Damn, sixth of the month: third headache.
Latest
If you MUST take oral prednisone…
This should be throwaway advice because it basically a middle-aged nerd giving recommendations on how to swallow a relatively small pill. But wait, there is more to this than there might
appear.
For those of you who sometimes suffer intractable migraines, the kind that morph into four day spectacles of nausea, dehydration, and wishing you were dead, you have my comradeship. After all the usual over the counter and prescription abortives have failed, it is time to turn to corticosteroids for relief.
Prednisone.
This is what you need to know about prednisone: while it will, taken over a three or four day period, put an end to your migraine (or whatever it is that you take it for), it is the vilest tasting substance known to humanity.
A single direct contact with tongue, mouth, lips or even throat yields a bitterness the likes of which is generally only known by RedSox fans of a certain age. And it can last for up to fifteen minutes.
Here is the secret: before you take the pills, take a big drink of water and swallow. Then, take a smaller drink. Hold it in your mouth. Swish it around, making sure every surface of your mouth has been very recently wetted. DO NOT swallow. Pop the pill(s) in and do your level best to keep them floating.
You’re welcome.
Hasta la vista, Google
With Google’s new “privacy” policy, which makes the full leap from “here’s is the level of privacy you can expect” to “here is the degree to which we will leverage every piece of data about you possible”, I am apparently not the only one “exporting” myself from Google. I am taking a look at Diigo as a possible alternative to Google Bookmarks. Looks like there are plenty of other rats leaving the ship :
Get-SPFail
This is how it was (or how it seemed) for a while.
Maturity takes time, I guess.
And people have to get there together.
Didn’t make it any less exasperating.
Handicapped plates
Not sure what percentage of people in Virginia have handicapped plates, but they seem to be fairly common. What I am quite sure of is this: the most common disability affecting Virginia drivers is not knowing how to drive.
with larger implications
Based on a sample size of thousands, a researcher at Google determined that 90% of Americans don’t know how to use the CTRL-F keystroke combination to do a search in a document or on a web page. Which is depressing enough.
Adding to that:
Google has rolled out a “practice tool” to teach people…wait for it…how to use Google. It’s called Google-A-Day (get it?). What is happening to us?
On the really cool side, to use Google-A-Day, you have to be in Deja Google, which is described below:
Deja Google
Science is not a “belief system”
First, watch this.
Then, ask yourself:
What is up with the concept of science as a belief system?
When was the moment that scientific knowledge was put on a par with cultural belief?
How did the human race arrive at the point where people get to decide whether or not to believe in facts?
How did facts become disputable? a matter of perspective?
Why is it not insane to think that “people should get to choose what they believe in”?
Thank you so much, Miss Connecticut, Miss New Mexico, and Miss Vermont.
All the educational reform and reconstruction in the world is not enough to overcome this kind of, dare I say it, ignorance.
And then, for a laugh, watch this.
A Healthier Spin on the Towers
A week from today, many (not all) in this country will indulge themselves in a paroxysm of nationalism, reminiscence, and solemnity. And while I do not want to diminish the seriousness of what happened ten years ago, more and more I view it as an opportunity squandered, one that drove us, as a people, down the road of war and intolerance.
For a healthier remembrance of the towers, check out Studio 360′s interview with Phillipe Petit, the artist who took multiple illegal and unauthorized walks from one tower to the other before they were opened. While everyone may be grieving next weekend, Petit reminds us that before every death, there is usually a life worthy of great celebration.
Knowing SharePoint
This is the “polite” and SFW version :-)
Keeping Irene’s rain out
Compared to some of the folks in the Adirondacks and Vermont, we lucked out on Hurricane Irene.
One of my quirks is a dread of water leaking into my home. The first season I worked construction, I proclaimed skylights to be nothing more than intentional holes in the roof which would eventually leak. Ever since, I have been involved in the feverish pursuit of keeping outside water on the outside.
It has always struck me as a complete oddity that many builders who build houses with basements choose to put sump pumps in those basements. I am not sure whether it is pure economics, laziness, or conformity with past (and bad) practice, but many homes with sump pumps sport one that looks not unlike the one below:
What’s wrong with this picture you might ask?
Well, this type of installation, while simple and straightforward, brings the water you want to keep out of your house INTO your house.
A better alternative is to put the pump outside like the installation I have at my house. Before backfilling the addition, we stood a 24″ plastic culvert pipe on end, cut a hole near the bottom for a 6″ PVC inlet, and surrounded it in crushed stone. Not gravel, crushed stone. While gravel is porous and drains well, crushed stone allows for faster drainage, which may make a difference in a heavy rain. Another hole is cut further up for an 1-1/2″ PVC discharge pipe. The culvert pipe needs to be tall enough that six or eight inches stands above finished grade. In the next photo, all the fill between the run of hose and the house in the second picture is crushed stone.
The discharge goes to a shallow pool that overflows into a storm drain. The pool was cleverly crafted by my birder wife, who tapered the slope so that songbirds find it a welcoming place to wade and bathe. Extra bonus.
An old galvanized washtub makes for a critter-proof, easy-on, easy-off lid. The nail holes are so that water doesn’t pool and give mosquitoes a place to breed.
