Toadfish Monastery

A humorous read, recommended:

http://www.stonekettle.com/2012/11/hemlock-with-small-side-of-schadenfreude.html

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=486858768014508&set=a.195751057125282.46346.191278307572557&type=1

(In case the link doesn't work, or you cannot...)

QuoteIt's 6pm on Friday,and I'm writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet.
I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.
Here's the thing.
I have a dog Janet, and she's been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She's almost 14 years old now.I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then ,an adult offi
cially - and she was my child.
She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.
She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.
She's almost 14 and I've never seen her start a fight ,or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She's a pacifist.
Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact.
We've lived in numerous houses, and jumped a few make shift families, but it's always really been the two of us.
She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.
She sat next to me when I wrote songs,and barked any time I tried to record something,and she was with me in the studio,all the time we recorded the last album.
The last time I came back from tour,she was spry as ever,and she's used to me being gone for a few weeks every 6 or 7 years.
She has Addison's Disease,which makes it dangerous for her to go on the road with me,since she needs regular injections of Cortisol,because she reacts to stress and to excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.
Despite all of this,she's effortlessly joyful and playful,and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago.
She's my best friend and my mother and my daughter,and my benefactor,and she's the one who taught me what love is.

I can't come to South America.Not now.
when I got back from the last leg of the US tour,there was a big,big difference.
She doesn't even want to go for walks anymore.
I know that she's not sad about aging or dying.Animals may well have a survival instinct,but a sense of mortality and vanity,they do not.That's why they are so much more present then most people.
But I know that she is coming close to point where she will stop being a dog,and instead,be part of everything.She'll be in the wind,and in the soil,and the snow,and in me,wherever I go.
I can't leave her now,please understand.
If i go away again,I'm afraid she'll die and I won't have the honor of singing her to sleep,of escorting her out.
--Maybe she'll fool me,and live for a couple more years--maybe I'll lose my potential friends,in places I feel a longing to know.

Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to pick which socks to wear to bed.
But this decision is instant.
These are the choices we make,which define us.
I am not the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship.
I'm the woman who stays home,and bakes Tilapia for my dearest,oldest friend.
And helps her be comfortable,and comforted,and safe,and important.
Many of us these days,we dread the 'death' of a loved one.It is the ugly truth of life,that leaves us feeling terrified and alone.
I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time.
I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her,and of her life,and of my love for her,in the last moments.
I need to do my damnedest to be there for that.
Because it will be the most beautiful,the most intense,the most enriching experience of life I've ever known.
When she dies.
So I am staying home,and I am listening to her snore and wheeze,and reveling in the swampiest,most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel.
And I am asking for your blessing.

I'll be seeing you.
Love, Fiona
Love,
Fiona

... ever, if I can manage it.

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57544323-285/five-least-intuitive-things-about-windows-8/

After reading the linked article, you'll see that Windows 8 has hard-coded gestures or in normal-speak, secret, special movements of your finger or mouse that cause critical functions to work.

I don't do gestures.  I just don't-- the whole idea in counter to my mantra:  the computer must be subservient to the operator.

Never the other way around.

(which also explains why I won't use an apple computer)

... meh.

Microsquish has really stepped in it with this one.

/end rant

Last Friday in the AM (4am to be exact), I got one of those calls--the ones you never really want to get.

My mother was in the ambulance with my dad, going to hospital, as Dad was experiencing extreme pains in what she said was his chest...

... which later turned out to be rather lower down:  the abdomen.

After much fussing & testing of Dad's heart (which turned out to be fine), the doctors turned their diagnostic attention to what was causing the pains.  They concluded, via several more tests (naturally!) that it was his pancreas-- he had acute pancreitis (a fancy name for "your pancreas is sick in some way").  Pancreitis sounds official. "Mr P--, something is wrong with your pancreas, and we have little clue what it is, or why."  ... meh.

After much testing, they are sending him home today.  What it isn't, at least so far, is the dreaded C-- as the survival rate for people diagnosed with pancreatic "C" is .... not good.  It turns out that your pancreas does a boat-load of useful stuff, but has little or no actual pain nerves in it.  So it has to be pretty messed up, to even trigger symptoms... not good, if the cause is C, as that means it will have too good of a foothold.

But they are sending him home today, after spending the weekend in hospital (in the heart wing-- they initially thought it was his heart, as although he has no history of heart problems, he does have a history of high cholesterol and high blood pressure-- both long since controlled by medication).

I will guess that sending him home today, after being admitted Friday-AM is a good sign.   (even if it's not, I'm going to say it is... so there)

My Dad's eight decades into his life these days, and his poor body is really in need of both a tune-up and some replacement parts.  Alas, the body-machine was not "designed" with replaceable parts, was it?  A severe oversight on the part of the designer, in my opinion.  Quite severe.  Almost as if the designer was... an idiot.

Anyway, I'm sitting here, waiting for the phone call to meet mom at hospital-- she hates the place, as it's an amalgam of 8 to 10 buildings, all interconnected via a confusing maze of hallways & narrow, twisty passages.  I suspect Grues, myself.

However, back in 2000-2001, I worked in that place, daily.  And it's not changed all that much since-- a new parkade here and there, easily avoided.  The main cluster's the same.  So I go to navigate & provide emotional support.

... meh.

Who's infernal idea was it, to take all the sickest and most ill people, and house them in the same damn building?   Isn't that just asking for an epidemic?

*sigh*

At least, this time, the news is good.

Ever wonder what the various elements look like in their pure form?  An amusing video created to accompany the [in]famous Element song.

What all the elements look like in under 2 minutes (Song: Tom Lehrer-The Elements)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bec_s36HEo&feature=player_embedded

[youtube=425,350]-Bec_s36HEo[/youtube]

From this lovely blog: http://scentednectar.blogspot.com/2012/10/youtube-mix-38.html

They said it couldn't be done:  create a sailing machine that can go directly downwind faster than the actual wind pushing on it's sails...

... but, as it turns out, with some clever application of leverage (in the form of gearing) you can:

http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/10/18/the-impossible-sailing-machine/

The scientific explanation is below the video-- it's leverage.   Archimedes would've been proud.

An audio track of an allegedly serious caller into a radio show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI8UPHMzZm8
[youtube=425,350]CI8UPHMzZm8[/youtube]

Amusing, if real.  According to the scuttlebutt, it is a real telephone call.

If true, then it's rather a sad case of extreme ignorance and utter lack of logical ability in a human being.

But also .... kinda funny.

Person 1: "It has to be true!"
Person 2: "how do you know?"
Person 1: "I read it on the internet-- and they can't put anything on the internet that isn't true!"
Person 2: "how do you know that?"
Person 1: "Don't be silly.  I read it on the internet"

6 People You've Never Heard of Who Probably Saved Your Life

http://www.cracked.com/article_18519_6-people-youve-never-heard-who-probably-saved-your-life.html?wa_user1=5&wa_user2=History&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=yesincite

A fascinating look back at history, and 6 obscure persons who's decisions have had a major impact on human civilization.

Worth your time to skim, at least.

Enjoy! 

My favorite quote so far? 

QuoteMan, the Soviets sure saved our asses a lot during our war against the...Soviets.

The whole is written in an irreverent style which I found amusing.  But the 6 people mentioned are still made of heroic stuff nonetheless.

... and breaks the sound barrier on the way down, lands safely via parachute

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FHtvDA0W34I

[youtube=425,350]FHtvDA0W34I[/youtube]

Quote
After flying to an altitude of 39,045 meters (128,100 feet) in a helium-filled balloon, Felix Baumgartner completed a record breaking jump for the ages from the edge of space, exactly 65 years after Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier flying in an experimental rocket-powered airplane. Felix reached a maximum of speed of 1,342.8 km/h (833mph) through the near vacuum of the stratosphere before being slowed by the atmosphere later during his 4:20 minute long freefall. The 43-year-old Austrian skydiving expert also broke two other world records (highest freefall, highest manned balloon flight), leaving the one for the longest freefall to project mentor Col. Joe Kittinger.

Watch the Full Recap: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOoHArAzdug

(emphasis mine... it's cool... watch the long video if you can, it's only 5 minutes)

When did "white goods" (sheets, towels, etc) become so outrageously expensive?  For even the cheap stuff?

My long-lasting waterbed sheets have finally gone the distance-- I had two sets, and one is already retired for cloth-rags, and the last, working one is soon to follow.

Now, I knew that finding them locally is problematic, as waterbeds have been relegated to on-line only shopping.   But I figured I'd buy pair of top-sheets only and "roll my own" as it were-- I can sew triangles to the corners, and the top to the bottom as easily as anyone else can.

But lordy-lordy, the prices have gone through the roof!   I looked on-line for quality sheets and was dismayed to find I'd need to shell out $60-80 for a single set of waterbed sheets for the bed!  What?   I found some cheaper, but the reviews all complained about how thin and cheap they were.... from Amazon....!!! (I usually expect quite a discount from them or their vendors).

Seriously, I had rather expected to pay $20 or so for a single flat sheet -- but first, almost nobody will sell you a single flat sheet-- they now come in sets only:  flat, fitted bottom, a pair of pillow-cases.   For way, way too much $$ for the quality of the fabric.

I did locate individual flat sheets at Bed Bath & Beyond your budget "on sale" for $100 per each.... whaaaaa?

I almost asked the salesperson if, at that price, they came with a butler to put them on the bed for you?  No?  Hmmmm....

So, back to Amazon, where I can get allegedly 1200-count all Egyptian cotton (a type of cotton, not a place of manufacture I have now learned) for about $80-100, allegedly "American Made" too.   A full set (top sewn to bottom, bottom with corner-pockets), including two pillow-covers.  And, from what I found out in retail, that's not a bad deal at all.

Dayum.   I paid less than $40 for both my current sets, and it wasn't all that long ago.....?  (or maybe it was... time flies... let's see-- when did I get those, actually?  In the early 90's?  And it's 2012?  So... 20 years of daily use?  Oh-kaaay... that's a pretty good bargain right there.....)

But an inflation rate of, what?   $20 --> $100?   Over only 20 years?  That is quite a lot, actually....

... my, how times have changed. 

If I could afford it, I'd buy 4 sets this time-- leave 2 sets unopened, and re-sell them in 20 years on EBay and make a fortune..... <snerk>

... as pointed out by Bill Maher.

(warning... Mahr drops the occasional F-bomb)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WjxOVOLKkdQ

[youtube=425,350]WjxOVOLKkdQ[/youtube]

Here's a pretty good video of the history of the world* in about 2 minutes

http://www.viddler.com/v/dd2d628b

I don't know how to embed Viddler though.


___________

_{* well, mostly of the Western world, with emphasis on the USA of course.} 

This artist is amazing.  Worth your time to watch.

Via The Chive

(you can skip over the interview (it's in Chinese anyway) by jumping to approximately 1:27 on the slider, and the song only lasts until aproximately 5:44 or so, the rest is just interviews)

Uploader's comment:  "The 19 year old girl ZhengHong singing Adele's 《Someone Like You》."
[youtube=425,350]Vv9wgDldVZg[/youtube]

In recent news (old news by now), both CNN and Fox News committed a gross blunder in reporting, by failing to read the whole document released by the US Supreme Court.

For many minutes, both new channels erroneously reported that SCOTUS had struck down the centerpoint of Obama's health care bill, the individual mandate.   Fox corrected itself a bit before CNN finally realized their error.

Of course Stewart had a boatload of fun with this.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-28-2012/cnn---fox-news-report-supreme-court-decision

Sorry to those folk in the UK and elsewhere, I don't think the above link will work...

The following parody was also quite good:  http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-28-2012/the-best-f--king-news-team-ever-reports-on-the-supreme-court-s-health-care-ruling

Lately, I have installed my venerable Dell Streak 7 up into the headliner of my work van, using velcro.   It sits there neatly behind the sun visor, hidden from casual view.

I also have routed a 12v power box over to that spot (the headliner has a nice 4" space between it and the actual sheet metal, at that point).    The power box I used was one I'd had, but it has a lovely little auto-disconnect feature in it, if you disconnect the power, it does not leave accessories inter-connected to each other.   So I powered it via a convenient switch, naturally.

But into that 12v box, I have a 12v to 5v adapter, high power (2.1 amps, actually) that then goes through a proprietary cable to the Dell, keeping it's battery topped up.

Now, I have no idea how well that 12v adapter is constructed, reverse-voltage-wise.  Does it leak volts backwards through itself, trickle-draining my Streak's internal battery?   I do not know, so I've been pulling the 5v plug anytime I'd powered off the 12v box.  Kinda defeating the point of a handy switch, if I also manually pull the plug too.

So....

... a trip to Mouser (a lovely house of everything electronic-parts wise, thousands of electronic products) and a look-through their 5v relay offerings and I selected me a nice 5v coil, DPST relay:  double-pole, single-throw.   That is, there are two switches that only go on/off-- on when energized, off when not. 

And I took one of my spare Dell cables, and .... sliced it open with a razor knife.   Inside, I found what I expected:  4 wires, neatly color-coded:  red, black, white and green.  According to the online specs, they are +5v, -ground volts, -Data (about 1v) and +Data (approximately 3v or so).   I reasoned that switching the +5v and the +D lines should be sufficient to keep from draining my internal battery through the adapter's electronics.   I confirmed all this, by plugging the now open USB plug into a charger, and measuring the volts coming out of each wire with respect to the others. 

So I wired the now-split cable (which I also conveniently shortened to a more manageable length).

The coil has 6 pins:  2 to the coil (which does not care about polarity), and 4 more, 2 per switch.   So it was from the USB plug end, red/+5v to one coil terminal, including a short jumper over to one side of one switch, and on the remaining switch terminal, the red/+5v from the Dell plug.   Then the black/ground to the other coil pin, and also the black wire from the Dell-plug end, a convenient tie point.   For the final two pins, I put one green wire from the USB plug, and the other green wire from the Dell plug.  Lastly, I twisted the two white wires together.  Careful soldering of all points, including the twisted pair.

Now, to test it's functional operation:  re-plug into the charger, and measure volts at the various pins:  all is as it should be, with the relay switching the 5v and D+ wires anytime it's plugged in, and disconnecting them when it's not.

A careful wrapping of electrical tape, to also mechanically secure the ends of the cables to the relay body, and a nice, neat little package, with a nice shortened USB to Dell via a relay cable for my Streak.

Now?

Whenever I hit the switch to kill power to the 12v ports in the upper left corner of my van's headliner, it does kill 5v power to the Dell's cord, allowing the relay to open, eliminating a possible battery-leak backwards through the converter's electrics.   No need to manually disconnect.   

Nice. 

Well worth 12 minutes, IMHO

From http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDRXn96HrtY

[youtube=425,350]rDRXn96HrtY[/youtube]

A while back, I noticed my beloved mainbox PC was operating ... slowly.

I detected this initially during a demo of a game I was considering, and that started an odessy of digging under the hood.... something I would have relished in my younger days, but now in my 50+ experience, a tedium I had wished to avoid (which is why I bought this one "turn-key" instead of building from scratch..).

Of course, I'm long past the "free" techno-help from the vendor, that was only good for a year and I discovered I purchased this in 2010-- my how time flies!  It's coming up on 2 years old, this machine is (Dec of this year).

Anyway, it was acting slow-- but only for certain specific conditions.   Certain types of hard-disk access, for example.  Going back into the BOOT screen was painfully slow-- you could order pizza and have it delivered between each key-press within the BIOS menu (for example).

Scouring the webs yielded a plethora of possibilities-- none of which helped me with my symptoms.   

One computer builder suggested a latency issue(s) from some utility or other, and I downloaded the DPC Latency checker (google--it's free utility-- no install, you just run it, it's tiny-- a handy tool).    I had zero latency issues that it could detect.... WTF?   Still slow under certain conditions....  (specifically, certain sound-engines would stutter or play skip-wise as if jumping over rail-road tracks...some video was slow and laggy too)

Last night, I had Had It:  I opened the side of the case (now quite handy, thanks to my 3 Screens stand... Yaaay!) and just started unplugging everything:  all DVD drives, all hard disks, all USB stuff-- everything.  Then, only on the main USB bus, I re-plugged the main keyboard and nothing else-- well, apart from the 3 screens...

... and hit the power button:    *BAM*  it was lightning-fast, just like when I got it.  Okay, power off at the "ESC TO BOOT, 9sec countdown" message. 

Next:  Plug-in the DVD drive and only the Win7 Hard Drive:  *BAM* lightning-fast.  Power-off.   
Next:  Plug in the mouse, too:  *BAM* lightning-fast.... let it boot all the way... Windoze was fast-booting too... Yaaay!    Let Windoze come up all the way.   Joy!  Fast!

Alas, without the P: drive, most of my programs were missing... so... power off-- Joy!  That was fast, too.

Re-plug the next two drives:  P: (programs) and S: (storage)... still lightning-fast.  Happy-Happy-Joy-Joy!   Let Windoze, again, come up all the way... alas, it's Artificial Stupid (laughingly called a "wizard") wanted to re-detect all my hardware... okay, let it, but no, I do not need it to also check Windoze Update-and-Crash site...  a few seconds later, all was re-installed.

Happiness!  I don't need to replace any of the hard drives... (but I may anyway, as a preventative-- I have 2 years on my main Win7 drive, and even more on the others:  P: is a 320gig, about 3 or 4 years old, and S: is a 500gig slightly newer-- I probably ought to replace them all... with a couple of the newer fast ultra-large disks, and put these into an archival setting... something to ponder).

But I have solved the BIOS Molasses issues... it turns out, it was one of my USB devices (I have yet to determine which one).  It was either an CrApple iPod cable (which does have some electronics innit, even though it was not connected to the iPod) or one of several microUSB data cables or perhaps the old Zune dock (which I had forgotten all about).   Or it might even have been a little 4-port USB Hub, which is passive (not powered) that I had used to consolidate all my keyboard/mouse's inputs into one-- or even my old Z-board mini-gaming keyboard-- none of those are plugged in as I type this.

I'll have to re-plug them one at a time, and test-test-test. 

Later.  Maybe. 

Right now? 

I has Lightning-Fast once more...

.. as seen by the creator of this humorous video.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t3TAOYXT840

[youtube=425,350]t3TAOYXT840[/youtube]

Or is it humorous, really?

Do we really want our daily walkabout bombarded with web-based input like this?   Imagine trying to drive.... when an emergency message suddenly blocks our view....!

It turns out you can modify the menus & icons in the latest release of FireFox, if you try.

I still cannot get the tabs where I want them (I am used to them just below the quick-links toolbar, but now they are at the very top, just under the word-menus).

I have no problem with vertical space-- I have a 21 inch monitor, with 1050 pixels of resolution to play with (and nearly 6000 pixels of horizontal room).   Not an issue for me.

So the first thing, I enabled the word-menus, that is the ones that use words instead of stupid little cryptic images-- it turns out that right-clicking on the title-bar itself (the one Windoze will force onto all windows within it's space, and is color-coordinated with your current color schema, which for me, is a kind of semi-transparent red) -- right-clicking on the title-bar causes the menu bar to show itself, where you choose VIEW and then enable/disable the various tool bars as you like.  I turned'em all on, for starters.    Later, I turned off "Add on bar" as I don't see what it actually does...

Hey!  In writing this up, I was reminding myself of how/what I did, and I spotted a nice little "Tabs on top"-- unchecking that put my tabs back where they belong, just above the actual Internet window-space.  Nice.

Anyway, that helped, but did not fix everything-- some of my buttons were still missing:  back and forth was there, discovered by playing with them, but none of the rest were. 

Okay, under the same menu:  View-->Toolbars was Customize.   That one was not really clear what it was doing-- you had to watch carefully! 

It had an obvious box/window of buttons you could drag here or there, but the ones I wanted were not in that box/window at all... frustration ensued.   Then, looking back at the original so-called "Navigation toolbar", I noticed that only when the Customize window was showing, so were the missing buttons-- only at the extreme left!  As soon as you closed the "Customize" window?  They vanished!   WTF?   Who was the idiot who thought that was a good idea?

Anyway, with the Customize window open and only then, all buttons on the Navigation toolbar are movable-- you can drag them hither-thither as you please.  I drug away the one I never used-- down to the window where it stuck-- and then put the refresh/close back where they belong.  My NoScript button has been moved up there too (from it's former spot on the bottom, status bar, which is now completely gone-- I rather miss it, as it had useful information which was not duplicated anywhere else... stupid "update" anyway.

But that's that:  I'm now running the latest, more or less looking as my old one did.   Good enough for now.

I am sad to say, my black kitty, Samantha died last night from a long illness.   She went quietly in her sleep, slowly breathing her last breath. 

She refused to give in, and refused to give up, even though she lost in the very end anyway.   She was not in noticeable pain, as far as anyone could tell-- she was simply, and slowly, dying.

Life is just too damn short.

   

I'm kinda bummed, naturally, but I'm kinda relieved for her too-- she can rest a long-deserved rest.

I'm gonna miss her-- she was always the first to the door when I came home, Galileo (my other cat) too often demonstrated classical cat: "Oh.  it's you.  feed me."

Sammie always had a all-but-silent "mew" for me, and would run to greet me at the door, regardless of what odd hour it was I was coming home.   This always earned her a lavish coat-brushing, but not to be picked up-- she always hated that.

So I will be forced to pick her up one last time, and take her.... somewhere.  I've not yet decided where (she's currently in cold storage, until I may sort out my feelings-- she won't mind, as she always preferred colder than hotter, if she had a choice).

I think it's not quite yet sunk in.

Alas, poor kitty, I will miss your quiet ways.