Simple Food

My wife and I went out for dinner last night. She had a fried bologna sandwich with mashed potatoes and wine. Then for dessert: Derby Pie with ice cream, coffee, and of course some more wine.

MTM - Old Cars

The advertisement said: The Model T's are Coming! Fri. May 8 at 7p.m in front of Court House - Cars! Ice Cream! Music by Dixie Sizzle! Come join the FUN!

I was not in town on Friday night, but I believe by 7pm it may have just stopped raining.

Sleep(less) Study

I have sleep apnea. In short, my airway closes when I am sleeping and I stop breathing. My heart rate then goes up due to lack of oxygen until I finally take a breath. This cycle is repeated many, many times a night. As you can imagine this is not good.

For 17 years I have slept with a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine. This machine blows air, at a controlled pressure, into my nostrils to keep my airway open. Every so many years I go for a new sleep study, which determines if the pressure needs adjustment, as well as other things.

The protocol is to go to sleep without the CPAP. A technician and instrumentation measure things like how often you stop breathing, eye moment, leg movement, etc. After two hours of sleep without the CPAP, the technician comes into the room and attaches a CPAP mask to your face. The rest of the night is spent with the technician adjusting the pressures (from a control room) to see what pressure is optimum.

Last night was the first study since Medicare covered me. Medicare has their own protocol. The medicare protocol insists that the determination of the correct pressure be done after at least two hours of sleep without the mask. This determines how bad your apnea is, i.e. how many times you stop breathing. Their other protocols, in my case required that these two hours be up by 2 am.

I went to bed at 11pm, of course without the CPAP. I took a sleeping pill just before bedtime and another one hour later. Here is the short of it: by 2am I had only slept 1-½ hours. Therefore they could not do the second part of the study (called titration). They would continue taking measurements until 6am without the CPAP in place! After sleeping for 17 years with the mask on, I do not sleep very well with it off. I got a measured 2.25 hours of sleep during this sleep study!

Now I get to go back for another night so they can do the titration!

Back from Florida!

I am back home with memories of Tradition Field (Mets spring training home) and especially Kerri, the Sports Management Intern from Mississippi. I also have memories of the River Cruise on the North Fork of the St. Lucie River during which I saw many birds, and some alligators and a few turtles. After the cruise as I was driving to my rental I saw the group of white Ibis crossing the road.

It's the Little Things in Life!

My eight year-old grandson wanted everyone to know that he ate a small Domino's bacon and cheese pizza by himself!

Word Usage

I just read a blog by a blogger whom I regularly read. I could not help but notice how many words in the blog ended in "ing". If I counted right there were 23. Then it bothered me that I could not remember what part of speech these words are. Google to the rescue!

-ING WORDS "The present participle form of English verbs ends in -ing. Its most basic use is to describe an action in progress, whether as part of a compound verb, an adjective, or in a participal phrase."

I've been living in KY for almost 7 years now and still notice how often the word "wanting" is used. This is not the case in NJ and CT. Do you suppose it started with a student who did not have enough words in is essay so added some "wanting"s. For example "I am wanting to go to the store" has one more words that "I want to go to the store".

When I spell checked the above in MS Word it want to change the “I am wanting” to “I want”!

Is "wanting" used where you live? (Please post where you live in your answer.)

Of course adding "I am just going to go ahead and" adds even more words, but I am going to go ahead and save that topic for another blog.

Wordless Wednesday - One for Packages?

MTM - Kentucky Confederate Cemetery

The Kentucky Confederate Cemetery is in Peewee Valley, Ky. It is the final resting place for 313 Confederate soldiers, who lived out their final days in the Peewee Valley Confederate Home. It is also the home of the Confederate Memorial, which is listed on the National Register of Historical Places. There is a house, just larger that a bird house, that contains a log of the people buried here, giving their grave location and the unit that they served with.

I learned about this from my Geocaching hobby, which is a higher tech hide-and seek. The gentleman in the picture is Ben of the Geocaching team Ben & Grace. Ben passed away recently after he and his wife Grace found their 1,000th cache.

I Guess Every Penny Counts!

I got a letter from DirecTv saying that certain fees were being increased. I could check on line for the details. I looked at this month's and last month's bill on line to see what the "increases" were:

Premier Monthly service went from $104.99 to $109.99

Each of the two addition receivers went from $4.99 to $5.00!

The HD Access fee went from $9.99 to $10.00!

The DVR fee went from $5.99 to $6.00!

"Going" by Sonar at Starbucks Solution?

Please see "Going" by Sonar for a description of the problem.

I've come up with a possible solution, which took me back to my much younger years: Draw "letters" in the water while “going”. I suppose that dumping a few Cheerios in the water would work too. Just try to sink them! What do you think?

"Going" by Sonar

I am at a Starbucks right now, in Port St. Lucie, Florida. This Starbucks has one annoying feature that I have also seen in other Starbucks: The light in the rest room is motioned controlled! So as you are standing there doing your business, the light goes out. You can no longer "aim" visually, but need to depend on the sound. Of course women don't have this problem as their anatomy puts them much closer to the "target".

Wordless Wednesday - Chow Time!

My Cell Phone Caper!

I’ve been catching up on 2+ weeks of blog reading. I lost touch while getting ready to go to Florida, driving there, and settling in. I finally got Internet service in the place I am renting on Monday, however today I am sitting at a Panera Bread bloging, surfing and having lunch. There is no home spring training game today and a cold spell. Well that is cold for Florida it is in the mid-sixties.

Reading about pita-woman’s and junosmom’s cell phone stories prompted me to write about mine. I left for Florida on 2/23. On 2/20 I went to the Sprint store as I was having a problem with the screen on my cell. It was a flip phone and half the time when you flipped it open the screen was just gray!

Of course I was quickly talked into a new phone at no cost to me, if I signed on for another 2 years. (Well I wanted a new one also.) All phones I was shown had a built in camera. I thought I may at some point actually take a picture with the cell, but certainly would not be posting “random photos from my cell phone” as Passage of a Woman recently did. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I use my cell phone for PHONE calls.

I picked out a phone but asked how to get the pictures out of the phone? I was told that I could use “PictureMail” or buy a data cable to connect the phone to my computer. With “PictureMail” I could email or text message the pictures to anyone. I did not even ask the price of this service and opted for the $15.95 cable.

On Sunday, I took a “test” picture, and then tried to download it to my computer. I hooked up the data cable and the Setup Wizard told me that it had no idea of where to look for the driver or firmware needed for this cable! I went to the Sprint site and could not find anything!

I left for Florida on Monday 2/23, stopping in Acworth, GA and Ocala, FL. On Tuesday evening I visited the Sprint store in Ocala with my problem. I was told that I needed to go to the “SamsungWireless” web site to get the firmware. I visited this site but they did not have what I needed. I then sent an email to customer support. The reply: this phone DOES NOT support download to a computer!

On Thursday, 2/26 I went to the Sprint store in Port St. Lucie FL. A very helpful salesman said he would gladly exchange the phone for one that had the capability I wanted. I explained that I had left the charging cord at home. No problem, but did I have the car charging cord with me? I said no problem it was in the car that was parked in front of the store. The new phone actually has an SD chip that you can store the pictures on. I made the exchange and drove home. After another test picture, I attempted a download. Of course I failed to exchange the data cable and it is a well know fact that each cell phone has a uniquely constructed output port!

Thankfully the Sprint store is near the baseball stadium, so after the Friday game, I exchanged the data cable. I can now actually download pictures from the phone to my laptop. I even uploaded the UCONN Huskies ringer and a picture of my grandchildren as a screen saver! Now if I can only get the phone to ring loud enough so that I can hear it ring when I have it tethered to my belt!

Wordless Wednesday - My Medications

Florida Sightings

A billboard that read "Abortion! Thank God mom and dad were not thinking that way."

An automobile registration tag, probably of a chemical engineer: "WEIR TO"

Internet Connection at Last!

I arrived at my rental home in Florida last Thursday. The owners had had cable TV installed before I arrived. They had been renting long term (1 year) but have switched to short term (weekly or monthly). I have rented for 5 weeks. At my request they ordered Internet, but the soonest it could be installed was yesterday. I have taken my laptop to Starbucks, which is OK for some things.

The installer was to arrive between 11am and 2pm. I told the owner I would be here for him. He called about 10am to ask if he could come sooner. By 10:30am the modem was installed and working. Next I hooked up the wireless router I brought from home, so that I could use the Internet for my laptop and Tivo. What I thought would be a simple task was anything but! I think the problem was that I have DSL at home and cable Internet here.

A visit to the router manufacturer's (Linksys) web site was of little help. I tried a "technical chat" and was told the router was out of warranty and they had little technical support but she could send me an email with some help. Thankfully I asked her what I should do if the email did not help. She gave me the phone number of Technical Service. This number is NOT on the web site.

The email was nothing more than a link to what I had already read on the web site. So I called Tech Serve. Of course I was faced with an automatic response system but told I could dial zero at any time for live help. I decided to try the automated system first. I put my cell on speakerphone. I was very pleased with this service. They had step-by-step instructions. At any time you could repeat the instruction, go back to the previous step or on to the next step. It took about 30-40 minutes of shutting every think down and booting back up (several times) but it worked!

This was an unusual Tech service experience!

In Florida!

These will be my homes for the next five weeks!

Heading South! - Day 2

I made good time today. Actually had to turn on Air Conditioning in the car! Staying in Ocala FL tonight. Should be at destination in Port St. Lucie by noon tomorrow.

Heading South!

On my way to Florida. 400 miles down and 600 miles to go!

Note: "EconoLodge" and "Low Rates" may go together. However, as I found out tonight, neither goes with "High Speed Wireless Internet". I guess you get what you pay for.

Constable Update

It has been two months since my last update, however I have not written the first parking citation! In order to write a citation you must have someone "run the plate" for you so that you can know the registered owner's (RO in police talk) name, address, etc. I found this out in December and after calling several people, I found that our county dispatch could do this, however I needed to be approved by their "board" which was not scheduled to meet until March (they had meet 3 days before). In early February, I got a call from the Director of Dispatch. Some how I had gotten approved, but needed to sign a "User Agreement". It took another week to get the agreement signed, then of course it had to go to Frankfort (state capital) so I would be approved by them, and "put in" the computer system. Yesterday I got word that I as now able to run plates.

I had to go to the county court house today to renew the plates on my wife's auto. There were two cars without the proper credentials (hang tags or plates) parked in Handicapped spots. But it was much too cold today to write any citations, so they lucked out--for today.