Family Medical Emergency

Sorry for not posting, but this week has been pretty rough on my wife.

Her 9-year old grandson is in the ICU, and not expected to come home.

When he was about 6 months old, he started going into convulsions, and having seizures. They ran test after test, and all they were able to figure out was that it wasn't epilepsy or chemical exposure.

At the time, the Doctors said that in 95% of cases like this, they never do find out.

So, his development came to a halt, and over the intervening time he's developed a host of other medical problems.

He's had to be fed with a tube almost all of his life, and because
 he couldn't run around like other children, his skeletal and muscle development have been extremely abnormal.

Last week his parents noticed he wasn't breathing normally, and by the time they got him to the ER, he was gasping for breath.

Turns out he had a collapsed lung, and a massive respiratory infection, most likely caused by aspirating some of his food into his lungs.

They put him on a ventilator, and into a medically-induced coma, as he was thrashing around so much trying to pull out the breathing tube that they were afraid he'd severely injure himself.

Earlier this week they drained his lungs, and took him off the ventilator to see how he was breathing.

His oxygen uptake dropped to 30% as soon as the ventilator was switched off, so they put him back on it.

Thursday they drained his lungs again, and took him off the ventilator to see how he was doing. He didn't start breathing on his own, so they used the bag/valve unit to get his breathing started.

His oxygen uptake dropped to 5% this time, so they immediately put him back on the ventilator.

My wife went to see the little guy this morning, and they'd moved him into an isolation room. With all the antibiotics they've given him, his immune system is compromised, and they're afraid he'll get something really bad from all the microbes floating around in the hospital.

This afternoon we got word his kidneys are starting to shut down, and his blood chemistry is all out of balance, and they're not sure what, if anything, more than can do for him.

At this point I think it's out of the doctor's hands, and in God's hands.
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New Printer!

Well, my trusty, 9-year old little Brother HL-1440 monochrome laser printer suffered a cerebral hemorrhage this morning when my step-son's girlfriend tried to print a huge document.

One of the sheets of paper in the tray was wrinkled, and when it fed, it caused a massive paper jam.

It jammed so badly that the rear paper exit door popped open!

After farting around with it for about an hour, and having other things planned for today, I bit the bullet and bought an HP LaserJet Pro 200 Color Laser printer.

Now since one of the things I had planned today was to clean up the Radio Room, and since I had to literally tear apart the shelf unit that has my (poor, dead) laser printer, Canon Color scanner, and a good portion of the test gear I keep in the shack, it was a nice way to kill two birds with one round.

I was a bit leery of buying this printer at first, since the Linux Printing page (now "OpenPrinting") didn't rate it very high, claiming some of the functions didn't work properly.

And in fact, I had already run down to Best Buy and purchased the replacement Brother sells for my little HL-1440, an HL-2270DW, which the Linux Printing page states "Works PERFECTLY".

While stumbling around the Best Buy, I had noticed the HP printer, and the fact it was on-sale, my wife's two favorite words.

After I got back home with the new Brother, I thought about it, and remembered HP is generally pretty good with Linux support.

Sure enough, I Googled for "linux hp laserjet pro 200", and it took me directly to the HP Open Source support pages for their printers. After reading a bit, I saw that they have far newer drivers for this printer than OpenPrinting does, so I took the Brother back, and exchanged it for the HP.

I think the main reason that OpenPrinting kind of slammed this model printer, is that the driver you get directly from HP uses a closed-source "Binary Blob" similar to how NVidia supports their video cards under Linux, and this greatly disturbs Open Source people.

So, back to Best Buy to exchange it.

While I support Open Source, I don't have a problem with a manufacturer using some proprietary, closed-source code in their drivers, as long as the product works "As Advertised".

I preconfigured the printer for the IP address I used on my network for the Brother, and headed over to the HP support page.

The HP driver downloaded from Source Forge, and when I ran it, I was impressed with how thoroughly it asked questions, checked the system, found and downloaded the required dependencies, built the software, and installed.

Good job, HP!

Oh....and since this printer has built-in networking, I was also able to retire the D-Link print server module I had plugged into the printer port on the Brother, and eliminate a piece of hardware.

Now to configure my wife's PC, and the future daughter-in-law's laptop, and I can call it a night.

And I got the Radio Room cleaned up, too!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Corned beef is cooking for dinner...CHECK!

Irish Salt Bread purchased............CHECK!

Potatoes being readied.................CHECK!

The potatoes are the important part. Since I'm half Irish, and half Polish, potatoes were akin to religion when I was growing up.

And my sweet little wife knows that, and treats them with the reverence they so deserve.....

Whole-House Filtration and RO System Installation Complete!

These guys were GREAT, once they got here.

The main filters and salt container were installed, plumbed in, leak tested and flushed, and then they did the under-sink unit.

And they plumbed in the ice maker for the fridge, too!

As soon as all the water in the heater is replaced, we should be able to enjoy showers more, and the laundry should come out better, with less soap.

It wasn't a cheap system, and ate up most of our tax "refund", but it's something we'd both wanted for the house for quite a while.

Oh....and I took my share of the "play money" we set aside every year, and ordered my M1 Garand from the CMP.

Yes, I went "traditional", and ordered it in 30-06.

I'm not one for naming my guns, but I think I'll call this one "Duke" when it gets here!

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OOOPS! I Spoke Too Soon....

They arrived about 2 minutes after my previous post.

Equipment is staged, holes have been drilled, connections are being soldered, and other activities are taking place.

And again, they apologized profusely for not being on time.

Seems the "Special Deal" through Home Depot has been selling like hot cakes, and they're up to their eyebrows in work.

And one of the two guys is one that came the other night, they're both very knowledgeable and professional, and this should be an easy installation for them, seeing as they can easily get to all the pipes to plumb the system in to the house.

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Waitng for the Plumber, or Someone Like Him....

ARRRGHHH!

We bought a nice RainSoft whole-house softener and filtration system last week,

It was a "Special Deal" from Home Depot, and included 0% financing as long as we pay it off in 24 months.

WELL....the installation company was supposed to come out Wednesday, between 1500 and 1730 to site the installation of the tanks, estimate the amount of plumbing required, and install the under sink part.

They didn't get here until 1900, and by then it was too late to start anything other than the site survey, and drop off about half of the equipment.

They told us that somebody would be in contact Thursday morning, to show up Thursday afternoon, and install the under sink pre-filter, RO unit, and final filter equipment.

They didn't call or show, so I called the office at 1600.

At 1730 the office manager called, and *promised* me that somebody would be here between 0900 and 1100 to start the installation, and that they would call 30 minutes before arriving.

It's now 1125, and no call, no show.

I'm going to call them back at 1130, and try and find out what's going on.

The guys that came here Wednesday seemed really sharp, and answered all the technical questions I had to my satisfaction, and apologized for not being able to meet the promised schedule due to some unforeseen problems at the installation they had just finished.

They showed me some pictures of the one they had just came from, and I have to admit it was a difficult installation, and they pulled it off beautifully.

The house was on a corner lot, with a very small backyard, and the owner didn't want anything visible from the street.

They dug a pit to mount the equipment in, plumbed it in to the house, backfilled it, and put a fake fiberglass "rock" over the exposed components.

I'm sure it took them a lot longer than anticipated!

Of course, that does *me* no good, as they haven't come back, or called, since the office gal called Thursday evening.

I sure hope the damn equipment works better than their scheduling process in getting a crew out here for the installation!

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Here's One for Old_NFO!

He's probably already seen it, but I thought I'd share it with the rest of you.

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Another 18 Students Graduate from NRA "First Steps" Course

Well...we trained another 18 people today.

Some had shoot before, and were very good.

Some had never shot before, and got better as the class progressed.

And three young ladies had never held a gun before, and admitted to being scared when the class started.

At the end of the day, all 3 young ladies were "9 ring or better" for their 30 allowed shots, and kept saying things like "What's all the fuss about?".

And in our "The Law and Firearms" section at the end of the class, everyone was appalled at the legal wranglings and loss of our rights that's taking place.

And everyone said that they wished they had gotten more involved at an earlier date so they could write to their congresscritters, and state their views on what was going on.

One of the students even said "It's a Bill of RIGHTS, not a bill of WANTS", which I thought was a pretty good way to put it.
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"First They Came For...."

Here's an 'update' to the famous "First They Came..." quotation.

Shamelessly borrowed from Ninety Miles from Tyranny.

The "Bill and Hillary" Kitchen Set

From a friend of mine.

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Quiet Week.....

Not much going on. I've been going to bed pretty early this week to try and get plenty of rest while the antibiotics do their magic on my sinus infection.

It's working so far, as I'm able to breathe, and I'm not coughing all night long. The persistent headache I had has gone away, and my low fever (101*) has dropped back to "normal", which for me is about 97.9*.

Morale at work is pretty low, and I've moved all my personal stuff out of my office area on the ship.

Since there's NO CHANCE we'll be going out for at least a year, I figured why keep the stuff on board.

The manager I'm more or less permanently "om loan" to told us this morning at the O-dark-thirty daily meeting that the "voluntary layoff" was directed at a few specific people they're trying to get to leave "quietly". He didn't mention what group they're in, but I have my suspicions about which one it is.

And Saturday is another "NRA First Steps - Pistol" class that I'll be helping my friend with.

ALL of his "First Steps" classes are booked solid through the end of March, and he told me all the April classes are getting filled in, too.

I just hope we can scrounge up enough 22LR to keep the students equipped!