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View 507 February 25 - March 2, 2008

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Monday, February 25, 2008

I get zapped at lunch time. There's just time to walk the bills down to the post office. The mailbag ought to be up at Chaos Manor Reviews before evening, and the column will be up tomorrow. This afternoon I will be doing some new stuff with the Mac.

I still don't seem to have any contact with the Apple PR people, probably because I don't go to shows any longer, and I guess Apple doesn't care. This week Microsoft is having its Server 2008 conference here in LA, and I have invitations to a lot of Windows events; Windows people actually like to make friends with the press. Apple seems to be adopting the old HP strategy: if you're so dumb you don't like our stuff you don't deserve any. It may be successful, but then again, it may not.

In any event I am collecting non-Apple software for the Mac.

And later this PM I intend to do some fiction.

==========

It's a long time to the Convention; Clinton and Obama have quite a while to pound on each other, and there's little Clinton can do but go negative now. She spent all her money early and in a spendthrift fashion -- sort of like the Republicans once they got rid of Newt Gingrich -- and now she's got little left. She also shows us her contempt for other people's money. Her crew stayed at five star hotels, her consultants were the highest paid hacks in the business, and her management style was about what you would expect from someone who has never actually managed anything. Of course Obama hasn't much more experience, but he's a bit smarter, and seems to have chosen his team with a bit more care.

It ought to get interesting as the Clintons get desperate.

=========

Is McCain going to be hoist on McCain Feingold? Delicious irony. And hardly astonishing. Campaign finance regulation can either be simple: full disclosure and otherwise anything goes, and thus enforceable; or minutia like McCain Feingold which gives commissions and Bureaucrats what amounts to arbitrary power and a lot of leverage. No one can possibly conform to this crazy set of laws; no one even understands them.

But we told you that would happen. Not that my readers weren't smart enough to know.

The problem is that once the scope of government is vast and sweeping, and the power of the office is enormous; once you get to where you must have vast sums to get the office, and you must win because otherwise you are ruined by your borrowing, and possibly up for prosecution for criminalized policy differences -- then you are where the Roman Republic was, and it is worth everything to win. The remedy is to go back to leaving much of the power to the States and then decentralizing that to local entities; let the Federal government carry out foreign policy and defense, which is quite difficult enough without interfering with mangers in the public squares and affordable housing in the suburbs and financing transit in the cities and -- but then since we can't defend the borders we demand that the feds do something to justify their existence.

Would we be better off if one out of two bureaucrats were sent home, on salary, and told never to come back to work? Just do nothing and leave us alone?

But that's whimsy and it's time for our walk. I'll have some mail up later today.

================.

And here's the famous picture

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/
story/CTVNews/20080225/obama_
kenya_080225/20080225?hub=CTVNewsAt11

I believe I recall seeing Herbert Hoover in an Sioux feather head dress...

===================

I am a bit tired, and I think mail may have to wait. Radiation treatment isn't painful but it does eat energy.

==================

Subject: Justice at work

http://wweek.com/editorial/3415/10416/ 

Betcha hugging gets outlawed next.

Kent Peterson 

"... there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past ..." - Ray Bradbury, _The Martian Chronicles_

==============

Subject: "I hope you enjoy your meal."

 "[A] strong wave of food inflation is heading towards the world economy."

Time to start planning that "victory garden" -- and hope that the solar minumim doesn't make these projections look wildly optimistic.

Shoppers warned bigger bills on way 
 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/405e4028-e31e-
11dc-803f-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1 

Snips:

 When William Lapp, of US-based consultancy Advanced Economic Solutions, took the podium at the annual US Department of Agriculture conference, the sentiment was already bullish for agricultural commodities boosted by demand from the biofuels industry and emerging countries.

[...]

I hope you enjoy your meal, Mr Lapp told delegates during a luncheon. It is the cheapest one you are going to have at this forum for a while.

His warning that a strong wave of food inflation is heading towards the world economy was met by nods from agriculture traders, food industry executives and western s government officials at the USDA s annual Agricultural Outlook Forum.

[...]

I think we need to tell the American consumer that [prices] are going up, he said. We re seeing cost increases that we ve never seen in our business.

[...]

He said that wheat prices had previously moved from $3 to $5 a bushel without significant pain for consumers. But now the wheat price has jumped to nearly $20 a bushel. These large increases will show up [in consumer prices].

[...]

Companies until now have moderated consumer price increases thanks to large inventories and financial hedges in the commodities market futures. But during the course of this year those mitigating factors would vanish, executives said.

The final result will be higher prices, Mr Lapp said. The global economy is at the beginning of a period in which consumer will face higher food prices .

Of course increased CO2 levels will help plant growth, and if the Earth really were warming that would mean longer growing seasons.

SO let's go on burning food.

.

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Tuesday, February 26, 2008   

Commodity Index is up, led by food. Let's burn some more, and we can feel good about being green as we beggar the poor. Grinding the faces of the poor seems to be the policy of the Greens. Why not?

Today will be the fifth time of Zapping. It is a bit wearying, and I seem to be developing a mild sore throat to go with everything else. On the other hand we had a good walk this morning, 2 miles as usual, and while I have a bit of fatigue I feel pretty good.

I have downloaded a Mac program called Quicksilver which I am told is the greatest thing ever for Macs, but so far I don't see what it does. There is apparently a You Tube tutorial which I'll go look at when I get back from today's Zap.

This afternoon I want to try fiction. I also have the Mac ready for installing Boot Camp and XP (and perhaps later Linux, but on that I am not so sure). I am told that will take much of a day by the time I get XP running under VMware; but we will see.

And I have Office 2008. Office 2004 works just fine, so this will be interesting. I presume the Mac will allow me to have both, as Windows does.

So all told there's lots to do.

Now go buy some methanol and burn some food.  We need to keep those milk prices high. Of course it's not really helping the farmers because energy prices drive fertilizer and tractor fuel prices higher, but there aren't that many farmers anyway. Be of good cheer. Obama and Clinton will save us from this folly, and garnish your wages if you don't buy health insurance (but if you quit your job it will be free; at least that is the only way I can see that Universal Health Care will work). 

The health care experiment runs in Canada. How well it works seems mildly controversial.

It should be obvious that if you give away a valuable good for free, the demand will be infinite. There is no end to the amount of "health care" that can be absorbed at a price point of zero. In my case, I would have loved to have consultations at UCSF and UCLA was well as Kaiser, and there is a commercial firm that offered me a discount to have a look at my records; but I can't afford all that. I am quite happy with Kaiser, I do have free consultation with some of my readers who are physicians, and things seem to be going well. My point, though, is that there's not much limit to how much health care I can absorb at need.

Perhaps the states could try their hand at providing free clinics and subsidizing the training of paramedics to staff them, but then the inevitable cry would be that the poor and ignorant deserve as much as the wealthy and well educated, and how dare we? Ah well.

Anyway, I need to go get Zapped.

===========

Space Access '08 Conference Information

March 27-29, Phoenix Arizona

Space Access '08, our upcoming annual conference on the technology, politics, and business of radically cheaper access to space, is just over a month away. It's time to get serious about making arrangements

to be there if you don't want to miss this year's edition. Book your

flights and rooms now - late March is still winter tourist (and Major League Baseball Spring Training) season in Phoenix, so affordable rooms and good airfares go early.

http://www.space-access.org/

Alas, Niven and I will not be going this year, since my radiation treatments will continue through the conference time.

 

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Wednesday,  February 27, 2008

Restless at 4 AM. I sort of got to sleep at 2330, which is very early for me, but I sleep saft and I wake aft, it's long since sleeping were freyed frae me... gie me service back to my wife and bairns and all good men what spare frae me.

One gets giddy from lack of sleep. Today at noon is the 6th time of Zapping.

===============

If you live in Texas, cross over and vote for Hillary. We have to keep that contest alive. She pitched it in the debates last night, but it's not time to crown Obama. Or am I giddy?

========

A clarification from an IRS expert:

Rebate

 Bearing in mind that the "2008 return" is the one people will file for the year ending December 31, 2008, I think this item in a recent IRS FAQ clarifies a point made several times by readers in your mail column:

 http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=179181,00.html

 Q. Will the payment I receive in 2008 reduce my 2008 refund or increase the amount I owe for 2008?

 A. No, the stimulus payment will not reduce your refund or increase the amount you owe when you file your 2008 return.

 --Mike Glyer

============

And one more thing to look at

If you haven't been to Robert Thompson's web site this week, he has some clear headed, sobering thoughts on the impact of DNA testing on health insurance:

http://www.ttgnet.com/daynotes/2008/2008-09.html

Steve Setzer

Mr. Thompson and I do not always agree, but he can be counted on to give the Libertarian view, and that's worth knowing.

As to what to do after reducing uncertainty through DNA, that is very much worth discussion. I said elsewhere that I wish Mike Flynn lived near me. I'd like to talk this over with him.

========

And I am sort of caught up on mail. There are a number of discussions. Don't miss Fire and Ice.

Be of good cheer:

Wholesale Prices Jump in January

Higher Costs for Food, Energy and Medicine Push Wholesale Prices Up Sharply

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080226/economy.html?.v=12

Battered by bad economic news, consumer confidence plunged while wholesale food, energy and medicine costs soared, pushing inflation up at the fastest pace in a quarter century.

Go burn some more food.

=================

His Most Eminent Highness Fra' Andrew Willoughby Ninian Bertie (pronounced "Barty"), who has died aged 78, was Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta, that is, the Knights of Saint John.

Farewell, Grand Master Bertie!

<http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12801>

- Roland Dobbins

See also my report on my trip to Rome and the HQ of the Sovereign and Military Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Which reminds me of my story about the wolf on the Capitoline Hill.

==================

William F. Buckley, Jr, RIP

I can't call him an old friend, because we didn't know each other that well. I had dinner with him twice and lunch about as often, all back in the days when I was at Pepperdine and he visited the campus for a week. We corresponded with perhaps a half dozen exchanges of mail.

We had a mutual friend, Russell Kirk. Russell was the intellectual leader of the Conservative Movement, while Buckley was the popular leader.

He was a man of good taste and good sense. There will be thousands of obituaries, and I need not reference them. He will be missed by many.

====

I wrote the above in haste before my morning walk. I thought about it during my walk, and I'll have more to say. WFB was one of the influential men of his time, adept at translating principles into action directives, one of the most remarkable men I have ever met.

We disagreed badly on the Iraq War, and when Buckley allowed the egregious Frum to use the pages of National Review to read out of the Conservative Movement all those who did not enthusiastically support the invasion of Iraq, we exchanged polite but useless emails. It was the last time I heard from him directly, although a year later he said that has he but known, he would have opposed the invasion. I do not know if the egregious Frum then read Buckley out of the movement, but I would not be astonished to learn that he had.

We had similarly disagreed about the First Gulf War, which I opposed on the grounds that which gang of thugs possessed Kuwait was not of great interest to the United States; but that was different. I believe that the First Gulf War came about because of affirmative action: a career state department FSO was made ambassador to Iraq and failed to make Saddam aware of the stakes in his planned invasion. Indeed, her silly memo could be construed as giving him permission!  But I wander.

From that time on, I thought National Review was fading as the communications belt for conservatives. It went wrong on immigration, it supported disastrous Republican policies, and became more and more enamored of retaining power than of doing the thing which is right and speaking the truth from its heart. This culminated with the egregious Frum.

But of the dead one should speak only good: and William F. Buckley, tireless, did stand in the way of history shouting Stop! And he did change the hearts and minds of many, including me at a time when I was intellectually vulnerable. I doubt I would have read Kirk had I not read Buckley first.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine:
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

====================

Growing Up Smart

Having read http://www.worlddreambank.org/P/PRODODD.HTM I am minded to write my own memories of growing up with a 180 IQ. They are quite different from his. Of course no one can verify any of those numbers to begin with.

My recollections are not his. To begin with, I had no motor skills, and since I was always associated with boys two years older than me, I had little chance to excel. I was a disaster at any game involving a ball. My experience at basketball was inevitable: they would choose sides, I would be chosen last, I would get the ball, someone would shout "Double Dribble!" and they would take it away from me.  Football was impossible: that two year difference in age. Baseball was terrifying: this hard object would be hit or hurled at me, and I was more concerned with it not breaking my hands or bashing in my head than with catching it. Far too active an imagination: I could envision terrible things happening to me.

So I read a lot. Like him I cannot remember when I could not read, and I read voraciously: I soon found a way I could get into the adult section of the library and a place I could hide while reading books they would not allow me to take out. But unlike him, I had no gift for languages. I still don't. I think I have mastered English, and I could once write a coherent if wooden essay in Latin, but that's it.

In any event, I may begin a page for these musings.

============================

Welcome iPhone

A reader was so curious as to what I would think of the iPhone once I used it that he impatiently bought one for me. (I applaud such impatience, of course! Thanks!) It arrived today.

I have unpacked it -- like all Apple products the packaging is elegant.  I now need to accumulate accessories. Among them, I am told, is a skin: apparently they scratch more easily than one would like.

I also need to know about activation plans. I am already with AT&T for cell phone service, so I expect the easiest way is to take the new iPhone down to the AT&T phone store and invite them to show me options. I may get to that this afternoon after my noon zapping.

But the first order of business is to name this phone. It is far more powerful as a computer than old Zeke, my first computer, so it certainly needs a name. I am open to suggestions, for the name, for accessories, and for implementation plans.

=====================

I vegetated after my treatment. Yesterday I found the energy to write two pages on Mamelukes, but today there was none at all, and I moped. There's not much on TV tonight. My eyes aren't focused as well as I would like, so I don't really want to read, either. Restless. I suppose radiation treatment will do that to you. Overall, though, I am not particularly uncomfortable, the mild sore throat has not got worse, tinnitus is not as bad as it has been, and I can swallow. My voice is worse, after a couple of days of what I thought was improvement, and that is a bit of a concern.

T0morrow it's a very early zapping.

===================

Took a walk for about a mile with Sable at 2230. That may help me get to sleep. Roland tells me that I activate the iPhone by going to iStore on the iMac. I have dug out The Missing Manual on the iPhone and I will read through it.

I have mixed emotions on transferring my old phone number. The ancient Nokia has no camera or web browser or anything else, but it is a phone I can use and carry in a shirt pocket. The iPhone is larger, and has no place to secure a lanyard, and in my current clumsy condition I really want a lanyard; I suppose it's off to Fry's (or the Apple Store in Fashion Square?) to find a case?  I am informed that the iPhone doesn't scratch so easily as the iPods, and doesn't really need a case.

.

 

 

 

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Thursday,  February 28, 2008

0600  I slept well, but woke up, and I don't think I'll get back to sleep. I seem to be able to talk again. Not well, nothing like as well as a few days ago after the first treatments, but not so awful as yesterday. It was getting discouraging. I presume they're burning away parts of the growth, and there is likely to be some collateral damage. The hope here is that the good stuff will heal faster than they can kill it, while the other guy will go away.

Yesterday in the waiting room there was a pretty lady about 35, big wedding ring, decent clothes, and a large billed painter's cap. No hair. She seemed cheerful. And the day before as I was leaving, moving along with the aid of my cane and thinking about that, I saw a man who also had a cane to walk with. In his other hand he had a white cane which he swept in front of him to feel his way out. The lesson here is clear enough.

There is a case of Mad Cow Disease in Canada, I believe. Hmm. When I was in graduate school in psychology I worked with some psychiatric interns who invariably got Medical Student Disease. Of course my friends and I thought we'd like Korsakow's Sydrome. They were just learning about thiamine in those days. Science fiction writers had known about it for years. Interesting. I see I may not be fully awake.

==============

Monty suggests:

Name for iPhone: iPhigeneia? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphigeneia  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_Iphigenia

which neglects PDQ Bach's Iphigenia in Brooklyn... 

Now I am sure I am not fully awake. On the other hand I have an early Zapping, 1030, so I suppose I may as well stay up.

And Bob Holmes suggests

Subject: iPhone naming

Jerry,

How about Steve or looking a little backward Steves?

Bob Holmes

=============

I still have not got up the energy to install Boot Camp on Imogene, and I really want to do that. Yesterday I downloaded Scrivener. Their web store could be improved a lot. I discovered that Imogene has forgotten how to print, and I can't figure out how to set that up again. I was able to get her to look at Creon, which is the print server in my network, and thinks she is connected, but nothing prints.

I can't find a way to add a printer, or look for printers, and I am beginning the detest OS X. With the Mac everything is easy or impossible or so damned confusing as to drive you mad. With Windows I can browse to find printers. Will I have to install Windows and print through Windows on this Mac? Or must I connect my printer directly to the Mac with a serial port? Why can't I find my printer on this Mac? I am sure it is all ridiculously easy, but this Mac is beginning to make me feel stupid. Perhaps it's the treatments? Because I cannot figure this out. Why won't it print?

I HAVE GOT THE PRINTER WORKING, thanks for suggestions.

=================

Breakfast is done. Zap at 1030. I guess I'll take Sable around the block. It won't be my 2 mile walk, but it will be something, and I am restless.

===========

Back from zap. I find that the Mac has no problem adding /creon/jedi to the printers. It will print to it. But the job remains in the print queue and nothing will induce it to print.

I can email myself messages from the Mac to a Windows machine and then print them, so I have printed my receipt from Scrivener, but it's a hell of a way to run a railroad. Bah. This isn't ready for prime time.

I see the job in the queue. It remains paused. Nothing will start it. This is imbecility.

I HAVE GOT THE PRINTER WORKING, thanks for suggestions.

============

All right. Use Windows to print a printer configuration page. Determine the IP address of the printer, which is 192.168 etc. and put that into the Mac.  The Mac will attach to //creon/jedi which is what the windows machines print to, and will send job to the queue for that printer, but it will never print to them.

It does print to the actual IP address of the printer. Aunt Minnie will be thrilled.

I HAVE GOT THE PRINTER WORKING, thanks for suggestions.

 

==============

Julie Woodman says

Subject: SUPERCOMPUTERS FROM GAME STATIONS

I find this rather amusing....

http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/hpcwireWWW/03/0530/105147.html

============

Beware the Fury of the Legions

The idiots are now saying that because McCain was born on a US Naval Base in Panama to a military family, he is not a natural born citizen, and thus not eligible to be President, and they will go to court.

If some judge tries to interject in this as to who shall be Commander in Chief...

I believe I saw this scenario before. In Rome. It never ended well.

=============

On Mac Printing:

I have solved the problem and understand it and can tell people what to do, so there is a happy ending. This will be in the column Monday or Tuesday.

The Mac works again just fine, and I like it again, and I find that my treatments induce bursts of irrational rage which I need to control.

I'll also be covering backup and some other stuff in the column.  Mac are still cool.

I haven't had the energy to install Windows on the Mac yet, but I will. And I need to convert from Front Page to the newer Microsoft web design program. That too will take a day or two, and I need to work up the energy.

The big drawback to radiation therapy is energy drains, resulting in (1) restlessness, (2) agitation, and (3) bursts of irrational rage. Part of that latter is frustration from being unable to talk although as you can see I can write: I am writing as fast as ever, as fast as I can type, and so far I seem able to produce coherent paragraphs.

==============

And on Global Warming, there is more ice in the Arctic this year than last, and Siberia, China, and northern Canada are covered in snow. Look out for Global Cooling.

Ice Ages are far more to be feared than warming. And I remind you, in the last Real Ice Age, Southern England and Belgium went from deciduous trees to a hundred feet of ice in about 100 years, according to lake sediments. That is a very rapid cooling indeed. And the ice reaches miles in depth in some places.

Warming gives longer growing seasons and better crops. Cooling does the opposite.

================

Went to LASFS, then took Sable for a walk. Because of my early morning appointment she hadn't been out today, so she talked me into the full two miles at midnight. I ought to sleep all right tonight...

 =========

George Noory has a nutcase on Coast to Coast tonight. We have been to the Outer Planets -- we being USAF -- and have warp drives, and I guess they won't tell the Army since we seem to be spending a billion a day in Iraq. And, by the way, we are now at war with the aliens, who actually shot our satellite out of the sky. Or something like that.

Sometimes this stuff is amusing, but this guy is off his head.

I once asked George Noory if he believed all this stuff. Basically his answer is that he can persuade himself that it might be true while he's talking to the guests. He's always polite to them, and it's hard to tell how much he believes. In real life he is quite sane. And charming. I like him.

 

 

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Friday, February 29, 2008

Happy Birthday Superman

 

 

_Burning Tower_ is now available for Kindle, FYI.

<http://www.amazon.com/Burning-Tower/dp/
B000N2HBLG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=digital
-text&qid=1204268747&sr=1-1 >

-- Roland Dobbins

==================

Taki on WFB.

<http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/william_f_buckley_as_i_knew_him/

-- Roland Dobbins

As with Taki, I knew that Bill would not last long without Pat. Eternal rest grant him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them both.

==========

0700  Awake and up. Slept well. I seem to be able to talk better than I could when I went to bed last night. Taking a 2 mile walk before bed may be a good idea. Sable certainly approved.

There is a lot of mail, including a raft of suggestions for what to name the iPhone.

"Little Ice Age"

Steve Forbes, on "Fox and Friends" -- says the sun is inactive, last time it was like this was three hundred years ago and we had a "Little Ice Age."

Who knew?

Interesting that this stuff is now hitting the main line media...

See? We told you so...

====================

Disaster with Boot Camp  _ONLY IT WASN'T

Windows installed JUST FINE, but there is no driver for the Mac Internet Controller. None. Zero. And without a driver it cannot find the Ethernet to go look for one.

Ah. I need to use the Apple installation disk. OK, let's try booting with that.

And it all went painlessly. I am connected to my internal network with Windows on the Mac. Full report in the column.

 

Now to install VMware so I can run Windows as an application under OS X. This may be fun.

===========

XP all updated. Everything seems to work. Booting into OS X. There's the big apple...

 

======================

Evidently the pharmacy that sells the nose pump has problems with its server. I have commented out the reference to the site so that should stop the odd messages.

This wasn't an attack, unless it was on them. It happened once before as I recall

==============

 A Progress Report, sort of.

2000 hours. I find myself in a state of restless exhaustion, which isn't a good thing. I will probably take Sable for a walk before I try to turn in. That worked last night. She certainly approves, and while I do stagger a bit -- balance problems when I can't see well, didn't have those on our morning walk so I expect it's the dark -- I seem to be all right. Anything for a good night's sleep.

The problem is that it's easy to convince yourself that you're not just being lazy there is something wrong. That may not be true, but how can you know? After all they are burning away something inside my head. With luck they are only damaging the good stuff while killing the bad, and the good will grow back.

They warned me of bowel problems, and those are happening now with more frequency. Again hardly beyond the normal range of aches and pains. And of course there's flu going around. And I am in a hospital every day, only for a few minutes, and most of the people I see seem "healthy" in the sense that they are ambulatory like me, but still...  I sure hope I don't get a bug on top of my other problems. Purelle, I guess, and lots of hand washing.

But none of this is as bad as a bad cold, except for the temptation to make restless exhaustion become agitated depression.  And that, I think, I still have some control of.

At LASFS last night I got into a conversation with my philosopher friend -- he teaches Logic at a local college -- and deliberately got into a discourse on Gustav Bergmann, Karl Popper, and the Weiner Kreiss. Falsifiable hypotheses. Operational Philosophy. Since I took Philosophy of Science from Bergmann back at SUI (State University of Iowa) in the 50's, I think I had something to contribute to our conversation; but my ulterior motive was to use my friend as a gauge. If I was talking nonsense he'd tell me. It's bloody frustrating to think you are thinking correctly, only to croak like a frog and speak ... a few words ... at ... a time. How can you know if you make sense?  Except that I can write without hesitation and what I write seems to make sense. Anyway I seem to have passed that test. He didn't think I sounded mad. I guess what I think makes sense.

Or does it? Roland tells me I was a damned fool to install Boot Camp instead of simply installing VMware Fusion and installing XP directly in that. He may be right, too, since while having XP on Boot Camp seems to make it easy to install directly to VMware, I got an error message of a duplicate name on the network, and I don't seem to be able to access my internal network from the XP in VMware. It's too late to do trouble shooting now. When I was a bit younger I would chase that problem down to a happy ending, even if I had to nuke Boot Camp first, but I just don't have the mental energy to do that now.

Anyway, I keep trying to prove my head isn't deteriorating. I look good. I get lots of exercise. I don't feel awful, just uncomfortable and often rather tired, but I can manage to use mental tricks to pull a bit of energy up when I need to. Just not sustained.

So we are through the first week of treatments. The Month of March to go.

============

There is more and more evidence that the earth is cooling, and Niven and Flynn and I ought to write a preface for Fallen Angels, which is more prophetic than even we knew.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Saturday,  March 1, 2008

Midnight. Spent the day working with the Mac. Something is very wrong with the networking under VMware. And Microsoft is making life difficult with its Genuine Disadvantage.

Niven came over and we did a two mile hike, then a very good lunch. It's frustrating as hell not to be able to talk. Usually I do a lot of the talking when we're discussing a new book. I do hope they'll get rid of this problem for me. I don't feel particularly bad, I can still write, but ye gods.

I'm still using a PC to do this page, but I'm using the Mac for much of my writing. Roxanne, the Vista system that used to be my main writing machine, doesn't get a lot of use now. The iMac is fun, and I'm still exploring.

I also have the iPhone but I've barely turned it on.

It has been a fairly good day.

 

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Sunday,  March 2, 2008

2030: A good day. The steroids, or something, have just about wiped out the hip and neck pains I had from degenerate arthritis. I sleep better, I walk better.

The doctors tell me that if the Zap Treatments work, it will still take time; apparently I have some dead tissue in my head (at least given the hard x-rays there better be!) and it's going to take a while to get rid of. Think of a similar injury to muscle. The thing in there is larger than a golf ball, and getting that out of my system isn't going to be too fast. It will be more than the 30 days treatment before things really move.

My hearing still isn't good, tinnitus remains in my right ear with loudness that varies over the day. My left ear hearing isn't so good, and my right eye likes to focus on a slightly different plane from the left. Not a problem driving, but a bit harder on reading and looking at this computer screen. And I remain restless and agitated. Not much to be done about that except self control.

The big frustration remains in my speech. I think coherent paragraphs, but ... when I try .. to say ... something it comes ... out in gasps with a drunken frog accent, and that's so frustrating I want to scream. I keep thinking about Possony. After his stroke he would cry in frustration because he couldn't talk, but it was pretty clear there was a lot of the old fox in there trying to get out. Steve couldn't even write.

I can still write.

And it's not as bad as flu. And I'll take Sable for a walk tomorrow.

On that score, I will also post some pictures, of Sable, and of the treatment rooms at Kaiser. Tomorrow my zap appointment is early, 0948, so I'll have to get up and get moving.

============

It has been suggested that I allow a computer to speak for me. Long ago, Apple had wonderful text to speech, with many voices.

Does that still exist? Is it in OS X? All versions? How would I find out? At the moment I have Ariadne the PowerBook, running the previous OS X; I will probably upgrade that. And we will probably acquire either a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air; will either of those do the old Apple text to speech?  Could I carry one of those, type in, and let it read it to people?

I HAVE FOUND OUT how to do this: write it in Textedit, pull down Speech on the Edit menu and fire away, having selected a voice in System Preferences. It sounds pretty good, too, although the PowerBook isn't nearly loud enough. The iMac is, but I can't carry it around. I wonder about the volume in the Air or the MacBook Pro?

In any event, it's one option.

THE server for the nose pump firm has been fixed, and I have reinstated their advertisement. All is well, and the pump is good stuff...

 

 

 

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