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From: Moe Trin on 5 Sep 2007 16:06 On Wed, 05 Sep 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandrake, in article <LGmDi.3984$Ov2.856(a)trndny06>, Adam wrote: >Moe Trin wrote: >> But you get to fill in those wonderful Hospital Evaluation forms - >> and marvel over the absolute fantasy that are hospital bills. >I didn't get any evaluation forms Last two visits to the hospital (one for surgery. one to the ER to fix a post-op problem) I got the evaluation forms about 3 weeks later. It's a four page multiple choice type of form that goes to a central data collection center run for the Feds. There is even a place where you can rant over some of the more egregious stuff like call button response time - or the lack thereof. >I haven't seen any bills yet either. In that respect I'm very fortunate. I didn't get anything until after the insurance company had their say, about 5 to 8 weeks. Actually, I have one bill that the insurance paid their part, but I still haven't seen my bill 10 weeks after the service. >Today was my first day out on my own, and I can see that it will be a >few more weeks until I'm back to 100%, or close to it. Take it easy. I was on a 'do nothing' restriction for two weeks, then four more weeks of lots of restrictions (10 pound maximum lift, walking no more than five minutes at a time). I've started bike riding again, but no more than 3 miles a day (the 100+ temperatures aren't helping). >Anyone around here who's halfway serious about photographic equipment >goes to NYC, or orders via 'net or phone. A few years ago I needed a >replacement 50mm lens, and just waited until I went to San Diego. Yeah, I was up in San Francisco earlier this year, and there is a far better selection there. >And I know what you mean about the official Yellow Pages. I have some >unofficial ones, but haven't really found any reasons to use them. I have two "official" (Scottsdale and Phoenix Metro) and think I have five or more "others". The companies producing them must be making some money, but I'm not sure how much the merchants are getting back for the cost of their listings. >Speaking of telephones, according to a cheapo "telephone line tester" >(two-color LED with dropping resistor and RJ-11 plug), some of my phone >jacks have reversed polarity. Does this make any difference for DSL or >voice signals? No. Most phone apparatus manufacturers know about the shoddy work done by installers, and include a full-wave bridge rectifier to route the power in the right direction. Signals/data are non-DC, and there's usually a blocking capacitor or transformer to keep the DC voltage out. >> film... I'm assuming 35 mm >Yep. 35mm equipment is cheaper and easier to work with. as said - it's about the only thing you can buy today. A couple of weeks ago, I was rummaging through boxes out in the garage and discovered a Polaroid 320 camera, and a box of type 108 film (marked "Use before 1/82" so I guess it may not be very useful). I still haven't seen anyone selling Polaroid film. The battery (Mallory PX24 3V Alkaline) hasn't shown up on my radar either. >I once saw a single 35mm Kodachrome slide enlarged to 18 by 60 FEET >(about 500x), at Kodak's Colorama display at Grand Central Station. Not totally surprised - I've projected slides to that magnification without really noticeably problems. >I remember one Lexmark cheapie -- replacement ink cartridge was $30, >printer with ink cartridge included was $50, often on sale for $30. On rare occasions, I've even seen the new (but cheap) printer priced slightly below the cost of the cartridge. King Gillette lives. >Btw it looks like my current printer isn't completely dead after all, >so I used the money to buy more RAM. Well, obviously there are sensible priorities ;-) >> I don't know how many manufacturers are still _building_ RS-232 modems. > >Probably all the different brands are made by the same manufacturer! I don't think so (most modems are chipset based, and there are several different ones from Lucent, TI, and TOPIC). But I don't know how much longer they'll be used. Old guy
From: Adam on 7 Sep 2007 14:58 Moe Trin wrote: > Last two visits to the hospital (one for surgery. one to the ER to fix > a post-op problem) I got the evaluation forms about 3 weeks later. It's been 2 1/2 weeks since surgery, and no evaluation forms or bills yet. Years ago I was in one hospital (since closed) that had their own evaluation form, and I gave them about a zero out of 5 or 10, with lots of specifics. It was kind of fun to write up. I think I still have a copy of it somewhere. >> Today was my first day out on my own, and I can see that it will be a >> few more weeks until I'm back to 100%, or close to it. > > Take it easy. I was on a 'do nothing' restriction for two weeks I'm still not doing much that I don't have to, but at least I have a choice now. I'm not sure when I'll go back to volunteering at the SPCA, because some of those cats qualify as "heavy lifting"! And right now I'm trying keeping my incision ( http://www.whnpa.org/membergallery/tasnadi-johnson-scar.jpg ) from rubbing against my shirt by putting some moleskin over it. I think it helps a little bit. (I think moleskin is wonderful stuff. As someone put it, that alone has made the difference between unsuccessful and successful vacations.) Recovering from this is keeping me from taking a course at the local community college this semester, but I think I'll work on self-improvement by making my own web page. >> some of my phone >> jacks have reversed polarity. Does this make any difference > > No. Most phone apparatus manufacturers know about the shoddy work done > by installers, and include a full-wave bridge rectifier to route the > power in the right direction. Signals/data are non-DC, and there's > usually a blocking capacitor or transformer to keep the DC voltage out. Thanks, that's good news. I discovered that my computer power strip/ surge protector manages to reverse the polarity of the phone line as it passes through, and I can't figure out *why* -- I don't suppose that would be any cheaper than getting it right. > Yeah, I was up in San Francisco earlier this year, and there is a far > better selection there. B&H Photo ( http://www.bhphotovideo.com/ ) seems to have almost everything at decent prices, and they seem to be the standard that all other photo stores are compared to. Next time I need any significant quantity of photo equipment or supplies, I'll be ordering from them again, unless I happen to be around there in person (they offer one hour free parking, a rarity in Manhattan). > Polaroid 320 camera, and a box of type 108 film (marked "Use before 1/82" > so I guess it may not be very useful). I still haven't seen anyone > selling Polaroid film. The battery (Mallory PX24 3V Alkaline) hasn't > shown up on my radar either. Polaroid type 107 (rectangular b/w) and type 108 (rectangular color) have been superseded by Polaroid types 667 and 668 respectively, which are available from B&H and other places. And a Google search for "px24 battery" also found several retailers. So what's your excuse? :-) > On rare occasions, I've even seen the new (but cheap) printer priced > slightly below the cost of the cartridge. King Gillette lives. I hate to think of cars being sold on that basis! >> Btw it looks like my current printer isn't completely dead after all, >> so I used the money to buy more RAM. > > Well, obviously there are sensible priorities ;-) I had 640M and seldom used swap, but if I use VMWare to run more than one OS at a time, that won't be enough. Staples had a sale, 1 GB for $60 US, so I made an impulse purchase, and now have 1.5G total. >>> RS-232 modems > > I don't think so (most modems are chipset based, and there are several > different ones from Lucent, TI, and TOPIC). But I don't know how much > longer they'll be used. I think they'll be around for at least a few more years, as long as there are still places where it's the only service available, or there are people who find it sufficient for their needs. I'm keeping my external serial RS-232 dialup faxmodem connected, because I can use it to send (and presumably receive) faxes. Adam
From: Moe Trin on 8 Sep 2007 20:57 On Fri, 07 Sep 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandrake, in article <obhEi.14$BL3.12(a)trndny01>, Adam wrote: >Moe Trin wrote: >> Last two visits to the hospital (one for surgery. one to the ER to fix >> a post-op problem) I got the evaluation forms about 3 weeks later. > >It's been 2 1/2 weeks since surgery, and no evaluation forms or bills >yet. I really wasn't in any hurry to receive either. >Years ago I was in one hospital (since closed) that had their own >evaluation form, and I gave them about a zero out of 5 or 10, with lots >of specifics. It was kind of fun to write up. I think I still have a >copy of it somewhere. My sister is a nurse at a community hospital in Connecticut, and she tells me that the administrative types (and now the fed HHS department) pay attention to those forms. I had a couple of "Very Unacceptable" answers, relating to services. For some bizarre reason, they had decided to have an "all-hands" meeting at 14:30 on the day I was to be released. So I'm sitting there waiting for the staff to return from the meeting, while listening to the constant "Ding" of the call-button annunciator in the hall - for an hour. Then there was the IV pump with a dead battery that had to be plugged in all the time (else it lost the programmed settings) with a 6 foot cord - no where near long enough to get out of bed to hit the john. >I'm still not doing much that I don't have to, but at least I have a >choice now. I'm not sure when I'll go back to volunteering at the SPCA, >because some of those cats qualify as "heavy lifting"! Oh, like my Kiri (24 pounds), never mind the 17 pound "Good Sam"? >And right now I'm trying keeping my incision [snip] from rubbing >against my shirt by putting some moleskin over it. They just glued me back together. I had a simple bandage over the drain incision, but that was only needed for a week. My neighbor who has had bypass surgery and prostrate surgery has scars running nearly top to bottom. >Recovering from this is keeping me from taking a course at the local >community college this semester, but I think I'll work on >self-improvement by making my own web page. They don't have classes over the Internet? I had a web page in the mid-1990s, but haven't bothered with it since... 1997? >>> some of my phone jacks have reversed polarity. Does this make any >>> difference >> >> No. Most phone apparatus manufacturers know about the shoddy work done >I discovered that my computer power strip/surge protector manages to >reverse the polarity of the phone line as it passes through, and I can't >figure out *why* -- I don't suppose that would be any cheaper than >getting it right. The person doing the circuit board install was in a hurry? QC was in even more of a hurry? Yeah, that happens quite a bit. I supposed the guy who designed the protector could be clueless, but it shouldn't happen. >B&H Photo ( http://www.bhphotovideo.com/ ) seems to have almost >everything at decent prices, and they seem to be the standard that all >other photo stores are compared to. I'm doing so little camera work any more. There are the self-contained throw-away cameras in the earthquake bags in the cars (learned that trick after a cow-orker had an accident, and stuff got moved between the time of impact and when the cops finally arrived), but I haven't used the film cameras in five or six years. >I'll be ordering from them again, unless I happen to be around there in >person (they offer one hour free parking, a rarity in Manhattan). Parking, free or otherwise seems to be a rarity. >Polaroid type 107 (rectangular b/w) and type 108 (rectangular color) >have been superseded by Polaroid types 667 and 668 respectively, which >are available from B&H and other places. I just found the camera 2-3 weeks ago. I don't have that much use for it. It's been suggested that I try to flog it on FleaBay. >And a Google search for "px24 battery" also found several retailers. >So what's your excuse? :-) Found it at the "battery" store Friday, but didn't feel it necessary to pay US$18 for a battery with a 2009 pull date. >> On rare occasions, I've even seen the new (but cheap) printer priced >> slightly below the cost of the cartridge. King Gillette lives. > >I hate to think of cars being sold on that basis! I don't think the hybrids are that bad, but I could be wrong. >I had 640M and seldom used swap, but if I use VMWare to run more than >one OS at a time, that won't be enough. Staples had a sale, 1 GB for >$60 US, so I made an impulse purchase, and now have 1.5G total. Have you changed kernels? Most distribution kernels I've seen are defaulted to 1 Gig max, although there often are "large memory" kernels included. Does 'free' 'top' or similar show all of it being recognized? [RS-232 modems] >> But I don't know how much longer they'll be used. > >I think they'll be around for at least a few more years, as long as >there are still places where it's the only service available, or there >are people who find it sufficient for their needs. We had a conference here 2 weeks ago, and in passing, we somehow hit the subjects of home connections. Both my wife and I have company systems at home, and that includes separate DSL lines for each. This has changed over the past 3 years, where we used to have POTS modems. Several people from Rabat (.ma), Nairobi (.ke), Columbo (.lk), Bandung (.id), and Valpariso (.cl) mentioned that they had either DSL or cable for their home connections. >I'm keeping my external serial RS-232 dialup faxmodem connected, >because I can use it to send (and presumably receive) faxes. Yup - I rarely use it, but do have that capability. Old guy
From: Adam on 10 Sep 2007 16:44 Moe Trin wrote: >> I'm not sure when I'll go back to volunteering at the SPCA, >> because some of those cats qualify as "heavy lifting"! > > Oh, like my Kiri (24 pounds), never mind the 17 pound "Good Sam"? A few are more than that. My parents' Allegra (1989-2007) was given a middle name of Girtha and was known as Great Girtha. >> Recovering from this is keeping me from taking a course at the local >> community college this semester, but I think I'll work on >> self-improvement by making my own web page. > > They don't have classes over the Internet? I had a web page in the > mid-1990s, but haven't bothered with it since... 1997? They have a few online classes, but they were all filled by the time I looked. My two main issues in creating a web page are, one, what can I do that would be genuinely informative or at least entertaining, and two, how can I keep my URL from giving away my email address to spammers? For the first one, the only really useful thing I have is my collection of web links, but I think a page pointing to good websites on a variety of topics would be useful. I haven't gotten around to thinking about the second issue yet, but expect a new thread when I do! >> (they offer one hour free parking, a rarity in Manhattan). > > Parking, free or otherwise seems to be a rarity. In October 2001, I spend a few hours wandering around midtown looking at the sites where there used to be a Broadway theater. The most common replacement was a parking garage. >> now have 1.5G total [RAM]. > > Have you changed kernels? Most distribution kernels I've seen are > defaulted to 1 Gig max, although there often are "large memory" > kernels included. Does 'free' 'top' or similar show all of it being > recognized? I'm running vanilla Mandriva 2007.0, and both 'free' and 'top' recognized all 1.5G of RAM. However, the 512M DIMM that I've been using without a problem for three years now seems to get flaky when it heats up enough, whether it's in slot 1 (errors around 496M) or slot 2 (errors around 1496M, according to memtest86+ v1.70), so I took it out. Any suggestions, anybody? Adam
From: Moe Trin on 11 Sep 2007 20:28
On Mon, 10 Sep 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandrake, in article <X0iFi.3124$jn3.2196(a)trndny05>, Adam wrote: >Moe Trin wrote: >> Oh, like my Kiri (24 pounds), never mind the 17 pound "Good Sam"? > >A few are more than that. My parents' Allegra (1989-2007) was given a >middle name of Girtha and was known as Great Girtha. When we got Kiri at age ~2, she was a wisp - a mere 6.7 pounds, although some of that may have been the result of surgery she had. (Original owner couldn't afford the vet bills, and turned her in to the Humane Society.) >> They don't have classes over the Internet? >They have a few online classes, but they were all filled by the time I >looked. My wife and I have both taken classes at the local CC, so it seems we're on their permanent mailing list. We get the catalog about 5 weeks before classes start, which is _usually_ adequate time to apply. >> I had a web page in the mid-1990s, but haven't bothered with it >> since... 1997? >My two main issues in creating a web page are, one, what can I do that >would be genuinely informative or at least entertaining Why? Eighty-five percent of the personal web pages I encounter don't meet either criteria ;-) >and two, how can I keep my URL from giving away my email address to >spammers? Look for a second provider, or enquire of your ISP about blind accounts. One of the providers I have allows well known (to them) clients to have accounts that are essentially blind. You contact the webmaster through an internal mail interface that doesn't show a "real" (or what passes for "real") username. "mail" goes to the webmaster only, no matter how it may be addressed. This mechanism has ups and downs, as hard-nosed security types don't like unknowns or unknowables, but it can reduce the spam exposure. Another alternative is that some ISPs will provide an account intentionally without mail access from outside, or allow a minimal mailbox (512 bytes for example), and will send the official mail (bills, complaints, etc.) to another mailbox, allowing this one to "fill", Again, some people don't like seeing 'Mailbox Full' or 'Mail Undeliverable' messages when they try to contact you. >I'm running vanilla Mandriva 2007.0, and both 'free' and 'top' >recognized all 1.5G of RAM. OK - part of the advice is dated. I suspect given the bloat of modern distributions as well as the increasing size of installed RAM, many distributions are defaulting to the large memory model kernels. Used to be we'd make snide remarks about the emacs editor (originally said to mean "Eight Megs And Continuously Swapping" back when 8 MB was a _lot_ of RAM), but now we hear: "Thanks to the joint efforts of OpenOffice, Mozilla, and a few others, Emacs officially entered the category of lightweight utilities." -- kalifa on /. >However, the 512M DIMM that I've been using without a problem for three >years now seems to get flaky when it heats up enough, whether it's in >slot 1 (errors around 496M) or slot 2 (errors around 1496M, according to >memtest86+ v1.70), so I took it out. Any suggestions, anybody? To me, that suggests that your cooling is inadequate for some reason. What's it like in there? Does the RAM have adequate air flowing around? This specifically applies to ribbon cables blocking the airflow, cards, and what not. It might also be a voltage problem (extra current into the RAM sockets dropping the voltage due to a bad contact (but I doubt this very much). As for a solution, if fixing the cooling problem doesn't do the job, see -rw-rw-r-- 1 gferg ldp 80763 Mar 21 2003 BootPrompt-HOWTO section 3.3.2, which describes how you can use a boot parameter to limit the usable memory to less than the installed values. About the only way you could find a voltage drop problem (if it existed) would be to use an oscilloscope to monitor the supply voltage ON the RAM itself. Not fun, and often not economically repairable (adding jumper wires around the faulty connection). This problem might be confirmed by borrowing other RAM and seeing if it has the same problem, OR removing the new RAM and seeing if the problem goes away. It is possible for the old RAM to somehow been damaged through handling, but doubt this even more than a power problem. Old guy |