Just a quick note - had my laser surgery done on the veins in my left leg yesterday, and all went well, they tell me. It was pretty uncomfortable and fitfully painful in a small way: lots of injections, at least 20-odd for local anaesthesia and 20-30 more for the vein-collapsing goo where the veins were too small to fit the catheter: and my leg hurts like a bastard today, as to be expected.
Now I have to wear a support-hose for a week and a half while the veins seal up and close properly, but the upshot should be an absence of blood pooling in the foot and calf, which would be very nice (esp the repeated stabbing pains that come along with that)
Oh and why does catheter sound like catholic? Well it's just a little prick, an awful lot of pushing, and it can make a huge difference to your life.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
eBay
When I first encountered eBay, oh 15 years ago I suppose, it seemed like a marvellous idea,and I took to it like the proverbial amphibian to water, buying unpainted toy soldiers, painting them up and selling them off (plus, adding to my own collections), all for a tiny charge, and with a global market - marvellous for a New Zealander used to being the back end of beyond.
However, with the progress of years, and the greater and greater knowledge of the Internet among the dim, the unwary, and - especially! - the sharps and con-men, it is one of the sites that seems to have deteriorated in value and virtue.
If you should choose to list by price, lowest first, you get one of two responses - either the "premium products" get listed, lowest to highest, before anything else gets listed (ie same result), or else you get pages and pages of 'accessories' - be it buttons, bells, or batteries - to what you wanted all listed first, being marketed by the down-market compatriots of the premium product merchants, still trying to get your 'eyeballs' before you get to what you want to acquire.
On top of that, some of the purveyors of tat seem to feel they can ignore all classifications and stick their products into any and every category of business, the more irrelevant the better - this is how, while browsing for some SYW artillerymen, I came upon vibrating groin massagers, handpainted portraits of Jesus on velvet (autographed by him!) and the miracle dog-collar that will stop your dog ever barking*
Even more vexing, if such were possible, is that once you find something you want to buy, instead of doing the deal with eBay and relying on them, they whisk you off to the vendors own websire, where you have to spend -more- time just filling out some inane and over-intrusive questionairre about yourself, and then get presented with some tiny writing asserting your rights (none) and their rights (everything) and directed to tick a box to show you agree to these rights, otherwise the purchase cannot be completed.
Well, being cranky, I've started reading these assertions, and as a result have declined to complete several purchases, for completely ludicrous conditions such as (a) absolutely no returns on anything no matter what - thats a popular one, (b) the vendor reserving the rights to charge 25% or 40% on top of estimated postage and packing, for reasons unspecified, (c) you agreeing to pay for any time spent in discussing errors in shipping and mislabelling, and (d) the vendor reserving the right to ship a different product to that purchased if he has business exigencies requiring this.
And eBay itself now seems massively disinterested in helping sort out any disputes, combining difficulty in initiating complaints with an extremely dismissive attitude and lassitude.
So, I've given up. I guess I bought or sold at least $50k worth of stuff through eBay, but those days are over - the girl has vomited on that train**
*If you tighten it enough, I'm assuming
** or if you prefer, Sick Transit, Gloria Munday
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Cat TV
One of the thing both cats definitely approve of in our new abode, is the glass patio door, as it stares out onto a grove* of trees, and a thicket of bamboo, which seem to be perpetually full of bird life and squirrels.
Our mighty hunters are happy to spend hours, watching and imagining the hunt they will have if they ever, you know, venture out there. Given their prowess in hunting - basically nil - this is the sort of pipe dream definitely worth encouraging.
However, we appear to have an interloping cat prowling the neighbourhood, a shorthair black cat also called Midnight!**
It has been most entertaining, as it will come up to the patio door and stare in, while our Midnight is staring out, and they seem fascinated by each other. The first few times, our Middie would slink off in defeat pretty quickly (long years of being cowed by Brandy conditioning this, I assume), but with the passage of time & the failure to get beaten up, she has gained some courage, and now stands making the most peculiar sound, a sort of half-strangled halfwhine, half growl, descending in pitch. The other Midnight just blinks and wanders off after she gets bored, however, so it's not exactly devastating.
I should add, the couple of times Brandy has been staring out the door, as soon as Other Midnight turns up, she fluffs up, hisses, growls, and scares it off tout suite, but then she's a bossy little thing at all times.
*Well, a few trees anyway! Grove is perhaps a bit grandiose
** Name discerned from a little girl wandering the neighbourhood one night, bellowing 'Midnight! Midnight!' in a voice that would do a brass foghorn proud for both volume and harshness.
Our mighty hunters are happy to spend hours, watching and imagining the hunt they will have if they ever, you know, venture out there. Given their prowess in hunting - basically nil - this is the sort of pipe dream definitely worth encouraging.
However, we appear to have an interloping cat prowling the neighbourhood, a shorthair black cat also called Midnight!**
It has been most entertaining, as it will come up to the patio door and stare in, while our Midnight is staring out, and they seem fascinated by each other. The first few times, our Middie would slink off in defeat pretty quickly (long years of being cowed by Brandy conditioning this, I assume), but with the passage of time & the failure to get beaten up, she has gained some courage, and now stands making the most peculiar sound, a sort of half-strangled halfwhine, half growl, descending in pitch. The other Midnight just blinks and wanders off after she gets bored, however, so it's not exactly devastating.
I should add, the couple of times Brandy has been staring out the door, as soon as Other Midnight turns up, she fluffs up, hisses, growls, and scares it off tout suite, but then she's a bossy little thing at all times.
*Well, a few trees anyway! Grove is perhaps a bit grandiose
** Name discerned from a little girl wandering the neighbourhood one night, bellowing 'Midnight! Midnight!' in a voice that would do a brass foghorn proud for both volume and harshness.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Retrograde America
One thing only occurred to me over the weekend, about the American politico/social environment - and to be honest, I feel a bit retarded for not having twigged to it 20 years ago.
Simply, America had its revolution 200 years ago, unlike say England & the Continent, and the ideas that got embedded were a lot more weighted in favour of large land owners, fat cat mercantilists, and social stability, and quite disdainful of the common clay of working people ... and while the 19/20th century social revolutions that brought up the power of the working class didnt completely skip the USA, to a huge extent all of it was just suppressed/oppressed/killed off.
I mean, I know how the Union movement was anathematized and slaughtered (quite literally), and driven into a headlong bullheaded opposition to corporations, which still lingers, but it hadn't quite sunk in, the extent to which all of the accompanying social evolution just got kinda ... missed.
More later I hope - this week bids fair to be frenziedly busy (everyone trying to cram stuff in before the end of the year budget thing!)
Simply, America had its revolution 200 years ago, unlike say England & the Continent, and the ideas that got embedded were a lot more weighted in favour of large land owners, fat cat mercantilists, and social stability, and quite disdainful of the common clay of working people ... and while the 19/20th century social revolutions that brought up the power of the working class didnt completely skip the USA, to a huge extent all of it was just suppressed/oppressed/killed off.
I mean, I know how the Union movement was anathematized and slaughtered (quite literally), and driven into a headlong bullheaded opposition to corporations, which still lingers, but it hadn't quite sunk in, the extent to which all of the accompanying social evolution just got kinda ... missed.
More later I hope - this week bids fair to be frenziedly busy (everyone trying to cram stuff in before the end of the year budget thing!)
Friday, December 18, 2009
Windows Media Player
I use WMP to play music on my PC most of the time, as I've loaded all my CD's on to it. The repro quality is OK (would be better if I sprung for decent speakers of course), but it's a bit ... weird.
Today I felt in a Wagnerian mood, so typed Wagner in the search box, and got a bunch of the usual suspects: Tannhauser, Gotterdamerung, Tristen und Isolde, Meistersinger, Der Fliegende Hollander .... and also a Little Feat song, "Don't Bogart that joint". This is wagnerian? in any aspect or tone?
It's far from the first time I've gotten this sort of oddness included.
Today I felt in a Wagnerian mood, so typed Wagner in the search box, and got a bunch of the usual suspects: Tannhauser, Gotterdamerung, Tristen und Isolde, Meistersinger, Der Fliegende Hollander .... and also a Little Feat song, "Don't Bogart that joint". This is wagnerian? in any aspect or tone?
It's far from the first time I've gotten this sort of oddness included.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Medical Month
Well this does seem to be the month for things medical. On Tuesday I had a cardio stress test along with being injected with radioactive tracer (which is a lot less fun than it sounds :), and the cardiologist was not entirely sure of the result - there was a shadow or occlusion over the lowest part of the picture, and it's not clear whether it is caused by a blockage, or just by the thick muscle of the top of my diaphragm, as this is forced upward by my excess bulk.
Sooo, tomorrow I'm off to the hospital, where they will put a camera on a tube up through a vein in my groin, to have a look at my heart. If nothing is wrong, I should be out by lunchtime, but if they spot any blockage, they will insert a balloon and inflate it inside the artery to clear the blockage & I'll be in overnight (mostly to ensure nothing funny happens post-op, I think).
Given that this all started because I was feeling periodic palpitations/heavy pulse, and occasional left-chest pain, I'm more or less expecting that they will find something (and presumably fix it).
Anyway, on top of that, I visited the Vein centre last week, to check on my swollen foot/calf, and they have found some of the valves in my surface vein network aren't working properly (so leaving blood to pool in the extremity, hence the swelling), so on the 30th I'm scheduled for laser surgery with them (where they put a tiny laser into a vein, trace it up through the leg and seal the problematic points. That would also be nice, as this is a fairly annoying condition - it kinda restricts my mobility a bit, but mostly just aches a lot and is generally vexatious.
So, hopefully start the new year a whole new man! well, bits of one anyway.
-------------------------------------
Update:
======
Well, cardiac camera show done now, and all good news: no ischaemic blockages or anything like it - a few small traces of artherosclerosis unsurprising in a 51 year old, plus a lecture on losing weight, getting fitter and eating better, surprise surprise. Still don't know the cause of the symptoms but at least it's not cardiac.
Sooo, tomorrow I'm off to the hospital, where they will put a camera on a tube up through a vein in my groin, to have a look at my heart. If nothing is wrong, I should be out by lunchtime, but if they spot any blockage, they will insert a balloon and inflate it inside the artery to clear the blockage & I'll be in overnight (mostly to ensure nothing funny happens post-op, I think).
Given that this all started because I was feeling periodic palpitations/heavy pulse, and occasional left-chest pain, I'm more or less expecting that they will find something (and presumably fix it).
Anyway, on top of that, I visited the Vein centre last week, to check on my swollen foot/calf, and they have found some of the valves in my surface vein network aren't working properly (so leaving blood to pool in the extremity, hence the swelling), so on the 30th I'm scheduled for laser surgery with them (where they put a tiny laser into a vein, trace it up through the leg and seal the problematic points. That would also be nice, as this is a fairly annoying condition - it kinda restricts my mobility a bit, but mostly just aches a lot and is generally vexatious.
So, hopefully start the new year a whole new man! well, bits of one anyway.
-------------------------------------
Update:
======
Well, cardiac camera show done now, and all good news: no ischaemic blockages or anything like it - a few small traces of artherosclerosis unsurprising in a 51 year old, plus a lecture on losing weight, getting fitter and eating better, surprise surprise. Still don't know the cause of the symptoms but at least it's not cardiac.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Welcome to America!
Well, I got to see my first real American guns last week - most exciting and scarey.
I was walking back from buying lunch, in mid-Little Rock, when I saw a minor car accident: two cars, heading in opposite directions, both attempting to turn into the same lane of the cross-street, and bang! meeting corner-to-corner. I couldn't say whether either or both were using indicators.
One car, driven by a black guy, careened across the crossing road, and up onto a car parking area. The other, driven by a young white guy, kinda stopped right in the middle of the intersection. Both of the drivers got out of their cars and appeared to be OK at first glance.
However, the car behind the white guys one, also trying to turn it appeared, managed to stop abruptly, just avoiding rear-ending him, and 4 young white guys got out of that car, all screaming something and waving pistols in the air. I suppose in retrospect they might have been replicas but they sure looked real.
I ducked back to the shop entrance I'd just emerged from to get some cover in case the crazy bastards started shooting, and the black guy across the road dropped flat to the pavement behind his car, but the other driver just kinda stood there. At first I thought they were screaming abuse and menacing the black driver but after a brief observation it seems they were yelling at the guy in front of them, for getting in their way when they were in a hurry to ... and I lost that part of it.
After 20 or 30 seconds, they piled back into their rust bucket, and careened off down the street they had been turning into, driving partly on the wrong side of the road. They didnt actually shoot at all.
Welcome to the wild mid-west I guess.
I was walking back from buying lunch, in mid-Little Rock, when I saw a minor car accident: two cars, heading in opposite directions, both attempting to turn into the same lane of the cross-street, and bang! meeting corner-to-corner. I couldn't say whether either or both were using indicators.
One car, driven by a black guy, careened across the crossing road, and up onto a car parking area. The other, driven by a young white guy, kinda stopped right in the middle of the intersection. Both of the drivers got out of their cars and appeared to be OK at first glance.
However, the car behind the white guys one, also trying to turn it appeared, managed to stop abruptly, just avoiding rear-ending him, and 4 young white guys got out of that car, all screaming something and waving pistols in the air. I suppose in retrospect they might have been replicas but they sure looked real.
I ducked back to the shop entrance I'd just emerged from to get some cover in case the crazy bastards started shooting, and the black guy across the road dropped flat to the pavement behind his car, but the other driver just kinda stood there. At first I thought they were screaming abuse and menacing the black driver but after a brief observation it seems they were yelling at the guy in front of them, for getting in their way when they were in a hurry to ... and I lost that part of it.
After 20 or 30 seconds, they piled back into their rust bucket, and careened off down the street they had been turning into, driving partly on the wrong side of the road. They didnt actually shoot at all.
Welcome to the wild mid-west I guess.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tougher than that
Well, great news and bad news.
First, the great news, despite medical predictions and all expectations, my mother seems to have recovered from her operation: her kidneys have revived and resumed function, her lungs seem clearer, she's conscious and speaking. Not sure how her heart is, but this seems to be immensely hopeful!
Apparently the Thompsons are even tougher than I thought.
I'd write more about it, but my heart is too full of relief and joy.
The not so good news, my wife got fired last Friday (last thing in the afternoon of course, have to get the whole day's labour from her first). This is more than a little unexpected, as her employer seemed to have a high regard for her, before he got hospitalised with his own serious complications (pneumonia, kidney failure & other stuff).
But apparently his substitute, untrained and insecure, felt threatened by her competence and training and talent, and insisted on her dismissal because 'he couldn't get along with her'. As far as I can tell, that mostly consisted of a complete inability to delegate any work to her or anyone else, and to self-manage by constant flirtation with the edge of disaster and putting himself under unnecessary pressure (the old Hero syndrome I've seen so much of in the IT industry, basically).
We also found today that her previous wages cheque had been bounced for lack of funds. She got to the bank and cashed it directly today, so it's apparently cashflow, not malice, but a fairly good sign that the business is deteriorating rapidly - the october accounts weren't even sent out til the end of November, so the cashflow problem is just going to snowball unless someone starts actually managing the business.
Karmic revenge doesn't normally operate that quickly :)
First, the great news, despite medical predictions and all expectations, my mother seems to have recovered from her operation: her kidneys have revived and resumed function, her lungs seem clearer, she's conscious and speaking. Not sure how her heart is, but this seems to be immensely hopeful!
Apparently the Thompsons are even tougher than I thought.
I'd write more about it, but my heart is too full of relief and joy.
The not so good news, my wife got fired last Friday (last thing in the afternoon of course, have to get the whole day's labour from her first). This is more than a little unexpected, as her employer seemed to have a high regard for her, before he got hospitalised with his own serious complications (pneumonia, kidney failure & other stuff).
But apparently his substitute, untrained and insecure, felt threatened by her competence and training and talent, and insisted on her dismissal because 'he couldn't get along with her'. As far as I can tell, that mostly consisted of a complete inability to delegate any work to her or anyone else, and to self-manage by constant flirtation with the edge of disaster and putting himself under unnecessary pressure (the old Hero syndrome I've seen so much of in the IT industry, basically).
We also found today that her previous wages cheque had been bounced for lack of funds. She got to the bank and cashed it directly today, so it's apparently cashflow, not malice, but a fairly good sign that the business is deteriorating rapidly - the october accounts weren't even sent out til the end of November, so the cashflow problem is just going to snowball unless someone starts actually managing the business.
Karmic revenge doesn't normally operate that quickly :)
Friday, December 4, 2009
Mum
My eyes are hot
with unshed tears
uncounted
Time to fly away
my beautiful canary,
I'll never forget
the music you gave me
Fly from the pain
let the suffering stay behind
I'll miss you forever
with unshed tears
uncounted
Time to fly away
my beautiful canary,
I'll never forget
the music you gave me
Fly from the pain
let the suffering stay behind
I'll miss you forever
Thursday, December 3, 2009
eye not on the ball
Quoting from Matt Yglesias:
Thomas Friedman? Wow, Bill is really off his game here - I've repeatedly described Friedman as being too stupid to breathe without instruction, ever since reading the execresence he was pleased to call a book, 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree', which can be summed up as: "People in poor countries want to be rich, too. But that might not be good for us people in rich countries"*, only in 300 pages.
When they put him on TV as a pundit on - well, any and every topic it seems - I usually wind up turning it off after a couple of minutes as a less-expensive alternative to throwing things at the screen. One of his pearls of wisdom that springs to mind from recently, on the Afghanistan, started with:
"The three alternatives are, massive increase in force in order to smash the bad guys and win the conflict, stay as we are, or withdraw ..." which left me aghast. In what alternative universe do you win a guerrilla war by massive increases in force? And if it were even possible, where exactly would the USA conjure this massive increase in force from? The army and marines are about at the end of their tether with the current small boost in forces in Afghanistan, even a smallish boost in force, say another 100,000, would be completely out of reach on their current state.
Basically I'm just nutting off here: the wall of smug stupidity that encircles the seats of power here seem even more impenetrable than it was in England, hard though that would have been for me to believe before I got here.
*Cant remember who I stole that from, sorry to whoever
Foreign Policy magazine asks Bill Clinton “Who do you think is the smartest, most penetrating thinker you know (maybe other than your own family)? Are there people who should be on our list?”
The answer:
Paul Krugman — I don’t always agree with him, but he is unfailingly good. David Brooks has been very good. Tom Friedman is our most gifted journalist at actually looking at what is happening in the world and figuring out its relevance to tomorrow and figuring out a clever way to say it that sticks in your mind-like “real men raise the gas tax.” You know what I mean?
Thomas Friedman? Wow, Bill is really off his game here - I've repeatedly described Friedman as being too stupid to breathe without instruction, ever since reading the execresence he was pleased to call a book, 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree', which can be summed up as: "People in poor countries want to be rich, too. But that might not be good for us people in rich countries"*, only in 300 pages.
When they put him on TV as a pundit on - well, any and every topic it seems - I usually wind up turning it off after a couple of minutes as a less-expensive alternative to throwing things at the screen. One of his pearls of wisdom that springs to mind from recently, on the Afghanistan, started with:
"The three alternatives are, massive increase in force in order to smash the bad guys and win the conflict, stay as we are, or withdraw ..." which left me aghast. In what alternative universe do you win a guerrilla war by massive increases in force? And if it were even possible, where exactly would the USA conjure this massive increase in force from? The army and marines are about at the end of their tether with the current small boost in forces in Afghanistan, even a smallish boost in force, say another 100,000, would be completely out of reach on their current state.
Basically I'm just nutting off here: the wall of smug stupidity that encircles the seats of power here seem even more impenetrable than it was in England, hard though that would have been for me to believe before I got here.
*Cant remember who I stole that from, sorry to whoever
Business sucks
but small business sucks more, something I get periodic reminders of.
From Cat, of course, who gets the visceral reminders.
At her current job, her employer was hospitalised for pneumonia a month ago (plus kidney failure and other complications that havent been communicated), and is having a very shakey, slow recuperation - being an elderly (well older than me anyway!) diabetic smoker who doesn't keep up with his medication and regularly ODs on sugar, this probably isn't exactly astonishing, but it looks like he won't be up to daily appearances at the shop til maybe Valentines Day.
The problem with that is, he doesn't have a 2ic, and hasn't trained anyone to take over several of the more important bits of the job - like, ordering supplies, a fairly critical feature for floristry!, and sending out billing for regular contracts etc*. Worse than that, he has more-or-less delegated his authority to run the place to -two- people, one of his florists and the, umm, I'm not quite sure what her job is but I'd call her floor-manager.
One of the results of that is that things fall between the cracks regularly, but that is tolerable. More or less tolerable anyway.
The bigger problem is that neither is temperamentally suitable to manage - the floor manager is a wind-up merchant, someone who is perpetually agitated and tries to spread that agitation to everyone she works with, and is apparently feeling severely threatened by Cat (with her furrin experience an' book-larnin' an' stuff I guess). The senior florist, on the other hand, seems to only be able to work on the threshold of perpetual crisis - he puts off everything until the last minute, so is always putting himself under maximal pressure.
Of course, if he cocks up anything, what could be a minor & correctable hiccup turns into epic disaster, usually with knock-on effects on several other projects/items. I've worked with project managers like this, myself - briefly! - and I recall the enormous frustration and stress it generates.
How long Cat will last like this, I don't know. Possibly she will last til the owner returns, but it seems unlikely. She is talking about starting her own business: she perceives a market opening in the largest mall in the city, which has no floristry on offer, and if she can drum up some government grants for startup money, I think she'll try to arrange to get a stall or cart there to explore that.
-------------------------
*to be fair part of that problem is that he had to fire his bookkeeper for being crooked (and also enormously annoying), and hadn't found a replacement when he got laid low ... but he hadn't exactly made it a priority either.
From Cat, of course, who gets the visceral reminders.
At her current job, her employer was hospitalised for pneumonia a month ago (plus kidney failure and other complications that havent been communicated), and is having a very shakey, slow recuperation - being an elderly (well older than me anyway!) diabetic smoker who doesn't keep up with his medication and regularly ODs on sugar, this probably isn't exactly astonishing, but it looks like he won't be up to daily appearances at the shop til maybe Valentines Day.
The problem with that is, he doesn't have a 2ic, and hasn't trained anyone to take over several of the more important bits of the job - like, ordering supplies, a fairly critical feature for floristry!, and sending out billing for regular contracts etc*. Worse than that, he has more-or-less delegated his authority to run the place to -two- people, one of his florists and the, umm, I'm not quite sure what her job is but I'd call her floor-manager.
One of the results of that is that things fall between the cracks regularly, but that is tolerable. More or less tolerable anyway.
The bigger problem is that neither is temperamentally suitable to manage - the floor manager is a wind-up merchant, someone who is perpetually agitated and tries to spread that agitation to everyone she works with, and is apparently feeling severely threatened by Cat (with her furrin experience an' book-larnin' an' stuff I guess). The senior florist, on the other hand, seems to only be able to work on the threshold of perpetual crisis - he puts off everything until the last minute, so is always putting himself under maximal pressure.
Of course, if he cocks up anything, what could be a minor & correctable hiccup turns into epic disaster, usually with knock-on effects on several other projects/items. I've worked with project managers like this, myself - briefly! - and I recall the enormous frustration and stress it generates.
How long Cat will last like this, I don't know. Possibly she will last til the owner returns, but it seems unlikely. She is talking about starting her own business: she perceives a market opening in the largest mall in the city, which has no floristry on offer, and if she can drum up some government grants for startup money, I think she'll try to arrange to get a stall or cart there to explore that.
-------------------------
*to be fair part of that problem is that he had to fire his bookkeeper for being crooked (and also enormously annoying), and hadn't found a replacement when he got laid low ... but he hadn't exactly made it a priority either.
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