Daynotes On A Budget, V6.0

 Yeah, I have been here, busy as all heck, and ... believe it or not, getting better. I had surgery in June for a strictured urethra.  So if it hurts to pee, tell your doctor you need a referral to a urologist - or get yourself to a urologist.  My problem came to ... well, I'll call it a peak last September 11th.  I was having more pain an more trouble urinating, but did not do any internet research.  I did see an article on CNN that says it was written by a urologist, who had been having problems urinating, but found himself constipated.    In desperation, I had taken a laxative, and was totally unable to pee - but I had diarrhea.   So my wife took me to the ER where they tried 3 times to catheterize me - they could not.  They called the on-call urologist and took me into the OR...  and that was where they diagnosed the issue.    I had that catheter in for a month, then we scheduled surgery to correct the issue....

It's been a busy fair few months, I do apologize. I've been doing OK, for the most part, albeit with more than a few challenges.  I was able to get my strictured urethra repaired, with a few complications.  I spent 8 days in the hospital with the charmingly-named "cellulitis of the groin" kicking me in the squishy bits regularly.  That's been the major malfunction I've had to deal with, although there's also been another death of sorts in the family... That one's a bit more and less painful in some ways.  Back sixteen years ago, now, I had to replace one of my computers.  More correctly, I had to replace "my computer".  I went to Bloomington and visited a store named "The Box Shop".  This wasn't a chain, just a small store that used to be a bakery or candy shop or something most likely food related that a fellow had leased and filled with bits and pieces of computers.   I'm sure he had some sort of relationship with a few la...

 It has occurred to me over the past few years that I'm, well, not getting younger, as much as I'd prefer it to be otherwise.  I am closer to the end of the story than I am to the opening credits, I guess.   And it's made me even more sentimental than usual.  I guess I've always been one of those people who really prefers to attach my memories to physical things that remind me.  It's a bad habit, I guess, but I really cannot help it.  I have memories that are more attached to places and people, but there's a certain amount of me that's just missing some of the things I've lost.   Aside from family that I've lost, there are a few places that made me who I am, that no longer exist.   The first is the first home I ever recall living in.  I've been told it was my third home, after my parents brought me home to where they were living after they got married.  They moved from there into a short-term rental after they purchased th...

 It's no secret - I work every day asking insurance companies to make a decision on whether or not a patient can receive a particular medication. It's much more complicated than that, but the bottom line is simple.  A doctor meets with a patient, reviews their medical condition and history, and then uses their judgement to select from a growing field of medicine a particular medication that will treat the patient and improve their health.  Quite often it's not a cure, as most of the time these are conditions that don't have cures.  It's usually a treatment to help the patient feel and do better.   The insurance company will tell you they aren't making care decisions, they're simply using their best medical judgement to determine whether the prescribed treatment is going to have a positive response.  Certainly, the medications are expensive, but they aren't fooling me.  The reviewer, who is also a trained medical professional, looks at the medical ...

 Well, I guess my background of fine-tuning my own HTML leaves me disappointed with this editor.  But anyway... Today marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Prince.  A rather famously anti-drug person, he sadly died from an unexpected (I'd guess) drug overdose.  Now his initial explosion into the music world here was well below my radar, as I really wasn't all that tuned into the local music world.  I was pretty focused on popular music with a rather intense interest in what we used to call hard rock. When Prince took the skills he had developed locally and blew up the entire music world, I disagreed at the time, but as time went on, I had to agree with my wife.  While Prince was ground breaking and a gigantic talent, he likely had as much of an influence on popular music as the Beatles had.  Yeah, I know, they had very little in common on the surface, but if you step back a bit, you will realize exactly the same thing.    In the ea...

  The episode in which your regular Cranky Correspondent muses rather crankily on the current state of AI and where it could really make a difference... I know, I know, but the thing is We Are Not Yet getting Artificial Intelligence. There are many ways to define "Artificial Intelligence".  The classic one is when you hold a conversation with something which you believe is human, and can't tell the difference.  I'll give you a little more complex one.  True Artificial Intelligence will be able to respond to a situation it has not encountered or prepared for and selects an appropriate response.   What we have today are expert systems.  The way you know that is because they are trained.  They are exposed to situations others have experienced and the things that others have done to respond to them.  They then develop their response based on previous responses.  So yes, I have also just described much of what some people consider traini...