The clear solution is to buy a cell phone which is to be carried around the place, and forward the main phone to that.

Sigh. Why can't simple things just work?

since you are retired and have unlimited time. to clear you of your boredom i have inserted a do it yourself way of getting your phone system to alert you. you can add some of your own ides of course.

LOL Ray.

That was actually their solution. Except that it isn't practical for us to carry our phone around. We are constantly getting wet and our hands are slimy all the time.

Their other solution require going to walmart to get something or other. He said something something analog something.

You were in IT all those years. The answer is always to create more and more complicated and fragile interfaces instead of correcting the underlying system.

So, now we leave cell phone on the desk, but create an app which posts to yet another server which can turn on a big flashing light in the shop. Get some consultants in there, in just six months and $250K, you'll have a system which fails in some other way.

It's been a while since I've been able to sit down and do anything. I think we had relatives here 25 out of the 31 days last month. Although it is nice to have folks here, it's also nice for them to be gone.

So, things will get back to normal.

Time to reflect on last year. It has been a phenomenal year. One of the best I've had I think.

Finished the Loonee Balloonee book series
Got the website up and running
Retired
Still married to a wonderful wife
Been able to fish fairly regularly and the fishing was good
Got a new fun job
The deck is finished
Biggerwife got a new much better job.

That's a lot of good stuff.


I don't think I have any resolutions but there are some things I want to shoot for in the upcoming year.

Finish my short story
Revisit and finish my screenplay
Market the Loonee Balloonees better
Maybe start on 2 new children's books? I've written them already but I'm not sure what the artwork should be.
Start on the project to showcase my Dad's art and tie in some sort of giving back as well. This is pretty vague, but my sister and I want to get the wheels turning.
Pay much less attention to politics. It doesn't do anything but make me angry. Wean myself from all the 24 hr. "news" stations.
Be nicer. This is my goal every year. Progress is slow but steady.
Maybe get a new boat. Or a new old boat. Or an old new boat.
Be a good husband.
Fish, fish, fish.

Hurray for a good year, and here's to another one

Thanks!

LOL, I got notice that my inbox is pretty full, so I went back to weed some older PMs out. I found this jewel from you:

I'd like to think I've mellowed somewhat since then

Lol. I think so. nuts hot prolly had it coming though iyam imo

It's pretty bad when all you have to talk about is your cat. But that's about it right now.

My cat doesn't really do much except eat, wait to eat, and stare at me. Sometimes he does all of these at the same time. I got tired of him staring at me because he wanted to be fed, so I got one of those timed feeders. He now sits in front of it 1 to 2 hours before it is set to go off, just staring at it. What he likes to do is position himself as close as the feeder as he can and at the same time be in a place where he can stare at me.

That's not really the point of all of this. The other thing about the cat is, I'm allergic to him. I normally wouldn't mind him being on the furniture except that it triggers my allergies, and put him in a better position to stare at me. Anyway, in an attempt to keep him from sitting where I normally sit, I put some double sided tape down. I heard that works.

It does not. I walked in from a trip to the gym, and he was laying right on it as if it wasn't there.





/cat stories

I need a more interesting life.

a lot of duct tape a couple times will train him.

that was like putting a peanut in front of an elephant to try to slow him down.


p.s. ive been catching a lot of sea trout lately but not many over about 15 inches.

Yeah, I'm not hearing many great trout reports right now. Usually this time of year the sheepshead are the draw but this season has been tough for them as well. They are slaying the snook here, though.

So, phone (kinda) troubles part deaux.

Our credit card machine was losing connection to the interwebs. Our local cable company (the one that couldn't adjust the phone volume) came out and did some stuff on the pole and said it was all fixed left without actually checking if it was fixed. It wasn't.

We called them and they said it was our card reader. Only we lost the internet connection in another office so it wasn't our card reader.

The guy came back out and was trying to test the connection. I watched him booting up his computer.

It seems that the cable provider that is supposed to give us the greatest technology for all our needs is sending their technicians out with laptops loaded with Windows 7.

Well, it's stable.

-ish.

pompano are the catch on the east coast now. right off the beach.
windy though and tough when its like that and not much fun.

I'm sure everyone has seen those pictures of the plastic islands in the Pacific. Miles wide. And, I'm guessing most have seen pictures of huge amounts of plastic (and other) debris washing up on shorelines here and there.

We almost always see floating trash when we go offshore. We always pick it up if possible. It is usually some sort of plastic something or other.

This has sort of moved us into trying to reduce our plastic intake.

Our first stab at this was to stop buying bottled water. We didn't really use a lot to begin with, but we did take it out on the boat since it is so convenient. However, we figured we could reduced even that so we bought these. They work great.



We didn't really do much more until recently. We talked about how we could reduce even more.

The next thing we are trying to eliminate is sandwich bags. We use a lot of those, mostly the gallon ones. We bought some of these silicon bags.



The jury is still out on these guys. We are going to do our best not to use the hefty/glad bags but the silicon ones just aren't the same. Kinda bulky and hard to get things in and out. But, we are going to give it a shot.

Saran wrap was our next target. My wife uses it on fruits and veggies that she quite often chops in half, then saves the other half for later. We got these things and they work remarkably well. No problem with this one.



Then it was on to getting rid of saran wrap to put on bowls. We got some of these silicon lids. These haven't been all that good, mostly because we have all sizes of bowls and they don't always get a tight fit. Or, they are so tight they pop off. I think we'll keep trying, maybe get a different brand or more sizes.



Then it was on to our kitchen trash bags. We just started on this one. We decided to buy one of these washable trash bags that we will use for our recycle bin. My wife is a bit worried about putting real trash in them, then putting them in the washer. But I told her I could spray them with the hose first or something. Still an experiment at this stage.



We obviously aren't going to save the world here. I mean, it's a miniscule drop in the bucket, but it is something we both want to do.

It is a bit frustrating, though, knowing that moving forward it seems like we (humans) are producing more and more plastic. The very first thing we did quite some time ago was start to bring reusable bags to the grocery store. But, sheesh, the store we shop in is now packaging most of its produce in plastic bags. Frustrating to say the least. Even more that the store itself has a booth in front with a person encouraging customers to reduce plastic, when the store is adding plastic.

I don't want to be preachy about this at all. I don't have the activist gene. But it is something that my wife and I think about and would like to at least not add to the problem.

Hmm, we do not have reusable trash bags. All the other things are . We try to do all of that stuff b/c it just seems lazy and idiotic to use a bunch of plastic. And, imo/ime a lot of the products available are simply better (e.g. using cloth bags at the grocery store instead of paper/plastic grocery bags).

You're right that you won't save the world.

But imagine if nobody did anything.

We can each only do our part, and hope others do the same. Hopefully all the individual efforts make a difference in the big picture.

Thanks for being conscious of the problem and acting.

If you did nothing you are right it wouldn’t make a drop in the bucket as far as ocean pollution goes. 99% of man made waste comes from countries who either are too poor to deal with waste or the culture just does not give a **** about it yet.

Reusables in USA#1 aren’t going to make a comparable environmental impact as long as your ziplock bags and plastic water bottles are making it to a trash can. We as a country dispose of 99.9% of waste in recycling or landfill. And landfill is a great place for plastic waste to end up since there really isn’t an economical way to recycle it right now. It can hang out there safely underground until someone figures out a way to make money off of recycling it. Luckily we have plenty of room here to deal with it.

So yeah obviously don’t throw your water bottles in the ocean, bag them accordingly and dispose of them safely and you’re doing better than most of the world!

My father-in-law is in the hospital, recuperating from lung surgery.

About 2 years ago (whenever hurricane Irma hit) he was getting some routine testing which showed some heart issues. The doctor sent him straight to the hospital where he got emergency triple bypass surgery.

He actually recovered quite well, but he has had on and off issues with his stomach since then. And, he complains of a lump that seems to move around. So, he got it checked out.

The scan revealed that they left a sponge in after his heart surgery. I'm somewhat amazed that this can even happen anymore. I'm pretty sure they have some fairly strict protocols for counting and verifying sponges, but it was there.

The worse part is, they found cancer in his lung. They also saw a spot on his brain they weren't sure about. After further testing, the brain is fine, but they needed to take out the cancerous lobe of his lung.

He went into surgery yesterday. It was scheduled for 2 to three hours. It took over eight. The first issue is that he had a ton of scar tissue from the heart surgery. And, they moved around an artery so they had to work around that. But the biggest issue was that the sponge had sort of meshed with the lung and they had a lot of problems getting all of it out. In the process, they tore a hole in his lung and it is "leaking". The doctor says this might heal up on its own, but if it doesn't they will have to remove the entire lung.

Just one bad thing after another.

The surgeon also took some samples to biopsy to ensure the cancer hasn't spread. We don't think it has, but we don't know.

He has never smoked in his life. There is some suspicion that the sponge might have played a part in the cancer. But we don't know. We do know that it has led to complications with this surgery.

immediately after researching, go find the biggest law office that has a good rating for medical mal- practice cases.
you want to do this before something happens that my terminate his life. that will have a large determination on what damages will be accessed. and be sure there will be.
plus they can guide you through the process. right now the hospital or the doctors will be trying to cover their asses and not be acting totally in his best interest, possibly,, and you dont want to take a chance on that.

good luck on this

Yeah, he already has a lawyer. The current doctors have been extremely clear that the previous ones ****ed up. I don't see how this isn't an open and shut case.

nothings open and shut. he needs to have great lawyers not just so so ones.
and his lawyer must have already have him been documenting every single thing that has happened in relation to his problem. if not that is a clear sign of an incompetent lawyer. of which there are many.

Wow, I'm sorry to hear about you FIL. I remember reading about you & biggerwife attempting to prep things prior to the storm while simultaneously dealing with his heart surgery and thinking how stressful that must've been

Best wishes to him.

Ugh, that really sucks. I hope the lung heals and no more cancer remains - that things trend in the right direction for him.

It's great that he has you in his corner to help with all of this.

FIL update. He's doing much better. The official leakage is 0 although there is still some leakage. I have no idea what that really means except that it appears that he'll keep the remaining lung parts.

They have reduced his pain meds and removed a few tubes.

His original release date was no later than tomorrow, but that is not happening. He is a lot better but they need to keep him a while longer.

The only remaining hurdle is the biopsies on the surrounding lymph nodes. Fingers crossed.