Blatherability

 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.  Fortunately, I had other things come up and had to reschedule the surgery.  Which was good because that let me get the cardiac bypass done first.  But the stricture was fixed on June 11th in "Day Surgery".  I took the day after off, and was back to work on Monday.  Two weeks after the surgery, I had to be admitted to the hospital due to infection.  

I spent 8 days in the hospital, came home with another 10 days of antibiotic home infusion.  Yeah, a taste of my own medicine.  

Since then I've been getting better and more active.  Just a few more weeks and I'll be back to AN state.  That is Ab Normal, my normal state of existence.  

 Beyond that, I'm once again in the market for a computer.  My formerly main machine, a Dell Desktop I bought for $40 at a used computer shop that no longer exists.  I probably bought it about 2009, so it was plenty old.  I knew it had issues, but I also had a very robust backup routine.  All of the data was stored on external drives.  I have a 250 GB Western Digital External drive, a 2 TB external drive I got at Target, and 3 other external drives I'd bought the enclosures for and bought the hard drives myself.  Not counting the 40 GB internal drive, that machine had close to 5 TB total, with the 250 GB WD drive the primary backup drive.  Both my laptop and that computer backed up to that.  That drive backed up to another 800GB external drive, which backed up to the 2TB drive.

So now I'm looking at NewEgg, where they list their refurbished systems.  I keep going back and forth on what I want to get.  I've looked at refurbished gaming systems, and had my eye on a couple that had 32 Gb of RAM and were under $600.  But those would probably be overkill for what I need.  I'm still thinking something with a great deal of RAM, as my dead machine downstairs had only 4Gb.  I'm really hoping to find something with a DVD drive that will read and write disks.  It's probably cheaper per GB to get a bunch of USB drives to move files to computers that aren't here, but that's not a big problem.  I never was too into playing computer games, I didn't have the budget to have a gaming system.

 Honestly, there were only a few games that I ever really got into.  SimCity was the big one, Populous was also fun.  I do have a copy of Empire that still works.  I found that one way back in college, where it ran on the VAX.  I had started writing my own version of it, and had gotten to a point where the map generation was almost reasonable.  The only game that I always wanted to play, but couldn't pull together the hardware, was good old Microsoft Flight Simulator.

I did have a flight simulator years ago on my Amiga, but it was pretty difficult to fly from the keyboard. I don't know that a $600 refurbished gaming computer might run MFS tolerably, and I don't know that I want to spend that much just to be disappointed.  

 I do think I'd be better off picking up another external drive and develop a different hobby - Photography.  I have a used camera shop near me, and I may just scratch another itch instead.  Back in high school I started saving for a Pentax 35mm SLR camera...  But then computers came along and I got married and had kids.  I'd like to pick up a gently-used DSLR with auto-focus lenses, and learn all over again.  I don't need a $6000 super-zoom lens, I wouldn't mind a 50-200mm zoom along with a general use lens.  I had priced a setup like that out for about $250 with bag and new batteries and charger, but I'm sure that's changed too. 

So I'm still here, dragging along.  Not dead yet. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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