Tales From The Ansbach Area
In the past couple of days, I’ve had a few spammers try to register on the blog. So here’s the deal. If you want to register, you’ll have to contact me personally. As I don’t really advertise my email address, I’m a bit hard to get in contact with. Those that know me can do it. Those that don’t.. Oh, well.. The folks that registered in hopes of gaining access have been deleted. New Registrations are closed for now.
It’s been a while, but I’m finally home. I went to the Uni-klinik in Erlangen for the heart bypass surgery and so far things seem to have gone well. As I wrote before, it’s scary but necessary. Now I know why.
I arrived at the hospital, and got checked in. It went well, and I got into the ward. The folks were nice and started getting me ready for the surgery the next day. First thing to lose was body hair. Chest, legs, underarms, All gone. I feel so bare.. 
But it’s a good thing I guess because it keeps things clean. A lot of doctors came to see me that day to explain what would happen. I think I like the anesthesiologist the best. He promised drugs. But enough of that. I got word that I would be first up the next morning, and that’s a good thing. No waiting for me.
The next day they wheeled me out of my room and I don’t remember much after that. I guess it was all the stuff they gave me. When I woke up I was in a different ward, ICU, and had lots of extra equipment connected to me. They can monitor everything and it’s actually quite amazing. At the first sign of a problem, they know and can get the right things going. I think the worst thing is being hungry and not being able to eat. Eventually that comes, but it seems like it takes forever.
The rest of the time I spent there was recovery. There are three steps. ICU, then intermediate care, then back to the ward. They tend to be very careful. They check to make sure that you don’t have any extra pain, and that’s nice. I just hate sitting there in one position, and they could help with that too.
I’m glad to be home. I’m supposed to go to a “cure” hotel tomorrow. I’m just not sure I want to. I hate being away from home. But it’s for my own good, so I’ll probably do it for at least part of the time.
Almost two weeks ago, something scary happened to me. We were coming home after our usual Thursday night dinner, and I just didn’t feel right. I thought it was indigestion. Boy, was I in for a surprise. I got into the house, and went into the bathroom to take see if I could get rid of the “indigestion”. Needless to say, I didn’t. I walked into the bedroom, and sat down on the bed. I suddenly couldn’t breath very well. We’re talking respirations of about a zillion per minute. It was scary and horrible. Jane called the emergency number and finally got an ambulance to come. I was hanging on, and know that the two guys from the ambulance came in and started working on me. Then the doctor arrived. After that I don’t remember anything until about 2 hours later when I woke up in ICU at the hospital. It turns out I’d had a mild heart attack along with pulmonary edema. My lungs had filled with fluid for whatever reason, and that’s why I couldn’t breath. The folks at the hospital were able to get me stabilized, and after three days or so, I was able to be moved up to a regular ward.
Now all the testing started, and my lungs are OK, but there were heart problems. After a bunch of testing, it was decided that I’ll be needing bypass surgery. That’s scheduled for this week. Am I scared? Yep, but as always, I’ve got a positive attitude, and trust the doctors. Hopefully I won’t have to spend too much time in the hospital, and can get back home. Everyone says I’ll be better than before, but I’ll just be glad to be alive.
I’ve often said that by using linux at home, I didn’t have to worry about the dreaded virus/malware attacks. I have also grown to know that there isn’t a lot that I can’t do. It sometimes takes a bit longer, but eventually I get what I want.
Yesterday, I got a webcam for this computer. Nothing really fancy. It’s a logitech Quickcam communicate delux. It’s a nice cam that fit right on top of my monitor. Ah, but getting to work with linux. Well, google is my friend. I did a search, and came up with what I thought would be a driver for it. Alas, it had to be compiled and for the life of me I couldn’t get it to compile. It kept coming up with an error 2 from Make. Luckily, I did a search of the openSuSE site, and lo and behold there was an RPM just for this. Did a one-click install and then inserted the module into the system. The cam came right up in Skype. Nice.
The second one was today. I have had an internet radio for quite a while that I listen to. Mostly public radio stations. But also knew that if there was a uPNP player, it would play the music from my computer. I looked around and again, found a program called mediatomb. Again, it was a one-click install and I was off and runnning. It’s really a nice program. It comes with a web interface for setup. I fired up the browser, and setup all the music that I’ve got on this machine. It took just a couple of minutes, and I was ready. I went down to the radio and went through the menu. Wow! There’s all my music. I can listen to it everyone I take the little radio in the house.
I’m really pleased on how well this all has worked. I basically use openSUSE 11.0 on this machine. It does everything I need and now even more. And it just runs and runs.
Now, someone explain to me why I need Windows anything?
I bought the upgrade to Snow Leopard for Jane’s iMac a couple of weeks ago. Before it arrived I started reading little things that might happen, and that perhaps I should wait for the first update to fix some of the problems. So I waited. Mainly because of everything I’d heard about problems with HP printers. We have a 2600n Color Laserjet, and it had been working quite nicely with all the computers in the house.
Yesterday I got the bug, and started the upgrade. It was easy and came right up. But not so unexpectedly, the HP printer was gone. My little brother Laser printer was found and properly installed. No problem, I’ll just re-install the HP. First I got the updates to 10.6 and that went well. But still no HP fix. I checked around the net, and found an update to the HP drivers for the Mac. I downloaded that, did the install, and still nothing. I worked on it for quite a while without any luck. Now where is that install disk for the printer. Searched the room, but couldn’t find it. No problem. I’ll just download it. Still no luck. I quit. Better to stop, than get frustrated, and throw the computer out the window..
I came back this morning, and found the disk. It was right beside the mac. I put it in, did the install, and then checked. There was still a problem, and it couldn’t find the right driver. But I clicked on something and up popped the printer with a strange name. I said install it, the mac said OK, and all is well.
Are there improvements? I think so. But she’s up to date now, and so far it works as it did when I bought it. It is nice to not have to worry about updating the virus protection, and so forth.
I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition today, and the last story had me in stitches. It seems that the internet speeds in South Africa aren’t that good. One company proved it by strapping a memory card to a homing pigeon’s let. When it arrived at it’s destination, only 4% of the file had come across the net. Now that’s slow. Here’s the short story
I’m so tired of hearing about Sarah Palin that I can’t believe she is still around. This lady is back on the death panel kick again. WTF?? Is she so stupid that she doesn’t understand what the passage in the bill says? Damn, she has a “college” education, although I don’t know what her major was. Underwater basketweaving? She says so many stupid things that she is really getting boring. And now because she quit her job as governor of Alaska, the only place she has left to spout off is Facebook. Yea right. I guess it’s better than twitter because she can use more than 140 characters, but really folks, how really stupid is this person?
I’ve been listening and reading to the news for the past couple of days. It appears that a couple of the so called new folks have either lost their marbles, or they are on drugs. The first? Glenn Beck. He was on one of the Fox news shows and stated that our president is a racist. Oh, really? That’s odd. He said that President Obama didn’t understand the white culture, or he didn’t like it. Damn, that’s strange. His mother is/was white. Grandmother was white and he thought the world of her. Somehow I don’t think Glenn gets it. His so-called resume includes him claiming that he is a recovering alcoholic and addict. Another drug addled brain spouting off on national TV. Reminds me of another druggie from Florida.
The other nutjob is Lou Dobbs. He really needs to leave CNN and go over to Fox like his brother Glenn. He is on the air with the so-called birthers. But CNN says that editorial content on his show is his alone. Damn.. Then they’d all be together. Dobbs, Beck and Hannity. Kind of reminds me of the wit brothers. Half, Dim, and Nit.
Nuff Said
I thought I’d write a long story about this, but I’ve decided to make it short. 40 years ago, I married a wonderful woman. Jane was the answer to everything. We spent our wedding reception and night at the Holiday Inn in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Since that day we’ve done a lot of different things, been to lots of different places, and raised three great sons. Little did I know or even dream that we’d still be together for this long. It’s just not something that you think about at the time. But it has been absolutely a wonderful time. There have been rough spots, but nothing we couldn’t get through.
Tonight in celebration, we had dinner at Colmberg Castle. It’s not far and seemed to be the best place to celebrate. It was quite a change from the beginning night.
I can only hope that it lasts another 40 years. If it’s half as enjoyable as the first 40 years, I’ll be tickled.
We finally arrived last night from our latest trip to Norway. What a great trip. We got to spend most of the time with the family, and see now places. We stayed near the Atlantic Ocean, and for the first time I was really able to see how the tide comes in and out.
One of the most exciting things about the trip was the drive home. Matt and the family wanted to see Geiranger because we were up in that area. We’d been there, and decided to split from them when we were waiting for the ferry on RV63. We left them and I was happily driving along the road heading for Andalsnes. Now I had done a lot of research on the area and knew a bit (I thought) about the roads. So we are driving along and come upon a rest stop called Trollstigen. It still didn’t ring a bell until Jane said what’s the Troll’s ladder? Oh no, well, maybe it’s around here somewhere as I’d seen pictures of this road. We stopped, took a break and then decided to drive on. All of a sudden the road said 8% grade. We were headed down the road. I can only say that it was the thrill of the trip, but not one I had planned. Here is a link to one of the descriptions of the road. You know you’re in trouble when their is a vw minibus backing up to let a regular bus go by.
But enough of that. I took pictures and they are finally up. Enjoy.
Npr’s Politicaljunkie