Month: May 2013

May 2013 Note: This was written back in December 2012. It has hung out in the Drafts folder since then. I’m not sure why I didn’t put it up at the time, but here it is now.

It’s 2012. In the suburban, broadband-connected world I live in I have high expectations for internet customer service. This is especially true when it comes to services which are by definition internet service. For example, if a particular company advertises that you may operate your account settings from their website, this should actually be possible, up to and including cancelling service.

Today’s complaint is about TiVo. First, we’ll start with this:

We upgraded to a new TiVo DVR as a part of our grand “GET A NEW TV!!!” plan for this Christmas. As a part of this upgrade, I discovered new functionality on the TiVo website, such as adding the shows we like to record rather than with the remote control (which is annoying). Except that apparently there’s a cooling down period between turning on the Season Pass Manager and actually being able to use it. I can buy a pistol faster than I can use this online service. Good job, TiVo.

The second complaint is that while you can change your service and add new TiVo service online, you are unable to delete or cancel any existing plans. As we only have the one TV, and our current DVR is 7 years old (almost to the day; it was a Christmas present to Jenn way back when), I have no need to maintain the service on the old TiVo. So I added the new TiVo to the account, but was unable to remove the old one without actually calling. Thanks, TiVo.

If I had been required to call to do all this work, I wouldn’t be complaining. The decision to not permit the customer to self-remove themselves was made (I’m sure) at a level in the corporate structure of TiVo to encourage people to remain on the plan by introducing friction in the process. I don’t like friction in my online life. Thanks, TiVo.

Now back to May, 2013

I’m not so bothered about this that I’m not using the service. I’m very happy with the TiVo we have and the way it’s working. But it’s the principle of the thing. Give us full service websites, please-and-thank-you.

Next week I’m going in for a cortisone injection in my back. The purpose is to break an inflammation/pain cycle having to deal with this and then finish my round of physical therapy.

While filling out the standard new-doctor’s-office forms, I was forced to accept several documents before proceeding. These forms were HIPAA and Privacy and this one:

ADVANCED DIRECTIVE
Marietta Surgical Center is not an acute care facility; therefore regardless of the contents of any advanced directive or instructions from a health care surrogate or attorney, if an adverse event occurs during your treatment, we will initiate resuscitative or any other stabilizing measures & transfer you to an acute care setting for further evaluation. Your agreement with this policy does not revoke or invalidate any current health care directives or health care power of attorney.

I found this fascinating. They will not honor a Do Not Resuscitate request (DNR) or other advanced directive at this office. As I’m hardly an expert on the topic, I decided to brush up at Wikipedia. Here are the money quotes:

A DNR does not affect any treatment other than that which would require intubation or CPR.

Continuing:

In the United States the documentation is especially complicated in that each state accepts different forms, and advance directives and living wills are not accepted by EMS as legally valid forms.

And further:

In the U.S., cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) will not be performed if a valid written “DNR” order is present. Many US states do not recognize living wills or health care proxies in the prehospital setting and prehospital personnel in those areas may be required to initiate resuscitation measures unless a specific state sponsored form is appropriately filled out and cosigned by a physician.

I learned something today (That means I get to go home, right?). I learned that DNRs and Advanced Directives are not synonymous. I learned that DNRs are complex little beasties requiring physician sign-off on the correct forms, and might not be followed anyway.

What does this mean for me? Not much, really. If I suddenly go into cardiac arrest while they’re sticking a needle in my back, they have full permission to revive me. But it does increase my basic bureaucratic knowledge in case a DNR or Advanced Directive is something I have to deal with later, so win–win.

I was filling out a form online for a medical appointment and I had to go look up the proper spelling of “Urushiol”, the chemical that causes poison ivy to getcha. To my horror, I learned that the chemical is used to lacquer artwork in Japan, and it can be cured incorrectly!

One other interesting thing about urushiol: It’s harvested from the Japanese lacquer tree and prized as a lacquer for artwork. Antoine Wilmering is an expert in , as it is known at the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles. He says you apply multiple layers of the lacquer with a brush, cure and polish each layer, “and then you get these really beautiful shining surfaces.”

The good news is if you properly cure the lacquer, it not only hardens but it also loses its allergenic properties. But an object covered with improperly cured urushiol lacquer can still cause a rash.

This reminded me of good ‘ol radioactive Fiesta Ware, a plate of which my high school chemistry teacher kept around for the lesson on radioactivity.

Do not ever buy me anything that has urushiol deliberately added to it. Thank you.

Here’s another great example of “always put your stuff away.”

The 1/8″ to 1/4″ adapter that came from my headphones was missing. I searched for a week and ended up finding it in the headphones plug of my audio interface, where I had unplugged it “just for a few”. I needed up putting the audio interface away, with the adapter still in place. I finally remembered that today.

So always put things in their place! Then you’ll know where things are. Either that or have fewer things.

I have a lot of friends who are into the fabric arts. Jenn is an accomplished crotchet ninja and she once tried to teach me (at my request) how to utilize the single hook to craft things.

I failed.

I failed in the sense that I couldn’t get over the initial hump of figuring out how to move the hook in a manner to catch the next loop and create the continuous knots. I found it to be extremely frustrating and decided crotchet was not (knot!) for me.

But, as I said, I have a lot of friends who do this sort of thing and a lot of them knit. Knitting struck me as a bit easier to accomplish (on a basic level) so I asked my friend Annie to give me the basics.

Et voila! Six weeks later I ended up with a finished project. I found knitting to be an order of magnitude less difficult to figure out than crotchet, albeit I was working on something very simple, a scarf. Of course, this is Georgia so I didn’t expect to have an opportunity to wear it until next year. But, the fates intervened because we were heading to New Jersey to cheer on Annie and her husband Mike at the Long Branch Half Marathon which was also my opportunity to have Annie teach me how to finish the final row (cast-off, in the knitting vernacular). So she taught me how to do that, and the scarf got some wear during the trip due to the chilly wind.

This scarf project was very simple, just a continuous knit stitch (a garter stitch as the pattern is called) and it let me practice knitting quickly and well, and also the different ways I can screw up while doing a knit stitch quickly and not-well. I learned that it’s easy to drop stitches (“I could have sworn that last row was 39 stiches?”) and that if you’re not starting the row right it’s easy to add stitches (“Okay, now what the hell? 40?”).

I learned methods for “fixing” a dropped stitch several rows back. You can un do all the knitting back to the screwup, or you can “work it up” and knit it back onto the needle. That was what I tried to do, but it wasn’t entirely successful, as shown in the image. It’s only a small flaw in an otherwise large scarf, so I’m not worried about it.

My next task is to pick a new project with a greater level of complexity. Annie taught me how to do a perl stitch (opposite of the knit stitch) and I now know enough to be really dangerous when it comes to reading the knitting shorthand. I imagine that I’ll be asking for assistance from people as I run into things that aren’t making sense to me. ((Amusingly, Annie tried to teach me via FaceTime how to do the cast off. That didn’t work so well and I ended up with this crotched tail heading off into no-scarf’s land. I put the project down until I could see her at the marathon and we could fix it together.”))

The first lesson was in lighting.

I consider myself to be an adequate amateur photographer with a good grasp of the fundamentals. However, occasionally I manage to expose my ignorance in a fashion that makes me chuckle.

Exhibit one! I took this as a “before” picture. When I captured it, I looked at the view screen on the camera and deemed it acceptable. A bit overexposed in the background, but good enough to be working with.

Exhibit two! This one was taken immediately post shave and shower. Maybe 10 minutes had passed. The only difference in these two shots is the light coming in the window onto my face and reflecting off some white sheets to my left. Still a bit overexposed (especially on the face) but so much better than the first shot, for lighting up my face.

Portraiture has been something I’ve been interested in for a while, but I’ve not gotten to it because I know it will be more of a study (practice, practice, practice) than the type of photography I’ve done most of my life. I remarked to Jenn that, based on these two shots, I really need to buckle down and learn about lighting and start practicing ((This will save money when it comes to photographing the baby (but probably not stress). ))

I was extremely amused with myself when I downloaded these images and saw the difference. My first thought was, “Why did I think that first shot was a good one?”

Oh, what’s the second lesson I alluded to?

I look a lot younger without the grey side burns.

Everything I’m testing should be invisible to you. If something is weird, then either I or the process got SNAFU’d.

I find it interesting when I take self portraits that I just can’t manage a very good smile. I’m usually pretty good about smiling for other people’s pictures, but for the ones I take of myself I end up with a lot of throwaways if I try to get a smile. So, I don’t bother too much.

I’m going to leave these two things here for everyone to reflect on. The top is today’s google trends search. The bottom is an xkcd comic from April(?) 2012. The crossover point, by the way, is November, 2012

We are in Newry, Maine for a baby shower with Jenn’s family and some friends who’ve come up to join up. I went out for a stroll this afternoon and here are some pictures of the place where Jenn grew up.