It's about 2.30 am on Saturday morning, and I still haven't gone to bed. Working too hard, not able to switch off my mind and relax. So, I'm afraid there's no Snippet today; instead, I'll have a last cup of tea, then head to bed and just lie there until my eyes decide it's OK to close.
Peter
I'm updating the publication text of various books published by my wife and myself; fixing errors spotted by readers, re-formatting sections, and so on. (Don't worry: the content and storylines won't change at all!) This is occupying a lot of my time at the moment, so I won't be posting more blog content for the rest of today. Please amuse yourself with the bloggers in the sidebar. They write good, too!
Peter
I've noted in the past that there are times when Google simply doesn't seem to know what to do with Comments on this blog (and others). The Blogger platform sometimes deletes comments as soon as they're made, before I get a chance to view them; at other times, it memory-holes comments that have already appeared on the blog.
Now - at least, for the past week or two - Blogger appears to be sending some perfectly valid comments to Spam, without giving me a chance to moderate them. What's worse, they appear to be mostly by regular commenters here, who've established a good track record of no spam comments, no profanity, etc. - in other words, no reason to block them or their comments. I've "un-spammed" at least six comments like that over the past couple of days, and am now forced to manually check my Spam folder a couple of times a day to see whether any others have been redirected there.
I've no idea why this is happening. I'm very frustrated by it, but the Blogger team don't appear to answer queries at the best of times, so I don't know whether they'll provide any explanation this time round. I'm sorry for any heartburn this causes commenters - but again, I have no idea why it's happening.
Peter
I overdid it yesterday, sorting out things at home and trying to catch up with what's been neglected during my weeks of medical treatment. As a result, I'll have to head to the doctor this morning to check on a couple of backward steps, and see if anything is needed to fix them.
Blogging will be interrupted until I get back. More later.
Peter
My deepest thanks to everyone who kept me in thought and prayer for my procedure yesterday. It was partially successful, but the surgeon discovered additional problems that prevented him from completing it. I'm going to have to go back next week for additional tests, followed by another procedure. I hope that will deal with the current problem, but that remains to be seen.
I'll also have to check on the costs involved. We could cope with the co-pay (several thousand dollars) for one procedure, but a second (assuming it costs a similar amount) will be cause for concern, as will a different and much more complex procedure likely to be needed soon. I know some of my European and Canadian readers will likely argue that the subsidized cost of national health care in their countries makes such procedures much more affordable, but it can also take months (sometimes even years) to get the attention one needs. Here, it's more expensive but faster, and (unlike Canada) I don't have to put up with bureaucrats encouraging me to kill myself instead, to save money for the health care system. (I don't think they'd appreciate my response.)
Meanwhile, I'm in a lot of pain, resting at home and trying to cope with the aftereffects of the first procedure. I think my wife is rapidly building up her sainthood points as she puts up with my grumpiness, helps me gently and lovingly to get around and do what I can, and proves every time how lucky (and wise) I was to marry her. I'd hate to be facing this without her love and support.
Blogging will be sparse for the next few days, because my sleep schedule and ability to sit at the computer are subject to change without notice. I'll see about putting up something more substantial later today, mobility and pain level permitting.
Thanks again for your prayers. Please keep them coming!
Peter
Tomorrow morning, Wednesday 7th May, I'm scheduled to undergo a surgical procedure. I hope to be out of hospital the same day, if all goes well, followed by a week or two of recovery at home, probably with some home health nursing thrown in. If all goes well, it should be a relatively simple procedure; but there are ramifications that may turn it into something much more complicated. The surgeon won't know until he gets in there and can take a look. I'll be very grateful for your prayers for healing, please.
I won't be blogging tomorrow, and possibly for a day or two after that, depending on how things go. While I'm offline, please amuse yourselves with the bloggers listed in my sidebar. I'll be back online as soon as I can manage it.
Thanks, y'all. Enjoy the peace and quiet while I'm gone.
Peter
Friends, several times in the past I've had to post reminders that I won't allow foul language, extremism, xenophobia, calls to violence and suchlike in my comments here. That's one of the reasons I moderate every comment, burdensome though it is to have to revisit that section several times a day to approve or delete reader input.
I've recently seen an upsurge in what I think is "fedposting" - comments that call on us to "shoot police in the face", or attack political operatives who are imposing policies we don't like, or throw out of helicopters anyone in general with whom we disagree. Some of them have been over-the-top foul, too, but most are seemingly just the rantings of people who've had enough, and aren't going to take it any more.
I don't believe this is simply emotion working its way out. I think this is an organized, deliberate effort to "poison the well" for all conservative and middle-of-the-road media, by providing ammunition to declare them "extremist" or "racist" or something like that - in other words, providing justification for the powers that be to shut them down. The same thing appears to be happening across many other social media sites; so many that I can't believe it's coincidental. This is planned.
Friends, I will not, repeat, not tolerate such comments here. I deleted four of them just this morning. This blog will remain a "free speech zone" where anyone is welcome to say anything, provided it doesn't contravene the constitution and laws of the United States or the basic Christian moral code that I observe. Calls to kill political and other opponents are far outside both categories, and won't be published at all. The same goes for comments that denigrate other religions or cultures or political views just because they're different, rather than providing rational, reasoned argument why they may or may not be acceptable in this, or that, or the other society. Ditto for profanity, pornography, spam and the like.
Please, keep it family-friendly if possible, and keep it rational and reasoned, and keep it lawful and ethical. If we all do that, there won't be any problem. If a few don't . . . too bad. My blog, my rules. Start your own blog, where you can do as you please.
Peter
This weekend a number of friends of the North Texas Troublemakers (of which my wife and I are members, too) are gathering at our annual invitation-only "Foolzcon" to have fun, eat too much, and generally kick back and relax together. It's normally held nearer April Fool's Day (hence the name), but this year other events intervened, so we pushed it back a few weeks.
We're going to be involved in the fun and games, and we have house guests who've come here to join us, so I won't be putting up blog posts this weekend. Normal service will be resumed on Monday. Meanwhile, enjoy yourselves with the bloggers in the sidebar. They write good, too!
Peter
Friends, most of you know that the reason I instituted moderation of all comments on this blog was because spammers were becoming a bigger and bigger problem. I couldn't rely on Blogger to catch them all, so I have to do it myself. I'd rather not - it takes effort to do so, and time I'd rather devote to other things - but it was the only way I could stay on top of the problem. (I've moderated 28 spam comments in the last five days alone.)
However, it looks like it was a worthwhile policy even without the spam problem, thanks to the increasing polarization of our society and the weirdness that's being reinforced by online echo chambers. Too many commenters appear to be listening only to their own thoughts and those of people who see the world as they do, whether or not that perspective has anything to do with reality. Trouble is, they insist on exporting those thoughts and that weirdness to everybody else, including forums such as the Comment sections on this blog. This morning, when I woke up and sat down at the computer to moderate overnight comments, I had to discard several proclaiming that all the problems of the world are caused by the Jews, or the whites, or the blacks, or Democrats, or Communists, or women who refuse to be "traditional wives", or . . . you get the idea.
Folks, I try to allow most people to comment freely on what they think. They, as we, have the right to speak their minds. However, they do not have the right to use my blog as a propaganda outlet to beat me (and the rest of us) over the head with their particular schtick. Therefore, I deleted all such comments, and I'll continue to do so. The same applies to disjointed comments that make no logical sense, or have nothing to do with the topic under discussion. Why inflict them on my readers? We have better things to do with our time.
(Some comments don't make it to my inbox at all. Every now and again I get complaints from people who allege that I've deleted their comment, only for me to check the files and find it didn't arrive at all. Blogger does that sometimes - it's been a known problem for years. I have no idea how to fix it.)
Rational, reasonable comments and discussion from people who've clearly thought about the subject under discussion are more than welcome, even if their viewpoint or perspective is the opposite of my own. I can be wrong too, you know! However, I won't allow this blog to become a forum for extremism in any form, or an echo chamber for way-out-there muck and murk that might stick to our metaphorical walls. We don't need that here - and as the online janitor, I flush it away whenever I come across it.
That may offend some readers, particularly those with a particular ideological axe to grind: but that's the way it is here. If you want to do things differently, please start your own blog and have at it.
Peter
I have to head down to the metromess (DFW) to collect some bookcases. I'd made alternate arrangements, but thanks to utterly ridiculous store policies, it turns out that nobody except me can collect the goods ordered over the Internet. (Why IKEA is so absolutely anal and unhelpful about dealing with online orders, I have no idea. I can only suspect they prefer you to drive to the store and do things in person. I won't be ordering online from them again, I can tell you!)
Anyway, that means I won't have time to put up more blog posts this morning. Please amuse yourselves with the blogs listed in the sidebar. Thanks!
Peter
The ServiceMaster team completed repair work on our walls yesterday, so now it's on to the floor. The contractor reported that the new flooring arrived yesterday, so they're getting ready to remove all the old tile and other detritus and prepare the concrete sub-floor. That job will hopefully be completed by the middle of next week or thereabouts, after which we have all the fun and games of bringing back everything we took out to make space for the repairs, and getting things back into some semblance of order. It's almost as bad as moving house, and neither of us are enjoying the disruption (to put it mildly).
As part of the fun (?), we'll have to remove the shelving in our "pantry", which is a large built-in double-door cupboard affair. The tile floor extends into the pantry, so to replace it, everything inside has to come out, including the built-in wood shelves. We'll replace them with some steel wire shelves (already bought). A friend will visit tomorrow to help box up the pantry, move the boxes out of the way, and break down the shelves. I expect much good-natured abuse in the process (the existing shelves look to have been knocked together out of scrap wood by the previous owners, who definitely did not do a good job of all the little and not-so-little "projects" they left behind for us. Slowly but surely we're tearing them out and replacing them with something more fit for purpose, but it'll take a while to get it all done.
The good news is, I expect to have a little more time for blogging over the next couple of days, until the work ramps up again. Look for more posts today and tomorrow at least.
Peter
The repairs to our home's drywall, closing panels removed by ServiceMaster to dry out the insulation after our little flood encounter last November, are proceeding apace. The new drywall is in place and "mudded", and the team will be back today to re-mud (is that even a thing?), sand the edges smooth, and prepare the walls for painting. That'll happen either this afternoon or (more likely) tomorrow, whereupon the ServiceMaster repair team will step back for a week or so to allow our new floor to be laid. When that's done, the final step will be to install baseboard over the flooring and tidy up any last bits and pieces.
It's taken a lot longer than I anticipated to get everything organized. Just finding a contractor was hard enough; most wanted three to four times more than ServiceMaster is charging, and would only undertake to fit us in around other, larger jobs. Very frustrating, that. At any rate, we finally got things scheduled, only for both my wife and myself to come down with this year's crud (which, as I've observed earlier, is the worst annual crud I've encountered since coming to this country for the first time in 1996). Even now, after almost six weeks fighting it, neither of us is yet fully recovered, and don't expect to be for some weeks yet. Needless to say, we didn't want to be yet another plague vector for our poor contractors, so we had to delay proceedings until we were no longer infectious.
Now to find out whether the flooring wholesalers kept their promise and delivered our flooring as promised. The previous lot didn't - it seems making promises and keeping them are distinctly variable propositions, explained away by the catch-all "supply chain issues". They've gotten so bad that a couple of local contractors have actually shelved plans to build new housing developments, because they can't be sure of getting the parts, appliances and bits and pieces they need, when and where they need them. It's bad enough for us, with a few thousand dollars in repairs, so when developments in the seven-figure range are impacted, I have a great deal of sympathy for the businessmen involved.
Oh, well . . . onward!
Peter
This week ServiceMaster will be repairing the holes they made in our walls to dry out the house after our little flood adventure last year. Hopefully, that'll be done by the end of the week.
While that's going on, we've had to choose different flooring from that we originally selected, because the wholesaler lied to our dealer and told him he could deliver the quantity required - but couldn't. We spent a couple of weeks looking through alternatives, contacting wholesalers and demanding assurances that our choices were available, and trying to ensure we weren't left dangling again. All being well, our selected flooring should be in town by the end of this week. That means next week will be taken up with scraping off the old tile, smoothing and leveling the floor, and laying new vinyl plank flooring in our kitchen and dining area. (We've already taken care of the other bits and pieces.)
Once all that's done, hopefully within ten days to two weeks from today, we'll have ServiceMaster make a final pass to install new baseboard on top of the new flooring: then it's hey-ho to move everything back into the kitchen and pantry, and start living in the house again, so to speak.
Unfortunately, all this work means it's going to be a very disorganized couple of weeks. I'll try to put up a blog post or two as and when I have time, but regular schedules simply can't be maintained for a few days. Please excuse the disorganization, and enjoy the bloggers listed in the sidebar.
Peter
ServiceMaster should be here within a day or two to fix the drywall they cut open to dry out the house after our little adventure with our previous dishwasher. Yesterday a friend helped me move several large, heavy bookcases from their usual place to standby locations, so that a crack in the drywall behind them can be repaired as part of the process. While that's being done, I'm going to try to go through my library and toss over a thousand books. We cut down by two-thirds moving here nine years ago, but even so, they've expanded a bit, and it's a lot of work to keep them all dusted and organized. As I get older, I'm no longer up to that; so it makes sense to thin the collection. Anything essential will be kept, of course, or replaced with an e-book edition.
Unfortunately, that means blogging will be light today. Please amuse yourselves with the bloggers in the sidebar. I hope to be writing again by tomorrow morning.
Onward!
Peter
My wife's been battling a sinus infection for over a week, and I guess my turn has come around. I was coughing and spluttering and feeling miserable all yesterday, and didn't sleep well last night. I'm really not in a fit state for blogging right now.
I'll try to put up something later this morning, once the medication kicks in and my nose has stopped dripping on the keyboard. Until then, please amuse yourselves with the blogs listed in the sidebar.
Thanks.
Peter
I'm going to take a brief break from blogging over Thanksgiving. I've had a very busy couple of weeks sorting out repairs after our water leak, and I'm pretty tired. I need a rest. Therefore, normal blogging will resume on Monday, November 27th.
Please enjoy your Thanksgiving celebrations, and visit the blogs mentioned in my sidebar. They'll keep you entertained during my absence.
See you in a few days.
Peter
Woke up to a very wet (sodden!) kitchen floor, and an overflowing dishwasher. I don't think it's a blocked drain, or something simple like that, because when emptied, the dishwasher keeps filling up again. It'll be a plumber day, I'm afraid, and possibly a replacement dishwasher.
That being the case, and working around mopping, pumping, buckets and two curious cats who Want. To. Help., I suspect I won't have much time for blogging today. Please amuse yourselves with the bloggers in the sidebar. They write good, too!
Peter
EDITED TO ADD: 09h50 - Plumber has been and gone. Leak stopped. Now for insurance assessment of damage, and getting hold of an appliance service company to fix/replace the dishwasher. So far, so good.
I've had a busy week, and haven't been able to take the time to transcribe an excerpt for the usual Saturday Snippet feature. Please amuse yourselves with the bloggers listed in the sidebar. They write good, too!
Thanks.
Peter
Miss D. and I got home safely on Thursday evening. We're settling back into our domestic routine, with our cat masters companions helping us by demanding cuddles, treats and suchlike at frequent intervals. (It's our fault, of course: we abandoned them for over a week, after all, so we have to make up for all they missed while we were away!)
We're both tired, and I haven't had enough time to prepare a Saturday Snippet post this week: so I'm taking today off blogging. I'll have a Sunday Morning Music post tomorrow.
Peter
The Blogorado crowd are on the move again for our annual get-together in the wilds of Colorado (bloggers + Colorado = Blogorado, if you see what I mean; you'll find past articles about earlier Blogorado gatherings here). Miss D. and I will be joining the fun and games, leaving our home and our cats to the tender mercies of friends, and then taking a few days off for some writing research in the Kansas City area. In particular, we want to see the Arabia Steamboat Museum, which is a time capsule of the early, pre-Civil-War Old West period of American history. The story of the paddle-wheel steamer Arabia, lost with its cargo for well over a century until its rediscovery deep beneath a Kansas wheat field, may be read here.
We'll be away for about ten days, starting this morning. I'll try to blog something every day, but that'll depend on the availability of time and Internet facilities. Normal blogging should resume from about 15 October, if all goes well.
Please keep us in your prayers for traveling mercies, as always. Thanks!
Peter
