I am in a skilled nursing facility near Willowbrook Mall named Legends Oaks.  It is part of a chain of retirement homes that started in central Texas.  The chain was bought a few weeks ago by a bigger chain based in Mission Viejo, California; the Ensign Group.  The big switchover was May 1.

The transition included computer equipment.  I could get on the web at 10 PM that night.  Monday it was slow until 10 PM.  I got good speed until 10:30 this morning.  I can get onto the ENGUEST network but it wasn’t accessing the internet.  Hopefully they will follow the 10 PM pattern.

No internet means I have to deal with the terrible cable setup here.  It doesn’t have all the local channels.  I have to go back to the 80’s version of computer activity, programming and writing.

No web access means no communication other than the phone.  I can’t email or Skype with Brooke.  She is going to have to wait to find out how I did dealing with the business office and the insurance company.

UHC problem

I am allowed 25 days per year in a skilled nursing facility.  I had used 18 days at Brookhollow earlier in the year.  I was in Legends 7 days and they told me I had used all my benefits.  I paid for a week.  Brooke looked at the policy and said I shouldn’t have paid.  I should have made them request more benefits under the continuity of care section.  I’m still trying to get them to make the request.

Legends has only 9 English-language TV channels:  3 news(CNN,Fox,HLN), the Weather Channel, PBS, and 4 local channels.  Houston has 5 local channels.  I haven’t been able to get to the internet for five days.  I can connect to the Wi-fi network but it doesn’t go out to the web.

They wake us up around 7 AM.  After breakfast I have nothing to do since I can’t afford physical and occupational therapy ($30 to $60 for 15 minutes).  I can get all the breaking news of the day in the first 15 minutes of all the networks.  Since this is an election year the next 5 to 10 minutes is filled with comments from or about Trump and Hillary.  Non-intellectual talk and game shows e.g. The Price is Right fill the time before lunch.

Since I’m lazy I try to put off or cut short the computer tasks that don’t involve the web.  This gives me time to watch these professionally upbeat people report on the latest gossip, fashion, and food trends.  This kind of information has never come up in a trivia game.  So the facts come in my brain and takes up space that could be used to store the capital of Botswana(Gaborone).

I know I’m close to the mushy bottom when I wonder what going on with Wendy Williams’ show.  This is bad because I once saw her try to smoke a strip of beef jerky.

The lead is I had to have my right foot amputated.  I got an infection and it moved up my leg.  I spent a month in a hospital and now I’m in a skilled nursing facility for more rehab and Brooke is on a South Seas cruise.

The main reason for this post is since I don’t have therapy today I’m spending all day in bed.  Last night a nurse knocked the TV remote to the floor and broke it.  It’s not a complete loss since I can watch Xfinity on the web.

This includes my DVR, On-Demand, and whatever is streaming.  The trouble is I watched a lot of the DVR at the hospital.  I’ve been breaking up the TV shows with actual computer work like programming language tutorials and obviously this blog.

I’m lazy so when it’s time for actual work like powershell or MySQL I look for new releases or check my whiteboard spreadsheet to see what I was last doing.  For example, I have Record Press on the MySQL row.  I tried signing in and forgot my password.  I’ve forgotten a lot of admin passwords.  I thought I had standardized them.

I’m so desperate not to do actual computer work I was watching sitcoms from the TVLand network.  Jim Gaffigan’s show has a funny character that’s a cynical Jew and proud of it.  George Lopez’s show has some funny lines but I don’t appreciate the premise that he is still not used to being rich and famous.

I saw today on Lifehacker that the hacker group Anonymous is releasing their own flavor of Linux.  Supposedly it will have a set of hacking tools.  I’m of two minds on this.

Speaking as a regular computer user I think it would be a very BAD idea to play with this distro if you value anything on that machine.  The idea of installing an OS from a hacker organization seems reckless and crazy.

I’m sure they are on the up and up but the words back-door jump up whenever I think about systems and hackers.  This has been in the back of my mind since Wargames.  A person that just uses their computer should stay far away from this OS.

I’m talking backup your system, clear your browser history of all sites that mention it, turn off the computer, unplug all the cables, and go watch a double feature of Wargames and Hackers.  You’ll thank me later.

That having been said I must put on my nerdy, geeky,  and pointy wizard hat and confess that I want it.  I don’t have the talent or the training to use it but I can learn.  I know I should have a properly secure machine and network setup to guard against the back door I mentioned earlier but that’s hard and boring.

I’ve always used software to wander down paths I never took.  It started with the text version of Star Trek and has progressed to planes, surgery, music, and sports.  Activision had a Hacker game for the Commodore 64 that started with just a prompt.

Now there’s a whole OS with hacking tools out there?!   As soon as I get another machine (probably from a pawn shop) Anonymous is going on.

Blogging and writing has been coming up a lot this week.  Now that I’m on this 250 word kick it’s becoming more like work rather than self-indulgent musings.  But a resemblance to discipline is resemblance to discipline.

I went to the doctor Friday for diabetes drugs and an opinion on this cough.  He said if it hadn’t gotten worse in 3 weeks it was just a sinus allergy.  So I get to go to the drug store and look for something that will kill the sympom.

He gave me some Lanthus pens.  These are very convenient insulin delivery systems.  He commented that they were expensive.  I answered that you pay extra for convenience.  I wanted to add that if I had a more expensive doctor he wouldn’t see me 45 minutes after the appointment time.

Forum came up on the task picker yesterday.  It looks like I have not touched the thing since November.  All I had was one category, Buzztime Trivia.  I added a few categories and a sub-topic.  My next task with it will be adding a link to it from both the work and play pages.

I seem to be an afternoon work person but I’m forcing myself to get out of bed in the morning.  At least I read my electronic sites and send out my resume to jobs I have a marginal chance to get an interview.

I bought and extra wireless router a couple months ago because Woot had a good price.  I’m toying with the idea of setting it up in my office and being able to connect my Toshiba to the Dell.