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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
May the tiles be with you!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, that was some lucky day! I'll bet that doesnt happen very often!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
We got some last-minute help straight out of Japan on the project. More work for me too, truth be told, but I still think I'm on schedule to wrap it up when I wanted to.

I think I'll probably stick around part-time for a while, at least to check in from time to time and answer any questions and offer advice, but not doing any more project work myself. It looks as though we've got a growing handful of collaborators already, and although I have several places we can go to converse, they're looking into creating their own spot right now. What we need is a top-shelf coder, so I hope that happens eventually. What we've been doing only required a small bit of coding here and there that we were capable of figuring out, but the general usefulness of the entire thing would rise exponentially with a few small programs or specialized front-ends for existing programs, based off of my creation as the template for what the code needs to do. I doubt without that we would see much progress in the future because of all the tedious work that needs to go into it right now. I'm not saying I'm the only one out there who can focus long-term on a task like this, but good luck finding more of them like me that would want to help.

It looks as though a few of them think this thing is going to be a lot bigger than I expected it to be. The guy who has been kicking around a working prototype says he's going to make a video to introduce it.



It's actually very hard for me to expose myself like that. Trust doesn't come easy, and even up until the very moment I put that prototype out there I had that small voice in the back of my mind telling me that it would be stolen. Not that this really matters because I want it out there for everyone for free without any paywalls anyway... I dunno. But I've been working with the guy for going on half a year now and I really felt like I could trust him. It feels good having my judgment reaffirmed like this. It's been fantastic working with him so far.

It's just so cool collaborating on something like this. It's been a long time since I did anything requiring anything resembling team work.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Out to get my laundry done in a bit then a walk in on a bright sunny day.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Out to get my laundry done in a bit then a walk in on a bright sunny day.

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If you can believe it, we had a 4 (5?) day hot spell here. One day it went all the way to 90F/ 32C! I'm just not used to the heat! So I did a bunch of indoor stuff. Plus I saw most of my doctors in a row: internist, ENT, oncologist, nephrologist, and rheumatologist.

I'm about to add pulmonologist to the list. And Dr rheumatologist suggested I see a podiatrist too. (Really??? I don't think so!) Remember those "collect them all!" ad campaigns for figurines and such like? I feel like I'm on a mission to collect every possible specialist in my retinue.


Well, some day I hope to be healthy again. It seems my current immune suppressant is beginning to work. I can breathe thru my nose, the bridge seems to have stopped collapsing, and my joints (mostly) don't hurt. So on to addressing the shortness of breath, the strange lump on my leg, and my (slightly) elevated cancer marker.
On with the day!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What is a T-4? It sounds like some kind of tax form?

Yanno, before I retired, we had someone watch over dear daughter, and bc (besides being the right thing to) I was using a pretax childcare account, I had to be paying to a legitimate Social Security number (E-verify) and file state and Federal employer taxes.

IT'S NOT THAT HARD!

Everything you post about your employer makes her sound pretty scatterbrained. If she's my age (70+) that's understandable. I don't multitask like I used to. But if she's under 60 maybe she should eat eggs or take B12 or something.


BTW, eggs are good for you. People who eat 2+ eggs a week have fewer cardiovascular events than people who eat 1, and those people do better than people who eat none.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
We got some last-minute help straight out of Japan on the project. More work for me too, truth be told, but I still think I'm on schedule to wrap it up when I wanted to.

I think I'll probably stick around part-time for a while, at least to check in from time to time and answer any questions and offer advice, but not doing any more project work myself. It looks as though we've got a growing handful of collaborators already, and although I have several places we can go to converse, they're looking into creating their own spot right now. What we need is a top-shelf coder, so I hope that happens eventually. What we've been doing only required a small bit of coding here and there that we were capable of figuring out, but the general usefulness of the entire thing would rise exponentially with a few small programs or specialized front-ends for existing programs, based off of my creation as the template for what the code needs to do. I doubt without that we would see much progress in the future because of all the tedious work that needs to go into it right now. I'm not saying I'm the only one out there who can focus long-term on a task like this, but good luck finding more of them like me that would want to help.

It looks as though a few of them think this thing is going to be a lot bigger than I expected it to be. The guy who has been kicking around a working prototype says he's going to make a video to introduce it.



It's actually very hard for me to expose myself like that. Trust doesn't come easy, and even up until the very moment I put that prototype out there I had that small voice in the back of my mind telling me that it would be stolen. Not that this really matters because I want it out there for everyone for free without any paywalls anyway... I dunno. But I've been working with the guy for going on half a year now and I really felt like I could trust him. It feels good having my judgment reaffirmed like this. It's been fantastic working with him so far.

It's just so cool collaborating on something like this. It's been a long time since I did anything requiring anything resembling team work.

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It sounds like this has been a good project, not just on its own merits but good for you too. Getting to work collaboratively with someone is a great antidotefor dealing with pathological idealogues. Good on you!
It also helps if you get to pick and vet your team. I hope you stay in contact even when you turn your attention elsewhere. Seems like you found someone sympatico.

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I don't exactly get to pick and choose anything, really. Help online just isn't like it was back in the late 2000's. That's actually pretty interesting to me because it makes me wonder how many things have changed in the last 20 years socially that would make it so hard to find help now when I almost felt like I was getting too much help and just managing all the help started turning into a full-time job in and of itself back then. I know the generation of people I grew up with working on this are now all in the middle of raising kids or possibly even seeing them off to college by now, but this isn't a generational project specific to my generation.

I think probably the biggest issue is that younger people with the most free time (as we all once were) use the internet entirely differently than we did and still do. Some of the people I've been working with now even talk about their tiktok accounts or joining together on Discord to talk about stuff in real time. I'm old school and prefer my communications in forums like these. I also prefer to keep my commentary out in the open, and I only communicate in PM if I'm dealing with somebody who just flat out refuses to talk out in the open and only wants to communicate in the shadows.

I think there's probably a lot of younger people out there with free time and talent that would love to help out if they knew it existed. Except for a few old dogs who were there to answer some questions I forgot the answer to years ago, or to whip up some code for me, my only REAL help this time around is by people at least 10-15 years younger than I am.

My one guy though, he's amazing. Not only has he helped me get in touch with two people from Japan who really had some great stuff and insight to share, but he's remained diligent about completing a huge part of this for me on a time crunch, despite the fact he's working full time and he's still young enough to go out partying with his girlfriend and his friends. (Every time he apologizes to me for not getting something done on a weekend I have to tell him to have as much of that fun while he's young while he still can, and that I'm the one who is sorry for the time crunch).

I'm going to do my best to keep up communication with them. I didn't do that the last time around very well, but truth be told I was in the middle of my alcoholism breakdown when that finally ended the first time after about 7 years of online collabrative work. You saw me here. You can probably imagine how all of that went down.

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So, when do we get to see the video?

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Never, unless you luck into it, unfortunately. And even if you saw it, you wouldn't know that it was me, since Jack isn't my real name and I've used a different name everywhere I've ever posted.

I'll be sure to send it to you if Haken ever fixes our PM system here though.

I'm sure you understand, especially when one of the reasons just created another stalking thread in homage of me this morning.

I don't know about you... but if I was a retired billionaire I'm sure I could find more interesting things to do with my time than stalking me.



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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Sounds like your dental work went A-OK! I imagine trips to the dentist are inconvenient as heck, but OTOH your teeth are getting taken care of, and a lot of the ones that get fixed won't need fixing again.

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Was it a deliberate hoax, do you know? Or did someone just accidently leave a package behind? Usually this kind of stuff happens during some sort of specific disturbance. People are mad about something, or there's been a terror attack and people like to copycat. But AFAIK I don't know that anyone is mad at Canada. So, if you had to guess... what do you think happened? And why?

*****
I've been feeling good but my blood test results aren't as good as I feel. Altho my GPA marker (ANCA) is still negative, my other markers are off. So Dr Rheumatologist just doubled my immune suppressant dose, and Dr Oncologist wants to see me in 2 months for a repeat blood test.

Yesterday I had a stress echocardiogram. They took an echocardiogram, then ran me on a treadmill fast and on an uphill slant for as long as it took to get my heart rate near max, then took another echo while my heart was banging away. I was in fear of being ejected off the end of the treadmill and I hung on to the rails for dear life, but in the end I completed the test. I've been doing partial squats, countertop pushups and planks in addition to walking the dog and some yardwork, and I feel like those squats really helped!

Today I had a lung function test. Both those tests required NO COFFEE for 24 hours.

NO COFFEE???

OH NO!!

Friday I'm going to have an ultrasound of my kidneys (nephrologist is trying to figure out why they're slowly failing, even tho there's no evidence of any inflammation or disease) and a mysterious lump on my leg. Fortunately, I can drink coffee that day


In the meantime, dear daughter and I have been weeding. Turns out, she likes it!



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"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Out to do groceries then when I come back I have to comb the carpet. Too many loose hairs around.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Out to do groceries then when I come back I have to comb the carpet. Too many loose hairs around.

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Gotta vacuum and dust too.

I mentioned that hubby bought me a cordless HEPA vacuum cleaner some time ago. It really only works on hard floors. Fortunately we have hardwood, tile, and vinyl throughout. It also works OK-ish on very low pile mats (which I have at the doors to try and keep dust from tracking in. If only hubby would wipe his feet from the garage instead of leaving sawdust footprints!) But the vacuum, convenient as it is, is somewhat low power, and struggles to pick up dust when its filters are getting clogged.

So I noticed yesterday that it was not picking up dust ... oops! ... time to change a filter!

The vacuum cleaner has a 3-stage filtration system. The first is a canister that is bascially a cyclone with a coarse metal filter that catches the big stuff- hair, dirt and sand from outdoors, fluffy furnace-dust. There is second filter (a prefilter) that catches fine dust but isnt a true HEPA filter, and a final HEPA filter. They look like this

Note the sizes: these are SMALL filters!
Dirty air is forced into the center of the pleated filters and cleaned air comes out to the outside.

We empty and clean the canister/cyclone with each vacuuming, it gets that full. When the vacuum cleaner starts to gag, its usually the first pleated filter (prefilter) at fault.

I told you all that to tell you this: So, I pulled the prefilter, and looked at it, and it didn't LOOK that full. So I wondered ... gee, how much dust is in there anyway? So I turned the filter upside down and tapped it against the sink edge. A lot of very fine dust fell out. So I tapped again... and again ... and again ... over and over and over. All together, I think dislodged about a teaspoon of very fine dust that was packed intonthe filter pleats! Dark gray dust, which means a lot of carbon particles, either from the major freeways and roadways that ring our neighborhood, or soot from the fires, or both.

Gosh, our neighborhood is dusty!

BRENDA, there is one advantage to being several stories up: you escape a lot of ground level pollution, which includes rubber tire dust (THE major component near roadways), windblown dirt, and pollen.


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"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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