The year of the -ologists continues.
Yesterday it was a visit to a cardiologist. My request for a change in blood pressure was approved. An ultrasound of the heart is scheduled and waiting for a call to schedule a stress test.
Yeah... I need to up my daily activity in preparation for the stress test.
Someone I worked with who is 15 years younger than me and used to jog 5 miles daily went for a yearly physical and it was requested he go for a stress test.
Technicians stopped the test and sent him to the hospital.
One week and 4 stents later, he was allowed to go home.
Are you serious??
I've heard people having heart attacks while testing...
A friend suggested I rethink the test.
A man was in the crawl space trying to fix a plumbing issue at his girlfriend’s mobile home in western Pennsylvania when he discovered another problem.
He tells her "I think there is a dead body under there."
He was right.
The woman has lived in the mobile home for about five years with her daughter and she sometimes thought a dead animal was causing a bad smell.
FIVE YEARS??
Something about this story stinks!
Link here:
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett appear at the Oscars ceremony and comedian Chris Rock jokingly comments about Jada's hair loss. Will walks up to the stage and slaps Chris and shouts obscenities.
A joke gone too far? Obviously, there is something deeper than a joke.
While it's been a few weeks since the incident, the repercussions aren't over.
I'm bothered that she had a affair that's been publicized. Maybe Jada should have been slapped...
A blog appeared last week about 18,000 illegals entering into the United States daily. I followed the name of the guy who made that claim to see he does podcasts and his website asks his listeners for money. I compare that to TV Evangelists and ex-presidents.
Anyway, one day they fell short of 18,000...
"Woman dies attempting to climb border wall in Arizona after being trapped upside down" News link here:
That story made it on Monday. Old news... right?
A generation ago, many of my pilot friends were spread out as much as 50 miles. Local phone service beyond 20 miles was considered long distance and when we talked it was as much as 25 cents per minute.
One friend owned an electronics repair shop and got us into CB radio so we could communicate by car when getting to the flying field. It was also good when we broke for lunch and did a caravan deciding places to eat. Under normal circumstances car to car reception was only good (at best) for a few miles with a standard 5 watt radio. It was easy to tune the amplifier circuit and get more output. Add on an an external power booster of 150 watts and you could be clearly heard 10 miles. Talking on the radio became normal for us.
The guy with the repair shop took his hobby to extreme and in his house he had a 2,000 watt amplifier and specialized directional antennas that were on a tower with a rotating motor so he could point the array and easily talk 50 miles! It didn't take long for me to do the same. We were buying high quality ham radio gear and modified things to talk on CB frequencies and beyond. I always received good reports that my signal and audio was balanced and ultra clear.
My neighborhood was very 'radio active' and you could easily find someone nearby that would talk to in a group setting. If I wanted to go for dinner and asked if someone wanted to meet... a few people would jump into the announcement and join me.
With 40 channels to talk on, we were often separated by different groups. Rednecks stayed near channel 19 that was the call channel for mobile operation. the 'brothers' were on channel 7. Latinos could be found on 23. Teenagers often hung out on channel 1. Most of my friends would go to the higher channels as there was less traffic there.
Heterodyne is a noise made when 2 people try talking on the same channel at the same time. Neither can hear themselves and others listening would hear the strongest signal or when both were nearly equal in power a mixed signal. Sometimes. it a squeal and other times it's a buzzing sound. Often in group chat 2 people will talk and not know their signal is heterodyning with another operator.
When several people are in a fight you get several signals and different sounds of heterodyne. Most of the brothers were using a few hundred watts in their own neighborhoods as 'watts' dictated power. If you had sufficient power your signal could cut through heterodyne and block out the other signals.
The problem with too much power on tweaked CB radios is they 'splatter' sending a distorted wide signal that bleeds across several channels making it impossible for people to talk on adjacent frequencies. That's the reason for the different groups separating themselves across the 40 channels.
One day, I was getting splatter that affected hearing a neighbor. Someone was driving down a main road near my house. I knew he was a 'brother' and from the audio I knew he was running a few hundred watts. I turned on my amplifier and went to the channel the guy was on. He was telling his friends that he needed to get some 'motion lotion'.
Although I was an avid CB'er I usually refrained from CB jargon. I knew motion lotion was CB talk for gasoline. But, I wanted to rattle his cage as he was only a few blocks from me. I asked if the motion lotion was because his girlfriend was 'dry down there' and suggested he visit the local pharmacy.
Yeah, that touched a nerve and he started screaming some obscenities in retaliation. I could hear some heterodyne howling from his friends a few miles away.
Knowing I had considerably more power than him and operating with an antenna on a tower, I keyed the microphone and told his friends to tell him 'he got dusted'
To be dusted means someone with considerably more power comes over the top of your signal with the strength to eliminate heterodyne.
This week, I've gone back to watching YouTube videos about the life of Nikola Tesla and the common thread is he gave too much of his talents away... so much that it drained him. He died at the age of 81 after being hit by a taxi. Many years Tesla had been living alone in hotels leaving behind unpaid bills.
As a young man coming to America, Tesla had worked for Thomas Edison. This was a double edged sword as Edison had cheated him of money and inventions. However, Tesla had the chance to grow and expand his experiments in the laboratory environment.
Edison's idea was to power homes by direct current (DC) generators. The problem with direct current was the limitation of traveling long distances. Thick wires and power stations every few miles were needed to conduct this type of electricity.
Tesla didn't agree with Edison and had invented motors and generators that worked with alternating current (AC) so he could run much longer distances with thinner wires.
His use of alternating current was less expensive and was gaining in popularity. He partnered with George Westinghouse to provide AC power distribution.
This was affecting Edison's business to the point where Edison started a smear campaign of fear mongering the dangers of alternating current. In retaliation, he began to use alternating current and horrified spectators when he publicly executed animals.
Anyway, I find it ironic that the most famous electric car in America named Tesla, is powered by batteries that supply (DC) direct current.
I'm surprised to see the clarity of highway cameras. In the video below a car loses control entering a highway and slams into a box truck heading for an overpass. The truck hits the rail that retains the vehicle from going over the edge but the bursts into flames (like a Hollywood movie) billowing black smoke until (about 8 minutes later) the emergency fire truck arrives to cool things down.
It appears COVID-19 (and variant) numbers have gone down, so people have forgotten about social distancing, sanitizing, etc.
A designer I met with a month ago didn't respond to my emails on a project she brought to me. I know her family spent a few days together during Spring Break vacation.
I spoke to her on the phone. She and her entire family came down with COVID. A week later her daughter and husband suffered fever and flu-like symptoms are getting better.
Her 2 sons didn't do well, they had some respiratory problems. She's got the worst of it, despite double vaxx and booster, she's been coughing and having difficulty breathing.
More than a week later she's still testing positive for the virus.
I've heard that's possible, whether it's false readings, she isn't going anywhere until the coast is clear.
Letting your guard down...
It seems like a lifetime has passed when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and Donald Trump won the presidency.
So the conservativvs (yes, I misspelled it like one of the members here who is unable to correctly spell Obama, Hillary, Democrat, or anything that's not Rebublickan) coined a phrase Trump Derangement Syndrome or TDS for short.
Fast forward to the present:
Trump is out and Biden is in. No I don't want lectures about 'Stop the Steal' and Trump being the rightful president. The America I know doesn't recognize that belief.
So just like Trump Derangement Syndrome then, it's the Biden Derangement Syndrome now.
Don't believe me?
Do a Pro-Biden blog.
With Trump mentioned or not in the blog, you are guaranteed to get some resistance.
Chances are they are afflicted with the BDS.
Scanning some new profiles, I see a woman who claims to have a masters degree states twice on her profile:
"fell free to text me up thank you very much"
Fell free...
I rarely go a weekend without listening to Emerson, Lake and Palmer. In the past few years there have been many videos of Rachel Flowers who is probably the top performer of Keith Emerson's music.
Keith ended his life by suicide in 2016 had suffered with focal dystonia, a painful crippling disease that affected his right hand. He had several surgeries, suffered from depression and had a short list of health related issues.
Prior to Keith's death, he acknowledged Rachel (on several interviews) for her accomplishments as she and other musicians have produced several ELP music videos available on YouTube.
Rachel was chosen to perform at the 2017 Keith Emerson Tribute in Birmingham, England. Most of her work was virtual during COVID-19 with other musicians and my guess it was the biggest live gig she's performed at.
It's obvious she was overwhelmed with emotion and starts to cry about a minute into the song.
Rachel who lost her eyesight as an infant, was taught piano at an early age. She is also accomplished at flute and guitar.
Blind girls do cry...
I design kitchens and for some unknown reason (female) clients are requesting paper towel holders built into a drawer. I stopped asking for their 'wish-list' of kitchen gadgets because they spend hours searching sites like Houzz and Pinterest for photos of things that often don't belong together.
Contemporary or Italian styles don't get fluted mouldings, wood crown moulding and turned wooden legs on the island. Just because you saw it online doesn't make it right.
That makes as much sense as foam dice and dingle-balls on a Mercedes!
But, I've got to do these freaking drawers that hold paper towels.
These clients must be different as nearly every time I reach for a paper towel, my hands are wet! That means the door below it will get water splashed on it. Duh...
I received a request to put one over the trash drawer... you know the place with smelly garbage just inches away. That should give you a warm, fuzzy feeling when you pull a paper towel to wipe your face!
online today!chatillion Blog (1,893)