Get Off My Lawn
Kids today…
I have a… idunno, I guess I’m (one of) his Elmer(s) but I don’t know what that makes him. PFY, maybe. Told him I’d drop some stuff off for him to use to try to revive the PLL on an Icom IC-240 (the TC5080 had snuffed it).
Anywayz, so this Whatsapp convo goes down:
(Yea, I wind him up. I feel it’s my duty).
Sometimes it’s better to remain quiet.
None of these answers is useful. I’m fully expecting the next comment to be a warning not to solder without adequate ventilation.
(For the record, 105 = 10 and 5 zeroes, just like a resistor, so 1000000 pF = 1 uF. And yes, 15 is the voltage. Also, google “what is the value of a capacitor marked 105” gives the correct answer straight off the bat. People. Feh).
The Old Man
“I’m too old to fall in love, but I ain’t old enough to die. I’m too old to run, but I can outwalk you because I know how to pace myself. I know when to work and when to rest. I know what to eat and what sits heavy on my stomach. I know there ain’t any point in trying to drink all the licker in the world, because they’ll keep on making it. I know I’ll never be rich, but I’ll never be stone-poor, neither, and there ain’t much I can buy with money that I ain’t already got”.
Postal Service ain’t what it used to be
When my mother was in Europe back in the eighties, she exchanged air-mail letters with ny father back home, maybe five or six in the four weeks she was there. Two, three day service, basically.
My landlord Sergey in Ljubljana gave me a post card to send home. I have it to him on the 4th of October. OK, he only mailed it later, because the cancellation is dated the 14th of October.
It arrived here today.
Memories
Played my first game of Castle Wolfenstein in … 25 years? tonight. Got to the third floor. I am not as good as I used to be.
Also played a game of Lode Runner. Yup, not nearly as good as I used to be.
Then again, I played Lode Runner to the point where I went to bed with a book and was trying to find paths between the words and sentences on the page… yea, I was a bit obsessed.
Lowlife scum
Read carefully. It’s not the domain expiring. It’s some bullshit you never signed up for.
I wonder how many people they catch.
And then this happened
My back’s been bothering me since Y2K. I could handle that. My foot started bothering me about five years ago, debilitatingly so. After two neurosurgeons, one neurologist, a podiatrist, biokinetics, three orthopaedic surgeons, four MRIs, many X-rays, and a nuclear scan, It Was Time.
The good news is that I have 100% medical aid cover. The bad news is that doesn’t mean what you think it means — good doctors (And Dr Makan is good, no doubt about that) charge 225% or more. So I’m in the hole for about R20k of Dr Makan’s time, as well as some amount towards the klaas vakie, but it’s money well spent for professional service.
The other good news is that the medical aid fully covers the hospital (Life Vincent Pallotti, recommended) charges, and there are many.
I went into theater at around 13:30 on Tuesday. Started being aware of my surroundings maybe somewhere around 17:00, 18:00, thereabouts, up in High Care. Saw Dr Makan, briefly, at a distance, he waved, said all had gone well.
Moved down to Protea ward somewhere between breakfast and lunch the next day, all was good. Very nice staff, great (well, for a hospital) food, morphine drip, catheter… lay back and enjoyed it.
Thursday was… not so good. They started taking me off the painkillers and the drain (pipe coming out of my back and into a bottle) was really making its presence felt. So also the catheter. Thankfully Dr Makan came around, I asked, he told ’em to lose all the plumbing, and once they’d removed that (needle in my wrist, drain in my back, catheter) life was much more rosy.
So I started swapping food pics with my mother-in-law, who was in Life Knysna at the time. Crappy cellphone pics, but still.
05:30, coffee and a rusk.
08:00, breakfast.
10:30-ish, coffee and a cookie.
12:00, lunch.
14:30, coffee and two cookies nogal.
1700, supper.
20:30, coffee and sarmies.
Hobbits would like this place.
With the Medical Aid paying, everyone was cool with me staying the maximum allowed 6 days, but I booked myself out on Sunday to make Tanya’s life easier. So now I’m supposed to spend six weeks on my back…