Small Talk: The Welcome Mat

Netfoot · June 15

Doggies are amazing creatures. But they all have an inescapable flaw. They will be out in the yard, decide that something is wrong, run into the house, into the bedroom, jump onto the bed... and vomit copiously.

Poor Mo. After his first, huge deposit in the bed, he was hacking away with deposit #2 in mind when I shoved him off the bed. He departed with a wounded look on his face.

Now, I understand that when they are ill and then run to you got comfort, they must be very dismayed when they get rejected. In truth, I was right there for him, but it is much easier to clean up tiles than bedclothes.

Never mind. 20 minutes later he was back, looking and acting perfectly normal and looking for cuddles - which he got.

Rice for lunch and condensed milk for dinner. My blood sugar will be pretty awful tomorrow morning. After eating the condensed milk for dinner my beard was a sticky mess, so another shower was required. (While drying off, I realized my new glasses were on top of my head the whole time.)

Returning from that shower I met Mo coming the other way down the passage with the empty condensed milk tin in his mouth. Little trash-pirate that he is! He had rice for dinner, by the way.

And now, he's a pillow-pirate, too.

Watching a movie called Body Of Lies with Leonardo DiCaprio & Russell Crowe. Seeking terrorists in the middle east. Shows like this always leave me feeling that such efforts are pointless. I had an old friend who repeatedly said the solution to the terrorism problem was nukes. I personally think that suggestion was a little excessive! But I have long concluded that you can't use reason when dealing with people who are inherently unreasonable.

Spent the day trying to work out why my local Apache (web) server would not serve CGI content. All day. Turns out the error was in this line of the .conf file. The LoadModule line that activated CGI processing was commented out. The little # at the start of the line caused it to be ignored when the .conf file is being processed. Cateracts and a crappy monitor and I just didn't notice it until only a short while ago.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a system which allows a web server to serve dynamic content. Static content is something that is prepared in advance and left on the server. When requested, it is served as-is. Here is a static web page:

<html>
  <head>
  <title>Hello, world!</title>
  </head>
  <body>
  <h1>Hello, world!</h1>
  </body>
</html>

Saved as hw.html or similar, you request it by fetching http://www.srv.com/hw.html and the content is always the same. (That isn't a real link, BTW.)

Dynamic content is content that changes. It is generated on demand so that the information presented is up to date. Instead of serving up a predefined page as described above, the server runs a program. The program generates the content on the fly and that fresh, newly generated content is then served to the user. CGI is a method by which web servers (like Apache) can execute a program and serve the output from that program instead of serving predefined content which could have been created days, months or years before.

Most online content these days is dynamic. So you can see that getting CGI running was important. But bad eyesight and dumbness stopped it working all day. Dumbness, because I should have figured out the CGI module had not been loaded far sooner!

Anyway, I am going to brew up. Hax a mug earlier but I feel like another.

Edited June 15 by Netfoot

Netfoot · June 15

New jig for drilling steel plates!

The old one was tatty and I remade this one, incorporating a couple things I learned from the old one.

A few plates peep in in the right. Note paintbrush at the top of the jig - it is for placing a tiny drop of oil on the plate prior to drilling each hole. Also notice magnetic "brush" st the bottom, needed for sweeping away the swarf from the area before drilling each hole.

Out of 3-in-1 oil; using old chip-oil from the kitchen.

The ⅜" holes in the jig are centered on the desired locations of the holes in the plate, as indicated by the sample/pattern I was given. As you can see, the drill bit is much smaller than the ⅜" holes in the jig.

I start by locating and clamping the jig on the drill press so it will drill down into the center of the ⅜" hole in the corner. The plate is pushed up into the corner and held in place. A drop of oil is applied to the spot to be drilled and the quill lowered to drill the hole.

Once the hole is drilled, I use the magnets to clean away any swarf that might prevent the plate from sitting flat. Then I rotate the plate 90°, apply another drop of oil and drill again. Cleanup, rotate, oil, drill. Cleanup, rotate, oil, drill. That's four outer corner holes drilled. Next!

On previous occasions he had requested eight holes on the outer perimeter. This can be accommodated by drilling four, then flipping the plate over and drilling four more times. Because the holes in the jig are not symmetrical with the corner of the jig, flipping the plate over will give an offset to the second four holes.

Here's why the holes in the jig are ⅜", much larger than the hole to be drilled:

When you drill a hole in the plate, the exit (underneath) is not clean. A new drill bit can help with this but I can't keep buying new drill bits when the ones I have are still perfectly capable of drilling a good hole!

Here is the underside of a hole that was just drilled:

You can see a little "crown" of swarf that will have to be removed later. Meantime, when I rotate this plate 90° to drill the next hole, the little swarf crown won't let the plate sit flat. The ⅜" holes are there to give the swarf crown somewhere to go when I am drilling more holes.

So by fixing the jig in this one position I am able to drill all 104 outer corner holes (4 x 26 plates) without readjusting anything. They go pretty fast once everything is set up. The only thing that slows me down is if the magnetic brush or the oil brush or the oil reservoir wander away. And occasionally I have to take the swarf off the magnet and dispose of it where it won't cut my feet later or end up in Mo's food.

Now the outer corner holes are drilled, I have to unclamp and reposition the jig to drill the inner four holes. Then the same "Drill, cleanup, rotate, oil" sequence can be repeated to drill all 104 inner holes. And then finally, one more repositioning of the jig will facilitate the drilling of the 26 central holes.

This is why I tell the guy to bring as many as many as possible. I'd much rather have him bring 200 plates at once. I'd reposition the jig three times and drill all the holes relatively quickly for each position. If he brings 20 a day for 10 days. It is still 200 plates but it is 30 times I got to align and clamp that jig!

Once all holes on all plates are drilled, I will have to deburr the holes to remove those swarf crowns. Only takes a minute.

All that used chip oil makes me think: chips for lunch? I asked Mo but he did not venture an opinion. But either way, it isn't lunchtime yet.

Netfoot · Sunday at 08:00 PM

All 26 drilled, outer, inner and center.

Half (13) deburred. My back was hurting do bad after deburring 11 that I could hardly stand up. But I did two more to get to the halfway point before taking this break.

Would have had to stop anyway; the deburring tool was clogged with swarf. Here it is after I cleaned it out again.

Not an easy task - the hole was clogged solid!

So, as soon as my back stops hurting I will do the remaining 13 plates. I don't want the task to stretch out into next week. Tomorrow especially will be especially busy without having to worry about steel plates and swarf!

Mo & I had chips for lunch.

Netfoot · Monday at 03:21 AM

I watched Burnt, a movie starring Bradley Cooper as a top chef trying to gain a 3rd Michelin star. Quite good!

Set out on Garden Patrol and within three steps, the rain started to fall. Mo looked askance, but when I kept walking he leapt ahead! We did not dilly-dally, and the rain was light, so we returned fairly dry and I'm drinking a mug of cooperative tea right now.

Chips for lunch and rice for dinner. After last night's dinner of a tin of condensed milk, I was surprised that this morning's blood sugar was still in the green.

Tomorrow morning I have my eighth appointment at Urology at QEH at which I expect them to ask why I have not had the biopsy yet. The biopsy they have never scheduled.

And then I will go to Edgar Cochrane to refill my meds, except for the pyrodstigamine, which requires me to go to Randal Phillips polyclinic in Oistins. Next month I will get a new prescription from Dr. Kristi and I will be getting all my meds from Randal Phillips after that, which will be better than going to two separate pharmacies to get everything.

Steel plates all drilled and deburred. Achy back and two hands twisted with cramp didn't make the finish easy, but they are done. I think he overpaid me so I will offer to do another batch FOC. He won't be able to collect from me until I am back from QEH/Edgar Cochrane/Randal Phillips but he told me he didn't need them until "mid-week" so if he gets them tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday morning he should be good.

Mo is a warm spot against my back. He often cuddles at night, especially when the lights go out. Kangaroo kicking, now. Little scamp! Now he is curling up on my feet. Yes, he moves around a lot. Often I wake in the night and he is gone. And when I first open my eyes in the morning he is not usually there. But when he realizes I'm up, he comes in like a ball of fire, jumps into my lap and bathes me with kisses. Now he is looking out the window... And on getting down he sticks his butt right in my face. 😐

Yawning but I can't just switch off the lights. I have to get up and choose a book to read, a task I have skipped for several days but if I am going to QEH and two polyclinics with a phone that keeps rebooting and rapid-discharging it's battery, I will need something to read to pass the time.

So let me do that right now, and then get some sleep.

Edited Monday at 03:23 AM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Monday at 10:40 AM

😡

andidante · Monday at 12:21 PM

8 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Tomorrow morning I have my eighth appointment at Urology at QEH at which I expect them to ask why I have not had the biopsy yet. The biopsy they have never scheduled.

I hope you get scheduled for the biopsy this time!! It has been far too long.

Netfoot · Monday at 01:06 PM

39 minutes ago, andidante said:

I hope you get scheduled for the biopsy this time!! It has been far too long.

25 months. Just arrived at QEH (at 8:59) and the walk from the car to Outpatients was almost too much for me. And there were no seats inside so I am seated outside. Where I won't be able to hear them call my name. 😕

Won't post much h battery voltage plummeting like a stone. Already down to 77% and all I did was have it in my pocket for the drive down here!

Picked a book Tactics Of Mistake by Gordon R. Dickson. This is the first of the Dorsai! trilogy. I read it only a few months ago, but it is a good one,so I will read it again. Starting now....

Netfoot · Monday at 02:28 PM

10:27 and soon to see the doctor.

10:42 and still sitting here waiting.

10:55 and the junior doctor has gone to get his boss.

11:04 and the nods has just arrived.

11:09 on my way out of QEH. More later.

Edited Monday at 03:33 PM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Monday at 03:46 PM

11:33 at Edgar Cochrane. I am #253; now serving #230.

Very wobbly this morning and the rain that fell while I was in QEH has made everything slippery. Which makes the wobblies even worse.

While at QEH they showed me the CT scan they did in March. I snapped a photo of the screen. I will spoiler-tag it for those who are not interested in seeing what my guts look like:

Spoiler

Spine and a couple ribs easily observed in white, near the bottom.

More interesting/disgusting is the huge lump outside the peritoneum visible near the top! Dr. Kristi says it is not concerning and I can forget about it. But it's hard to forget that thing....

Hungry. Not sure what to have for lunch but what ever it is, it has to be something they does not require a spatula to cook.....☹️

Edited Monday at 03:49 PM by Netfoot

Notabug · Monday at 03:54 PM

6 minutes ago, Netfoot said:

11:33 at Edgar Cochrane. I am #253; now serving #230.

Very wobbly this morning and the rain that fell while I was in QEH has made everything slippery. Which makes the wobblies even worse.

While at QEH they showed me the CT scan they did in March. I snapped a photo of the screen. I will spoiler-tag it for those who are not interested in seeing what my guts look like:

Hide contents

Spine and a couple ribs easily observed in white, near the bottom.

More interesting/disgusting is the huge lump outside the peritoneum visible near the top! Dr. Kristi says it is not concerning and I can forget about it. But it's hard to forget that thing....

Hungry. Not sure what to have for lunch but what ever it is, it has to be something they does not require a spatula to cook.....☹️

The lump is probably a lipoma, a benign fatty mass. They form in the adipose layers under the skin frequently, they can be removed, mainly for cosmetic reasons; but they don't ever become malignant or cause serious problems.

I see your kidneys, but don't see any masses, the mass must be in a different cut on the scan.

Netfoot · Monday at 05:08 PM

1:00 PM at Edgar Cochrane. Processing me now. After this? Oistins.

1 hour ago, Notabug said:

they don't ever become malignant or cause serious problems.

Dr.Kristi said it was nothing to worry about. But it can be uncomfortable. Like when playing Tummy Trampoline.

1 hour ago, Notabug said:

I see your kidneys, but don't see any masses, the mass must be in a different cut on the scan.

I asked him to maximize the lump. People don't believe when I say I got a big, uncomfortable lump on there. He did show me something on the kidney but it just looked like a slightly darker grey patch.

Apparently it has only grown one millimeter in two years. Perhaps it is benign. That would suit me + no surgery necessary. But I would like that to be confirmed! I fong think that's unreasonable.

1:07 PM, battery at 20%. Still waiting on my meds...

1:09 PM, 18% and I'm oudda here!

Edited Monday at 05:10 PM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Monday at 05:37 PM

1:33 PM and I'm at the other polyclinic in Oistins. Can't remember the name. They don't have any more numbers to hand, out so I don't have a number. But I found out who was the last person before me (they don't have a number either) and I will follow them. 5½ hours and still nowhere near done.

Battery: 11%.

Netfoot · Monday at 06:29 PM

2:26 PM. Battery 7%. No progress. Hungry & tired.

2:28 PM. Battery 6%. Prolly brvfrad before I get home.

2:52 PM and I'm done. Home time! Battery: 1%...

Edited Monday at 06:54 PM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Monday at 07:23 PM

3:20 PM and home again. Mo has taken up position in my la and won't move.

Too ~~latde tgo ook~~ late to cook lunch. Looks like a ~~largve~~ large dinner fr for Mo and I. I will drink an interim mug of tea.

Steel plates to be collected in 5 minutes.....

Edited Monday at 08:41 PM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Tuesday at 12:16 AM

Aaarrgghh!!

When you go to the polyclinic, they want you to bring back the empty container you got last time. Why, I dong know. They can look up on the computer to see what you are due so they don't need the boxes - but they want them. So you go in and hand them the bag with all your meds in it. You wait and they call you to come pick up your new supply. Off tou go with the bag..... And when you finally get around to looking in it, you discover that they have thrown away the old boxes and the medication that was in them!

I went today because I was already dealing with QEH and because I was down to zero Spirolon. Obviously, I refilled everything. But I had some warfarin remaining. I had 9-10 days worth of digoxin left in that box. Over a week's worth of Gliclizide. And they threw all that out.

The steel plates are gone. He said he might have one or two other small jobs for me by the end of the week. That would be good - the larder is close to bare. Yes, I could spend tire-money but I need to get two more tires for that van. It is scary to drive when there is a good shower of rain. A heavy downfall will wash the road clean but a shower will just mix with the dust on the road and make a slick lubricant that is not fun to drive on with bad tires.

Made a cross between corned beef & cabbage and corned beef hash. Corned beef, cabbage and potato. (Plus onion). After starting,I realized exactly how tricky this is with no spatula! If I had a working bandsaw I'd make my own. I make my own push-sticks, 10 or 15 at a time. Or I did when the bandsaw was working. So I could make 10-15 wooden spatulas at a time.

Anyway, Mo was hungry and let me know in no uncertain terms that it was time to get cooking. And even without a spatula, the meal was tasty. Mind you, sawdust and engine oil would have tasted good because we were both hungry.

Have not had a chance to do much of anything productive today. I did start on page 1 of Tactics Of Mistake when I got to QEH and had reached page 158 by time I left Randal Phillips polyclinic.

I could watch a movie but I don't know what to watch. If I could think of an old favourite - one I always enjoy rewatching....

Just gone eight o'clock. Got to take my Dinner Meds. And I feel like I could eat my dinner, too! Except I already have. And I also have to lay out meds for the next three days.

It just started howling down outside and we still have not done our Garden Patrol. I will do the meds thing, put the kettle to boil (no further issues, BTW), get wet on Garden Patrol, have a shower, drink my tea....

Crap! Mo just came running in, leapt on the bed an turned out to be soaking wet! Now he is using me as a towel!

andidante · Tuesday at 01:25 AM

1 hour ago, Netfoot said:

Aaarrgghh!!

When you go to the polyclinic, they want you to bring back the empty container you got last time. Why, I dong know. They can look up on the computer to see what you are due so they don't need the boxes - but they want them. So you go in and hand them the bag with all your meds in it. You wait and they call you to come pick up your new supply. Off tou go with the bag..... And when you finally get around to looking in it, you discover that they have thrown away the old boxes and the medication that was in them!

Can you take out the meds that are left in the box before you go next time? That way they won't get thrown out? What a stupid thing for them to do!! And I guess they still didn't schedule a biopsy for you?

Netfoot · Tuesday at 03:16 AM

13 hours ago, andidante said:

Can you take out the meds that are left in the box before you go next time? That way they won't get thrown out? What a stupid thing for them to do!! And I guess they still didn't schedule a biopsy for you?

Sure, but then I need to put them in something until I get back and I have to keep them separated because sometimes the pills can look similar.

Why would the pharmacist(s) think they can ask to see something of mine and rather than return if it, just throw it away? I mean they ask to see my ID card but they always return it...

Once more they have an excuse for why there was no biopsy. "The cath-lab is not working!" I dunno what that is supposed to mean.

But I asked whether there have been any biopsies done in the last 25 months, and if the answer is "Yes," then my next question is "Why wasn't it my biopsy?"

Then I said, "The next biopsy performed in this island had better be mine, or I will introduce you to the two nastiest bitches in this island. Two lawyers that would take the food out of your children's mouth if they thought they could sell it for a dollar. They specialize in medical malpractice. And the best thing about it is that I won't have to pay them because they are family."

They promised they would arrange the biopsy before my next appointment and I was given an date in 6 weeks (shortest I've ever been given before was three months). Then I asked for a list of names for everyone who was or has been on the Neuro team in the last 25 months. When they asked why, I told them I was going to give the list to an investigative reporter at The Nation (leading local newspaper).

But it's all pointless. In six weeks time they will tell me that the dog ate the biopsy's homework or something and send me on my way with a lot of promises.

By the way, the two bitches are real people, family members who wouldn't lift a finger to save my life if I begged them.

Edited Tuesday at 02:28 PM by Netfoot

andidante · Tuesday at 12:52 PM

9 hours ago, Netfoot said:

Sure, but then I need to put them in something until I get back and I have to keep them separated because sometimes the pills can look similar.

Why would the pharmacist(s) think they can ask to see something of mine and rather than return if, just throw it away? I mean they ask to see my ID card but they always return it...

Once more they have an excuse for why there was no biopsy. "The cath-lab is not working!" I dunno what that is supposed to mean.

But I asked whether there have been any biopsies done in the last 25 months, and if the answer is "Yes," then my next question is "Why wasn't it my biopsy?"

Then I said, "The next biopsy performed in this island had better be mine, or I will introduce you to the two nastiest bitches in this island. Two lawyers that would take the food out of your children's mouth if they thought they could sell it for a dollar. They specialize in medical malpractice. And the best thing about it is that I won't have to pay them because they are family."

They promised they would arrange the biopsy before my next appointment and I was given an date in 6 weeks (shortest I've ever been given before was three months). Then I asked for a list of names for everyone who was or has been on the Neuro team in the last 25 months. When they asked why, I told them I was going to give the list to an investigative reporter at The Nation (leading local newspaper).

But it's all pointless. In six weeks time they will tell me that the dog ate the biopsy's homework or something and send me on my way with a lot of promises.

By the way, the two bitches are real people, family members who wouldn't lift a finger to save my life if I begged them.

That makes sense about the pills. I am glad you told them what's what!! Hopefully that will light a fire under them.

Netfoot · Tuesday at 02:31 PM

1 hour ago, andidante said:

I am glad you told them what's what!! Hopefully that will light a fire under them.

I doubt it.

If my niece (Heidi's sister) was someone who would actually help, I wouild ask her to write a nasty letter with some scary threats. OK, it would take her 15 minutes but in practice, she wouldn't spend 15 seconds on me.

Netfoot · Wednesday at 04:03 AM

Got up this morning and prepared myself for the onslaught. It did not come. No puppy jumped into my lap, demanded back scratches and hugs, bathed my face with kisses or dug their claws into my thighs. Instead, he walked slowly into to the room, looked at me and curled up on the floor.

No internet. Not really a surprise. I was supposed to go pay the phone bill yesterday afternoon. By time I left the polyclinic in Oistins, I was so tired I forgot all about it. I popped over to the mall and paid the bill. Mo came with me to the gate and waited for my return. He did not leap three feet in the air to give kisses over the gate as I unlocked the padlock. Not like yesterday, when my friend got more than steel plates when he came around.

Lunch was a simple rice with onion & diced potato. Garlic powder and paprika. Tasted powerful good. Mo, who normally waits for me to finish so he can clean my bowl first, decided to eat his own lunch right away. He was finished before I was. Not surprising. It was really good.

Dinner was CB&CH (corned beef and cabbage hash) with garlic & paprika again. And again, it was really good. Once more, Mo tucked in without delay and finished fast.

There is not much left, food wise. A bag of onions, one medium potato & two small, most of a 2Kg bag of rice, about ¼ of a medium cabbage, ½ a tin of corned beef. I cooked a package of lentils today so I can add a scoop of them to any dish I cook that looks like it might benefit from them. Like rice or CB&C(H). And... that's about it. Eight tea bags, most of a liter of milk, and most of a bag of sugar.

I cleverly poured the used chip-oil back into the lime-juice bottle. The oil is floating on top of the lime juice. I'm not sure the oil or the lime juice is fit for use now

We will finish the bully tomorrow night. Maybe we can stretch it to lunchtime Thursday. It will take quite an effort to stretch to the weekend. There is certainly no way it will ~~ladt~~ last through the weekend.

I have $166.03 salted away to buy a tire and it looks like I will have to abandon that plan and buy food instead. 😕

I will try to stretch the grub until the weekend. There is no reason not to cook meat-free rice with lentils instead of bully. My friend said he had thought he would have some small jobs for me, at the end of the week. If he doesn't come through by Friday evening I will have to spend that tire money.

This evening, Mo was having issues standing up. Twice he struggled but when I lifted him up, he walked normally. Then I observed him get up twice and reposition himself. He doesn't stick in one place for long. Eventually, he got up and left the room.

When it was time for Garden Patrol, I went out and found him lying near the front of the garage. I told him he could stay there while I went on Patrol but he got up and lead the way. ~~Lyaer~~ Later, I heard him outside racing around and barking at some unfortunate (or maybe a shadow or a leaf blowing in the breeze). He is here with me now, alternating between curling up on the foot of the bed, looking out the window, or (like now) bogarting the pillow pyramid. He just rolled over and demanded tummy rubs.

Watched two movies today. The first was called Deep Fear, with a cast I did not know. The heroine, while single-handedly sailing a yacht around the islands she rescues a handful of people who promptly make her dive into shark-infested waters to retrieve their "product" from a sunken trawler. The best performance of the show was that of the shark, although some of the "CGI" was so bad it looked like it was done by a kid with a crayon. ~~Input~~ I put "CGI" in quotes because if you used a ZX-81 you could have produced better effects so I don't think any computers were to blame. The principle actress had little to offer except a large busom which was distracting at times, despite the fact that they were mercifully restrained and never unleashed upon us.

The other movie was The Amateur with Rami Malek, Caitríona Balfe, Laurence Fishburne and Holt McCallany. Malek works as a geeky, hacker/boffin for the CIA. His wife travels to London and is collateral damage during a terrorist attack. Malek demands sufficient training to allow him to go after the terrorists personally. His methods are unconventional.

This movie was quite good! I would certainly suggest you give it a look, if you are OK with secret-agent type movies.

No Mo has gone to lie on the tiles. I'm not sure why - it is quite cool tonight with a good breeze in the window. It's rained off and on during the day. Not for a couple hours now, but there is a definite sense of rain in the air.

Have not touched my book today. Will read a few pages before lights out. Spent the day working on a couple programs, one which I wrote a while back and a new one I wrote today. The first, MakePerl, is fed a number of arguments and writes a skeleton perl program. You can tell MakePerl what modules & packages your program will need, what options it can expect to be given, what subroutines it will include, etc.

I periodically get to work on this program to improve some feature or facility. I spent the day working on the processing of options. I can specify that the target program should expect to be given data, so --options name,size,price tells MakePerl generate code to accept data and store it in three variables, appropriately named.

So the output code would define the variables with default values like so:

$name = 0;
$size = 0;
$price = 0;

But while the size might be an integer, chances are name will be a string and price will be ~~afloat~~ a float. So I made changes to allow --options name=s,size=i,price=f which will generate code that uses more appropriate default values:

$name = "";
$size = 0;
$price = 0.0;

The new code also allows not only scalar options ($s_opt) but also array (@a_opt) and hash (%h_opt) options, with appropriate defaults. I won't go into details.

The second program I wrote today is ppp which stands for Perl Pretty-Printer. Pretty-printer programs are not at all uncommon. They read a text which is (usually) a program in a particular language and reformats it to conform to layout rules that should make the code easier to read and understand.

The issue I have is that the console uses a standard tab-width of eight as does the vi editor. But I prefer to set my usual programming editor (Kate) to have a much shorter tab-width, like 2 or 3. I find the code easier to read if the indents I use to indicate code structure are not so deep. Because of the differences in tab-width between vi and Kate, sometimes programs ends up with different parts of the code using different tab-widths. I wrote ppp to read in perl source code and output it again but with standardized tabs.

It turned out not to be as easy a task as I thought. It needs work. But I think I can get it to appoint of minimal usefulness fairly easily. After that, it will probably get an occasional improvement when I need it to do more.

Don't want to shower. It is cool and there is a breeze in the window. But my feet are dirty. I walked all over to the mall today In Crocs with vent holes in the bottom as well as the top! Going to do that now.

Mo just jumped up and is looking out the window. Found a nice, big piece of razor-sharp swarf in bed this afternoon....

Edited Wednesday at 01:33 PM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Wednesday at 04:38 PM

Went to cook lunch. A small piece of corned beef, rice, onion and lentils. Cooking has been tricky with no spatula. I've been using a ladle instead. That takes some doing.

No ladle. Not in the sink, nor on the stove, nor on any counter. Found it out by the gate. 😐 Puppy would have gotten at least serious talking to. Except he was deeply ensconced in his Fortress of Solitude & Dust-Bunnies.

Had planned to do some work on my ppp program but thought to myself: "Am I reinventing the wheel?" Answer: Yes. The perl module Perl::Tidy comes with a program called perltidy (which uses the Perl::Tidy module) that will pretty-print a perl program. It is extremely powerful and flexible. It comes with documentation on how to set up and configure the program to produce exactly the formatted output you need/want. That documentation is 5,447 lines long. It will take me a while to absorb that and set up a suitable configuration file. But probably not as long as writing a while new program myself.

A lot of the coding I do is for entertainment as much as utility. But I'm not an idiot. I am not going to rewrite a 7,882 line perl program just because.

So my plans for the day being made redundant, I may just watch some movies & read my book.

Edited Thursday at 12:43 AM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Thursday at 02:34 AM

So after a successful lunch, I made the same thing for dinner. Only, for a slight change I added a couple teaspoons of curry powder

I ate mine but Mo only ate about half of his. Mind you, he polished off a large lunch, so perhaps he will return to his dinner later in the evening. Curry may not be his favorite, ~~bug~~ but he has no problem eating curried foods, especially when the amount of curry is so small.

As planned, I've been watching some action movies:

Mandy stars Nicolas Cage who lives a reclusive life in the woods with his GF. When she is kidnapped by a cult and subsequently killed, Cage goes postal. Now, I know that Cage gets a lot of criticism but I actually like him. He has been in several good films. Lord Of War was good. I even liked National Treasure.

But I think I like Next best, where he played a magician living in Vegas, who can see two minutes into the future. He uses this ability to make medium sized wins at the casinos, from time to time. But casino security is after him. So the FBI in the form of Julianne Moore, who wants to use his powers to help stop foreign nuclear terrorists. And all he wants is to get with Jessica Biel, the girl from his visions.

But back to Mandy, a poor movie with a dull plot and uninteresting script. The production quality is so poor it looks like it was filmed with an iPhone. And the periodic inexplicable colour-washing of lengthy scenes in red, green, blue (but mostly red) looks like it was done on the iPhone as well.

I'd certainly recommend any of the three I've just mentioned, but not Mandy. Read a book instead.

Next was The Italian Job, a heist movie in which the stolen loot (bullion) is transported away in Minis. Now, the 1969 movie starred Michael Caine and several other notables of the day, like Noël Coward and even comedian Benny Hill!

Of course, for me, the real stars if of the show were the three 1275cc Mini Cooper S cars in red, white & blue. I'm talking classic Minis here, like my first ever car - only with the hot engines in, (not 848cc units like my old car had). I'm talking the oval shaped rear lights, later replaced with rectangular ones, and the sliding windows! Again, later replaced with wind-up ones. (Those wind-up windows reduced the size of the interior by 6-8" in width. Not good in a car that was only 10 foot long, from bumper to bumper.

But the movie I watched today was the 2003 version starring Mark Wahlberg, Donald Sutherland and Charlize Theron, Edward Norton and Jason Statham. All actors I like well enough. Unfortunately, they used the later Minis built by BMW with godnozewot engines in. Certainly not ye olde A-series engines. These are the Minis you are probably familiar with, having seen them on the road. Horrible, bloated things, almost two feet longer and almost a foot wider, not to mention 150 lbs. heavier than the classics.

And the plot left a bit in the asking. The original had a clean, straightforward plot-line, but I guess they felt they had to improve it by adding in a bunch of complications

If you want to watch a clever heist movie with a touch of comedy and some great getaway-driving scenes with iconic vehicles, of the type which won the Monte Carlo Rally three times, look for the 1969 version. It's by far the better of the two.

The third movie I watched was Haywire. This stars Gina Carano as a secret agent who is betrayed by her own agency and does not take the insult lightly. There are supporting roles for Michael Douglas, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, and Michael Fassbender, all actors I like.

Carano gets physical in this movie and for once, it isn't a 5'2", 95 lb. girl-boss effortlessly beating up 6'4", 235 lb. male opponents without mussing her hair. The fights look believable and Carano takes her fair share of hits.

And finally, Léon: The Professional starring Jean Reno as a seedy hit-man and features a Gary Oldman who plays the corrupt DEA agent (and won accolades for his performance). Also, for her movie debut, Natalie Portman at age 13 plays the girl from next door that Léon/Reno adopts when the remainder of her family gets killed.

This is such a well know movie I am sure everyone will have seen it. If you have not, do so without delay!

Now I will persuade the puppy to join me on Garden Patrol, take a shower while my tea is drawing, and ~~traf~~ read my book.

(My phone hung/crashed/rebooted three times during the writing of that last sentence.)

Edited Thursday at 04:26 AM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Yest. at 01:53 AM

Blood sugar terrible this morning. Dunno why. When I had condensed milk for dinner it was only 5.5 mmol /L the next day. But yesterday, when I ate rice rice, this morning it was 7.6 mmol/L and I had to use the --force switch on my program to get it to accept such a high value and not reject it as a typo!

Been exploring that perltidy program I told you about. I have been tweaking settings and I'm fairly happy with it so far. Only one issue I've spotted.

I like my conditionals to be "tight" so they should be formatted like this:

if ($found && ($amount < 6)) {...}

With the brackets tight around their contents. But function calls I prefer less tightness:

$found = count_files( $location );

with a space separating the brackets from the argument(s) contained therein.

I know it's inconsistent but that's just how I like it. Unfortunately, when I use the -pt=2 switch, I get the highest level of tightness on both conditionals and function calls. Whereas if I use -pt=0 I get the lower level of tightness on both. (-pt=2 gives subtle differences which I won't get into, sufficient to say it doesn't help.)

There are separate switches for braces (-bt=#) and square brackets (-sbt=#) but no -cpt=# and -spt=# for conditional parenthesis tightness and subroutine parenthesis tightness separately. Only -pt=# for parenthesis tightness, which affects them both.

I will have to decide which I want to settle for.

Cooked our last piece of corned beef in rice with onion and lentils.l, for dinner.

Not very big. Less than ½" thick.

Had the last of the cooked lentils for lunch, so this afternoon I had to cook the last package of lentils in the house. Tomorrow, it's rice with onion and lentils. And the bag of rice doesn't have more than two meals in it.

There is also a full bag of flour in the freezer. 2Kg. I could make fry-bread but there is no butter (peanut or otherwise), jam, or anything else that could be eaten with the fry-bread.

Tomorrow is Friday and Popular will be a madhouse after lunch and people collect their pay and go shopping. I will need food for the weekend. There are only about 3-4 teabags left, and milk and sugar are starting to run low.

There is no cheese, eggs, bread or biscuits. All the potatoes and pasta are gone. Only enough rice for two meals so by tomorrow night that will all be gonecas well. There is no bully, tuna, sausages, mince or any other type of meat. No carrots, cabbage, cucumbers, broccoli, pak choy, or any type of vegetables other than onions, of which we have about six. No tinned corn, channa, black or red beans or any other type of tinned foods.

Essentially the cupboard is bare. The small woodworking job has not materialized (but see later). It might come tomorrow, late in the afternoon. Or it might not come until the end of next week. I have had an enquiry about making some corner braces/brackets, 8-10 in number. The person told me they could mot say for sure how many, nor how tall, wide or thick, whether they wanted them made from pine, cedar, mahogany.... So at the present there is no telling what the job will entail, if it materialized, nor how much it will be worth. All I can be fairly sure of is that it won't be soon.

So I don't think I have any choice but to go out tomorrow before the rush at Popular and spend the tire money on food. 😥 I am not happy about this. Next Friday I get another welfare cheque but all of that will have to go towards the phone bill. I paid it on Monday but on Tuesday I received notification that the next month's bill had dropped.

I'm being eaten alive by mosquitoes again. And before the battery on this phone gets any lower and it starts rebooting itself, I'm posting this and contemplating Garden Patrol, a mug and a movie.

Edited Yest. at 10:57 AM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Yest. at 02:41 AM

Went on Garden Patrol. Mo was already patrolling. With one of my Crocs.

Encountered a big centipede. Big is relative. I once saw a centipede in Trinidad that was 13+" long and over 1" wide in the body. I am fairly sure a bite from that one would kill a grown man. Tonight's "forty-leg" was only about 6" long and no more than ½" wide in the body. Only a small child (or a pilfering puppy) would be endangered by a bite. A grown man would probably survive.

I stomped it with the heel of my shoe and fortunately it did not enter through the vent hole in the sole. It became very agitated and began tying itself in knots and crawling away through the grass. I ran off for something to deliver the coup de grâce and returned with a blade a few moments later to discover... that the beast had vanished in the grass.

Here's hoping the stomp I gave it is sufficient to bring about termination. Otherwise, it might crawl through my bedroom window tonight and snuggle up in bed with me!

Edited Yest. at 10:58 AM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Yest. at 03:56 AM

Not sure how, but the previous post was duplicated here. My bad.

Edited Yest. at 10:59 AM by Netfoot

Netfoot · Yest. at 04:51 AM

Just finished watching Kon-Tiki, the 2012 movie telling the tale of Thor Heyerdahl's 5000+ mile journey from Peru to Polynesia on a balsa raft along with five companions. The goal of that journey was to show that it was possible that the Pacific islands had been populated by migration westward from South America, rather than eastward from the orient.

I met Mr. Heyerdahl on 13th July, 1970 and shook his hand. That was the day after he arrived here on Ra-II, a papyrus reed boat, having journeyed roughly 3,750 miles from Morocco. The purpose was to show that pre-colombian trans-Atlantic crossings were not impossible. Traveling with six human companions and a monkey, they completed the journey in 57 days. The local authorities told them that the monkey would not be allowed to land here. The crew avowed that the monkey had been eaten during the closing days of the journey.

For many years I had a short piece of papyrus reed from the hull of Ra-II which was given to me as a souvenir. Sadly, it was destroyed by the fire that destroyed pretty much everything I owned, back in 1991.

Their first attempt at a crossing failed when their vessel, Ra, began to fall apart at sea because the builders had omitted one component shown in the ancient drawings they used as a blueprint.

By the way, I know for a fact that they lied about eating the monkey.

Edited Yest. at 11:05 AM by Netfoot

Netfoot · 2025-06-20T19:01:27Z

Midday had passed so I set off for Popular. I knew the car was very light on fuel, so I planned to stop at the station for $10 on the way.

Turned right onto the gentle downgrade that leads to Popular... and the car died.

The gauge sensor & pickup line are at the rear of the tank. When you go up a hill, the gas flows back in the tank. The gauge increases a hair. When you are going down a hill, the gas flows forward, away from the pickup and the sensor. The gauge goes down a little.

If your tank is extremely empty, going down hill makes the gas flow forward away from the pickup and the engine dies. That is exactly what happened to me.

With no gas reaching the engine as the van was pointed down hill, I coasted down, past Kooyman on the left, and down to the roundabout on the highway. Fortunately, there were no cars speeding along the highway so I kept rolling across the highway.

And next on my right was the station. A steep downgrade to enter, but a slight upgrade to reach the pump. I sat on the upgrade and the last teaspoon of gas flowed back in the tank, reached the pickup and allowed me to start the engine. But the idiot at the pump decided to bake a loaf of bread (or something that took nearly as long) before driving off. So by time I could drive the last 10 feet to the pump..... the engine died again because the tank was really empty.

I had a can in the van (and apparently a poetic heart) so $10 in gas went into that, was transported 10 feet to the van and poured into the tank.

Did the van start after that? Of course not. When you run your vehicle completely out of gas, the last thing the engine drinks as it dies is all the sludge and condensate (water) out of the very bottom of the tank. When you fill up again, the engine still has the crap in it's mouth so you have to clear that and get some fresh fuel in there before she will go again. A couple guys pushed me away from the pump (so nobody would think I was baking bread) and a minute of cranking & pumping the throttle and I was off to Popular (next down the hill from the station, on the right).

So starting with $1.11 and the tire money of $166.03 and after paying $10 for the gas, I had $157.14 available to spend at Popular. No luxuries. Food that we can stretch for as many days as possible.

50 teabags
1.8Kg sugar
1L milk
PB&J
2 lentils (400gr)
Garlic powder
Ketchup
4Kg rice
6 corned beef
4 cavatappi (400gr)
2 spaghetti (400gr)
Mayo
8lb potatoes
2lb carrots
0.835Kg cucumbers
2.5Kg onions
0.72Kg cabbage

Total $141.97 and $15.17 left in the bank. No, mayo is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Didn't buy bread but I can make fry-bread now, coz I got some PB&J to eat it with.

Who needs tires anyhow? At least we got food for the weekend and perhaps longer. I certainly hope longer......

Edited 20 hours ago by Netfoot

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