response 278 of 475:

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.  

response 280 of 475:

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.

response 282 of 475:

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.

response 286 of 475:

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!

response 288 of 475:

Feb 25 21:51 UTC 2004

Don't skimp on thermostats.  Cheap thermostats allow wide temperature
swings, which are highly annoying and waste energy.

response 290 of 475:

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.

response 292 of 475:

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.

response 294 of 475:

Feb 26 13:55 UTC 2004

Baby rats are more food for snakes, etc.

response 296 of 475:

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.

response 298 of 475:

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. 

response 300 of 475:

Feb 26 18:36 UTC 2004

/snicker.
Including the hall and vestibule, there are 12 rooms in mine.

response 302 of 475:

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.