June 9, 2005

• It must be Thursday; SuSu’s online.

  
  

  Direct from the Willow Public Library, where there’s no time limit as long as there is nobody waiting to use one of the three web-enabled computers, and the chairs adjust in height almost high enough for me to comfortably reach the keyboard, I’m online!  Physically, this is the most comfortable of all the valley’s libraries and that lack of time limit is a great plus, but the librarian here is very gregarious and chatty.  My last entry and several comments to it mentioned the former tradition of quiet in libraries.  This library is the first one in my experience where the librarian herself is the noisiest person around.  Right now, she has a patron sitting behind her at her desk, looking over her shoulder at a monitor showing the pics she took on her recent vacation in Rome, and I’m listening to the travelogue.

  
  

  I suppose that having Greyfox provide updates is better than no updates, maybe.    As he himself noted in a comment to his latest update, his eyes tend to glaze over whenever the topic under discussion strays away from himself.  That’s due to NPD of course, and it’s a sign of great progress that he has gained such a level of self-awareness that he can recognize it.  Amazing, isn’t it, that a lifetime of self-obsession doesn’t necessarily provide any great deal of self-awareness?  Anyway, perhaps I’d better caution my readers not to take anything he says literally or to credit much of what he reports about me and my circumstances.  I’m the one who got the Truth in Blogging Award, not he.

  
  

  I looked at the $250.00 system for sale at TigerDirect that Amethyst62 recommended in a comment.  The system specs show why it is so much cheaper than the system that rosabelle‘s roommate Rich built for us.  I think that settling for such a drastic downgrade would be unwise in that it would be even more limited than the old system that Rich and Diane’s gift replaces.  That seems somehow ungracious or ungrateful as well as being a false economy.  We had outgrown that old system.

  
  

  Without that gift from Rich and Diane, we might have settled for getting the old machine repaired yet again and might have had the same old repair tech give us another used and possibly defective hard drive that would have malfunctioned again before the warranty expired.  We still had not decided whether to go that route or go into debt for a new system when Diane told us that Rich was willing to build a new system for us.  Doug and I both really wanted a new one, but were hesitant to go for it since Greyfox had just put his “new” used car on a credit card.  Rich and Diane solved that dilemma for us.  Now we just have to wait and see if the insurance settlement comes through.  Then we will shop and negotiate and try to come up with the system that meets our needs at the best price — not necessarily the lowest price, but the one that gives us the most bang for the buck.

  
  

  This incident illustrates why I value Xanga so highly.  Diane is someone I’ve never met.  She lives in the city where I was born, and she came to Xanga and blogged after having found my site through Google and reading some of my memoirs.  She told me recently when we were talking on the phone about the postal snafu that the reason she wanted to help us with the computer was because she had read about that other Xangan who had initiated the difficulty over the business license that caused the hiatus at KaiOaty.  She felt that by sharing her resources and her roommate’s skills, they could “balance things out.”  Isn’t that sweet?

  
  

  I have some things I want to share with you.  One of the odd little ironies of my current situation is that since I can’t get on to blog and surf Xanga, I read and listen to the radio more, which provides me with even more than the usual amount of blog topics.  Below are some of the choicer examples from recent weeks:

  
  

  
  
  • I’ve been picking up a lot of specific info about brain anatomy and function, in particular related to memory, mood and so-called “psychic” awareness.  Two areas of special interest are the anterior cingulate cortex (info here and there ) and the amygdala.  The amygdala is a fascinating little blob of protoplasm, and the more I learn about it the better I understand my own personal brand of insanity (or super-sanity).
    
  • The U.S. government wants to give us a hand in identifying misinformation .  Now, if somebody would just help us determine what portion of our government’s information is actually disinformation….
    
  • Under the heading of “bird brains”:  seabirds, mostly immature gulls, are feasting on the hulls of soybeans washed ashore after last winter’s wreck of the Selandang Ayu.  Sixty thousand tons of soybeans were in the holds when the ship broke up and sank off Unalaska Island in the Aleutians.  She also was carrying half a million gallons of fuel oil.  The beans got waterlogged and sank.  The bean hulls got oil-soaked and washed ashore.  The birds… well….
    
  • Sugata Mitra thought that perhaps children could learn computer skills independently, the way they learn many other skills, but didn’t have a chance to test that theory until he found a way to combine it with a commercial project.  The result, Hole-in-the-Wall places computers in outdoor kiosks.  Kids are taking to it with great success, of course. 

  
  

  I gotta go now.  Someone wants this computer.  I may get back on later from a different library… ya never know.

  
  

  UPDATE, 4 hours and two libraries later:

  
  

  I spent my allotted hour at the Big Lake Public Library checking and answering email from my currently active yahoo account (kathylynn_douglass, for any who want to email me there) and reading the most recent mail from my primary account through mail2web.com.  It’s an alternative for when I can’t get into my regular mailbox (like now) but using it is slow and cumbersome for me because every time I elect to read an email from one of these library computers, I have to log back in to the site to read more mail.

  
  

  After getting through as much of the backlog as possible there and forwarding a few old messages to myself at Yahoo for future reference, I came on into Wasilla, spent a few minutes at Greyfox’s place, then came into town with him for another hour at this library, where I finished off the email backlog.  My hour is almost up now, so I won’t have time to visit the imbecilic Xangan who claims who claims that “fibromyalgia” is not a real disease but only an excuse for “whiners” to take drugs and shirk work.  That’s probably just as well, anyhow.  I haven’t the time to properly engage in a flame war on these benighted library computers, anyway.  I don’t call it “fibro” anymore anyway.  I now use the preferred international terminology:  myalgic encephalomyelopathy/chronic fatigue immunodysfunction syndrome, and I am here to tell the world IT IS REAL, I have it, I shirk only as much work as I am absolutely unable to do, and I take no medication for the pain.  The addiction to the medication was one of the worst effects of the disease, before I learned how to deal with the pain through the PAINSWITCH (which switch is explained fully in the post linked in my left module — the best drug is no drug).

  
  

  Ignorance is not bliss.  Ignorance is just a lack of knowledge.  Inform yourself, bitchmistress, before flaunting your ignorance.  **sigh of contentment**  Aaaah, that felt good.  When I get my new computer, I’m going to rant to my heart’s content — yeah!

  • 9:55 pm
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