Chaos Manor View, Saturday, August 01, 2015
Thursday I came back from medical appointments exhausted, and Thursday night I came home from my LASFS meeting early, with a stomach ache and other internal problems, and feeling worse than I have in weeks.
Bad night Thursday night. But woke up Friday morning after finally going to sleep feeling a lot better, but harried; I hadn’t got much meaningful work done Thursday, had another medical appointment at one o’clock meaning I was rushed, and I began to feel indigestion and nausea again.
And things went crazy; in particular, Firefox acted strangely, and when I restarted it the session manager never appeared, and I couldn’t find it. Part of my memory system is opening links readers send to me so I am reminded of them.
And it was still acting strangely. And I had to go. Came back with stomach ache and Zantac didn’t help a lot; I can only conclude mild stomach flu or food poisoning. And at my age I notice that piling on minor annoyances can quickly result in my bringing on a real disaster.
Restarting the Windows 7 system cured several of the problems; I think Firefox has a real problem with garbage collection. There is also ambiguity in how Firefox treats the “maximize” button, and their new way of accessing Options is perhaps an improvement but also unfamiliar.
In any event All is more or less back to normal; I feel as if I am recovering from either mild stomach flu or mild food poisoning – the symptoms are pretty well the same – and I am improving, so between Zantac, milk of magnesia, and Alka-Seltzer I ought to be fully recovered by Monday. Eric is bringing down Swan, a computer I can use at night in the back room; now that we have wired fast Ethernet back there Things may go better.
Baen and Simon and Schuster announce Lord of Janissaries, http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Janissaries-BAEN-Jerry-Pournelle/dp/147678079X or http://books.simonandschuster.com/Lord-of-Janissaries/Jerry-Pournelle/BAEN/9781476780795
This is not. Alas, the new Janissaries 4 Mamelukes, which, I swear, I am working on and now that my two finger typing is improved – I type that and take longer to correct all the typos than it did to type the sentence. I keep hitting two keys at once. But slowly I improve. Anyway I have not forgotten the book. But Lord of Janissaries, the new title, is not new: it’s all three of the original books in one enormous volume. More than 850 pages, with the maps in back as an appendage. Type big enough that I can read it, which is as well because I opened it at random and came on a scene that affects what I’m doing now, and I better go read it all again. Fortunately it still holds up, so if you need some good bed time reading this may be your answer.
And I just thought of a new Mamelukes scene, so maybe it’ll get worked on faster than I thought.
Eric is hard at work getting the up[stairs straightened out; our Ethernet switches up there are really old and it gets hot, and it’s probably time to replace them, oh my… Meanwhile I think I can type in the Surface Pro 3 faster than on this comfort curve keyboard: bigger keys. So I can take it back there with the docking station and a large screen monitor.
The election is early days; Mr. Obama is not popular, Mrs. Clinton not a great deal more so, and opportunists are throwing themselves into the Republication nomination scene. What the Republicans need is good lower level party work; get the ground game up to speed, Forget the nuances, it’s time to win. There are plenty good candidates who won’t stand out in this early melee. It’s time to take Congress and the Presidency and get out of this Depression. And make no mistake; it is a depression, mostly brought on by regulations. It’s now easier to open a neighborhood bank in most European countries than in the United States, and growing government won’t fix that. Whole agencies need to be abolished.
People have had it with Hope and Change; can we just get back to normal economic growth and take advantage of the enormous upswings in technology? But we won’t do that by growing government. Increasing regulations, and all the rest that Hope and Change always equates to.
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
