Teyrnon

I intended to be posting more this year but here is the second of March and this is my first post here since December. There really isn't that much going on of late. At least very little that'd make for interesting reading.

The biggest news of the month is probably that a section of the ceiling in my garage fell making a huge mess of broken glass from the large fluorescent bulbs, brownish dusty insulation, broken sheetrock, and sundry detritus that the previous occupants stuffed in the attic. The fluorescent light wasn't secured to a beam as it should have been, it was just attached to the sheetrock of the ceiling. It's not the first example of shoddy and ill thought work I've discovered in this house. I doubt it'll be the last, sadly.

In other news the Raspberry Pi I fiddled with off and on throughout 2015 has found a more long term use. It's now running a wiki I'm using for notes and whatnot. Would like to get add a RS-232 port to it so I can attach an X10 firecracker so I can set up cron jobs to turn lights on and off.

The headaches that plagued me throughout 2014 and 2015 are still with me and making me quite irritable from time to time. There isn't much to be done about it at this point. Curiously coffee with a teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper per cup has a really potent ameliorating effect. So far it's the most effective remedy for these headaches that I've found.

I've returned to working on a little writing project I've been dabbling with off and on for too many years now. I'm going to be in need of test readers for it before too much longer, I hope.

That's all for now.

I had an early morning doctor's visit which cut into my walking time for today. My blood pressure was 120/88 at the doctor's office which apparently means I stay on the current medication to keep the blood pressure under control.

For today's walk I circled around the neighborhood instead of heading out for the park and ride lot. I'm not sure how far I walked but I think it was about a mile all the way around.

Just thought I'd make a quick post here to let everyone know I'm still around. Things are mostly okay. I'm dealing with high blood pressure and hopefully a medication that actually works can be found soon. It's always been on the high side but for the last year or two it's been excessively so.

I've been debating whether to do holiday cards this year. I'm thinking that if I do I won't be buying any new cards this year. Instead I'm going to round up all the left over cards from past years and use those. Get those out of the way for a fresher start to 2013. I think I've got five or six boxes with just three or four cards in them. Should be enough.

I've been reading the Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold in a rather haphazard order as I can lay hands on them. I don't know why I've never bothered to read them before now.

I'm seriously considering getting a Kindle Fire this year. I want one mostly for the access to magazines that the publishers have decided must only be available for tablet devices rather than e-ink devices. I think it's stupid personally, but what can you do? I'd also like one for the other features too. I've been wanting something like this since forever but have heretofore refrained because the options either didn't impress me or had aspects that I found repulsive.

After an interesting search for a dentist I had two root canals done last Thursday. This is what happens when you only see a dentist once every 8-12 years which is something I'd like to change for the future. I'm thinking yearly visits for cleanings or something would do well to not let things get quite so bad. I visited several dentists before finding the one I let do the work. One in particular looked to be the stuff of nightmares.

Hmm, actually, it seems I need to bolt so if anyone's interested let me know and I'll try to do a more detailed post about this year's dental adventures.

The end of 2010 is fast approaching. There hasn't been a whole lot to say. I've been and still am working on a few projects that are eating up a lot of time. I had a sinus infection or something during the middle of the month. It was extremely unpleasant and slowed me down entirely too much. I don't think I got anything at all accomplished the week it hit me.

I got my Holiday cards out. They were mailed a little later than usual. I didn't get them out the door until about the 20th. I went with a card that was not insignificantly more costly than what I've used in past years. (They cost me double what I usually end up paying.) It was a really nice card. Managed to find a card design I really liked this year.

For Christmas I got a nice cover for my Kindle DX. I like it better than the sleeve I've been using since I got the DX. I'd recommend using a cover instead of sleeve quite emphatically. The difference it makes is something I did not imagine when I bought the sleeve back in 2009.

I installed Linux on my old Compaq laptop. After Windows XP went to service pack 3 the old thing had gotten extremely sluggish and seemed to be getting worse with every update Microsoft released. The fact that it only has 256MB of RAM likely didn't help at all. Anyrate, it's been running quite well since I installed Linux.

I really should not post during a bout of insomnia. It's rarely a good idea. I'd say more but I have the most amazingly awful headache this afternoon.

Okay, doing a post every day is going to be a challenge. Today I woke with pretty much the same headache as yesterday. There were pains in the neck and left shoulder too. No leg pains though. That was nice.

Tried the new Chinese buffet down the street. It wasn't bad but they had a large amount of seafood. Crab, oysters, several kinds of shrimp, mussel. The Black Pepper Chicken wasn't bad at all. Nice enough place, don't think I'll be going back any time soon. I'm just not a huge shellfish fan.

The past week hasn't been that kind to me in terms of aches and pains. The arthritis has been acting up pretty bad. Worse than it has in a few months. Some morning it's been a struggle to get out of bed in the morning from the pain. Left shoulder, neck, lower back, and fingers seem to be where it resides. The dry air has been wreaking havoc on the skin of my right hand the left hand is mostly unaffected by cracking, pealing, and bleeding skin. I wonder why that is? My left hand looks normal but my right looks horrible.

On a similar note the past couple weeks I've had a wound on my left palm. Curious circular pattern with three small straight line breaks of skin. It's right in the center of the palm too. I believe it's from opening bottles combined with the dryness of the air. I've been avoiding opening bottles as much as I can and it seems to be getting better so we'll see. I've been using a 40 year old jar wrench to open screw on lids I just have to open. I looked at a few stores Saturday for a tool that'd work better but none had anything. Which struck me as odd. Ended up ordering something form Amazon that evening. Don't know if it'll be any good since I have only a vague idea what it looks like from the picture of it in its packaging.

I also went looking for a few pairs of sweatpants to replace the rags that were once sweatpants when I bought then in 2003. I tried Wally World, Target, and Kohls. Wal-Mart had some sweatpants but the sizes they had started at XL and went up from there. Target had nothing and Kohls had some really thin things they were calling sweatpants with prices starting around $20. Far too expensive. Where do people buy sweatpants these days? I'm obviously looking in the wrong places.

I have a few more things I could say but need to run for now. I'll probably post some more later. Hope everyone is well.

On the off chance anyone might be interested. As some may recall I made a post about considering going with something electronic to replace the latest paper notebook. I've been using hardbound blank books since the late 80s as a combination journal and notebooks. I have very nearly an entire shelf full of these that are filled with my scribblings. Unfortunately lately I've developed issues where handling paper makes me sick. It was the driving reason I started using ebooks and dedicated ebook readers about midway through the last year.

I still haven't gotten anything to use a PDA. The past month I've been considering the iPod Touch and it looks like a nice enough device. Not exactly impressed with it though. I've fiddled with one in a store recently and while it might be usable the on-screen keyboard seems rather awkward.

I'm thinking a small netbook would probably be the best thing at this point. An 8" model or something. I could even load it with a few of my favorite open source compilers and use the various utilities I've written over the years on it.

Anyone have any thoughts to add? I'm as undecided as ever.