Blain Nelson’s Blog (not!)

This is just odd. I was checking out the suggestions Netflix has for me, and one of those suggestions was a set of comedy shows from this guy named Brian Regan. Based on the films they were using to explain why they’d made the suggestion, I got the impression that this is somebody who knows how to be funny without being crude — something I value a lot. So I checked out the reviews for one of the disks, and this impression was confirmed. I added them to my queue, and decided to take a look at the guy’s website, and, from there, decided to see where his shows were going to be. Now, as I was clicking the link to his show schedule, the thought that went through my head is “but I wouldn’t be able to go to any of his shows even if they were close because I always have to work all weekend, and shows are always on weekends.” Read the rest of this entry »

This morning, I found a list of domains that the nice people at FProt posted which are likely to be bringing bad things, and their names have to do with swine flu.  So I set out to add them to my hosts file, to avoid any problems from them.

Darned if my hosts file wasn’t completely empty — just the stuff that Windows brought with it. 

So I looked around and found a few more robust hosts files, downloaded them, sorted them, and then merged them, culling out the duplicates.  I did all this quickly and easily with some standard command line applications under Cygwin (sort, comm, and grep — my first time with grep — and a perl one-liner I snagged from someplace). 

Now, there are places where you can get updated hosts files with frequent updates, and I won’t be updating this file all that soon, but, in case somebody wants to try it out, you can check it out here.  Copy and paste that onto the end of your hosts file, and you’ll be a lot less vulnerable to ad servers and nasty things on different websites. 

For some guidance about how to do this under Vista, this article is quite useful — especially the comment half-way down about setting up a short-cut to allow you to do it quite easily.  And, for those who don’t know what I’ve been talking about all this time, a hosts file is a list of domain names and ip addresses.  When you try to access a domain name, your system will look to see if that domain name is on that list, and, if it is, will use the ip address listed for it in the place of that domain name.  The hosts file I’m talking about here lists domain names of domains that serve up ads, malware, and bad things, and gives 127.0.0.1 as the ip address for all of them.  127.0.0.1 is the address for the local system (aka “localhost”), and, by pointing all those domain names at it, none of the files on those nasty domains will be loaded on your computer, because it will look for them on itself, and they aren’t there — all requests will time-out instead. 

If you find that something you want to do is blocked by this, just edit the file and remove the name of the domain you want to reach.  Not complicated.

So, about a week ago, I got notice from AVG-free that I needed to upgrade to their newer version, and I did.  I made a few other changes at the same time, and, shortly thereafter, FF started losing access to the http stream every couple of hours of operation.  It would operate fine, but would time-out when trying to access any page on the web.  Email came through fine, and the chat client worked fine, so it wasn’t the whole internet feed.  But it would sometimes delete the sound and network icons on my status bar as well.  Adding to the annoyance was that it would not respond to restarting FF, nor even logging out of my session — the only solution was a full reboot. 

So, tonight, I hit that point again.  Just for giggles, I turned off AVG-free, and FF recovered, and is now working just fine.  Not coincidentally, probably, I got notice that AVG-free wanted to upgrade again yesterday, but the download had problems, and I didn’t bother.  Perhaps that upgrade will fix this problem — AVG-free doesn’t usually do full upgrades after a week.  But I’m kinda wondering what the point is. 

I’ve been running AVG-free for a year now, and doing the same things I’ve always done, and I still have yet to get a virus.  I did this because all the people who talk like they know what they’re talking about said it’s irresponsible to be on the internet without a currently updated anti-virus program, but I think that, in my case, it’s a lot of bother that accomplishes nothing.  I’ve been using computers communicating with other computers for twenty years this summer without a single virus infection.  I think my computing habits are safe, and using an anti-virus program for me is a bit like wearing a condom when you’re celibate. 

I’m going to keep running my firewall and anti-malware programs, because they’re not all that annoying.  And I might do AVG-free again sometime. 

Well, my other, other LJ, actually.  I created it a few years go to be the place I could put article/essays about issues of the day, and then kinda forgot about it.  But, today, I wrote something, and it seemed to me that it’d be good to post there, and to open it up so that people could know it was there.  At this point, all it’s got is today’s article, and the first two parts of a series I never finished about Social Security reform, back when people were willing to talk about that.  I never mentioned it to anybody — I wanted to have a body of posts there first, but that body’s never going to happen if I just keep waiting.

So, here’s today’s article.  I think I’m going to start putting my “Hey, world, think about this” posts over there, rather than here, and leave this LJ to just be about me, and humorous things I find, and whatever along those lines.  If you like the first kinds of things, then friending that LJ is a good idea.  OTOH, I’m thinking I’ll post links here that point to what I come up with there.  We’ll see.

I realize this is a bit “already in progress” but it’s been an interesting day.

Being a work day, my day started at midnight, as my swing shift turned into my graveyard shift.  I usually take it a bit easy across that time, catching up on my online things a bit, and see what’s on History Channel.  When it came time to start on the paperwork for the new month, I went to the office computer and set up the med sheets for the month (they just needed some minor adjustments), and then sent them to the printer.  Nothing happened.  So I checked the printer queue, and found my file sitting there, right next to three copies of a job the case manager had sent to it, none of which was going anywhere. 

Some brain-fuel burnt later and I figured out that what seems to be going on is a network problem.  Last week, as I was leaving, the Comcast guy was there changing us from DSL to Cable internet, and my coworkers were complaining about having trouble getting on the internet, so I think there’s a problem in the network, probably the router.  I think the IPs might have gotten assigned differently than they were configured, and now things aren’t talking to each other the right way.  I tried resetting the router a couple of times, and powering down the computer and the printer and the router, but it wasn’t working.  There’s a network device in there for filtering things that might be messing with stuff, and I don’t have admin privileges on anything, so I can’t do much more than that.

So I couldn’t print out new med sheets for the month, and had to have a place to track the meds for the day, so I squeezed them into empty spaces on the February sheets, and I’ll probably have to do that tonight, and try to get it worked out in the morning when the case manager gets there, in the midst of all the other chaos of the morning.  It’s going to be a rough sleep time — I’m behind on sleep heading into the night, and I’m going to have to stay to get that laid out at least, and then I’m going to have to go to the Lynnwood Parks and Rec department to pick up my hat (I left it there after the pottery class Friday — in a year, it’s the first time I’ve forgot that hat anywhere — much better than my record with baseball caps, but very annoying), and I’m still left with only a few hours to sleep before I have to pack up and head to my afternoon job. 

All of this time spent on getting the printer to not work came out of the time I had other things to get done, so I was behind.  And, being tired from a bad sleeping day yesterday (yes, this is becoming a pattern), other problems arose.  There are three sets of keys for the house, and, Friday night, the other two staff that finished the swing-shift took the set they were carrying with them, so we’ve been working with the set of keys I had that night ever since.  And I lost them for about half an hour, right in the middle of becoming more frantic about trying to get everything done that I needed to in the time I had remaining.  In a faith-promoting moment, I had a short, frantic, direct standing prayer of “I could use some help here, please,” and I walked to the place where I’d placed some papers on top of the keys and there they were.  It was helpful — it’s nice when God puts up with my mouthiness when I really need it.

And then the 0700 staff called to say she’d be 15 minutes late (which wasn’t too big of a deal).  By that point, I was in pretty good shape — I just had three baskets of laundry to fold.  So I folded laundry while she dealt with kids that were bored in their rooms, but can’t come out until 0900 (other than bathroom things).  One of the two 0800 staff that are to relieve me didn’t get there until almost 0840, so I had time to finish folding the laundry and got some of it put away before I left. 

The problem with leaving that late was that I was trying to get to Church by 0900, and the ward I tried this week is about 40 minutes away.  So, I was about 20 minutes late when I got there.  I picked this ward because some friends of mine that I haven’t seen in a few years live there (for those in the know, it was Jay and Audrey), and it would be good to share space with them on the weeks I can’t be at home (and I can’t do the Sunday trip home more than a time or two a month — it just about kills me).  Being late, I sat in the back and scanned the crowd to see if I could find them.  I found their older son first, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t him — it would be too convenient if the first boy I saw about the right age and size just happened to be him.  But the older lady playing with him looked familiar, and then the short-haired guy in front of her turned his head and it was Jay, and then I realized that next to him was Audrey.  That was cool.  But then I looked and noticed that, next to Jay was Audrey’s brother, my former home teaching companion.  I had no idea he would be there — I thought maybe his family had moved into this area as well, and that would just be weird in a good way.  But I couldn’t remember his name, and it bugged me — a lot.  I’m not good with names in general, and I was just not even thinking about him, and there he was.  I couldn’t remember his wife’s name either, but I could remember their older daughter’s name — she used to think I was about the best thing around, and would follow me around, but, not too long before they moved away, she got some taste and decided that she’d at least play a little coy with me (she was like 18 months at that point). 

So I sat at the back of the room, staring at these people, trying to remember their names, paying attention to what the speakers were saying for the most part, and having the spiritual experience, while tipping my uncomfortable metal chair back to reduce the muscle spasms in my ribs (which are still there) so I can keep breathing.  I closed my eyes at some point in this and started dozing off — making a very unsettling moment when I came awake and realized that I had almost tipped my chair over backwards.  At some point, Jay got up and carried out a rather small looking baby, so I figured they’d had another one.  Not a huge surprise — it’s been a few years since their second. 

After the meeting, I wandered over behind their seats, and the best moment came when Audrey glanced back and saw me, because, when she recognized me, she smiled. See, I’ve been running into people I haven’t seen for a long time on Facebook, but it doesn’t allow you to see what their process is when they get the friend request.  It’s hard to tell if they’re at all pleased with the prospect, or if they’re just approving the request to be polite.  But there was nothing in the polite or forced in that smile, and that meant a lot.  She told Jay that I was there, and it took him a second to think about what Blain she was talking about and then to look over and “Oh.”  But they were both glad to see me, and I got to meet the new baby girl, who is only six weeks old.  The reason they had all the family there was that they had blessed her this morning, and Jay reminded me that Audrey’s brother’s name is Spencer (I remembered Brooke’s name while driving out of Marysville on the way back afterwards).  I told them what’s going on, a little bit, and then they needed to leave, because all the family was there and had seen what they came to see.  But they said they hoped I’d come again, and meant it.  Again, very nice.

The rest of the meetings went reasonably well.  The Sunday School teacher this week (the rotate between two) is someone I know as well, although we weren’t particularly close, and I’m not sure he recognized me.  I’ll talk with him next time, when I’ll hopefully be a little earlier getting there — maybe even before the meetings started.  Sunday School went well, and that was good — a bad Sunday School experience is enough to not come back, since I have quite a few wards to choose from.  So I will be back, at least a time or two. 

Sleeping this afternoon didn’t go very well.  I woke up for good just before 2000, and now I need to get ready for work — I need to leave in about 40 minutes.  And, when I go on-shift at 0000, it will be another interesting day. 

I tend to be interested in shows where the fun of the show is the unfolding of the overarching story, and where little details along the way can really spoil the fun.  I appreciate that folks who post here to talk about their shows tend to take this into account by making it easy to avoid reading those little details along the way, but wanted to explicitly be grateful for it.  And, also, to list the shows that I’m particularly concerned about, so folks can know — and so we can talk about them if you want:

24
Heroes
BSG
Dollhouse
Sarah Conner Chronicles
Lost

I’m also planning on starting my way into Chuck and Big Bang Theory, but haven’t gotten to them yet.  I know the basic plot of Chuck, but have forgotten the premise of BBT — and don’t want to be reminded.  I don’t like the “what’s coming next” at the end of episodes, nor the teasers in promos.  I don’t even like the flashes at the end of the BSG theme.  I want the story to unfold on its own. 

But that’s me.

Howdy,

So I got friended by these two accounts.  I looked and saw a bunch of familiar folks listed as friends, but the rest of the accounts looked dodgy — no userpics, no details about the individuals to make them sound like anybody I knew, and then I found the journals were identical.  And the posts were nonsensical.  And the second of the three had a “BTW, it would help me if you click this link” that goes to a data gathering website.

So I contacted the person who had friended one of them, and she didn’t know anything more than I do.  So I’m suggesting that these are fake accounts created to point to a likely phishing site. 

Your paranoid tip for the day.

I put this list together for Facebook, but thought I’d bring it here as well.  These are 25 random things about me.  Feel free to respond with 25 random things about yourself.

1.  I like the color blue.
2. I have shaken hands with Blaine Yorgason, Russell M. Nelson, Orson Scott Card, Slade Gorton, Vladimir Jan Kohanski, Tim Bachman, George “Pinky” Nelson, and Janis Ian.
3. I once blockaded my door and hid when a jealous husband had left his house with guns on his way to my house. (It was a misunderstanding. I never did or said anything inappropriate to/with his wife.)
4.  I have successfully predicted my last two recorded A1C levels. 
5.  I read the Book of Mormon in two days once (Alma one Thursday, everything else the following Thursday).
6.  I once slid down a snow drift in the Beartooths in Montana in August because I tried to walk across it in flip-flops. 
7.  My great-great grandfather was a founding member of the James-Younger Gang (as in Jesse James).  Google “Arthur C. McCoy”
8.  My grandfather sat in the Montana State Legislature, and was suggested as a candidate for governor.
9. His brother was the mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota and was appointed to the United States Senate from Minnesota — the last Republican in that seat until the Reagan Revolution. His name was also Arthur.
10. I’m a Republican in the field of Human Services.  It can be lonely sometimes.
11. I once ran a kid on a bike of the road with my car on purpose as part of my job. 
12. I have never received a speeding ticket.
13. I was a candidate for the Washington State Legislature.  I dropped out before the election.
14. I had a pony tail and goatee for seven years. 
15. I learned how to type on a typewriter (IBM Selectric II).
16. I share a birthday with Marie Osmond, Paul Simon, Sammy Hagar, Chris Carter, Maria Cantwell (one of my U.S. Senators), Mario Bonilla (the younger), Kerry Bloxham, and my cousin’s daughter.
17. I have run a 5k, a 10k and a half-marathon.
18. I once received an email from Douglas Adams.  I also had a link-exchange in our blogs with Orson Scott Card.
19. I didn’t start playing Sudoku until the trip to be with my mother when she died.
20. I like Barry Manilow’s music.  Especially “Weekend in New England.”
21. I have seen the Cassini division from a personal telescope (that didn’t belong to me).
22. I’ve been hit by a car.
23. I have autographed pictures from Heather Locklear and Carmen Thomas.
24. I enjoy building computer systems, especially if I’m installing Linux on them.
25. My domestic abuse website has won several awards over the years, and has seen most of those award sites go down (excepting those built by Dr. John Grohol).

I’m down to the point that I’m not nearly as freaked out most of the time.  This update is just to show a bit of progress, and to account for the amount of freaked out that I still am. 

I did go for a walk last night.  It was actually pretty good.  Quite good, actually.  I was listening to the Phedippidations podcast (an award-winning podcast on running, especially marathon running), and it occurred to me that walking not only gives me something to do with my nervous energy other than pacing and stewing, but it could actually help improve my aerobic fitness, so I could make better use of my shallow little breaths, and that it would help speed up the healing of that torn muscle in my back.  So I walked for about an hour — more than I’ve done in a long time.  It works better for me, right now, than spending time on this computer does, because the only position that’s really comfortable for this is sitting, and the only position that hurts consistently is sitting (well, I’m sure the push-up position would hurt as well).  While I was out walking, I went by the home of several of my Facebook friends and waved at one who happened to be outside when I came by.  I also got waved at by a young teen in one of the houses I was walking by, but I don’t know who it was — maybe a kid from Church, or maybe just someone bored and looking out the window.

And then I cleaned up and went into town to buy some food and things that I was running low on, and to pick up my prescription, which was ready when I got there 30 minutes before it was supposed to be done.  Which was nice. 

Right this second, I’m laying down on the couch, which has been most of my resting place at home since the breathing thing became a problem.  For some reason, I have a better time getting to sleep here than in my bed, even though this is shorter than my bed and a bit uncomfortable.  But I’ve got the TV set to KBYU (for some reason, it’s quite calming when I’m trying to sleep), and I can just doze off whenever.  Once I’ve been asleep, and then wake up for a bathroom trip, I can get to sleep in my bed, and sleep for a time.  I woke up there around 0530 and wasn’t going to get back to sleep there.  I came back to the couch, and did some computering and dozing until it was time for my meds around 0600.  I did walk over to the Post Office to drop a Netflix into the mail.  I’ve done some more dozing than awakeness since then, coming to the last time in the middle of a show on scrapbooking (KBYU can be a bit weird, in addition to being comfortable). 

I have an appointment at the doctors at 1440, just over three hours away.  I think I’m going to skip my meds betwen now and then (it’s due about now), just to see how it’s going so I can talk to him intelligently about that, and we can make a plan for where to go.  I will be walking over to the appointment — still not comfortable driving with these meds, even though I’ve never been loopy on them (negative b, plus or minus the square root of b squared minus four ac, all over two a).  Plus, I’m liking the walking.  When my back gets better, I think I’m going to work into some running again.  I feel better when I’ve run.

So now I’m just burning time and trying to stay comfortable.  I probably won’t sleep any more since I’m a couple of hours before my appointment — don’t want to sleep through it.  Haven’t got food totally figured out yet — I tend to lean on what sounds good.  Mostly, I think I’m bored.  I don’t yet know when I can get back to work, and a number of the jobs I need to do around the house require sitting or bending, both of which hurt a lot.  And my concentration’s still not that great.  I don’t know if I’m sleeping so much because I’ve been behind, or because I’m healing, or because of the meds, or because I’m bored.  I don’t know. 

I still have to exercise some control of what I let myself think about — I can’t handle as much sadness or emotional stuff as I usually can, or it gets me going and then I get a little freaked and have trouble breathing.  It’s a little bit like being mentally claustrophobic. 

I think that’ll do for today.  Maybe, if I’m awake, I’ll update after the appointment. 

I went to sleep shortly after my last post, and slept on the couch for a half hour or so, and then, after a bathroom trip, moved to my bed, where I slept for about an hour.  Just as I woke up, Emily was in my doorway.  I said “Hi,” and I guess she said “Bye,” and then she left to catch the bus to her mom’s.  I was awake, and still pretty frustrated about the breathing thing.  So I tried laying down on the couch again and the breathing was hard, and I got frustrated again.  So I went for a walk and, while I was walking, I made a couple of phone calls — one to a friend who hadn’t heard any of what was going on with me, so I got to give her the full schpiel and whine and everything.  Then I called Emily back when I got home (she called three times while I was talking to the other friend), and she was reallhy concerned about what was going on with me and wanted me to go to the after-hours place again.  I decided that it made sense to go over there for the night again, and thought maybe I’d get Kathy to give me a ride to the after-hours place and then could get picked up from there. 

Then I talked to Kathy about what was going on.  I couldn’t think of anything medical that could be done for me that hadn’t been.  I’d just had time to be on the prescribed pain med once through, and that wasn’t enough time to be back saying “that isn’t enough.”  I also recognized that much of the problem was me being frustrated and scared and impatient.  If I could focus on being calmer and more patient and relaxed, perhaps this could work.  So I did this, and got a briefish nap after taking the next round of the meds, and then caught another almost-nap.  Then I packed up and headed to Faith’s. 

Things were pretty quiet there, so I read in my book for a while, and then talked to Emily.  She was getting ready for bed, so I went and laid down and tried the focussing on being calm and relaxing and I went to sleep, and slept straight through until almost 0700 (which was about eight hours by itself), and then, after another bathroom trip and taking all the relevant meds, went back to bed and slept until 1020.  This helped a lot.  So I got up and, pretty soon, decided the best thing would be to come home, where I could get food that works with my funky life and take my diabetes med. 

So I came home and watched some TV and, pretty soon, laid down and got another nap, until it was time for my next dose.  Staying current with the meds has worked pretty well, as has the relaxing and being less crazy.  It’s still a bit moment to moment, and having breathing be weird is still hard, but it’s working pretty well.  I’m going to be going into town to buy some food and pick up a refill on my muscle relaxers in a bit — I’m even going to clean up a bit first.  I might take a walk before that — walking doesn’t hurt. 

Continued prayers are requested.