I had a big medical bill to cover, for one thing. (Would have been a lot bigger without insurance, of course.)

And now I've noticed that my main computer is failing, a bit. The cooling fan has died. That already got replaced once, a couple of years ago, and acquiring the replacement fan was a dreadful pain. I've decided it isn't worth it to go through that again.

This is about my last chance to buy a new computer with Win7 on it, so I've decided to take it. I just put in an order for this. It's faster than the one I have now (2.3GHz versus 2.0GHz), it has twice the RAM, half the HD, and a better graphics chip (not that I do much that requires a blazing graphics chip). I'm guessing now I'll have it Tuesday, but that's just a SWAG.

And now I have to be virtuous and stop buying toys.

Buying a new computer is a love-hate event for me. New toys are always good, but a new computer means decrufting, followed by reinstalling all my apps. It'll be weeks before I get it all done.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 07:39 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Most mornings I'm up before 7, but today I slept in. I keep my phone on my bed next to my pillow so it's within arm's reach in case I need it, and I got waked by it at 8:00 when it made a sound I hadn't heard before.

It was an "Amber Alert". I didn't know about this feature. They sent an email to every phone in the region which could receive it, alerting everyone to a child kidnapping that happened in The Dalles this morning. (Which is about 70 miles from here.)

The kid is safe, and the perp is now in jail. I don't know if the Amber Alert helped, but surely it can't have hurt.

There's a menu in my phone allowing me to control whether I receive a bunch of different levels of alert: Amber alert, Severe alert, Extreme alert, and Presidential alert. I can't disable that last one.

I assume the others are for things like tornado warnings in Oklahoma. Maybe a "Presidential alert" means "we're about to have a nuclear war, so kiss your ass goodbye".

There wasn't anything like this back when I worked on cell phones; but that's because none of the phones I worked on did mail. They were just voice boxes.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 04:44 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Remember "I've fallen, and I can't get up"? You may think that was mildly humorous, but when you're infirm it's a serious worry. My lifestyle being what it is, if I have another, more serious, stroke, I might well die, slowly, of thirst. Likewise if I lose my balance and fall and break a bone.

It's not a prospect I really look forward to. So that's why I got the cell phone; and I always keep it within arm's reach. It's my solution to that problem. My normal wireline phone doesn't serve; it's on top of my refrigerator, and if I was hurt there would be no way to reach it.

I wanted to set up my account with Verizon to auto-pay from my checking account, and I figured I could do that online. The question was, would I have to go to the Verizon store to set up a login?

Turns out not. Their authentication isn't foolproof, but it's pretty darned good.

To set up the login, I gave them my phone number. And then they sent a text message to my phone with a temporary password. (It was an 8 digit number, which looked random to me. I don't think it was a hash.) It caught me by surprise; I was sitting at my computer using the web browser, and suddenly my phone chimed.

Using that, effectively it confirmed that I had that phone. It didn't prove I hadn't stolen it, of course, but that can be handled other ways. (Like the owner reports it stolen or lost, and then Verizon shuts down service for it.)

Anyway, using that one-time password I was able to log in and set a permanent password, and tell them my email address (to which, from now on, they will send all bills and communications; I am now "paperless"), and then I gave them all the information they need about my checking account in order to automatically pay my bill each month.

I had another experience like that a couple of days ago. A couple of my prescriptions ran out and needed refilling, and I decided to see whether I could put in the order using the web.

And it turns out that I could. If you're not from around here, you probably don't know what Fred Meyer is. It belongs to Kroger now, but it's a chain of stores located all over the Northwest and even down into northern California. It's kind of an omnibus store; they sell groceries, but also variety stuff, and electronics, and appliances, and furniture, and there's a home center, and... about the only thing they don't sell is cars. (I think they don't sell beds, either.)

Well, I got my prescriptions from their pharmacy, so I got onto the web site. What they asked for was, first, the prescription numbers I wanted to refill. But was I just entering random numbers to foul them up? How to prove not?

I had to enter the full phone number of the particular pharmacy I was using (which is printed on the label of the bottle), and the last four digits of my own phone number, to prove it was me.

For someone trying to cause grief, that means that even if they got a real prescription number, they'd have to guess right which of the many Fred Meyer pharmacies first issued it (and there are probably fifty of them), and then have one chance in ten thousand of getting the customer phone number right. That's sufficiently daunting that I doubt anyone bothers to try hacking it, which for Fred Meyer is good enough. (But if it becomes a problem, their records also include the name of the customer and they could ask for that, too.)

Both of those I thought were pretty clever. Security is always a tradeoff with convenience, but in these cases I thought they choose a pretty good tradeoff point.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 09:39 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I went back to the doctor's office this morning. On his last visit, my physical therapist took my blood pressure and it was about 175. Myself, I've been finding numbers as high as 210 since last Sunday, but now I have evidence that my measurement device has been reading high.

Still, it's too damned high, and Gil (the PT) called my doctor on Wednesday and got me an appointment this morning. My own doctor is on vacation, and I saw someone else in the office.

The upshot: they increased the dose of two of the medications I've been taking. My own doctor (an intern, it turns out) said she was going to do that for one of them, but didn't actually do so. The prescription I had coming out of the rehab was for two 10 mg tablets per day, and her prescription was for one 20 mg tablet per day. As of this morning, that's now increased to two 20 mg tablets per day, which really is an increase, but her original prescription doubled the size of the tablets but didn't increase the dose I was taking.

However, in my records she wrote that she was increasing it, and to my frustration today, this doctor read that and kept talking about it as an increase. I kept objecting that it wasn't an increase. It took me something like four times  to get her to look at the numbers, and finally realize that it was not. I sat there and seethed for most of the appointment because of that. I guess there ain't a lot of math required for an MD, eh?

Another reason I was seething was because I had gone around on this exact point twice in phone calls later in December, and didn't manage to get the point across. The people saw the word "increase" in my record and didn't bother to look at the actual numbers. grumble

That particular drug apparently doesn't really have much effect when increased, so they also doubled another one, which meant I had to visit the pharmacy yet again. Since I left the rehab I have gotten 11 prescriptions filled, and none of those was a refill.

So anyway, I'm supposed to log my blood pressure and email the result to my doctor once a week.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 02:30 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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It looks like I got off easy. It was only two weeks after my stroke before I was able to walk with a walker, and I would have been able to climb those steps within a month.

I'm not 100%, and probably never will be, but I'm back to being self-sufficient and able to live on my own again, and for that I am very grateful.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 12:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So it turns out that adding a custom ringtone is really easy. There's a "ringtones" directory, and you copy an MP3 file into it, and it shows up in the ringtones menu.

So now my ringtone is the song "Hakuoh Academy" from the Mouretsu Pirates OST. (Which I posted under a different name, a few months ago.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 11:18 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 That was gorgeous. Maybe I should give Mouretsu Pirates a shot.

Posted by: Jaked at December 30, 2012 05:19 PM (bKJoV)

2 The music for this series is outstanding.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 30, 2012 05:22 PM (+rSRq)

3 And yes, you should give it a try. It's my favorite series of 2012, and I can't imagine how anyone could dislike it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 30, 2012 05:24 PM (+rSRq)

4 And now everyone who calls you end up timing out and going to voicemail....   That is a lovely song.

Posted by: Mauser at December 30, 2012 06:24 PM (cZPoz)

5 It's going to take getting used to. I just had an incoming call, and I was confused for a moment.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 30, 2012 06:31 PM (+rSRq)

6

That is a good tune.  And not immediately identifiable as "anime music," so you can take your phone out in public. ;-)

I do the same thing; I'm currently using Gioia from Gunslinger Girl, and Book End Bossa from Chobits.

Posted by: Mikeski at December 30, 2012 08:19 PM (DU6Ja)

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Today I walked out to the Panda Express on Canyon road and bought a large tub of Orange Chicken and a large tub of noodles and carried them home. It's the longest I've walked since I got back from the rehab. Google Earth says it was nearly a mile, round trip.

The big thing I was worried about was crossing Canyon Road, which is 4 lanes. But I did fine; plenty of time to spare.

I am really tired now, and I'm going to feel it tomorrow. But it's good for me to push myself, and I'm walking better than before.

If I can increase my range about another 25%, I'll be able to reach Fred Meyers, the local omnibus store, and the place where my prescriptions get filled.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 11:36 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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I was wrong about this phone. Right now the battery shows 49% and says it's been 4 days, 21 hours since I last charged it. That's truly excellent.

Of course, it's a 2000 ma/h battery, and the ones in the phones I worked on were usually 600. But it's still quite excellent. I'm going to run it most of the way down before I charge it again. It's good for lithium batteries to do that when they're first new.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 10:42 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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We take so many things for granted, and don't really value them until they're gone. I have been taking daily walks, and gradually increasing my distance. Usually I've just walked around the complex here, but yesterday I went out and walked to where 114th crosses the other branch of the creek.

And today I went past that point and walked all the way to the Asian Grocery Store.

They didn't have any Pocky. Bummer. But they did have a bowl-of-noodles in Udon flavor, and I was curious, so I bought one. I'll have it for lunch today. And there were some rolled-up cookies in ginger, and I bought a box.

Google Earth says it was 3/10th of a mile one way, and when I got home I could tell I was at the limit of my strength. I'm trying to work up to being able to walk to Fred Meyers, but it'll be a while. That's twice as far.

UPDATE: Those noodles are appallingly spicy-hot. Just the amount of broth that's on the noodles is enough to make my mouth burn. I think I can't finish this.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 09:29 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 Good going.  Keep it up!

Posted by: ubu at December 17, 2012 10:59 AM (SlLGE)

2 Appallingly spicy udon? Send a picture of the label!

-j

Posted by: J Greely at December 17, 2012 12:45 PM (fpXGN)

3

 

It's actually a Korean product, and that should have tipped me off. My experience is that ever Korean food product I've ever tried was spicy-hot.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 17, 2012 12:58 PM (+rSRq)

4 It is true in general that Koreans overdose on chemically burning substances, but some of their stuff is not so bad. Bullgogi, for example, if authentic.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at December 17, 2012 01:39 PM (RqRa5)

5 The ginger cookies I bought are also a bit hot.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 17, 2012 01:50 PM (+rSRq)

6 I just did something very, very bad to my knee this evening... I don't think I could walk a half-mile right now.  Hell, I could barely climb nine stairs to get to Pond Central.

Posted by: Wonderduck at December 17, 2012 04:24 PM (cymHZ)

7

Stairs are a problem. I have to climb some stairs to get into my apartment, and that's the last thing, of course, in any walking expedition.

Walking up and down stairs is one of the things the physical therapists worked on with me at the rehab.

I'm sorry about your knee; hope it gets better soon.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at December 17, 2012 04:36 PM (+rSRq)

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So now I have a primary care physician. I just got back from my first appointment with her. She's changing my prescriptions slightly, increasing one of the drugs.

She's quite nice. And she's half Japanese. (YAY!)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 02:56 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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