Hedonism with Henry

I took a four week break from rowing before our regatta, and once the regatta was over, I went back to rowing. The first week after a break is always rough, and this week was no exception. My hands had softened, and my body had become flabbier than normal. I went to every practice, I rowed at every opportunity, I called for the power pieces and long rows, no slacking, no shirking, get back into it with a vengeance and get the misery over quickly.

There was misery. I learnt to live with pain again. My hands got tender, then they got stiff, then they got hard but continued to burn. My lower back hurts. My sprained ankle continues to hurt and isn't healing well. My biceps burn. My leg muscles are wobbly. It's business as usual. On the other hand, there are benefits. I feel calmer and more relaxed, I sleep better, I have more stamina, I am a lot stronger. I can take a deep breath and feel my lungs open right up. But it's all for naught.

My technique has turned to crap, and I can't get it back. I have a wobble. I'm supposed to go up and down the slide dead straight. I'm not doing that. I'm curving to the left on the recovery, and that's offsetting the shell and causing wobbles. It's a bad habit, and I can't break out of it. So I'm depressed. My back hurts from the curving and the boat wobbling, and my pride hurts because I can't control my own body.

But four times a week I will have another opportunity to work on it, so I'll keep going. Eventually, I'll work it out and I'll control the curve. But I'm still depressed about it.

Spotted this car number plate outside Tidda Thai at lunchtime today.

I have been fighting keyboards for a long time. I don't touch type. When I started working with computers, about 1970, only secretaries learnt touch-typing. I never learnt. I've never found the need to learn to touch-type. I'm a very fast two-finger typist, but in order to be accurate, I have some very specific keyboard needs. The keys need to be normal sized, and well-spaced.

About 1988 I had a keyboard come with a no-name 386 computer, and that keyboard was a beautiful instrument. It felt great, the keys were spaced just right and the layout suited me perfectly. I kept using that keyboard till 2005, when it finally made a few weird noises and become non-functioning. By that time it was missing a few keys, so I put it out with the trash. It also used one of those big DIN plugs, so although I was regretful, it was time to move to new technologies and get a keyboard with a PS/2 adapter. I went looking and found that the keyboard that felt best was a Microsoft Internet Keyboard. I bought one for work and one for home. They were great. But technology moved on and computers stopped coming with PS/2 interfaces and came only with USB interfaces. The PS/2 to USB adapters worked most of the time, but would occasionally fire bursts of crap down the line and when that crap hit a modal editor like Vim, all sorts of hell would break lose. I had to find a new keyboard.

Microsoft and Logitech and Dell were churning out worse and worse keyboards. They were getting smaller and smaller, the keys were smaller, the keys were closer together so my fingers would miss keys, hit multiple keys and my error rate soared if I used them. And they kept changing the layouts. I don't care about special keys or volume controls or application keys. I'm a programmer, I type. I type words and numbers all day long, like 10 hours a day. I want a strong, sturdy fast keyboard with all the regular keys and a layout that is effective for me. None of the new keyboards did this. The Dell keyboards got worse and worse, they must have been paying $2.50 each to make these plastic pieces of shit, because the keyboard quality went right down. Logitech and Microsoft started making cheaper and cheaper keyboards, and changing the layout so they could make them smaller and cheaper.

Apple, on the other hand, started making their keyboards smaller and smaller, but with better quality and charging more and more for them.

None of the available keyboards suited me, so I started hunting on the fringes for keyboards and I found Unicomp and ended spending about $80 on a Model M style keyboard called the Customizer, a massive beast with the best feel of any keyboard I had ever tried. It was beautiful. But it was a bit loud. I got complaints. And then after a week, I got ringing in my ears from the noise of it. I had to abandon it.

Two weeks ago, I upgraded my home computer and could no longer use my PS/2 keyboard. I started using the Dell keyboard that came with the computer. It sucked. I was mis-firing and making mistakes all over the place. The keyboard had keys that were smaller than I was used to, and they were jammed too close together and the layout sucked. I got more and more frustrated and one night I got so angry with the keyboard, I pounded it with my fists and I broke that plastic piece of crap. Had to get a new keyboard. I went back to Unicomp, hoping they had something good that wasn't too noisy, and found that some of their keyboards offer USB and "Enhanced Quiet Touch". I bought a Space Saver keyboard to try out, and it arrived today and I've been trying it out.

It's got a great feel to it. It works as well as the super-noisy version that I already have. Good keys, good space between them, great bounce-back feel of the keys, and the layout is exactly what I am used to. The noise? If that's Enhanced Quiet Touch, then I must have super-sensitive hearing. I admit that it's a lot quieter than the Buckling Spring noise of the Customizer, but it's still noisy. I'll know in a week if it's going to affect my hearing. If it works out okay, I'll get another one for home. I like to have matching keyboards at work and at home.

I had several people come into my office today and notice the new keyboard. The reaction has been bad. The women sniff and say "I don't like the colour. It looks too old." The guys sniff and ask "Where are all the extra keys? Why does it look so old? You spent how much?" People care more about how things look than how functional things are and how much benefit you can get from it.

David Byrne is coming to the Ferguson Center. He's apparently got a new album out, another collaboration with Brian Eno. I can't work out what the new one is, but I sure remember the last collaboration with Eno - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. That was one strong LP. One of my favourites.

Anne wanted to go see him too, so I phoned up this morning for tickets. Rather than phone Ticketmaster, a hideously difficult company to work with, I phoned the Ferguson Center directly to get their box office. The phone answered with "This is Ticketmaster...". Looks like you can't escape the evil. So I stayed on the phone and unlike the last time I spoke to Ticketmaster, no human came to the phone. I was in automated phone hell. I was able to pronounce Virginia adequately. But when it came to getting the name "David Byrne" out, I couldn't get recognised. Eventually, I worked out that they wanted the R in Byrne. Americans pronounce the R like the French, an exaggerated rolling R. So I did that, and said Byrrrrrrrne, with phlegm, and they got it. Okay, moving on, but I was getting more and more edgy. These phone systems suck. It led me deeper and deeper and asked stupider and stupider questions and I wasn't getting anywhere. And then I snapped.

Doug and a few others came out and stood at the door to my office and were greatly entertained while I raged into the phone and cursed Ticketmaster to hell and back with many creative uses of the word "fuck" and then I slammed the phone down. It took a while for the red mist of rage to pass from me, and then Doug suggested I try the website. That started out as an easy exercise, but rapidly turned into more Ticketmaster hell when I hit the double captcha. I missed the first attempt. That first word sure looked like "Pissed" to me, especially given my mood. I failed the second attempt on the second word. Third time lucky and I was able to determine the two words correctly through the over-embellished feathering they applied to the words. They showed me a floor plan and gave me two seats and told me about the convenience fee. The price of each ticket was $47, but they wanted an extra $6.10 each as a "convenience fee". Convenient to them I suppose. And I remember from the last time I dealt with these bastards, that when you get further down into the quicksand, they want another $5 or $6 per ticket so you can print it yourself, or another $7 or something each if they mail the tickets to you. And if I remember correctly, there are a few more "convenience" fees on top of that, that boost a $47 ticket up to about $70.

But I was still struggling with the floor plan. It was so bad I couldn't work out where the seats were. It took a while to get a rough idea that I would be jammed at the far right of a seat down near the end, but okay, if that was all they had then I'd have to take it, so I clicked the button and the bloody website told me that I had exceeded the allotted 2 minutes and 15 seconds to accept those tickets and those seats had been re-allocated to someone else and if I was interested I could start again. Yes, time pressure. They show you the seats, give you two minutes and fifteen seconds to accept them, provide a near worthless floor plan so you have no idea where those seats will be, and expect you to make a snap decision.

I snapped again, but unfortunately I couldn't find a text box to type obscenities into, so I just blew it all away. Ticketmaster suck so bad. Fuck them. I would like to see David Byrne live, but given how I feel now, I would rather burn my right hand off than buy a ticket through TicketMaster again. So I'll let David Byrne come to town and perform and I won't bother seeing him. I'll sit at home and play Rei Momo and Bush Of Ghosts and some old Talking Heads and I'll curse Ticketmaster. Fuck them.

I have read articles about the music industry, claiming that the industry is changing and artists can't survive by sale of cds or mp3s any more and they'll have to make a living by performing. If that happens, they're going to run into serious difficulties if they go through TicketMaster. They'll starve as TicketMaster jacks the prices up, shafts their customers at every opportunity and more and more people turn off the live performances.

I have gone through a few digital cameras. I started with a Sony P50. 2 megapixels, good with low light, big and blocky, but it worked nicely for me and it worked well with Linux. After two years, I upgraded to a Sony P92. 5 megapixels, not as good in low light, still big and blocky but a nice well behaved camera. At the two year anniversary, I upgraded again to a Sony P200. 7 megapixels, even worse in low light, physically smaller and neat and just a delightful camera to work with.

While I went through these cameras, Anne went through a Sony P52, and then a Sony W50, and finally in a complete break with Sony, I got Anne a Canon SD1000. Anne took it back to Australia and when she brought it back, she was done with it. She didn't like it. The biggest problem - no battery indicator. It just turned off when she was on the Harbour Bridge taking photos. Also, being such a small totally angular rectangular camera, it was hard to hold. So she gave it back to me and went back to the Sony W30 and she's still happy with the Sony.

I was at my two year anniversary with the Sony P200 and I was looking for a replacement. I used the Canon SD1000 for a while and found that I didn't like it either. The lack of a battery indicator was a big problem, but I discovered a firmware hack that let me do a lot of interesting things, including turning on the battery indicator. Why Canon didn't provide this by default is beyond my understanding. The next item that drove me to rage was the flash status. I take a lot of indoor photos. Churches, museums, historical buildings. They let you take photos, as long as you don't use flash. So I turn the flash off by default and leave it off. Well imagine my surprise when I pull out the Canon and take a photo and the flash goes off and the guide chides me for using flash. "That's funny" I said to myself "I mustn't have turned the flash off." So I make sure the flash is off, put the camera in my pocket and wait. Shortly after, I had another photo opportunity, I pull the camera out, secure in the knowledge that the flash was definitely off, take the photo, and the flash goes off again and the guide asks me to leave the building. I groveled, I pleaded, I was allowed to stay as long as I took no more photos. On the way home, I worked out what happened. Sony cameras assume that the flash off setting is persistent. Turn the camera off and on, and the flash returns to the last setting you had it on. Sensible, suits my needs perfectly, given my camera use. But Canon assumes that you don't want the flash settings persistent. It resets to on every time you turn the camera off and on. This was a big problem for me. Another big problem was getting the photos out of the camera and into my Linux computer. The Sonys look just like a USB mass storage device, but I couldn't make the Canon work with Linux in any way. I gave up and took the card out and put it in a card reader to get the photos out. This irritated me a lot.

Then I took it to a regatta and took zoom photos of the boats. When I got home, I wondered why the images were so small. It just wasn't what I expected. So I sat down and took my Sony P200 and the Canon SD1000 and I took side by side photos of the things that I usually take. Zoom images, regular images, macro shots, and low light shots. Regular shots - you got much the same image from both. Zoom shots, the Sony left the Canon for dead. Low light and macro, th Sony was superior. But then why would I have expected otherwise. The Sony was a $400 camera when I bought it, the Canon was a $150 camera. It doesn't mean that the little Canon SD1000 is a bad camera, it just didn't suit my needs. So I found a new home for the Canon, and went looking for a replacement for my Sony P200.

That was a depressing exercise. Point and click cameras have seriously dumbed down in the last two years. Hard to find one that does fine JPG or TIFF or RAW. It's hard to find one that fits the hand nicely. And very hard to find one that has a viewfinder. Most people probably don't need a viewfinder. But I need one. When I'm at a regatta, in blazing sunlight, and I'm trying to take photos of the races, I can't see a thing in the LCD screen on the back. The sun is too bright. I use the viewfinder. That is apparently not needed by modern point-and-click photographers today. I made a list of my needs and I went searching. What I wanted was a camera that:

• had a viewfinder
• could take fine JPG, maybe TIFF, maybe RAW
• had better than 3x optical zoom
• looked like a USB mass storage device for Linux
• had persistent flash settings
• reasonable zoom
• image stabilisation
• orientation recognition
• big CCD

I found nothing that fit my needs.

My needs were pushing me to digital SLR cameras. I resisted this at first, but eventually I had to accept that a point-and-click was not going to give it to me any more. So I went looking for a DSLR. It came down to Nikons or, believe it or not, a new Sony. I hopefully settled on the Sony A200 and went to Best Buy and got to handle one and take photos with it. I spent an hour handling it and working it and I was happy. Just as a comparison, I went to the Nikon and tried it out. Nice, but the Sony appealed to me more. Back to research, and I went through the reviews at dpreview.com and although they weren't completely enthusiastic about the Sony, it was good enough for what I wanted. One thing it had over the Nikon was zoom. The Sony had 15x zoom and to get that with a Nikon, I would have to go more expensive. Zoom is important for photographing the regattas, because the races do not finish close up. For the A200, which apparently is descended from Minolta cameras after Sony bought the Minolta camera division, Sony had abandoned the Sony Memory Sticks and was using standard Compact Flash cards. Even better. And even better, Sony works really well with Linux.

So that was it, I bought the Sony A200. I looked online for a good deal, but couldn't find it less than $499. I had a 10% off coupon for Best Buy, so I got it there.

The first time I cradled it and took a photo, and felt the heft of a SLR again, and my hand fit around it naturally, it felt heavy and stable and it just felt right. It felt like a real camera. I was happy. I'm still getting used to it, learning the features, experimenting. I've been to another regatta, and worked the camera hard. I was very pleased with the results. I'm having fun.

Best of all, it takes standard Minolta lenses, and I have a huge range of telephoto lenses to choose from.

And I kept the Sony P200 for small shots and surreptitious shots.

I finally admitted failure to myself.

I have high blood pressure. Late 2006, it hit 170/130. I got it down to 150/100 through weight loss and exercise but couldn't get it any lower. I kept fooling myself about losing weight and getting the blood pressure down, but it didn't go any lower. So I ignored it for a year.

Earlier this year, I made a half-hearted effort at salt intake. Initially my position was "I don't put salt on my food, so I can't be eating much salt". Then I started looking at the sodium content on the labels and I started freaking out. I stopped eating high salt products, then I stopped eating foods with any largish sodium content, and in the end, I had to give up nearly everything processed and do it all from scratch. I've been doing that for a few months, and I think my sodium intake is now down to less 300mg a day. But I still felt like I had high blood pressure and whenever I measured it, it was same old 150/100. So I admitted defeat and went to my doctor and said I can't do it on my own and I better go on the drugs.

He measured my blood pressure both arms, and then looked at me strangely. "You don't have high blood pressure" he said. It was 128/90, and although the bottom number is not as good as it could be, he believes I do not have high blood pressure. So no drugs are needed. I am forced to believe that my anti-salt fetish has brought about this miracle, so I will continue. He wants me to exercise more. I shall do this.

While I was there and there was nothing else to do, and I hadn't eaten since the night before (too nervous), he did the bloodworks and gave me a full physical. Everything else is as optimal as it was last time, but this time, the blood pressure is almost acceptable. Cholesterol is still 126, triglycerides at 91, and all the rest are extremely good. I do have a very slight Vitamin D deficiency but more salmon and orange juice and sun should fix that.

But the bottom line is that I have got my blood pressure under control and can continue my slow slide into old age without needing any drugs. I am very happy with this.

One of the guys at work received a free copy of the first issue of a new magazine - Garden & Gun. A magazine devoted to "Southern Living". I've seen "Home & Garden" and "House & Garden" but it would never have occurred to me to combine Garden and Gun. It's a brilliant concept. And it's not a parody, it's a real magazine devoted to gardens and guns and Southern living. Glossy pages, beautiful photography, interesting articles. The first year's subscription is only $14 so I'm going to subscribe just for the hell of it.

Just heard some words in a song:

"If I'd known I was gonna live this long,
Would've taken better care of myself".

It's Christmas Eve. Midnight arrives. The power goes out. All over the neighbourhood. Bah humbug. That put a dampener on a few parties around here. I wandered outside to see how widespread it was, and I looked up. There was cloud cover and no stars in sight. But there was a large circular opening in the clouds and the full moon shone down in the middle of that circle and lit up the edges of the circle. It was an interesting effect, and no doubt if all the street and house lights were on, we wouldn't have been able to see it.

Anne's first thought was "I wish I had just boiled the kettle", and then she lit candles, and we waited it out. I finish my computer game, and do a bit of web surfing to see what's happening. Anne goes upstairs and starts playing her computer games. I pause and think "There's something wrong here. We're in the dark, but we're still connected to the Internet?"

I remember. We had an outage recently, and I learnt from it and did some minor re-wiring of the rack and the network with the UPSs. If the external Cox routers stay up, then the Internet stays up in the house. Looks like I got it right.

So we did a bit of this and we did a bit of that, and we waited and we talked, and then we opened our Christmas presents by candlelight.

An hour went by. The computers and the Internet were still chugging along, but the batteries were down to their last bits and it didn't look like the power was going to come back any time soon, so I shut the system down gracefully. Then we really sat in the dark and waited.

And ten minutes later the power came back on.

I'm going to do some more re-wiring tomorrow. I have a few more ideas to try out. The power attempted to come back a few times during the outage and things like the Tivo got power-cycled and that's not good. I've got one spare UPS and I'll use that for the Tivo. I better get some more UPSs to protect a few more things. Maybe I should get one great big one for the whole house.

She didn't eat overnight, and she can't eat this morning. The drooling is worse, but at least there's no blood. She's sad and she's weak. Anne phoned the vet and made an appointment for 9. We took her there and made the arrangements. She got a sedative to knock her out, and then she got the hotshot.

RIP Redrum.

The vet said that six years ago, his cat had the same problem. From diagnosis to euthanasia, he said it was three weeks. And yeah, for Redrum, from noticing the tongue problem to euthanasia was three weeks.

She was almost 17 years old. One third of our lives spent with her. The house is empty without her now. And now with both Ruffian and Redrum gone, that changes our lives. Anne said "our happy little family is gone now". It's just me and Anne now.

15 years with Ruffian, and 17 years with Redrum. I miss them both. On the way out of the vet's this morning, there was a little Siamese kitten on someone's shoulder looking at us. It looked like a young Redrum. Nearly made me cry some more when I saw that kitten. We can't get another cat just now. We might get another one when we go back to Australia.

Redrum had a few problems, but she was strong and she was doing really well, right up to the end. She had hyperthyroidism, but it was under control. She had cataracts that were getting worse, but that didn't stop anything. She was 17, but she was as strong and active as any 4 year old cat. She wasn't infirm, she wasn't weak. She ran and jumped and played and ate well. She was happy with us. She was a happy cat. And then right at the end - tongue cancer - and three weeks later it's all over.

Redrum's tongue is really bothering her now.

We got the first of the drugs a few days after the visit to the oncologist. and that made a big difference. No more bleeding from the mouth, and she felt better and was a lot more lively. She seemed a lot happier. Except the cancer under the tongue kept growing and it pushed her tongue out of shape. She was doing okay until yesterday and then it seemed that growth made it hard for her to eat anything. She didn't eat anything last night, and she didn't eat anything today. When I got home, I tried to hand feed her some fresh tuna, but she couldn't get it over her tongue.

She seems happy, but she's weak from not eating. She wants to eat, she licks at the food but her tongue can't do it anymore. If she can't eat, there's not a lot of hope left. We'll make a decision tomorrow morning.

We went to the oncologist today and got a better idea of what's going to happen to Redrum. Most cats get cancer of the tongue. They pick up chemicals and carcinogens on their fur, then they lick. So they get cancer of the tongue. There are two types - ulcerated cancer and the non-ulcerated type. If Redrum had the ulcerated type, she would have 2 to 3 weeks before she dies. She has the other sort, so she has 3 to 6 months of life left. Gotta be lucky sometimes. There are some simple and inexpensive treatments, like a super aspirin, that attacks the tumour, reduces the pain, and makes her feel better. We're going to do this. It's less than $1 a day. There are chemo treatments too, but they will change the 3 to 6 month diagnosis so that it skews a little more to the 6 month mark than the 3 month mark, and that's not worth it, so we most probably won't do that.

So we have a little more time with the cat. When it's time, we will know, and then we'll take her to the vet and she'll go to sleep.

She's still happy and lively, and appears to be pain free. She's uncomfortable with the growth under the tongue, but that's not life threatening yet.

We've had a few worries about Redrum lately. Late the week before last, she developed a mouth problem. Something under her tongue was giving her problems. It swelled up and made her tongue fit uncomfortably in her mouth. We took her to the vet, and they did a quick investigation. Might be an infection, so antibiotics prescribed. That started to clean things up, but not a whole lot. They recommended a knock-out session, and a biopsy. Okay, we did it. We've been waiting a week for the results.

Since the antibiotics, she's been eating hugely. Eating all the time, eating good food. That's not a good sign. I remember Ruffian near her end. With Redrum, the antibiotics seemed to help a bit. But her tongue kept going strange, and she kept drooling a bit. I thought at first it was just a bit of old age. She's 17 after all. But each night, there's a little bleeding from the mouth.

The results of the biopsy came back today. Cancer.

We're going to see an oncologist this week, just in case. There's chemotherapy. But she's 17, and she's had a really good life, so unless the prospects for chemo are exceptionally good, we're not going to do it. And that means she's going to go to sleep in a few days or a week. Depends on how comfortable she is. But the end is very imminent.

She's been with me almost one third of my life. 17 years. Long time to get used to a little friend.

Power outage last night - 00:26 to 07:00. The UPSs kept all the gear safe until I could shut them down safely. Brought everything up this morning by 7:00am. Mail and web services have been resumed.

Only casualty was my internal server, had disk problems and fsck can't fix them.

It's that time of year again. Yes, the Concept2 erging Holiday Challenge. Starting Thanksgiving Day, which was November 22nd and finishing at midnight 24th December, erg 200,000 meters. You have to average 6,060 meters a day. This is my fourth year at it.

The first three days was nothing but pain. Sure, I've been rowing most of the year, and I raced at three regattas. But it's end of the year and it gets too dark too early, so we're only rowing on the weekends. And I went out in a four early Thanksgiving for a very long, hard row. And later that day did my first erg piece.

After three days, I ached all over. My ankles and knees hurt, my wrists ached, my neck and shoulder muscles ached, my legs burned. Then on day 4 I started doing power pieces and working on improving my times, and when I finished, I felt good. No pain. And since then, I've felt better every day. I feel lighter, I walk taller, I feel stronger, I breathe better. And now I remember, I felt the same last year. And the year before that. And every year I said "This feels good. I must remember to not stop doing this." And every year, I keep erging up to the Erg Pull competition in February and then I stop. And rowing keeps me strong and fit in other ways, but erging makes me feel really good. And I'll say now "I feel good. I better keep doing this and not stop after the Erg Pull." yet I know that I will stop. And I'll do it all again next year.

Today, I'm up to 40,000 meters. 20% of the way through it. I am a little ahead of target. I feel good about that. And then I go look at the Honour Board at Concept2 and see that a dozen people have finished the 200,000 meters already. And they're all late 50s or 60s or 70s. They must be erging 4 to 8 hours a day. Don't they have anything better to do? I hope I'll be rowing and erging into my 60s and 70s, but not that much.