News and Views

They had 23 fans and 5 dehumidifiers in the house for 4 days. What a racket! They finally judged the house dry, and took the equipment away last night, so at least it’s peaceful again.

The insurance adjuster was here this morning, and estimated about $7000 just to repair the damage to the walls. That doesn’t include the expense of drying out the house (that will be billed directly to that company so we will probably never know how much that was) or the new flooring (material or installation). It’s all covered after our $1000 deductible, except any updgrades to flooring, etc.

The repair man just left, after reviewing the job. They should start drywall repairs in 2-3 days, and be done in about 2 weeks total. Then comes the flooring. We are thinking of replacing the carpet with wood in several of the rooms, and maybe tile in the bathroom and utility room, so this is a good time to have the insurance company help with the cost.

After driving my Honda Odyssey for 10 years and 145,000 miles, I decided it was time for a new car. When you live many years with a car, you’re not aware of the gradual change as it ages — it still seems about like it did when it was new. But it’s not the car it was when you bought it. I was going to make a comment about spouses, but won’t. (Wait — I just did…) I still love my Odyssey, but…

I just bought a brand new 2010 Acura MDX Crossover SUV. Except for the entertainment package (DVD screen for rear seat passengers), I got all the bells and whistles. It’s the coolest car I’ve ever owned, or seen for that matter.

Some of the neat techy features include:
– Adaptive Cruise Control, where it uses radar to keep a safe distance from the car in front
– Collision Mitigation Braking System, where the same radar will warn you of an imminent collision and if necessary put on the brakes and tighten your seat belt.
– Blind Spot Information system, where it detects cars in the blind spot on either side.
– CDs are copied to a Hard Disk Drive, so you don’t need a disk changer.
– Ventilated seats in the front — air blows through tiny holes in the leather to keep you cool.

Plus all the “usual” stuff like Navigation, Bluetooth phone connection, back-up camera, etc.

It’s going to take me a while to figure everything out, but it will be lots of fun doing so.

The 2011’s will be out in a couple of months, but nothing has changed, and dealers were very ready to bargain to start clearing out the 2010 stock. So I probably shouldn’t have splurged, but if I keep it for 10 years I hope I will feel that I got my money’s worth.

We had a nice rain storm last night, but that’s not what this is about.

The connection to the downstairs toilet broke some time in the night, and we woke to standing water all over the lowest level of the house. The water is not above the top of the carpet, but walking on carpets leaves puddles. Family room, my office, guest room, laundry room and bathroom are soaked. Will probably have to replace all the carpet, moulding, and maybe drywall behind the baseboard.

We were tired of that carpet anyway…

Fortunately insurance will cover it, but it’s still a big hassle. Service Masters is coming in about 2 hours to begin the drying process. I’ll update here as we progress.

You may remember that Devon was accepted into the Cornell University Graduate Physics program. He wanted to spend the summer in Taiwan, studying Mandarin and immersing himself into another culture.

Well, he’s having so much fun that he doesn’t want to come back. He contacted Cornell, and told them he was enrolled in the University in Taiwan (which he is) and requested a one-year deferral. They agreed.

So he will remain in Taiwan through the winter.

Besides studying Chinese, he has met some people in the entertainment business that have him almost convinced he could be a model, actor and/or pop singer. I hope he doesn’t hit the ground too hard if reality disagrees…

I know that self-diagnosing by browsing the internet is often a bad idea. But in this case I think I got it right.

For months, every time after I get out of the shower, my legs would start itching. At times it is almost unbearable, and I sit there scratching away. It peaks about 5 minutes after drying off, and then usually lasts about an hour. It’s mostly in my feet and legs below the knees, though I get a little itchy on my back and other places.

At first I thought maybe I was allergic to the soap, or maybe the detergent or softener used to wash my towel, but switching things didn’t help at all.

Finally a little research on the internet showed that I was not alone: I had Aquagenic Pruritis. Aqua = water, Genic = cause, Pruritis = Itching.

There is no cure, but there are things to do to reduce the symptoms. I have tried three things:

1) Rub Benadryl lotion on my legs after my shower. It helps, but it takes 10-15 minutes to work, and it’s unpleasant waiting for it to take effect.

2) Desensitize the skin by multiple applications each day of a capsaicin lotion. (Capsaicin is the active ingredient in chili peppers that make them taste spicy. Be warned not to touch your eyes after applying!) I don’t know if this has helped. Maybe I don’t put it on enough times each day.

3) The thing that helps the most: Rub baby oil over my legs before my shower. Apparently this seals the skin so the water has less contact. It makes my legs a little oily, naturally, but a light layer isn’t bad. And it helps a lot, almost totally eliminating the itch.

I’ll keep up the capsaicin treatment for a while, and hopefully I can reduce my skin sensitivity, but for now I’ll continue going to bed oily. And if I forget both, there’s always the Benadryl with it’s belated help.

We have an Emergency Medical Technician in the family.

Derek has been studying to become an EMT, and finally took the National Certification Test on Saturday. He passed, and yesterday received his certificate.

The final step before he can actually work is to register with the state and get a license. It may take a few days because they do a background check. Once that’s done he can start applying for a job.

EMTs work in many different places. The first ones that come to mind are a hospital ER and an ambulance or rescue vehicle, but EMTs are also hired to work in casinos, schools, large companies, and sporting events, among other things.

Derek’s not sure in which area he wants to work; they all have advantages and disadvantages. It may come down to who’s hiring.

My wonderful new Windows 7 computer crashed today. I’m not sure what happened, but I think one drive of my Software RAID setup started to fail, and instead of using the good drive to keep things correct, it used the failed drive and started trying to match the good drive to the failed one. All I know is that I have two supposedly mirrored drives that are quite different,and neither one has many of my important files. Windows will barely boot, many things don’t work, and it says it is not a “Genuine” copy.

What a mess! I’m going to have to wipe and reinstall. This time I’m going to use hardware RAID — it’s built into the motherboard, so it shouldn’t be hard.

Meanwhile, in the corruption, most of my data files are gone from both hard drives. All my Thunderbird email files, and most critically all my C++ files that I have spent thousands of hours creating.

Fortunately I set up a Mozy account a few months ago, and it is going to save my sanity.

Mozy is an online back-up utility. Every night around 2:00am all of the important, impossible to replace, files get backed up to Mozy’s server. I have about 26GB up there right now, and when I just checked, all those critical files I was so worried about are as fresh as last night.

Boy I thought that setting up a RAID 1 mirrored system would prevent data loss. It looks like in this case it just made it worse. Hopefully the next time, with hardware RAID, it will do better. But in any event I will continue to use Mozy.

I just finally watched the Ken Burns documentary, “The Civil War”. I think I was out of the country the first time it ran. I remember hearing rave reviews, but I didn’t see how 12 or so hours on a war could hold one’s attention.

Boy, was I wrong. It is probably the best documentary I’ve ever seen. It really adds perspective to the nation. To think — it happened less than 100 years before I was born. That’s not very long ago.

A comment made almost at the very end sticks in my mind: Before the war they would say, “The United States are..” After the war they said “The United States is…”. We went from a loose confederation of separate “states” (which in those days was almost synonymous with “country”) to a single united entity.

Before the war you might argue that the association was freely entered into, and should be open to freely depart from. Lincoln disagreed, and forced the issue. If he had allowed the South to split off, later there might have been other disagreements and fractures, and we would have ended up as many small countries. It was forcing the union that brought our current greatness.

The theme song keeps playing in my head.

We have had a Netflix account for several years, and generally like it a lot.

I quit Blockbuster because I got so frustrated with late fees — I would be charged a whole new rental period for being one day late on a return. With Netflix, you can keep a movie as long as you like and never get charged a late fee. Their selection is very large, and we usually get movies the day after they are sent.

The main drawback is lack of spontaneity. It’s Friday night, friends or family are over, and you want to watch a movie. But none of the ones you have on hand is appropriate for the audience. So you either end up going to Blockbuster anyway, or playing a game instead of watching a movie (which is probably a better alternative, but that’s a topic for another blog).

Now with Netflix streaming movies, we can choose something to watch on the spur of the moment, for no extra cost. If you have a Netflix account, you can instantly stream a movie or TV show directly to your computer, or with the right connections, to your TV.

Gisele, Derek and I are two-thirds of the way through the first season of “24”, which none of us had ever seen before. We have been watching 2-3 episodes a night for the past week. I was out of the country when Ken Burn’s “The Civil War” was shown, but now I’m watching that too.

Not everything is available. Recently released movies in particular are absent, and even the old ones are somewhat limited. But there are so many movies and TV shows that are available that I always can find something interesting to watch.

You can watch them on your computer if you want, but if you have a Wii, or Playstation 3 or several DVD players, you can stream them directly to your TV. We use our Wii, and the picture quality is very similar to DVD. It required a DVD to activate, but Netflix sent it for free.

I think this is the future of home movie watching, though I’m afraid that the movie studios will feel they aren’t being compensated well enough. We’ll have to see how it shakes out. For now, we can couch-potato as much as we want.

We flew to Ottawa, Ontario yesterday. While passing through Security at Phoenix Airport, I had to put my brand new $1000 laptop in one tub, and my shoes, wallet, etc. in another. After passing through the X-Ray machine, I nested the shoe tub on top of the laptop tub and took them to a bench to put my shoes back on. Got everything out of the tub — it was empty, let’s go!

Got to Ottawa, opened up my suitcase, and — extreme sinking feeling — no laptop. Frantically looking everywhere, when it dawned on me. It was left behind between the nested tubs.

Call Phoenix TSA Lost and Found. No answer — too late. Slept OK, but hard to relax completely. This morning, I called back, and they had found it! Fortunately the “empty” tubs after the X-Ray machine are only handled by TSA personnel. If it had been left anywhere else it would not be so likely to have been returned.

Boy, do I feel stupid, but lucky. Derek will pick it up for me. My presentation was on it, but fortunately my colleague Les has another laptop with a duplicate presentation (just in case!), so we are in good shape.