I Need A Break
So, as usual, I prepared to download the pictures from my camera to select one for Cat Blogging and some others on how the roses are doing for my Mother. This is a normal Thursday evening activity. nothing out of the ordinary.
I got the camera and grabbed the cable off the hook. The camera cable is easy to spot because it has a ferrite coil built in.
I plugged the standard USB plug into the computer and the mini-plug into the camera and nothing happened. The camera should automatically power on and start charging when the cable is plugged in to a USB port and the computer should load the file transfer program and beep.
I have three USB ports on the front of the computer and none of them worked. OK, it’s a new computer and things die on new computers, so I decided to switch to the Win XP machine.
Both Win boxes are plugged into the same UPS so I powered down the Win 7 box and powered on the XP box. [Aside: Win boxes should come with the Carly Simon greatest hits album, because Anticipation is so appropriate for the boot cycle and the same could be said about You’re So Vain applied to Bill.]
When the XP decided to function I got the same non-response, so I decided that either the cable or the camera were broken, and nothing could be done until the morning.
I’m wrapping up the cable to put it aside and saw there were two cables, not one, and I had been plugging one into the computer and the other into the camera. I did this with a total of five USB ports on two different computers.
I need a break…
39 comments
Let me tell you about MY day…
/wipes brow
I’m so glad somebody else has done this!
If I had a dollar for every “dumb thing” I had found myself doing with a computer after hours of trying, I could retire as wealthy as Rmoney. Take that break; that really IS what this kind of incident is telling you.
Heh. I’ve been stuck in the Linux kernel block layer for the past six weeks. Let’s see: 1) You never know what context a particular piece of code is running in. Is it running in user context? Tasklet context? (And if so, which tasklet?). Interrupt context? If in interrupt context, top end or bottom end? 2) You never know what set of locks have been grabbed by some set of code upstream because you never know what context some piece of code is running in, or thinks it is supposed to be running in, and it’s utterly undocumented what locks were set by your caller in the vast majority of cases, so half the time you end up inventing new locks (which involves spinlocks) which aren’t necessary, slows the kernel down, and increases the chances of deadlock. 3) You never know what gets called when you deallocate something, because allocating things sets callbacks in the newly-allocated item that get called when the item gets deallocated, but you aren’t necessarily privy to that. So you wrote a block device driver that has a request queue and presents a block hard drive device to the system, and you want to shut down the device and release its resources? Well, when I call the hard drive deallocator, it schedules a flush tasklet in the blockdev work queue to flush any pending i/os. If I immediately call the request queue deallocator, it deallocates the request queue right out from under the flush tasklet, meaning Bad Things Happen. So I had to add a scheduling point right after the call to the hard drive deallocator so the flush tasklet could run and notice that the request queue was empty (duh, I shut down i/o and waited for it all to drain well above all this, of *course* it was empty) and exit. None of which should theoretically be necessary.
I *told* Linus, back in 1994, that writing the kernel as a monolithic kernel wouldn’t scale as the number of drivers and developers grew, just as I *told* Linus, back in 1995, that commercial vendors would never accept an OS that had no provision for loadable device drivers. He didn’t believe me on either, though he finally had to give in to Red Hat on the second and allow Alan’s Cox’s “kernel modules” patches to go into the 1.3 kernel. So now we’re seeing the limits and it’s nasty.
And I’m ranting to random strangers on a web site about Linux kernel internals. I need a break too :).
See, this is what blogs are really all about – telling truths without watching the listeners winch and shake their heads, or worse, the signs of pity.
You know, PJ, for a place that doesn’t actually take direct hits very often from tropical cyclones, Panama City sure takes a lot of grief from the outer bands and storm surge.
Ellroon, you are having fun with cluster quakes in the Imperial Valley, and yes, experience and training can’t always stop you from making obvious mistakes, which is why even famous accomplished writers have editors, and programmers have other people look at their code.
Steve, what’s really bugging me has nothing to do with the blog, and everything to do with people who believe they are well-meaning and ‘Christian’ while screwing around with other people’s lives. I think it’s time to be rude, because being reasonable and polite hasn’t worked.
There are people who stop by who do understand what you’re talking about, Badtux, and at least two lurkers I know who will never comment because of their jobs, who know exactly what you’re talking about because they have dealt with very similar problems.
There are so many things that would have been so much better if people started out planning for scaling up from the beginning. People generally limit themselves and their imaginations by using the world they exist in, rather than considering the world in the future.
This is as good a place as any to vent, and it doesn’t scare the cats.
Been there done that sort of thing many a time Bryan!
It is so frustrating, especially given the last week spent watching a hurricane that might have had my address in mind.
[points and laughs]
😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆
of course, it’s only fair to note that this exact situation is one of the reasons why i never unplug the camera cable from the computer.
plus, it’s one of those ultra-short cables, which, when i first got the camera, i thought was going to be a real nuisance. little did i know….
I have camera, printer, DVD, floppy disk, cell phone, etc. USB cables hanging on the hook and they all have different plugs for the device end. If I leave them plugged in they would become cat toys, so I don’t. Of course they are all black except for the printer cable.
It is time for the colored electrical tape.
It is time for the colored electrical tape.
yep. my current setup is pretty much pared down to the bare minimum, but when i’ve had whole cable jungles to deal with, i’ve always resorted to color-coding, and usually labeling too.
back when i had corded keyboard, mouse and speakers, those were always the favorite cat toys. but they completely ignore both the wireless mouse and the cable-with-no-attached-object.
“Linux kernel internals.” – BT
It’s the cereal an IT expert has for a hearty breakfast!
Without understanding the particulars, BadTux, I certainly understand the outlines of the issue of the sequence of deallocations. It was bad enough in old C programs, and I’m not sure it’s better in the object world. More than once I ended up setting common flags to communicate between pieces of code that did things completely unrelated to each other. Messy! And if there’s no way of finding out what context you’re running in, you’re really screwed. Part of me is glad not to deal with that crap anymore; part of me (a very small part) misses it.
You can get Ethernet cables in colors, so they are easy to identify, but USB seems limited to basic black. It’s another item on my list.
Yeah, I’ve had similar problems. Who hasn’t? 🙂
I solved it by getting a good powered USB Hub, but it only had 4 ports. I just upgraded to a neat mbeat 7-port powered hub with a 3A power adaptor last week. It has 4 USB 2.0 and 3 USB 3,0 ports, and each has an LED indicator and a on/off switch which I’ve found handy. It allows me to keep everything plugged in. So I have a total of 12 USB 2.0 ports and 7 USB 3.0 ports on my dev PC. Since I currently only have 2 USB 3.0 devices (2x 2 TB Buffalo HDD’s) I should be right for some time. It also charges my phone pretty quickly thanks to the 3A power. 🙂
My biggest problem with USB ports is that continuous plug/unplug of USB cables will make the ports loose or non-functional fairly quickly. They are not at all well designed IMHO!
OT:
A personal update. I just got out of Hospital earlier today. I went in last Fri evening in excruciating pain. As you know, I have been shot twice while in the SF, one to the chest and one hit to the calf muscle. This was at least 10x worse. Not kidding. It felt as though I was in one of the Aliens movies and the bugger was trying to eat it’s way out through my abdomen. The Doctor kept his cool and tried to find a vein so he could give me a big dose of morpheme, but unfortunately for me, I have deep veins that like to move. It took some time. He tried an old-fashioned injection of some other strong pain killer into the upper arm, but it did nothing much. I was having a lot of trouble breathing and my heart rate reached 132 before he finally found the vein and got the cannula in and delivered two big doses of morphine which began working within a minute and I passed out from relief (I think). My normal heart rate is 46 to 54 BTW.
I had an ERCP (Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography) procedure that was supposed to happen Sunday, but was delayed several times until Monday Evening. They found and removed about a dozen gall stones, some quite large. Wed evening (about 10PM) I had another procedure, a Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy with IOC (Intraoperative cholangiography) which turned out to be a waste of time as they found no stones in the bile duct (which Ultrasound tests suggested were there but was a false-positive) and they couldn’t find my gall bladder! The surgeon said in the post-op review that they suspect the gb had shriveled up and become very small and was hiding somewhere behind my liver, but they would have had to make a large incision to find it, so decided against it. I had been fasting since Sat Midnight, and was weak as a new kitten (even my calf muscles that are usually hard as rocks were soft as mashed potato)! Would you believe that they wanted to send me home Thursday, even though the abdominal pain was high, I couldn’t walk unassisted, my bp was low, sugar count was way high, and I had nausea! Thankfully the Ward staff are really good and said no way in hell was I ready to go home, which caused a big sh*t fight apparently. Friday Morning, the same surgeon came to review and said I was DEFINITELY going home today! There was a Physiotherapist and Nurse with me at the time, and they said I would go when they believed I was ready as I was their responsibility now. The Surgeon (A Professor of Surgery BTW) glared at us all and stormed off. The Physio said that when I could walk the length of the corridor unassisted, I could go. So, I practiced and got all the will power I had when I was weightlifting and in the Army, and managed to make it (though I was somewhat unsteady) and the Physio was very unsure but I told him that I would sign myself out if I had to. I wanted to come home, have some decent food and SLEEP!! (You cannot sleep in a Hospital! Especially when they come around every 3 hours to take bp, SATS and temp, or in my care IV or direct antibiotics, sugar level tests, give insulin or draw blood! my arms seriously look like a heroin addict gone mad! I am going to be covered in bruises from elbow to fingers. I’ve had a total of 5 IV cannulas in 6 days because the big doses of IV antibiotics collapses the veins pretty fast, and I was quite dehydrated (which made finding new ones a fun time for all, NOT!) Anyway, I got my way and came home this afternoon. The Physio showed me a cool trick to ease abdominal pain, especially when walking, getting up or coughing. by folding a bath towel into a rectangle to cover my abdomen and holding it there, it reduces the pain quite a bit and stops me feeling as though my organs are about to fall out all over the floor! Woohoo! 😉 😀
I must say that the Nursing staff, the staff Doctors, the Pharmacist were all wonderful and did everything they could to make me safe and comfortable. The surgical staff however can all go to hell IMHO!! I found out yesterday, that the Nurses here are so underpaid, they make about 50c more than a supermarket checkout drone!! That’s sooo disgusting!
I’m scheduled for another MRI in two weeks to see if any more stones appear, and more surgery in a Month (though that may well be ‘over my dead body’!)
See, our Health system is as crazy as yours!
Anyway, I have some pain, controlled by Oxycodone Hydrochloride and Ibuprofen, so it’s quite tolerable so far. But moving is a bit of a challenge still. Still, at least I will finally get a good night’s sleep (very soon) and maybe I’ll be better in the morning. 🙂
Have I mentioned in the past that I hate all Hospital’s BTW? *SIGH*
G’night all, and thanks for being sane and rational, and all your good thoughts. I needed them.
yow, what a miserable experience, kryten! glad to hear you’ve made it home from yet another adventure, and may you get some sleep now [yeah, no sleeping allowed in hospitals, that’s for sure, been there done that!].
More than half of the emergency ‘heart attack’ transports that I did, turned out to be gall bladder problems, and they were the people in the worst pain, bad enough that we didn’t wait for an ambulance, but took a squad car. My Mother has always said that it was the worst pain she has ever encountered.
Yes, the members of the guild [doctors] are an arrogant bunch who assume they are the only one gifted with knowledge and too many have a tendency to treat patients like lab animals. For some reason surgeons make a point for forgetting that their guild started out cutting hair, not people.
The pay of the people who actually do the real work in medicine, the nurses and technicians, is criminal. Doctors get all of the money, while others do all of the work. The ‘specialists’ are the worst of the sorry lot of egotists.
I don’t know how they expect people to get better when they can’t get 8 hours of sleep. It’s nearly impossible to get any sleep with all of the sensors and tubes that they routinely attach to people in the hospital. Then you have the beds designed by De Sade Manufacturing based on medieval designs from the cellars of old castles. It is topped the cheapest bed linen I have ever seen. I have thrown out as worthless the majority of pillows on hospital beds and wouldn’t use their ‘blankets’ as dust covers. For this, hospitals get five star room rates. It would be cheaper to go to a good hotel and use room service – you would be treated better, and the room would be cleaned more often.
Well, you have cheated the pale rider again, so sleep until you are rested and eat until you are full. People are always happier among their own stuff, and don’t have to worry about infections brought in by the ties of doctors [one of the greatest sources of disease vectors in US hospitals].
I have been looking at hubs, but desk space is at a premium. I have all of the cables color coded now, so that should solve immediate problems.
Hiya hipparchia & Bryan, and my deepest thanks! 😀
When I went into the ER dep’t, I was with a lady friend who drove me there (had to wait over 40 min’s for an Ambulance last time, takes 15 min’s to drive there). When the pain hit and became so bad I could hardly breathe, I almost gave up. But she was squeezing my shoulder and saying something like “just hang in there” over and over. I saw the terrified look on her face and also a look of determination, and knew I couldn’t just quit. If she hadn’t been there, I would most likely be dead now. I am so tired of it all, and like everyone, I have a limit too. I’ve lost a lot of weight but have more to loose. My ideal weight is about 115 kg, I have about 30kg left to loose. I’m starting a ‘Lifestyle’ program designed for people like me when I am fully back on my feet. It includes seeing an Exercise Physiologist 2-3 days a week, dietician, diabetes specialist and others. Hopefully I can start in a month. 🙂 Even LadyMin wouldn’t recognize me now, though I haven’t heard from her for about 10 mths. *shrug*
Well, I made it through my first night OK! I went for a bit of a walk earlier (it’s about 3PM now) and was pleased that I felt somewhat steadier than yesterday, but I won’t overdo it. 🙂 I had some trouble sleeping, but it was better than hospital by far!
It seems I am now allergic to Penicillin and derivatives, though I have had it many times in the past with no problems. Thanks to that I now have to deal with hives also! I am informed they can last for weeks and my skin is itchy as hell. Thankfully, antihistamine seems to work well and it’s not too bad. Just one more med I have to take. *SIGH*
Yeah, the beds and linen are garbage! And they cost a bloody fortune too! Nobody I spoke too in Hospital likes them.
Apparently, I am something of a minor celebrity now. LOL Opposition Leader (Liberal) Tony Abbott decided to visit the ward I was in (it has 4 beds and is on the ground floor) to visit the 82 yo patient opposite me (a farmer that fell off the top of a stack of hay bales and had a half dozen fall on him, but came away with only a shattered foot! They breed them tough here!) He then visited me and I was on my best behavior (I had no choice as the nursing staff threatened my with assorted mayhem if I wasn’t! Given my circumstances, I decided to swallow my annoyance and sanity and complied. I even allowed him to shake my hand and didn’t even try to crush his fingers!) 😉 LOL Anyway, we both told him the same thing. Nth Victoria cannot afford to loose the Hospital and that it was badly underfunded, way understaffed, and seriously mismanaged! Something better be done about it! Abbott couldn’t leave quickly enough, he was only interested in negative views on Gillard’s Carbon Tax deal. Typical politician. *shrug*
Not sure if a pic of me appeared anywhere, but one of Kevin (the farmer opposite me) is here on Twitter
Thanks again all, and good luck to us all! 😀
Cheers!
If I “did” desktops anymore, I’d certainly use a hub for all the things I plugged/unplugged. But I’m really too nomadic for desktops nowadays. For one thing, they tie you down too much. I am typing this while sitting on my futon, feet up on the coffee table, a cat cuddled against me on each side. Try that with a desktop computer :).
One thing I’m attempting to do is make things as wireless as possible. My new Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S3, much bigger screen than an iPhone, easier for my old eyes to see) is running a music sync app (that also has a computer app) to sync my iTunes mobile playlist via WIFI to the phone, so I don’t have to actually plug the phone into the computer to sync my music. The phone itself doesn’t even work as a “disk drive” when plugged into my Mac, I have to forward it to a Windows virtual machine, so it’s pointless to do so. When I need to plug it in to charge it, I plug it into one of my many USB charger devices that clutter my household. Similarly, when I want to play music from my computer on my stereo, I don’t plug a wire into the side, I use Airplay to play it to an Apple widget that outputs to my TV which outputs to my stereo. There’s even a way to do that with video nowadays, though I tried it out and you have to be hard-wired via Ethernet on at least one end for it to work well.
Hospitals seem designed to make people sicker. Last time I was in a hospital was when they did surgery on my foot to graft skin over the missing chunk (said graft mostly failed and it’s mostly scar tissue, oh well), and that was thirty years ago. I’ve since been told that reconstructive surgery has improved especially over the past ten years (due to all the soldiers being blown up in Iraqnam and Afghanisnam) to the point where they can make my foot function better if they can get in there and re-plumb things to get the blood flow working better and get skin in place of the scar tissue, but I prefer my solution — just wear sandals (with thick socks). Cheaper, and less chance of picking up some ridiculous infection that’ll result in them having to chop off my foot.
Gall stones and politicians would have rated two morphine drips to counter-act the pain.
That patient chair in the picture looks just like ours. The last time I sat in one it sounded like a cheap flatulence pillow, and had the same squeaky plastic upholstery that makes you sweat, just like the mattresses.
Yeah, the ‘new and improved’ version of penicillin is only loosely connected to the little white ovals that we ate like popcorn in SEA whenever we had broken skin on the ground. We always carried a bottle of them -just in case. It is the only antibiotic I’ve ever had, so I’d be ripe for a reaction to anything they gave me today. My Mother has had a lot of different antibiotics and the only one that seems to work for her these days is something the French developed 40 years ago. She has developed an allergy to just about everything else. Another problem with overuse.
Slow and easy, Mate, slow and easy. It might take more time than you think it should, but there are fewer setbacks that way.
Badtux, you have the right attitude about additional surgery. One of my best friends really messed up his foot walking on the debris in his boat house. He got some type of nasty infection in the wound and they called in a specialist to treat it. The first thing the infection guy did was haul my friend out of the hospital, even though the treatment involved IV antibiotics. The doctor said that he was confident of curing anything my friend might pick up at home, but he wasn’t sure about what might be picked up in the hospital.
My mother was a nurse for almost 40 years, Bryan, so I have the inside scoop on the current situation in U.S. hospitals. It’s bad. Medication mistakes are common and charting rarely gets done on schedule due to understaffing, and sometimes is outright fibbed. Not to mention the infection issue you brought up. As for the doctors, some are good, some are bad… (shrug). The biggest problem is when you have a complex case with multiple doctors and each doctor prescribes something… sometimes drugs that shouldn’t be mixed. My mother has some stories there…
My Mother was a theater Nurse for 30 years here. I heard a lot of horror stories as a kid, and saw Mom come home crying a few times. She saved my life twice, once when I was born, and again when I was about 8 and had a tonsillectomy and hemorrhaged. She came in to see me after my surgery and saw me bleeding out and did what she had to.
The Snr Pharmacist at the Hospital corrected 4 prescription/dosage mistakes made by Doc’s during the last and previous Hospital stay. One of my friends was Chief Pharmacist for a large Hospital in Melb. She once said (half-jokingly) that her main job was saving patients from Doctors. *shrug*
I had my foot fractured in 4 places several years ago. I get pain now and then, but it’s fine. The Doc’s say they can operate and fix it, but I won’t let them touch it. I went through that with my shoulder many years ago, and they made it worse. I learn.
OK Bryan!! Please explain why you bloody spam filter will not allow me to post the full comment??! Jeez!
Continued…
…Continued
The Gov here is on the warpath because they say that *people* are abusing the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) such as prescribing expensive anti-inflammatory drugs rather than generics (such as ibuprofen or paracetamol which are sold over the counter or even Supermarkets and not part of PBS). Since the other med’s I am on prohibit me from taking aspirin, paracetamol or ibuprofen for any length of time over a couple days, I needed another anti-inflammatory that required a prescription and fell under the PBS. The Doc decided that I could have ibuprofen since the claimed reaction to my other med was *theoretical*. However, the Pharmacist pointed out that it in fact had negative interactions with two of my med’s and was therefor a triple whammy which would be too much risk given my current state and that the Doctor would be held solely responsible for any negative outcomes. The Pharmacist won. 🙂 BTW, the way PBS works for me is that any Prescription drug on the list I only pay about $5.60 and the Gov (via Medicare) pay’s the rest. One drug I am on would cost me about $87, which I couldn’t afford.
I’ve decided that the Pharmacists, Nurses and Physiotherapists care a lot more about patients in Hospitals then Doc’s and Surgeons. Not one of the Doc’s or Surgeons really explained anything about what I should do, what would happen, etc. after I left the Hospital, they just wanted me out ASAP. The Physio gave me a nice information booklet they made about “Going home after Abdominal Surgery” that was a very interesting read. One of the items was about how long the wounds would heal.
Well, I have a *triple whammy* there! At least I don’t smoke or drink. 🙂 *shrug*
The booklet also states that for the first few weeks I should have a 2 rest periods of 1 hour every day lying down in peace and quiet, which I have been doing, though mainly because I run out of steam anyway. 😆
The booklet also gives instructions for many movements, such as how to get in and out of bed, how to get up or sit down, how to roll over in bed, etc to minimise any stress on the abdomen. I’ve found they do work. 🙂
Ah well… time for an afternoon nap! 😉 😀
Caio!
I see that you Aussies have the same problem of doctors abusing Medicare that we have. Funny how the government never seems to figure out that it’s the *doctors* abusing Medicare, not the *patients*. It’s almost as if they’re being *paid* not to figure that out. Naw, that couldn’t be ;).
According to a study posted in the ‘guild bulletin’ [the Journal of the American Medical Association] in 2000, about 7,000 hospital patients die each year from errors in medication. That isn’t bad because the same study 106,000 people die from taking the drugs their doctors prescribe, at the prescribed level of dose, and using the prescribed dosing instructions. The study said that medical error was the third largest cause of death in the US, but doctors complain about the number of malpractice suits.
I spend a lot of time looking at drugs because of my Mother’s health issues, and it is a mess. You keep getting sent to specialists, and the specialist don’t bother to study outside of their field. Like a guy with a hammer who sees everything as a nail. a cardiologist sees everything as a heart problem, etc.
The local pharmacy has pretty good software to check for problems, but you have to make sure that the pharmacy is aware of allergies and other bad reactions to drugs, because the doctors don’t spend any time looking at your records for those sorts of things.
Supposedly electronic patient records will take care of those sorts of things. but the way most doctors work, it will be days before they will update records of your latest appointment, so possible problems won’t show up until after you have bought the new prescription for a drug you shouldn’t take.
I admit that it is really amazing how patients can magically generate their own prescriptions according to the politicians, with no medical personnel involved. I was under the impression that only certain medical people could write prescriptions, and if you weren’t one of them, you went to jail for doing it on your own. The police in Florida arrested then governor Jeb Bush’s daughter for that, so I’m pretty sure that is definitely the way it works.
Maybe if governments did something about the way drug companies ‘encourage’ doctors to prescribe certain medications, the problem would be greatly reduced.
OT: Kryten I have been looking through the code for years trying to find out where the limits, both upper and lower, are specified, but have been unsuccessful so far. The code definitely exists because the original software didn’t do it. One day, I hope to change that. I have no idea how long a post is acceptable, but Hipparchia discovered that 15 characters is the minimum.
Supposedly electronic patient records will take care of those sorts of things.
hahahahahahahahaha!
the last time i was in the hospital, i was in their electronic records, had been for years, including the medications i’m allergic to. i say allergic, but that’s just shorthand – the time [many many years ago] that i was dead and brought back to life was when it was discovered that i really can NOT have that class of drugs. you would think that this would be flagged somehow, and that hospital personnel would pay attention. you would be wrong on at least one of those counts. the entire time i was in the hospital they kept trying, every two hours, to give one of those drugs, including waking me up in the middle of the night, every two hours. even when i kept telling them no i cannot have that drug, please go check my medical records for confirmation they never gave up trying to give me that drug.
Garbage In – Garbage Out
If they don’t actually look at the records they do have, the format of those records doesn’t make any difference – paper or pixels. My Mother carries copies of a list of her medications and drug allergies to give to every doctor she sees every time she sees them, and they will still call in prescriptions for drugs she can’t take. Her pharmacy, OTOH, has software that checks the list, and they call to tell her that they have to call the doctor back because he was trying to kill her… again.
My mom was a RN, a Registered Nurse. In her state medications in hospitals were required to be administered by an RN because they had the medical training to recognize medication errors or interaction problems before the patient ended up croaked. Well, that worked fine until hospitals cut back their staffing so far that the RN can’t really check the charts and see what’s going into the patients on her floor, it just isn’t physically possible in the seconds allotted per patient to administer medications. She quit hospital nursing because in her opinion she was just killing patients rather than helping them, and ended her career at a nursing home for severely developmentally disabled adults, where at least she didn’t have to feel like part of the problem.
Bryan, it’s also interesting how those wicked patients are forcing, forcing I say, heart surgeons to insert stents that they don’t need, and are forcing internists to prescribe MRI’s that the patients don’t need, and otherwise are just running wild like Central Park muggers with an insurance card rather than a gun. Funny how those wicked patients are forcing all these doctors to do all these treatments and prescribe all these drugs, you’d think the doctors would learn and hire security to deal with that problem, but apparently they don’t. 😈
Hipparchia, at age 19 I figured out that the health care system was best to be avoided unless I *really* needed it. If I have rasping in my chest I’ll go to the doctor, or if my throat is closing up, or it’s otherwise clear that I *must* do so. Otherwise, I don’t, because they’ll just want to prescribe drugs that I have a high potential to become allergic to (since I am allergic to almost everything), and I don’t want to become allergic to any particular drug until I *have* to. Thus I haven’t taken an antibiotic in 20 years… that one was for strep throat, I think. The only drugs I *have* to take are the antihistamines that keep my sinuses from becoming inflamed and infected, so I do those, but grudgingly.
Bryan, I have had the necessity of going into the PHP code that is WordPress. I prefer not to do so if not necessary, because a) PHP is surpassed only by Perl for typographical obscurity and likely tied with APL there :twisted:, and b) WordPress makes the Linux kernel look like clean and well-organized code. ‘Nuff said ;).
Like every other for-profit enterprise these days, Hospital Inc. uses the WalMart standard for staffing, i.e. the fewest number of full-time employees required by law, and part-time people to plug the gap when absolutely necessary. There aren’t enough people to do anything right, and when you raise a stink you are told ‘We meet state standards’.
I’m not surprised that your Mom bailed out, any professional would reach the point where that was the only moral option.
I avoid doctors like the disease they spread. They don’t want to treat people anymore, they want to make money, mostly by ‘surrendering to those criminal patients by over-treating, over-testing, and over-medicating’.
One of the reasons I don’t go near doctors is that I haven’t found one that is as good as the doctor I had when I was in Rochester, NY. He never did anything other than suggesting all kinds of possible solutions, and then saying ‘OTOH, if we don’t do anything it will probably take care of itself, so let’s wait.’ He was a professor at the University of Rochester, but I obviously couldn’t convince people to “First, do no harm.”
On WordPress, yeah, that length check has to be in function library buried somewhere, and it doesn’t have a very descriptive name. If I stumble across it, I take action, but I’ve tried all of the search terms that make sense to me. It definitely is not in anything obviously associated to Comments.
Sorry for the delay. Had a rough day. 🙂
Funny thing about my post above… I tried posting the first comment part with the first paragraph that’s in part 2. I was told the comment was *spammy*. So, I tried again moving that paragraph to the top of the 2nd part, and the 1st now posted fine. I decided to post the much longer 2nd part, certain it would be rejected… but it obviously wasn’t! There’s no logic there m8! 😉 *shakin head*
Shoot! I had to beg for Mths and end up in ER SIX times before they agreed to CT, MRI & HIDA scans!! Which found a) the area around my liver and elsewhere was septic, b) I had several gall stones, c) I had no gall bladder or it was dead (which turned out to be the case).
The Heath system is seriously FUBAR, or to use my Grandfathers vernacular… It’s completely SNAFU!
I even spent my Birthday in Hospital! Hmmph! What could be worse… Mind you, I did get a couple nice hugs from a couple of very cute Nurses that I had gotten to know… *sigh* Oh, to be 30 years younger! (It wasn’t ALL bad I guess!) 😉 😛
I knew a Chinese Doctor some years ago who was an MD, a herbalist, naturopath etc. He once said that Western Medicine is good if you need to be cut open, but for everything else, the Eastern way’s were best! I think he was right.
Well in the US you would have had every test known to exist, but no one would have actually looked at the results because the point was to rack up billable charges, not fix problems. Not surprising when in most group practices the doctors are expected to see at least 3 patients per hour, so there isn’t much time to review records. Besides, if they fix the problem you might not come back for a while, and they want to maintain their customer base.
Any time you can con cute women into your ‘bedroom’ can’t be all bad 😉
They are training doctors to rely on the testing instead of developing old-fashioned diagnostic skills, and then they get clamped down on the use of the tests, so of course things are screwed up. The way to fix it is to look for patterns of abuse and deal with the abusers, not blanket suppression of testing. Send a few people to jail and the situation will improve dramatically.
OT: Spam? That’s in a plug-in, and it must have been all of the references to ‘drugs’, a common topic for spammers. Filters are a real PITA, but comment spam is still a problem, and I’m trying to avoid using Captcha to reduce it to a reasonable level. Sorry about that, M8.
Any time you can con cute women into your ‘bedroom’ can’t be all bad
Ain’t that the truth! 😉 😆 Mind you… It’s been a long time between drinks (as we say down under!) 😆
You wanna know what the WORST part is…
I’d just spent US$46 on 3lbs of the Wallenford Estate Blue Mountain Coffee (regarded as the best anywhere) just before I went into Hospital and they banned me from having caffeine for 3 Months!!
Life just ain’t worth living… Just shoot me! *SIGH*
OT: (or, should that actually be OT:OT: now?) 😉
No worries about the filter m8! It’s really no biggie, and I understand! I just like whining right now! 😆 It’s all cool! 😀
My Mother is permanently forbidden to ever have another hot fudge banana split [an ice cream sundae]. She has said if they had told her that before they decided to save her life, she would have had to think it over.
It won’t be at its peak, but if you seal tight and throw it in the freezer, the coffee should be almost as good in three months. Maybe not $46 good, but still better than $40 😉
I’m glad you understand about the filter, because if the regular software is bad, the plug-ins are even worse when you try to figure out what the programmer had in mind.
I’ve considered using registration, but that is a real pain for people, having to sign in before commenting. It might not bother other people, but it really annoys me.
LOL @ your Mom! 😀 I don’t know your Mom at all, but I think I’d like her! 😀
I think I mentioned in another thread before I went into Hospital about buying that coffee… Serves me right for showing off! You think I’d learn by now… *sigh* 😉
I’ve been told by master coffee roasters that the best way to store roasted coffee is in an air & light tight container in a cool cupboard. Green beans can be kept in the Freezer. 🙂 That reminds me… I have been looking into roasting my own beans. Apparently, one of the best ways is with one of those hot air popcorn poppers! Green beans are a lot cheaper to buy. However, some beans roast better with a steam or hot water process, so have to be careful what beans to buy. 🙂
I’ve had the same issues with spam etc, and I decided there is no such thing as a perfect solution. In fact. I’d say it comes down to *least worst* or at best, what causes your visitors to whinge the least! A lot of sites now use reCaptcha which is a PITA! The number of times I can’t read one of the damned words, even with my glasses on and the page zoomed to 200%, and have been forced to reload the image… Gaaaahhhhhhh!
I am pretty pleased with my progress! 😀 I was out and about for about 4 hours, and carried 2 bags of shopping home on the but! I am exhaused, but feel good! However… proving that I am not totally stupid, tomorrow is a designated *lazy SOB, stay home and watch vids or play music, do nothing* day! 😉 😀 I have two new movies to watch, Ted & the Avengers; and catch up on the past dozen episodes of Daily Show (on the road to Tampa, Florida RNC & Charlotte NC DNC)! Should be a million laughs! 😆
I love their slogans for the two conventions.
DNC: “Democalypse 2012. Hope and Change Again, Again. It’s less weird than if he didn’t run!”
RNC: “A Party, too Patriotic for Facts. A candidate, too successful for taxes. A city where flip-flops are evening wear. The road to Jeb Bush 2016!”
Yeah… Gonna lay back and veg out and laugh until my stitches burst!! LMAO (OK… Maybe not that much!) 😉 😀
You have one big advantage over our elections… Yours are funny as hell, ours are boring as hell! (Sorry man, but you know it’s true, at least to the World outside the USA.) 😉
BTW. speaking of reCAPTCHA, did you know Google acquired the organization back in 2009? Is there anything Google won’t buy to track users? *SIGH*
Google Acquires reCAPTCHA
One less *Freedom of the Internet*. *shrug*
Bryan, the number of tests you get depends on whether you’re a member of a PPO, an HMO, or Medicare/Medicaid. If you’re a PPO patient, you’ll get every test that the doctor can trick the insurer into paying for, whether you need it or not, but probably not a horrific number of tests because it takes too much work to push a test through the deny deny deny deny deny deny deny accept cycle. If you’re an HMO patient (i.e., the doctor is salaried so has no incentive to overtest, the clinic or hospital is owned by the insurer, and the insurer makes money by denying care, not by providing care), you’ll have an experience similar to Kryten’s — one of my former bosses was in horrific excruciating pain for almost six months before Chiseler Permanente finally relented and did a MRI on him, Chiseler Permanente simply kept shoving pills at him until then (pills he mostly couldn’t take since he had a job to do and they put him to sleep). And of course Medicare/Medicaid, doctors prescribe anything they think they can get away with and justify it with “well, they pay less, so we have to prescribe more tests to be fulfilled by testing centers that *we* own in order to make the amount of money we want to make!”
Kryten, the fact that you’re whining is proof that you’re mending ;). Do take it easy, getting too energetic after someone just finished rearranging your guts is not recommended, you don’t want to have all your guts suddenly fall out onto your feet after all :).
Of course, as much as we gripe about health care today, the “good old days” were hardly good for those living then. If we funded healthcare today at the same level as in 1960, we’d have the same outcomes as 1960 — liver disease? Send patient home to die. Kidney disease? Send patient home to die. Leukemia? Send patient home to die. Heart disease? Give the patient some palliative treatments and send him home to die. And so forth and so on, page after page of diseases that were death sentences then and survivable today. Something to think about next time you’re griping about how health care is fscked up today…
Kryten, I’m really ready for politics to be boring. Boring is the best thing that could happen. Al Gore is really boring, and he would have actually solved some problems. Jimmy Carter had to have a crazy brother to provide any interest. Boring is how government should be – something you can ignore, like elevator music.
Maybe you should see about a visiting nurse, or someone who can play a visiting nurse 😉
Google buys everything it think might provide ad space. At some point you will have to recognize corporate logos and put up with an ad to comment at Blogger.
Badtux, the science is great, but the delivery is still screwed up, major league.
LOL bt! That;s what I have my towel for… to stop my guts spilling onto the floor! (Ford Prefect would be so proud!) 😉 😀
There was a lot wrong with ‘the good old days’, but there is a lot wrong with the new days. The difference being, today it’s mostly by design and deliberate. 🙂
I didn’t mean the politics is boring Bryan, I was only talking about the election process. The end results are remarkably similar here and there. Morons are elected that shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge of a lemonade stand let alone a Nation!
Well… I have this really gorgeous friend who took me to the hospital and visited me who would look great in a Nurses uniform… problem is, I like and respect her a great deal. She’s a 27yo single mom with two great kids I love also. Damned morals! (Not really of course! I wouldn’t have it any other way.) On the whole, I’d much rather have her as a good friend. They are rare. I discovered when I was younger and fitter… Bed partners are easy to find. (Oooh! Should I have put a disclaimer first for the puritanical hypocrites out there??) Nahhhhh… 😈 😉
Kryten, the fact that you’re whining is proof that you’re mending .
🙂
my cousin’s veterinarian has a motto that parallels that: an angry cat is a healthy cat.
Having someone who is willing and able to take you to the hospital is not as easy as many people think. There are a lot of people who just don’t want to go near the place. Yes, friends are not easy to find and keep.
Other people’s kids are always easier to love than your own – you don’t have to live with other people’s kids. [so says an uncle who has created havoc in the lives of his siblings].
On that basis, Hipparchia, Ringo should be taking me to the ‘vet’, because she is definitely angry.