Under 100

For years I (along with millions of other people in the world) have been fighting with my in-box. My newest strategy is to keep my inbox at zero unread and total messages below 100. Using my smartphone, my iPad, web access and my desktop computer at home and at work, one would think that this would be an easy task. But alas it is extremely difficult for me to manage my mail.

Over the past week I “cleaned up” my mail box to reduce the messages from over 4000 messages to about 39 now. Far too many of them were thank-you messages or were marketing junk messages or the like. Another bunch were messages I never even opened based on the subject line (copies of help desk messages, notices that I am copied on as a courtesy and etc.).

How will I do it?

1. Delete immediately those messages I don’t need. This really helps with searching.
2. Read and take action on those messages that need it. Then delete or file them when they are disposed of./li>
3. Create and use a folder file system so messages that i want to save are stored somewhere other than my in-box.
4. Monitor my inbox diligently. I do this now (mostly).
5. Unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. I unsubscribe to at least 20 to 30 mailing lists every year that I never signed up for.

So, time will tell if I can stick to this newest strategy.

HCV Therapy

For almost 6 months now I have been going through therapy for hepatitis C. I have about 5 more months to go now. The therapy includes a shot of peg-interferon weekly and taking ribavirin and victrellis daily – 16 pills each day. I have grown to really dislike taking pills!

This is my second round with this therapy. I have known I have had HCV since the mid 90s. It was discovered when I gave blood for the first time. I don’t recall the last round of therapy being quite as difficult as this time. In fact I was able to get through my karate brown belt test during my previous round of therapy. But this time is very different.

I feel sick all the time. It is very difficult to describe but it’s like my entire body feels ill. I have nausea, headaches, tinnitus, a constant feeling of ill health, constant fatigue, I feel like I am always on the verge of getting the flu or a bad cold, not to mention having blood drawn every 2 weeks or so. This is difficult.

I intend to write more about this illness and how I am handling it but I wanted to at least start with an introduction about what this therapy is and how it is affecting me.

A Friend

It happened quickly, at least from my perspective. One day he was there as usual talking to anyone who would listen. The next there were whispers of illness…classes cancelled…coverage sought…wondering minds…

It is rare to find someone who is who he is. That was my friend. In a setting where most are looking to position themselves to be in the right place for advancement or are positioning their social life to sync with their careers, he was just himself. Real, genuine, loving and living life fully.

I visited him today at hospice. He wasn’t awake. He is fading away physically as his spirit prepares to move on. Even so, I could see the person I knew. Comfort care now…I imagine he has stories floating around in his head that are helping to keep himself amused as his soul awaits the moment of passage.

His sister-in-law said it wont be long. Yes, that was clear.

I will miss you my friend. Until we meet again… when you will have eternity to tell your stories and laugh and make others laugh. Tell my brother hello for me OK?

Blackberry Torch

My favorite Blackberry so far. So much to like. 3G; WiFi; A touch screen; slide out keyboard; OS 6; great applications. Is it an iPhone? No, of course not. But it is the best Blackberry yet. Seeing what RIM has done with the phone and the OS makes me believe they are firmly in the smart phone game and will continue to be a leader in the business community.

My experience so far (1 week as of this writing) is that this phine does everything the Bold and the Storm does and is combined in one convenient package. I had a Storm2 and liked the larger screen. But I much preferred the Bold for ease of use with the keyboard. The Storm2 has a clumsy feeling on screen keyboard and I found it difficult to use. The Torch on screen keyboard is tactile and much easier for me to use.

WordPress Blackberry App

Just downloaded this application to my blackberry and am writing this on my phone. While I like the fact I can post from my phone I am not sure how practical it is for me. On the other hand it may cause me to post more. We shall see.

Am I better Off?

I remember sitting at my desk a number of years ago and staring at my Blackberry, my cell phone and palm pilot. I was longing to be able to carry only one device that would do it all. Well, here it is about 7 years later and voilà! My Blackberry Storm does everything those three devices did. It is a cell phone, does e-mail messaging well and has great organizational applications…

So Why am I sitting here today staring at 3 devices that I carry around???

I’m looking at a Blackberry Storm, an iPod Touch, and a Garmin nüvi. Admittedly, I could consolidate all three. But not easily. And depending which hardware I choose I may lose one or more important featrures that I do not want to give up. I suspect I am not so different than others in 1- preferring something other than the iPhone and 2- still wanting iTunes to manage my music and therefore needing to have an iPod. While I haven’t tried it I suspect I could use either the iPod Touch or the Storm for GPS navigation but I doubt the experience would be lass than using the standalone Garmin plus it is a smaller screen on the handhelds. So my suspicion is that I will always be stuck with at least 2 handheld devices for the time being. That is until Google or Palm (they still in the game?) or some other vendor create a viable music manager/player combo. It seems unlikely that Microsoft can get into the mobile handheld market at this point. But you never know.

So, yes, I am indeed better off but I keep raising my expectations.

I am so tired of politics before people

I have only recently started following political debates and the issues our elected representatives are dealing with. To say the last presidential election captured my imagination would be a gross understatement. But I have to say I am tired and disappointed that in many instances our elected officials place politics before people and ideological thought ahead off rational thought.

The fact that important votes always split along party lines sounds statistically improbable to me. Something else is going on and it doesn’t seem to be based what things are in the best interest of the the people who
elected them. Way too quickly politicians seem to become wrapped up in ensuring their own longevity in office. I find to all disturbing and most unfortunate.

Not a way to get marketshare!

I recently purchased a new Dell Studio XPS 435T/9000. I purchased the cheapest video card because I knew I would be upgrading it. Dell’s site only offered ATI cards and I prefer Nvidia. I received the machine, popped in the video card from my existing computer – PNY Nvidia 9800 GT – and received the dreaded “Code 12: This device cannot find enough resources” error. The screen then went to 4 bit color and 640×480 resolution and there is nothing that can be done to change that. I thought, no problem because I was planning to buy another card anyway. I purchased the new card – BFG Nvidia 275 OC – and the same thing happened. Doing research I found it was most likely a shared IRQ or DMA error. Looking at the device manager I found DMA resources that should have been allocated to the card weren’t but no other device was using the resources – the address range was simply assigned to the motherboard. I tried re-installing Windows several times; I pulled all of the other cards and did a fresh install; I tried to reallocate the DMA address range manually but the device manager would not let me do it. As you might imagine I was extremely frustrated. Much of the research pointed to needing a BIOS update but my machine had version A09 and the only thing I could find on Dell’s site was A07. The longer it went on, the more I felt I had wasted a significant investment. I began having thoughts of returning the entire system to Dell.

Well, last night I finally found an answer in one of the Dell forums. It seems American Megatrends who manufactures the motherboard has a deal with ATI where they have set the BIOS to not recognize Nvidia cards. As I mentioned above, the BIOS on my machine was A09 but on Dell’s site I only saw A07. I downloaded and installed the A07 BIOS and voila! it all works now. Apparently, any machine that ships after June 1, 2009 has the new A09 BIOS that causes Nvidia cards not to function.

This is soooooo annoying. I cannot believe ATI would make this kind of a request AND American Megatrends would do it AND Dell would then sell this crap to the public. The only redeeming thing in this is that Dell did have the A07 BIOS on their web site. I will NEVER NEVER NEVER (did I say NEVER?) buy an ATI product. It is incredible that they would intentionally cripple the BIOS to not recognize a competitor’s product. I don’t know how much they paid AMI for this “deal” but they have certainly shot themselves in the foot on this one. In my opinion AMI and Dell are also at fault.

Helen Andrukaitis Makul

My mother-in-law recently passed away. I loved her very much. I was given the honor of delivering the eulogy. Through some research on the web I put together the words below. I also sang one verse of a song in Swahili that I believe holds out hope for us all. I miss her.

For Helen
When tomorrow starts without me
And I am not there to see if the sun should rise
and find your eyes filled with tears for me
I wish so much you wouldn’t cry the way you did today
While thinking of the things we did and didn’t say
I know how much you love me; as much as I love you
And each time you think of me I know you’ll miss me too
For me there is no tomorrow because today will always last
Each day I will think of you but I will not long for the past
When tomorrow starts without me
Don’t think we’re far apart
Because every time you think of me
I’ll be right there in your heart

I will watch over you all
Until your time will finally come
Live honest and truthful lives
Until our hearts shall beat as one
Be patient
Show compassion
Help others to ease someone’s pain
Be content
Love each other
Until we are together again

k2 is back

I’ve returned to my favorite theme k2. I have always liked this theme but there was that issue with widgets vs sbm. Now that k2 has conceded the battle to widgets (I have no opinion on which is/was better…etc.) and has removed the sbm code I feel more comfortable using this as my primary theme. Over the summer I’ll do some customising.