU and you have to read the instructions very
carefully. Maybe he has to answer a certain number of postings every day?
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ryan
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response 166 of 475:
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Feb 5 19:07 UTC 2004 |
This response has been erased.
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keesan
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response 167 of 475:
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Feb 5 21:37 UTC 2004 |
I did not notice any popups because Opera does a good job of blocking popups.
Lynx seems to be immune to popups (also to javascript, unfortunately).
I may try mplayer for linux (does Windows media player type files) - has
anyone reading this tried it? I was unable to get any wave player to work
with linux.
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gull
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response 168 of 475:
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Feb 6 16:37 UTC 2004 |
In many cartridge faucets, what makes the seal isn't a rubber ring or
washer, but a precision fit between the pieces of the cartridge. You
see this technique in a lot of modern faucets because it requires less
force to shut off, has a smoother feel in operation, and lasts a long
time between repairs. (Consider that yours is only now wearing out
after 20 years of use, which is far longer than a typical faucet washer
lasts in daily use.) In good faucets the cartridge is often made of
some very hard material, like ceramic, to reduce wear.
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keesan
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response 169 of 475:
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Feb 6 16:56 UTC 2004 |
This must have been a cheap faucet because I think it is a hard plastic
cartridge and there is definitely a short rubber tubelike thing that needs
replacing. It has been dripping for a few years now.
Today Jim feels sicker than me and is spending the morning in a hot bath.
I am coughing a lot and using cotton napkins since I ran out of handkerchiefs.
Jim's sister called to let us know his cousin will be able to take care of
herself, and to go back to work in a few weeks. But the doctors apparently
always lie to people that it will be 6 weeks until the surgery is reversed
for diverticulitis. This time they told her 3 months. His sister checked
and it is usually 3-6 months. They told me 6 treatments of chemotherapy and
at teh time of the 5th then they said it 'might' be eight. Eight is standard
unless you are too weak to tolerate that. I was upset to get the change in
plans, but maybe I would not have wanted to know it was 8 at the start.
This doctor only tells me good news. I figured out eventually that I had been
in rather poor shape to start with, compared to many people. I kept getting
compliments on my blood counts going back up from near zero. And how well
I was breathing relative to before.
I got a nice card with spring flowers from a friend who is hoping for better
weather soon for all of us. We helped her a few times when she was sick.
And an email from the ceo of a public health dept. in Taiwan that i have been
writing to since we met as students in 1969. He was supposed to be doing some
sort of graduate training in agriculture in the D. C. area and was put to work
15 hours/day on a dairy farm. He and his roommate used to get up at 5 to cook
a proper breakfast and they gave up and felt bad about it. We met on a train.
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keesan
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response 170 of 475:
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Feb 6 19:23 UTC 2004 |
I have been trying for a couple of months to compile lynx with ssl for linux.
I had to compile openssl (the directory used to compile in is now 31MB) and
zlib and now ncurses. I was doing really well until I got: No space left
on device. The ncurses directory is now 35MB and not even complete. I needed
one file that was not in the precompiled version (it was too small - 249
instead of about 500K - libncurses.a). I bet I don't need most of what is
in the 35MB. THe precompiled version is 1.6M. And this is C, not even C++.
I wish all programs were in assembly language.
Time to uninstall Ted, and ImageMagick.
Someone called today about a huge translation job (from Slovene - there are
not a lot of us who can do this) but they say they are not in a rush. I
cannot make any promises for two more weeks.
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