Today we have an HP87XM and the first casualty of NaBloPoMo. Yep my right knee buckled and I dropped it as I was taking it out of the shed. Luckily, the damage seems to be just one crystal. So it should be an easy fix as soon as I find a replacement.
Anyway, the HP87XM was the highest development of the HP Series 80s. It had a built in screen, HP-IB bus and 128 kilobytes of RAM. As you can see from the pictures, it does not have alot of circuitry. It is indeed an overgrown calculator. Just one board for the computer and the rest for the monitor and keyboard.
I obtained this sample like many others at a University of Kentucky Surplus Auction.
The grapevine (and, now, finding her blog post) told me that IG was appropriate impressed with Folex carpet cleaner. It's seriously miraculous stuff - a gabillion-trillion times better than anything else on the market but a relatively unknown product. Spray, blot, stain = GONE.
And I just saw, on their website, that it's good for clothing stains too. Why didn't that occur to me on my own? Doh!!
Moving on....
Awhile ago, I found that Folex comes in gallon jugs and can be used in carpet cleaning machines. So I bought a jug and set it in my house for weeks on end. Then, during my extended illness, I pulled out the carpet cleaner that I bought let's say... SIX YEARS... ago and assembled it. But that made me exhausted so, I put it back in the garage to ignore.
Two weeks ago, when the weather was just right, I pulled out the machine, loaded the soap thingie with Folex, and tried cleaning just the hallway... to mixed success. But I realized the soap dispenser had barely dispensed any of the miracle cleaner. No wonder my success was mild, I'd basically "cleaned" with just warm water (making the amount of filth that came out extra scary)!! And the carpets had a LOT of cat fur so that gunked up the works a lot.
Today I got another wild hair (wisely, I had not returned the machine to the garage), mixed the Folex directly into the water reservoir and tried again. WOW!! Some spots just instantly disappeared. One swipe and GONE. That was fantastic! Other spots disappeared after being allowed to sit for awhile. Others (the spots where I sit all the time) only lightened up, appearing to be perma-stains, but were still improved (since I have light gold carpet, I can bleach them).
I'd show pics but the carpet still looks pretty bad (8+ years of gold carpet, black cats, me being a slob and a general disbelief in cleaning... you do the math). You'd only know it looks MASSIVELY better if you'd seen it, in person, before today's cleaning. Plus, it's still damp and I know the Folex will keep working till it dries.
Of course having misc piles of shit up off the floor is helping too. Too bad most of them will be put back because, much like Richard Gere, they've "got nowhere else to go!!"
I only got through 2/3 of the house before running out of motivation and Folex. I still need to do the dining room and move furniture and repeat the living room. And I supposed the bedroom too (the only time the carpet under the bed has been cleaned was when Adrian took out the bed to paint the room) - esp the East side, where the cord wouldn't reach (and there's cat barf that needs to be cleaned up anyway)(gawd, these cats are getting to me!!).
I may y or 4 more jugs of Folex and use it straight up, no water, next time. I'm not sure. I'm also not sure why I hate vacuuming but tolerate using the carpet cleaner... they sound and feel almost identical, and the vacuum doesn't leave the carpet wet, so why do I slightly enjoy using the cleaner but want to ax murder anyone who turns on a vacuum?
And that's basically how I spent my weekend. Sat was spent almost entirely asleep. The longest I was awake was to get some dinner (chicken pho) and pick up med refills (oh, lordy, when did my Darvo scrip go from 30 pills to 60?? the bottle is too big for my cabinet). Then I took 2 xanax (I've been having insane levels of anxiety), passed out around 10p, moved to my bed at 12:30a, and slept till 1pm today. Screwed up my plans for the day but, hot damn, I feel better! (got all the kinks out of my body)
I forgot to share my happy news... I WON A $50 AMAZON GIFT CARD ON FRIDAY!! Random draw from a facebook contest run by BlackFriday.info, which posts all the day-after-thanksgiving ads as they're created - so you can plan your shopping/spending early (or, if you're like me, start craving all sorts of stuff you don't really need). That was an awesome start to the weekend!! It was offset by working till 1am, and some really shitty meetings throughout the day, but hey...I WON $50!!
Should I go out for a drink tonight? I think Puka Bar might be calling me.
While TuxBrat was at the vet's for 3 days and nights, Miss HRTortie enjoyed having the house and the people to herself. Lots of talking, purring, and playing.
How healthcare works for me:
1) My employer decides whether I will have any coverage or not. The coverage that I will have will be decided by my employer, including which illnesses and procedures will be covered, based on the impacts of those costs on the cost of the plan. My employer decides what it will cost me, based on the level of contribution he desires to make.
2) I have the option of providing my own health insurance. If I am willing to pay four times as much for half the coverage, I can obtain my own health insurance. I cannot, however, cover anything that may have caused an insurance company to lose money previously.
3) The doctors can prescribe medications or procedures which may or may not be covered by my plan. He can change these based on medical efficacy, the fact that the drug rep is hot, or any criteria that he chooses, and that may increase the cost to me and my insurance company. There is no mechanism for me to review or understand his decision, other than trust.
4) The hospitals, technicians, and administrators decide what fees are appropriate for a given course of treatment. This can be based on actual costs plus overhead, plus whatever the market will bear, plus how ambitious the principles are. There is no way for me to review these decisions. My only decision is which hospital system to use, but that is largely based on the decision of my employer in 1).
So.
Whether I am covered at all is decided for me.
What conditions will be covered is decided for me.
What it will cost is decided for me.
What the treatments will entail is decided for me.
This is a free market? What do I get to decide?
I am told that an ideal market will correct all of these inefficiencies, by driving poor performing hospital systems out of business. But it is obvious to anyone that the most poorly performing hospitals are the ones that still practice a very old-fashioned care ethic : treat the sick. For the others, where is the incentive to provide better care supposed to come from? The humanitarian spirit of free enterprise?
This would be the same free market that extracted half the value of my house from me last year. The same free market that has been expelling jobs from America for the last forty years. What in hell am I supposed to trust?
I had been kicking myself for not trying to extend my stay in the Emerald City through the weekend, but I guess things have a way of working out for the best whether we realize it or not. M-----l headed west the day after I came home, and he and Homebody spent the morning watching my team play his team. I could have been there watching with them. It's best that I wasn't. There are worse fan bases in sports, but no fans are worse than Bengal fans when it comes to keeping a little bit of success in proper perspective. I still remember vividly the bitching and moaning on the part of Bengal fans when the Steelers shredded them (and Carson Palmer's knee) on the way to Super Bowl XL. You'd have thought the league promised them a championship or something, the way they cried about "being robbed." And I have no doubt that everyone in southwest Ohio believes after today that they are owed a Super Bowl victory. After two flukey losses, I kind of hope we face the Bungles a third time in the playoffs. I look forward to seeing them (and, hopefully, Carson Palmer's knee) shredded by the Steelers once again on their - the Steelers' - way to a seventh Lombardi Trophy.
Who dey? Dey ain't nuthin', that's who dey.
I'd been wondering why they were only vaccinating girls, when boys are a transmission vector.
And if you were trying to wipe out a virus, wouldn't you want to eliminate the source and all.
Logically, if you want to protect your girls, you need to vaccinate the boys too, no?
Is not a single-gender virus.
I just came across this:
"HPV vaccine will eventually be available for boys and men ages 9 to 26 because the Food and Drug Administration approved it for prevention of genital warts in October."
Well, that's nice.
Wouldn't want them getting warts on their little heehaws in the course of transmitting potentially lethel germies....
Stevie Olympics.
Jump 1 is behind the plants
Jump 2 is between the water jug and wall
Jump 3 is across the steps.
Lets think about how nice the view is up here
Jump 4, Cannonball!!!!!
YES!
This is the first time I used my condo's television room. It has cable.
At least it has internet access, or I would be bored out of my mind.
European cinema is where I find myself increasingly turning in order to see something satisfying and interesting these days - I think Hollywood has become chained up in the yard by commercialism.
On Friday evening I got my first taste of Austrian director Michael Haneke's work: The White Ribbon.
Set in a village in northern Germany in the lead up to the outbreak of the First World War it tells the story of a series of strange events that unsettle the peace of the towns strict protestant community: The doctor is thrown from his horse after it trips on a wire strung between two trees, the Baron's son and a local disabled child are tortured and a barn is burned down.
It is told through the eyes of the school teacher, who is from a neighbouring village.
The film starts silently with the opening titles, is shot in black and white and finishes with silent titles. Indeed Haneke embraces silence twisting it from what should be a peaceful, law abiding and Christian community into a uneasiness.
There are some startlingly natural performances from both the adult and child cast. There is certainly no saccharin-coated Disney-club over acting with which we've become so familiar in watching US and British films.
When the film was over and the credits began their silent ascent up the screen, no one stirred for a moment or two. And no one uttered a word until they were well out of the screen. In fact Haneke had created yet another stony silence.
I'd like to see a Hollywood film have that effect on an audience.
It won the Palm d'Or at Cannes this year and the critics seemed to have enjoyed it as much as I did:
Guardian The White Ribbon has an absolute confidence and mastery of its own cinematic language, and the performances Haneke elicits from his first-rate cast, particularly the children, are eerily perfect.
Independent Superbly and sparely acted, The White Ribbon is a remarkable achievement. It reads like a sprawling modernist novel with its extensive cast, dense narrative and systematic refusal to answer questions.
Screen Daily It’s a rich, detailed work pregnant with the sinister
undertones and evil deeds for which the film-maker’s work is legendary
and won’t disappoint Haneke fans waiting for fresh material after his
experimental US remake of Funny Games.
