Just Thinkin'

An Abundance of Noise

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Kirk MSeptember 12, 2021

The world is a noisy place. Apparently I had forgotten this.

I’m mostly deaf and it’s not because I listened to music at high volume–which I did–but that wasn’t the reason for my hearing or lack thereof. No, it was most definitely “service-related” and it happened aboard that very submarine you see in the image at the top of the site. But I won’t get into the how’s and why’s of it since that’s what you might call off-topic for this little missive.

However, because of this service-related audio problem of mine I have been supplied with hearing aids via the VA free of charge for some time now. And not just a any old cheapo ones they could get for the lowest price as you might guess. The ones I’ve received over the years, after a thorough hearing test each time, have all been the higher end models of which I have no problem with as it affords me a more normal–what do they call it again?–ah yes, Quality of Life. I still ended up saying “what?” a lot but without the aid of the aids I wouldn’t have heard or understood anyone–ever.

Now when it comes to hearing exams at the VA and the upgrading to a new pair of the latest and greatest in hearing technology for folks like me, the VA usually schedules these sort of things every 4 years or so. And it would be logical to assume that hearing aid technology might have improved a bit over said 4 or so years and you’d be correct if you did. And this is what usually happened with me–new hearing aids each time around that let me hear a bit more of the world around me than the last pair.

Then came Covid-19…

…and the usual time for a new hearing test came and went and of course, didn’t happen at all. Why? Because the ~~morons~~ ~~idiots~~ politicians in the federal and state governments had, in their infinite lack of wisdom, decided that at the crux of new and “deadly” disease rolling around the nation, to close anything remotely resembling a medical facility right when folks supposedly needed them the most.

But enough of that.

Because of the above “crisis” my usual hearing test was put off for almost 2 years and by the time I finally got an appointment with the audio clinic at my local VA medical center nearly six years had passed since my last one and, consequently, the same amount of time had passed since my last pair of hearing aids. However, that all changed around the middle of August when, after an inquiring call to audiology by myself, an appointment for a new hearing test was finally scheduled for the end of the month.

And boy, had things changed.

No more headphones with bleeps and bloops of different frequencies and me pressing a button when I first heard the sounds. And only a short bit of attempting to identify words in a sentence rather than a good frustrating 10 minutes of it. It appears that “old way” of doing things had gone by the wayside and replaced by 3 new pieces of equipment that I had never seen before.

So my new audiologist (seems she had changed as well) subjected me to each of these new machines, told me that I was ready for a new hearing aids and to come back on the 7th of September for fitting and programming–meaning the hearing aids, not me. That being done I headed home with the new things stuffed into my ears and…

…good gahd but the world is a noisy place!

I was hearing things that I haven’t heard in decades, literally. The birds chirping, the hiss of tires rolling down the highway that’s near the VA medical center plus hundreds of other little audio distractions that assaulted my brain. And that was just walking in the VA parking lot out to our vehicle. I almost asked my wife to drive home I was so startled by all these new “noises”. But I didn’t. Might as well start getting used to them right off the bat?

All said and done, it’s still not “normal” hearing by any means. My cochlea are too far damaged for that to ever happen again. But it’s light years ahead of my last pair of hearing aids and that’s definitely a change for the better. Especially in light of the fact that I’m not constantly asking my poor wife to repeat herself. And that’s an added bonus. Still, I’m glad I can take them out before heading to bed so I can sleep to the sounds of silence. Because if hearing technology ever advanced to point of restoring my hearing to normal levels permanently, I’d probably never sleep again.

Too much noise.

Oh yes. A picture of one of my new hearing aids:

New Hearing Aid

Laptops Young and Old

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Kirk MMarch 2, 2021

We had a new addition to our little family here recently that I just had to just write a post about.

A new laptop.

Had you going there for a second didn’t I? You expected maybe a kid or something? At our age?

Something, meaning a laptop, we have not had for several months now bar an old Thinkpad R61 circa 2008. You might as well know now that a laptop’s purpose in our household is secondary to our his and hers desktop PCs upstairs. Supplement to, in other words. Good for looking things up as needed after the big brothers upstairs have been shutdown for the day. To this end I’ve always bought used enterprise type laptops since, as I stated, the need for a lappy is secondary to needs so why pay for a new one? Besides, I always changed out the laptop’s hard drive, stuck in a new SSD and installed Linux Mint on the things. So what happened to change things?

To make a long story short, the latest 2015 laptop we had died. Wouldn’t even turn on. So much for that. Several months went by when something happened that brought the need for a laptop to the forefront of my wee little brain. I won’t bore you with the details. So, after much thinking and research later we finally decided we were done with used equipment and bought a new laptop instead and therein lies the tale. Or at least manages to refer to the title of this post.

It’s a lovely little machine–rose/gold is how they describe the color scheme of this laptop. Now I don’t know about any roses or gold but it’s an attractive color nonetheless. It has a 15.6 inch display, an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU (APU?) with AMD’s Vega 8 graphics whatever that is. It must work since I’m currently typing this post on the new machine and I can see what I’m doing. Oh, and it throws in 8 GBs of memory and a 256 GB NVme SSDs to round the thing out nicely. After much considering though I decided to leave the Mint install out of the equation this time around and worked at making Windows 10 as secure as I could possibly make it while still making it usable.

After getting the Windows set up as we like it my thoughts turned to another HP laptop (in the guise of a Compaq Presario after HP bought the company) that first got us started in the world of laptops. We still have it but I didn’t know where it was. That’s where my honey came in. She knew where it was–of course she did. Still in it’s hard shelled case we bought for it.

It’s a 2003 HP/Compaq as I said. Also a 15.6 inch one like the new. This one however was a literal “blast from the past” in the form of a Pentium 4 CPU and ATI graphics (before AMD bought ATI). I haven’t gotten around to determine the amount of memory it has or what size the hard drive is but it can’t be much compared with today’s machines. Still, there it was in all it’s past glory just begging us to turn it on after how many years?

It was originally purchased for my wife (before we were married) when she was after her degree in computers many moons ago. It was dial up back then but it did have wireless capability. Probably limited to 2.4 Ghz but it still had it which was something back then. That plus more ports and connections than you could shake a stick at including a multi-card reader. Installed on it was Windows XP Pro–a professional’s machine if I ever saw one. So what did we do? We plugged in the power supply and powered it up, what else?

Nothing fried. No smoke, sizzles or bangs either. The old laptop simply started up like it was only yesterday it was last powered down. Within a minute the login screen with both our accounts was staring us in the face. I tell ya,’ it almost brought a tear to our eyes. Many good memories we have in that old laptop. Anyway, she couldn’t quite recall her password but luckily I also had an administrators account so I went into mine (no password required) and changed hers so she could login. The old HP/Compaq purred happily away without a single hiccup. We even played a few rounds of the old “Chainz” game we enjoyed so much–probably because it had explosions.

So the new laptop took the place in the case of the first laptop we ever had and my wife intends to make a new soft case for for the old one and it’s power supply and who knows? We’ll most likely pull it back out, power it up, and play a few more rounds of that old game that has explosions in it. I mean…

…wouldn’t you?

So It’s A New Year is it?

Posted on January 1, 2021 by Kirk MJanuary 1, 2021

I woke up this morning to a brand new year–I think. I waited until after I had dressed and preformed my usual pre-breakfast planned maintenance before I checked the calendar and yes, my wife had changed them over. They now stated that it was indeed 2021. Thus confirming that it was indeed a new year I then decided to seek out said wife to wish her a Happy New Year and tell her that I hadn’t seen her since last year. I found her at her computer. After I did what I said I was going to do she smiled, thanked me, and then told me to go away. She was playing her game and I was breaking her concentration. Considering this to be the proper response I wandered off to find out what there was for breakfast.

Later on in the morning I fired up my computer for my daily dose of self abuse–reading the news– and I was somewhat amazed when I came across a news item that did not actually involve covid-19 or the election. Instead the headline proclaimed:

Flash is Dead

Or something like that. Since I suspected they didn’t mean Flash Gordon I could only assume the article meant Adobe Flash. Yeah, goodbye and good riddance as far as I’m concerned. I dropped that sucker years back when HTML5 and java script made things so much better.

Okay, so the rest of the news was the usual crap I’ve been seeing all this last year so I won’t bother about it. So, did I make any New Year’s resolutions this year? No, I didn’t. I do have a couple hopes though. I hope my old Jeep doesn’t crap out on me for the rest of the winter. I hope the sewer pipe doesn’t back up on us as it has in the past. And I hope to learn how to use this damn block editor for something besides text.

Oh, and I wish everyone within shouting distance a Happy New Year and all that. May it be better and less stomach churning than the last one.

Merry 2021 y’all!

Thinking About My Brain

Posted on November 30, 2019 by Kirk MNovember 30, 2019

The way my mind works has become increasingly stranger as time goes on. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I’m getting on toward old age. I know that being 60 years of age really isn’t considered “old” these days but you never know. Excessive mileage must count for something. Still, sometimes I really wonder what’s happening to my old brain of late. For instance, my mind seems to have begun the habit of “singing” to itself as I wake up in the morning.

Okay, it doesn’t actually sing per se but rather it comes up with snippets of different songs/music that I wake up to every morning. Songs I’ve listened to over the many years I’ve been around, a bit of a sound track from a movie that I’ve watched, songs from various musicals I know, or even opening themes of old ’60s TV series–even the ones I didn’t like. Quite entertaining except for the ones that turn into “ear worms” that drive me to distraction throughout the day.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the traditional walking into a room and forgetting why I was there type of thing. I’ve always done that regardless of whatever age I was. What I’m talking about is getting up out of my chair to put more wood into the wood stove but instead, turning around and walking all the way into the living room before I realized the wood stove I was supposed to be replenishing was right in front of the chair I had just gotten out of.

It’s that kind of increasingly odd behavior on my part that tends to puzzle me not to mention raising my blood pressure (I’m very critical of myself you see). Thankfully, this kind of thing hasn’t yet happened while I’m driving in and around town. The day I’m out to our local supermarket to get a few needed items and end up in New Hampshire is the day I really should consider hanging up my license. Still, I do occasionally find myself driving right past the store I needed to go to because my mind was busy entertaining itself somewhere else instead of paying attention to the here and now.

I really should pay more attention to myself not paying attention. Of course I’m not too sure what I would do if I actually caught myself not paying attention. Slap myself upside the head to get my attention?

Today–I say today because I started writing this post yesterday–I went through my usual breakfast routine, sat down in my favorite chair napkin in hand, and got all settled in before I realized I had left my breakfast on the stove. I swear I was beginning to panic until I looked down at my side table and realized I hadn’t forgotten my mug of coffee. If I had missed that as well I’m not sure what I would have done. Called the nearest old veterans home and see if there were any openings probably. Of course my wife might have a say in the latter. After all, I can still run the log splitter without too much fuss.

At least I’m consistent?

I think I’m going to stop thinking about my brain now. It’s giving me a headache.

Not Expecting the Unexpected

Posted on August 31, 2019 by Kirk MAugust 31, 2019

It’s been a rather expensive summer due to all but one unexpected events. And even the one expected event was unexpected. And if you can understand the previous sentence then even that is unexpected. I expect. To wit:

Replacing our old computers.

In short, we, meaning my wife and I–the cats don’t count, were expecting to do one thing this summer that we usually don’t do in the summer. Replace our aging desktop computers. These computers are the tower type that have been dutifully serving all our computer needs for over 10 years now. But their age was showing rather badly of late so we figured we’d replace them while they were still working rather than replacing them after they stopped working. Less panic that way.

I won’t get into any details yet since I may write a post about my adventures in new computer hardware after a 10+ year hiatus. Let’s just say that certain things were unexpected.

Now…

What we didn’t expect.

Okay, in no particular order:

My lady’s trusty old 2005 minivan wouldn’t pass inspection. We may not have emissions testing in the state of Vermont but what we do have is an absolutely strict and somewhat unreasonable check list of things that will and will not (mostly will) cause your vehicle to fail. Last year, when the Vermont state government passed a “new and improved” inspection procedure, even new vehicles were failing inspections let alone older ones. However, the government was “persuaded” to ease up on the rules a bit and all was well–sort of.

Anyway, the old minivan, which mostly still looked and drove like new, failed. It seemed that while the body was in good shape, the undercarriage wasn’t. In short, around $1000 bucks worth of body work and undercoating later it was back on the road again with a brand new inspection sticker. Until next year that is. The old thing is most certainly on it’s last year or two on the road.

Next…

My lady’s trusty old 2005 minivan wouldn’t pass inspection. No, I didn’t forget I already wrote this part. The fact that it failed inspection got us to thinking of why we bought the thing in the first place–her business. We needed something big that had lots of storage area that could fit a lot of stuff. It paid for itself 10 times over in that respect especially considering we bought it used rather than new. Now though, things have changed.

My wife retired herself and her business a few years back and the need for something like that old Ford mini-van has lessened quite a bit. Especially when it’s only got another 1 or 2 years left on the road. Still, at our age, we prefer to have 2 vehicles at our disposal, preferably one that’s 4 wheel drive, which we already have. So we were content to keep on keeping on.

Until her dream of owning a “Smart” Car showed up in the form of a 2015 Smart Fortwo with a for sale sign on it at one of our local supermarkets. Not in the supermarket actually but sitting on the lot in front of it. Considering the nearest “Smart” dealer is in Scarborough, ME–we bought it. Yes, it was rather unexpected.