Music, Writing

Prarie Home Companion changing of the guard

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On Oct 15 Prarie Home Companion is going to start with a new host, Chris Thile.  Garrison Keillor had been doing it for 43 years.  He deserves a rest. Garrison wrote and performed for two hours every Saturday.  The show also toured across America and did cruises.

I discovered PHC around 1978.   I tuned in at the end of the show during the News from Lake Woebegone.  This guy was talking about Pastor Inqvist and the Chatterbox Cafe.  The story ended with Lake Woebegone where the women are strong, the men are goodloooking and the children are above average.

This was before the Internet so all I had to go on was Saturday night, KUHF, and it ended at 7 PM.  I tuned in the next week at 6 PM and he was reading hello cards from the audience to people that were listening that couldn’t make it to the show because of distance, jobs, or children.

During that hour I heard musicians that were unknown to me like Jeanne Redpath and Leo Kottke.  I learned more about artists like Chet Atkins and Doc Watson.  An 18-year old boyon the North side of Houston doesn’t have any friends that listen to public radio so I didn’t have anybody to talk to about the show.

I could talk to the guys in the after work bar near me about the musicians.  The Namedropper was a small (1500 square feet) bar within walking distance of my condo.  The patrons were mostly in their 50’s and owned machine shops or car repair places in the neighborhood.

I learned to appreciate storytellers and the craft of radio comedy.  I silently cheered at Julie Walters’ line in Educating Rita about Peer Gynt.  She was given an exam question about how she would solve the staging problems of the play.   All she answered was ‘Do it on the radio’.  When Michael Caine wants more she takes the paper and writes Ibsen’s quote about it being a play of voices.

I’m afraid that the new version will cut out most of the skits and be a music show,  I’ll admit there’s not a lot of mainstream radio venues for bluegrass but there are even less for spoken word.

Podcasts are the coming thing but they don’t have the water cooler cache.  They are like the cool foreign movie you found on the bottom shelf at the video store.  Cars are starting to get the web but the radios are still there.

I wish Chris well but I’m not going to go to a lot of trouble to tune in to the new show.  The format will probably change.   Garrison  tweaked the format for PHC for probably 20 years.  I don’t think the new format will be perfect out of the box.

Prosethesis

Walking

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I’ve been using both new legs for about a month now.  It’s probably longer but I am bad with long term time(weeks and months).  I am using a walker and boy is it slow going.  If I could do the voice I would wear my bathrobe in public and do the pedophile from Family Guy.

A surprising feature of my new limbs is that they are 10 inches shorter than my old legs.  Now I literally see eye to eye with my wife.  I have to hop up to get on my king-size  bed.  Before I could just sit on it.  I like to  say if they were going to take 10 inches they could have taken it off my dick.

Using a walker takes both hands.  If I don’t have the basket attached it’s like I don’t have any arms.  The basket is 12″ x 6″ x 3″.  My scooter basket was as big as a bike basket.  I’m now in touch with my female side in that I prefer the depth rather than width,

I’m slowly raising the level of the walker so I won’t walk leaning forward.  I was two notches up but I fell last week so I’m back to one.  I’ll go back to two tomorrow.  I read in Lifehacker that if you tell people your goals you are more likely to accomplish them.  What few goals I have I need all the help I can get.

One of those few goals is spend 45 minutes on the working tasks on the PC like blogs, my wife’s website, and various programming languages like Java, C#, and perl.

Prosethesis

The straight poop (literally)

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When I was at Legends the wife and I started talking about how I used to defecate before I got Left ( my first prosthetic).  She reminded me that I took the walker into the bathroom.  This gave me a goal for physical therapy.

I would work on using a walker with Lefty.  This would need a lot of work because Lefty is heavy and hard to use as a skip foot.  I would also have to work on lifting myself using just the walker.  So I had a plan.  To quote Julia Sweeney, God Said Ha!

A few minutes after the phone call a lady from the business office came in and informed me that my insurance benefits had run out for the facility.  Since Brooke was still on the cruise I needed to pay for at least 10 more days.  Luckily I had the money to stay but I couldn’t afford the physical therapy.

When I got home I knew I had to swallow my pride and get adult diapers.  The knee scooter could not be maneuvered into the bathroom.  The end of the bed is my cleanup station/accidental toilet until I get my prostheses.

It’s a cleanup station because on the left I have a large plastic trash bag and on the right I have toilet paper and baby wipes.  Baby wipes are very comforting after or instead of toilet paper.  I learned this in the hospital.

It’s an accidental toilet because Depends do a good job of holding feces in but can only do so much when the load is not too solid.   I  have to take them off by myself so there is a point where they are upside down and a lot of the cargo falls on the bed.  This where a LOT of toilet paper gets used and the the baby wipes and air freshener are essential.

I keep the air freshener in the basket on my scooter.

Software

Dealing with Ensign’s Wi-fi

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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.

 

Software

Bad Cable = Mushy Mind

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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.

 

Software

Boring Sunday

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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.

 

 

Job Hunt

Good with the bad

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Written October 2014

We were asked to be a Nielsen family.

My id was looking forward to my wife and I representing 50,000 people.  We are older and Mensans.  We could keep Honey Boo Boo off the air and let Naked Dating have another season.  We had rumors of sponsors sending free samples to families to get them to watch their commercials.  Greed and power were within our grasp.

Then my superego and Brooke started researching the realities and logistics of having a monitored media opinion.  While I expected a box quickly attached to either outside of the cable box or the TV the true story was there were complicated installations that took hours.  They would inventory the house for other media outlets like computers.

There would be both gadgetry and log books.  I had heard that there was a small stipend (around $50/month).  I did not want to turn my escape from job hunting into work.

We adopted a pregnant cat.

A lady in our neighborhood rescued a small gray tabby.  My wife saw the notice in the subdivision newsletter and agreed to take the cat.  After a week Arye started to show she was in a family way.

When she guessed that the cat was ready to deliver Brooke started to bring the future mama into our bed.  One Saturday morning we were awakened by Arye meowing and delivering kittens.  In less than a hour 5 kittens were born on our bed.

For the next three days I slept on the couch.  I didn’t want to toss and turn onto the new family.

Job Hunt, Prosethesis

It’s been 2 years but I’m back

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I’ve been lazy and not interested in doing real input work on the computer.  I count input work as writing prose and doing code.  I’m starting work (non-game and TV stuff) again because my right leg got infected and had to be amputated below the knee.

I’ve already spent over a month in the hospital and I’m waiting to be transferred to a skilled nursing facility for more rehabilitation and basic care since Brooke is on a South Pacific cruise for 3 more weeks.  Luckily I’ve had real good Wi-fi.

This time the prosthetic will be covered by insurance.  We won’t have to us Brooke’s money to buy one.  A guy from op solutions has already been here twice.  He can start bringing me shrinkers since the staples came out today.

I’ve given up the illusion I’ll get another job since driving is pretty much out of the question unless Brooke wants to spring for a conversion job.  We have better things to spend serious cash on like cleaning up the house.  I was in the process of getting a firm to give me an estimate before we went on this last cruise to the Caribbean.

The cruise is a whole new set of posts and a new category.  Brooke’s mother died last year and left her serious cash.  We went on a Prairie Home Companion cruise in the eastern Caribbean and she loved it.  I tagged along because I liked seeing different things.  She loved it so much that we went on 4 more.

Trivia

Dumb laptop placement and live trivia

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I have a Dell laptop attached to a docking station that I don’t use much.  I keep it around in case I want to use Word 2007.  The docking station has the power button on top.   I use a Toshiba laptop that I keep on top of the Dell.  I’ve had this setup for months.

Last week the Toshiba started powering off after 5 minutes.  I googled the problem on my iPad and the posts suggested heat problems.  I bought some canned air and cleaned out the airflow area.  I took out the battery.  These did not solve the problem.  I started looking at laptop fan pads.  Then I looked at the docking station.

The power light was on.  One the cats must have stepped on it during their wild romps.  The heat from the Dell was being sucked into the Toshiba.  I’ve since unplugged the docking station and given the Toshiba a tilt so more air can be sucked in.

Last night we went to Griffs to meet some friends for live trivia.  Players put in $3 each and gather in teams with vile and funny names such as, Balls Deep, I Wish This Microphone was a Penis, and Sploog City.  Our team was She’s So Good With Her Stiletto, referring to a murder trial here.

The winning team takes the whole pot.  The pot averages about $100.  I’ve been there when it was over $160.  The place was very crowded that night.  We’ve won twice and come in second or third three times.  Place and show gets a pitcher of anything or a round of shots.

Last night we won $112.  It almost didn’t happen because he didn’t grade our answers on the last round.

 

Trivia

Mini-vacation to Austin

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The Midway Field House had an event yesterday featuring the new tablets from Buzztime.  The company is trying to replace the blue keyboard with something that looks like a fat smartphone.  It was the first time we had heard of them south of Dallas.

Brooke made time  and the hotel reservations.  Since South by Southwest was going on she couldn’t get a decent and reasonably priced hotel room on Saturday any closer than Brenham ( 90 miles away).  It was an America’s Best Value Inn.

This place was only $47 for the night but I would have paid an extra $20 for mattress padding and pillows.  It was a hard bed.

We ate at a Mexican restaurant less than a mile down the street from our hotel, Mariachi’s.  We ordered the jumbo maragaritas when we sat down and another round with our meal.  As we were finishing we saw another table had ordered a jumbo margarita with an upturned Corona bottle in a special ring.  We were on vacation so we ordered one.  The waiter informed us we could only have one because there was a limit!  When we explained we just wanted to split one he brought us one but it had a Coronita ( a half bottle).

Something didn’t agree with me because interspersed with tossing and turning on the bed/board my stomach was on fire.  I was up trying to throw up with out sticking my finger down my throat.  When we left I pulled into the first convenience store and got some Pepto-Bismol tablets.  I tried to swallow the first one whole.  I didn’t know you were supposed to chew them.

Midway is in the south part of Austin so I took the Bastrop route.  I enjoyed this route because I got to see how close the wildfires got to the highway.  This avoids I-35.  This is the only freeway in Austin.  There are other main highways in town but I-35 is the main North/South thoroughfare.

The club’s address is E. Riverside.  You can’t see it from E. Riverside, you have to take Royal Point to get to the place.  It is done up like a gym including a half-basketball court.  Sunday is a good day to drink there; most of the beers of their large selection are $3.  In Austin that is a fantastic deal.  It was cold and rainy in town but they kept the doors open.  When it emptied out it was very cold in the bar.

The tablets work well.  They solve the problem of no TVs turned to buzztime.  The questions come up on the tablet.  The problem is there is no sound to let you know a new question is up.  So if you are watching some sports event or talking to someone you miss the big type question and lower your odds of getting 1000 points.

We left about 6 PM for our hotel on the north side of town.  The average speed was 40 mph on  a Sunday on the freeway.  We got to the hotel and the bed was soft. I crashed for 12 hours.  We left town out what must have been 20 miles of construction on 290.  The one good thing was that it was sunny and warm.  A friend of mine said that God was pissing on the hipsters.

 

 

 

The good foot is gone