Saturday, January 6, 2001

5:10a
     I've been awake since 3:00, more or less, maybe an hour before that. I slept on the floor again after a couple of nights on the bed. My normal routine is all messed up again. So about 4:00 I just went ahead and got up, mumbling about how it's useless to try to get a good nights rest anymore.
     Winnie sent a link to the National Geographic article about Robin Lee Graham. That was interesting to read, a teenager roaming the seas, it seems like a different life time back then in the 1960s. I had forgotten he was the same age as me too, another '49er.
     So, the last of last year is history, the first of this year is history as well. I suppose it was only dreaming about being able to do something special for the change in year, decade, century and millenium. Those last 'twist and 'tween days that don't belong to any time.
     New Year's Eve day and evening was spent keeping up with what was happening with uncle DM. Leander came up that afternoon and evening. We sat in the den and had cheese ball and crackers for the celebration. Then she drove on back to her home.
     We went on to bed about the usual time. I had been outside a couple of times and saw a few fireworks off toward Brown's Mountain. While getting ready for bed I heard a hoot owl outside, nature's fireworks I suppose. Then it was sleep out the old and sleep in the new, just like every other year.
     New Year's Day was normal, normal lunch menu, normal parade, normal football that went mostly unwatched. Normal visits to the hospital.
     It was last week when I had one of those feelings of just giving up. There's always going to be something going wrong, nothing's ever going to work out good or right. I just don't care or want to care anymore. Something bad is always going to happen so might as well just expect it.
     ....
     Robert sent some, ... a lot of pictures of the trip he and Dan made last Fall. I looked through half of them last night. The countryside, mountains and lakes looked so different than what's around here. I guess one could have spent a day or two exploring each vista, instead of the few minutes to pause and look and take a picture. That would have been a real Journey of A Thousand Days. I think he said he used 70 something rolls of film, that would be 70 x 36 pictures x 2 days exploring per picture.
     ....
     I guess it's time to start stirring around more, eat a bowl of cereal, a couple of toaster waffles. Maybe by the time I finish that it'll be closer to the time I was suppose to wake up and start the morning. If I was at my house I'd already have done all my morning routine and laid back down. But I've got to wait till it's not so early to make too much noise and distrub Mom's rest.
     So much for the first entry of this year.

Thursday, January 11, 2001

6:15a
     Woke up at 2:45, was half awake before then too, got up at 4:00, took 40 minutes to get dressed, blankets folded, start coffee and computer, smoke half a cig out on the porch, sit down to check email and such.
     Now I've finished most of the morning stuff, spent longer at this computer trying to get a program to work. It's really time to start getting ready for work and such.
     Learned something about my website this morning. I suppose it'll be half interesting for the next few days. Just to see where it'll lead. Probably a coincidental timing of events but one never knows.
     So anyway, I'm out of here, again.

Friday, January 12, 2001

4:55a
     Just ditto yesterday's entry. I really can't think of anything new to write about.
5:55a
     Stagnation, Stagnate Society. It's been in my thinking, again, recently, mostly related to news media. Fundamentally, nothing has changed, not in decades just past nor in centuries either. The whole world is in mid-life's rut of living.
     The news is composed of death, desease and destruction. Hasn't that been the status quo for humanity?
     I've often compared how an abusive adult, parent, guardian, or other can tell a child they're dumb, stupid, careless, never going to amount to anything all their young life. Such individuals would be prosecuted for child mental child abuse. But that's exactly what the news media has done to society, they're the abusive adult and we're the helpless child. Such individuals would be considered mentally ill, the news media is mentally ill.
     There's also conditioned thinking. We've been conditioned to think and act as we do, whether or not it's a conscious thought. The news media, politicians and political entities, and other groupings have their own conditioned line of thinking.
     There's a fatal traffic accident ... go make images of the bloody, tangled mess and force them upon everyone's thinking. Shove that camera up in some grieving mother's face and use her to invoke emotion within the news viewers. But don't do such when one of their own dies from a traffic accident.
     It's been the same issues, the exact same topics and keywords for decades now. Breast cancer, prostate cancer, traffic accidents drunk or otherwise, guns and crime, building fires, earthquakes, wars, hate, corruption, .... But that's the way the news mind thinks, that's they way they've been taught in college journalism classes.
     It makes little diff, the last 50 years, the last 100 years, the last 1000 years. There's been no fundamental change in civilization's thinking.

Monday, January 15, 2001

6:05a
     During the space program of the 1960s we were suppose to have a Lunar colony by the 1980s, a Mars expedition by 2000. Broken projections, it was really just a scam, just like the space station, more money and resources expended on development than the original cost of the whole project back in the 1970s and 1980s.
     It's a capitalist society ... profit the motivation ... greed the prime mover.
     But I'm just an ignorant, mountain boy and not suppose to know stuff like that. I wasn't told such by a teacher while I sat behind a desk in her classroom, therefore, it's illigitimate knowledge.
     Everything is so preditiable when it's about politics, there will be the usual hype talk during the address this Saturday, more projections about how great things will be during the next adminstration, the same projections by the past 10 presidents, the same broken projections. The politicians and news reporters believe their own self hype talk more than any others.
     Stagnation.

Thursday, January 18, 2001

6:05a
     Let's see, what can I write about without jinxing whatever it is I'll write about.
     Been reading Robert's travel journal, I'm more than half way through it now. It was a great trip for them, some mini-adventures. I guess if you want to meet someone in an unknown town, the first service station on the right is as good a place as any. Sometimes though, just the first service station would have been a better place, some towns dont have one on the right.
     Things have been better than normal around here the past few days, the weather's been nice too. Mom seems to be in a better mood recently too. DM is still weak but recovering, at least I hope so. Leander's family had some misadventures recently. But there's always something going wrong somewhere.
     I guess that's all for now. Gotta get this uploaded and get on with getting ready.

Sunday, January 21, 2001

6:30a
     Yesterday afternoon I rode up to Lake Jocassee, probably the second time I've gone for a ride since last Fall. The lake looked like it was even lower than a couple of years ago when I was up there. It was cold and windy and still the boat ramp parking area was full of trucks and trailers. The long, floating dock was almost in the mud.
     I went on over to the far ramps where I use to spend my time. It looked even lower there too. I looked for that pile of rocks I made when I went on that walk around the lake shore. It appears others have added to it 'cause I didn't put that many up in a pile. It was almost conical in shape. I took my binoclars with me too and looked through them. Still I'd have to walk around there to make sure. So anyway, there's something out there that just doesn't look natural and I started it. It's made me think how some of the really old big mounds got started, just one person with a few rocks, and then others come along years later and add more rocks.
     I finished reading Robert's travel journal Friday afternoon. Got off work early and didn't start anything else, so I read it. Toward the end he was up in Pisgah where he hiked around in the '60s, that made those rememberances type feelings happen, something like when I think of the past years.
     That's all for now. Might as well get on with the usual Sunday morning routines.

Tuesday, January 23, 2001

5:45a
     There's a couple of things I've thought about writing about, another ThoughtSmithing type thing, a "retirement" book, and then again that blast the news media and bad society thing too. ... but you know ... I'll never get a round to it.
     ... but I'm just an ignorant mountain boy. Make Do Engineering and Technology. The Fall of Modern Civilizaton by the Big Bad News and Entertainment Media.
     Let me see if I've got this straight. Up on the back steps of the us capitol, there they all stood, the chief supreme court justice, the president elect, the Christain ministers and that bible, and they prayed, a nationally recogonized lead prayer. And then there was that thing back in the Fall about student lead prayer at a football game on school property. There's something hypocritical about it all. ... but I'm just an ignorant mountain boy and not suppose to see that I guess.
     Then there's all them there rich folk, partying and celebrating, like hey look we bought ourselves another president, congress, and country again. Yeah, special interest lobbists they're the problem in government. Not really, lobbist wouldn't be anybody if those senators and representatives wouldn't take the money. ... but I'm just an ignorant mountain boy and not suppose to see that I guess.
     That's all for now. Bye.

Wednesday, January 24, 2001

6:10a
     This computer messed up during turnon, stuff like that makes me wonder about a spy bug or something.
     The talk of moving everyone to Anderson started last week. That had always been a possiblitiy or more like probability. It'll happen before the end of the year, or Summer even. Thiry-five miles, more or less, to Anderson. I'll have to start my morning routine earlier and be on the road by six. Making noise that early in Mom's house is going to be more bothersome then.
     Besides that, work is really slow, cutbacks and all the usual stuff. I've been keeping busy with that program I've been piecing together, basic mechanical engineering problems and plotting.
     Got email from Daniel, he's started his new job and still looking for a place to live. It sounds realy bad around that city, old and worn down.
     That's all.

Thursday, January 25, 2001

6:10a
     One of these days I'll make a Journal Entry that's like this ....
     The End.

Sunday, January 28, 2001

6:25a
     Friday when I was over at my house, didn't have to work that afternoon, I thought I'd save the latest versions of some of my Journal pages from my website. I did. But they weren't like when I put the up there. All the carriage returns and linefeeds were missing, so it was all messed up. At first I thought yahoo deleted them, but I had done the same with the portable computer which has explorer instead of netscape and it all looked normal. So it was netscape doing that, maybe. Then again, I used FTP on my desk computer and got the same messed up files, so it was yahoo. Yesterday I took my portable over to my house and copied the files over to the main computer. At last, the local website site files are up to date now.
     This month's Sci-Am magazine has an article about the water shortage that's coming. And there's that nasty foreshadowing of electric shortage out in California. And there's the usual gloom and doom from the news media about death, desease and distruction, earthquakes, wars and such. This century is just getting off to a bad start. Nobody, that is no one in power and influence, cares.
     It's time to finish getting ready for the day. Go get the Sunday paper. Oh yeah, more gloom and doom ... its that over rated football game day too.

Wednesday, January 31, 2001

6:05a
     Last day of January 2001, tomorrow is February, where does the time go? and why does it feel like it both drags by and drag races by?
     Mom wanted to call Robert last evening, it was his birthday. So we sang to him. Everything seems to be going ok with him and his family. She has also wanted to call Dan a couple of times during his move. I've been the one to do the dialing when she mentions it, she doesn't seem to want to do the dialing herself anymore. I don't know what that means, if anything.
     It's much the same at work, waiting to see how things fall out, who's been offered an early retirement package, when will the move happen, where's the business headed.
     I've still been trying to keep busy with writing code for a program. I did start using MathCad but learned some of the things don't work on the computer I use. So that got me in a bad mental state. I don't know why I keep trying to figure some things out when they don't work. I should just see that they don't and then move on.
     I sent off an "ignorant mountain boy" email to ABC News, WLOS and WSPA the other day. ABC sent back an acknowledgement, "forward to the appropriate department for reveiw" response. I suppose my doubting force will, or already has, kicked in and negate any further response. Nothing I do ever really leads to anything.
     Later.

Friday, February 2, 2001

6:15a
     A 3:00 in the morning wake up. I should have had more done by now but I only did the usual news sites. Well I did update the stats summary for my website.
     I went to see the doctor about the skin rash on my cafes and ankles. He didn't seem too concerned about it, just an enzema type of some kind, cold dry weather as much as anything else. So I shouldn't concern myself about it any more either.
     Nothing else new at home or work. I think we're mostly just waiting about work, move to Anderson or just closing the whole business here and moving it overseas. But that's just the usual shop talk.
     No other responses from the ignorant mountian boy event. So what else should have been expected?
     Might as well shut down the computer and get on with getting ready for the day. Bye.

Sunday, February 4, 2001

5:05a
     All week I've woke up at 3:00 to 3:30, never really get back to sleep. After all these months I should be use to it, I think I am too.
     Yesterday morning I spent at my house after washing clothes. I walked down to the mailbox and there was one letter in it. It was from Costa Rica. One of Dad's cousins on the Cauley side had moved there with one of her sons back in June of 1999. We had corresponded off and on during the '90s, mostly about genealogy and then during her moving around between Colorado and Texas, she had lost my address. So that was a really pleasant surprise. She must be in her own 90s by now. I spent some time looking through the Cauley papers but I dont have a birth date for her. Her brothers and sisters were born between 1903 and 1919 so hers is about then too. I wrote a letter back to her in the afternoon, it's in my tote-bag, the plastic, second use, grocery type designer tote-bag.
     I have thought the last few days of changing my morning habit. Instead of dialing up the internet and checking the news and weather sites, I'd just write in my journal and even write some email too. So that's what I'm doing now. Maybe I'll get the email done.
     I took this portable computer over to my house yesterday too. I was looking for a file on the house computer but couldn't find it and decided it was on this one. But I didn't find it on here either. It was in a new folder on the house computer. But anyway, while I had it over there, I tried connecting to the internet. This one has a faster modem, I thought. But I learned it's the house phone line that makes a difference. The portable computer only connected at 24000 bps more or less, just like the desk computer. I don't understand that.
     Well enough of this entry. I'll try to compose some email next and then dial up the internet.

Tuesday, February 6, 2001

6:15a
     At the cnn website they've posted some links to space launch video clips, some go back to the first ones, the Mercury, Geminii, Apollo. I downloaded the Shepard one. It was another toss back to past, sitting here watching something from the internet, on this computer, in Mom's kitchen, that I saw originally in 1961. Fourty year ago come May.
     I doubt if I'll ever get use to it, remembering things from 20, 30, 40, 50 year ago. And then there's that aspect of being able to actually see and hear the past. It's totally different from 100 year ago when it was grandchildren listening to grandparents and great-grandparents tell stories of their past.

Thursday, February 8, 2001

5:55a
     It's a Full Moon morning again. The year is 10% past now. Activity at the website is down. Have to take Mom to the lung doctor this afternoon for a check up. Had a good day at work yesterday, I've been putting together MathCad worksheets for general mechanical problems, and learning how to use MathCad. No change in sleep habits. I sent a letter to the Cauley relative in Costa Rica and part of my Journal to Randy & Shelia on Monday. I suppose it's all just another morning really.
     Oh yeah, there's been a couple or three adult world shootings recently. Youth World is following along, again. But fortunely they've been stopped before anything really bad happened. Don't know how long the fortunely will hold up though.

Tuesday, February 13, 2001

5:10a
     The doctor had x-rays made again, the puluminary fiborsis has not progressed any, other than that everything else is as it has been.
     Saturday I got a email from someone who had been to the Tour of Pickens County section of my website. She said she enjoyed the visit very much and that she was Redmond descendant. She had put (Robert's little brother?) in the greeting, so she and Robert were in elementary school together. I wrote him about that and that's what he remembers.
     The weekends have become more of waiting to get back to work so I'll have something to do. Lawrence asked how my weekend was yesterday, I asked him, "Does wanting to come back here on Monday tell you anything?" He said, "You really need to get a life." Yeah, I know, I've known that for decades.
     I did go down to see DM and Micky on Saturday afternoon. She was out cleaning the car and DM had been sitting on the porch. He's looking and acting more like his self now. He's still got the usual aches and pains in his legs, knees, hip and back. But at least he's recovered from the operations over the holidays.
     I called Randy and Shelia one day last week. I had thought Shelia would answer, I was wanting to get Randy's work number, but he answered. He had a cold. They got the package I sent the week before. We talked the usual stuff and they are doing ok. They were getting Shelia's resume updated and she was going to look for work. Everyone has to have a job to make ends meet, but I guess that's always been true.
     That's all for now. Bye. ... Oh yeah, I've started to strip the HTML coding out of my journal files, get them into plain text format, and printed the out. Maybe I'll get it all into pre-publishing status, eventually. Yeah sure.

Friday, February 16, 2001

5:55a
     Well, I thought the interesting event concerning something mentioned a month or so ago was over. But I guess not. Too many hits for one person to start with, then one more, now it's three, too long in between for random hits. But anyway, comparing the before and after maybe they'll take the hint and go away again.
     The past 2 or 3 weeks at work I've re-discovered something, or re-realized a truism. When I was in elementary school, 4 or 5 grade, I was good at the geometry and math. The teacher even called on me to see what answers I got after she did a problem. But anyway, it was just plugging in numbers for letters in standard formulae. That's basically all I've been able to do, through high school and college, just try to pick the right formulae and plug the numbers in and do the arithmetic. I've never been able to do the fundmental physics or calculus, how to set up a real problem from basic principles. That's all I've been doing for weeks now at work. Copying formulae from books and putting them in my programs or mathcad worksheets.
     I did the tax forms this week too. That was Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Not that it took that long, just fill out the pencil form first and then wait to check the aritmetic later and then mail them even later after checking 2 or 3 times that they were signed and all.
     So that's all for this week.

Tuesday, February 20, 2001

5:25a
     The pages at my other website are gone now. I had gotten an email from them recently that they were closing up and shutting down part of their system. So now I'm down to just this one at Geocities.Yahoo.
     Mom had visitors on Sunday, Leanader, Jackie, Christy, Seth, Hayden. And Lucille came on Saturday. So she's had something different for a change. I would like to think that improved her mood, she was feeling bad most of last week.
     I'm doing vibration and natural frequency equations at work this week. Simple beam problems like the usual equations want. It seems like there's never an equation for the real problems.
     I have gotten all my Journal pages in a plain text form now. I put together a program to strip out the html coding. Now all I have to do is some clean up editing. I've even got about half printed, I guess it's about half. I haven't counted all the pages but it's about 300 so far. I've got 1.6 megabytes of words in this Journal now. Probably most of them were written since I put them up on this website. It has to do with being about to type them up as I think of them. Before, when I was doing the spirial notebooks, it was slow and illegible hand scribbling. Still again, there's that absence of being somewhere else, outdoors, on the streets, when I write.
     Well, I've been awake since 3:00, it's 2 2/3 hours latter and haven't done much except sit here and check out the news sites. I never seem to get that email out that I think about writting either.

Friday, February 23, 2001

5:10a
     I gave up trying to do the natural frequency of armatures, should have never started, physics never gets in sync with reality. Now I've gotten Earl interested and he's worked on the same problem off and on for years.
     I haven't printed anymore of this Journal, maybe I'll get another section done today, or just finish deleting the html coding that the program missed.
     One thing I did do this week. That thing about other worlds listening in on the telegraph, radio, television signals from Earth, I did the sphere volume calculations and allowed one star per 4 cubic lightyears. It works out to about 125,000 or 400,000 stars within 100 or 150 lightyear radius.
     Wonder how many of them have planets with others on them?

Sunday, March 4, 2001

9:50a
     I see it's been a week and a weekend since I wrote last.
     One thing that's happened recently, a couple of weeks ago, the sky was clear and the space station was to pass over this part of the planet, so I made a effort to look for and see it. It was a lot brighter than I had thought it would be. I moved from the northwest to the southeast, and it did move along, faster than an airplane and that's about how bright it was too, an airplane with its landing lights on.
     I stood out front to see it and when it was obvious how easy it was to see, I went into the house to tell Mom and she got to see it through her bedroom window.
     A few days later it was clear and to pass over again, this time over the south part of the sky. It wasn't as bright as before but still easy to see. It's going to be the 10th - 13th before it can be seen again.
     Daniel has moved into his house up in New York now, that was the 28th. Robert and his family got the Seattle earthquake last week too.
     My work is basically the same. We are working on a real problem with one of the circular saws, so that's interesting.
     But I guess what's really been on my mind recently, or again, or always has been, it that feeling of not accomplishing anything with my life. It's like been 34 years since high school, a career was suppose to have happened during that time. Yet I'm still just doing what it takes to get from one day to the next.
     Last night the PBS had a special, fund raising, about the Lawrence Welk band and shows. It was a reunion of the past with them, all those entertainers who had a career and can have something to reflect back on. One thing that caught my attention was that Peter Fountain was once in that band, 1959 or so, and he's still around too. It's things like that, see so much of the past on television, and imagining what kind of careers they had. That Bob Burgess, the former Mickey Mouseteer, he's one of them too.
     So anyway. It's a cloudy, wet, cool Sunday and that's my mood today too.
     Oh yeah, I brought my VCR over from my house last Sunday and got some tapes for Mom to watch. They were an Albott and Costello, Three Stooges and a Bing Crosby movie, his Going My Way. We watched the Bing Crosby one yesterday afternoon. It was another one of those things that made me wonder about how things use to be and where my life has gone or rather not gone.
     Maybe I should just stop gripping, no one likes to listen to a gripper. Bye.

Monday, March 5, 2001

6:25a
     I guess, I'm always guessing at things aren't I, that the elders of the 1850s or any generation, use to sit around and tell stories about their previous 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years. Now we just sit and watch re-runs on television or video tape.

Wednesday, March 21, 2001

6:00a
     So 15 days have passed by, it mostly means I've just not been in the mood to add Journal entries. Which means my mood is down. There's been stuff to write about, thoughts, events, but there's just no motivation to do the writing.
     It's partly cause of that Santee school shooting, I started following the CNN discussion about that, made a few posts myself, but it all didn't proceed as I had wanted. Besides, those entries have flowed downstream and been lost to oblivion. Who's going to look through 15,000 posts to find them?
     I had thought about writing about my daily routine, new daily routine, weekly routine even. It's so different than when I was staying over at my house. I've been sleeping on the floor, between the night table and chair, in the front bedroom. I've been unfolding blankets, making my sleeping mat and covers, and then in the mornings it's fold them all back up and lay them on the old piano bench next to the east window.
     I've been gathering my carry around stuff off the kitchen table about 7:30 or 8:00 in the evenings, go to the front bedroom, get the blankets ready to put on the floor. Then it's stand in the bathroom and do the body wash thing out of sink. I brought a piece of plastic from my house in December I think, I'll stand on it to keep the rug from getting so wet.
     In the mornings, I'll wake up early go to the bathroom, lay back down. I'll lay on my back for a while, then on one side and then on the other. About an hour passes by, me just laying there wanting to get more sleep. But that seldom happens. Then it's get dressed and do the blanket thing again. Gather up my carry around stuff, open the bedroom door, open and close the living room door, walk through the living room, open the kitchen door, put my stuff on the kitchen table, go back to the living room and get my coffee and cereal from behind the chair, go back to the kitchen, get coffee started, get the computer started, get a some of the first drippings of coffee, go out on the porch, sit, smoke, sip coffee.
     Oh well, times up, gotta start finishing up my morning routine.

Thursday, March 22, 2001

6:15a
     The first Spring of the 21st century happened Tuesday, it was cold, rainy, snowy, sleety, breezy, cloudy, gloomy. So much for how then next millenium is starting.
     The Mir space station is coming down in about 19 hours, 1:30 am Friday. Fifteen years in space. I think it be about the same for the International Space Station, another 15 years. So that'll be from 1961 to 2016, 55 years in space and we're still stuck at the 200 mile height.
     Bye.

Friday, April 6, 2001

4:40a EST
     Yeah, it's back to that funny time, saving daylight, making the sheet longer by cutting a foot off the bottom and sewing it to the top.
     Work is busy now, actually doing some real design problems, or trying to at least. I'll never understand mechanics.
     Most everything with family life is normal. Leander's birthday was last Saturday. On Sunday afternoon Mom decided she would ride down to her house for a visit and be with her sister. So that's what we did. I took three tanks of oxygen and she used about 1 and 1/4, I never really checked it that closely. Anyway, she wanted to get a cake too, so we stopped at the grocery store next to the creek and I went in to get that while she sat in the car. Then we drove on down to Leander's house. It was a good visit, almost like it use to be. That was a windy weekend too, which was about the only bothersome thing about the trip. We left to go back to Mom's house about 4:30. So anyway, they got to be together and Mom actually felt like, or made herself feel like, venturing out. Except for that ride with Leander, Lucille, and her last Fall to look at the foilage, she hasn't been out of the house since the Fall of 1999.
     I'm still sleeping on the floor in the front bedroom. It's starting to get warmer now and I don't know what to do about the Summer. It's going to be hot it that part of the house. I guess I'll have to buy another air conditioner and put in that room.
     It's time to start cutting the grass again too. I should have done that last weekend but it was the traditional thing, I mention it and the reply it let it go. Well, almost, it's do it during the week after work.
     Bye again.

Sunday, May 6, 2001

9:30a EST
     It's been a month now since I last made an entry. It's a sign that I haven't been coping all that well with life. It's be a bad time for a couple of those weeks. When I quite making entries, it means I've just lost the motivation to even try.
     I'm over at my house this morning, for an hour or so. In another couple of weeks it will have been 6 months since I slept in my house. That first snow before Thanksgiving last year was when I moved over to Mom's house.
     Last April 18, Wednesday, I had gone to Mom's house to eat lunch like always. I got up to go back to work and before I got out of the house, I felt my heart go out ot rythem again. The last time that happened was March 10. I hadn't been doing anything that morning to bring it on either, least not that I was aware, I had spent a few days at work fretting over how to write up some report or something.
     But anyway, I went on back to work and sat there at my space in front of the computer. I felt ok as long as I was sitting, except for the anxiety of wondering what was going on. I had read that caffine, smoking and such would cause a normal heart to lose its rythem, but I don't think that was it.
     In the past it would clear up in 30 minutes to an hour, but that was when I could lay down on my couch. I just sat there mostly, got up and walked around some and sat back down. But it wouldn't go away. I finally left about 3:30 and went home and layed down for an hour. By the time I had to head back over to Mom's house about my usual time it felt better.
     The rest of the week, the weekend and on in to the next I week I just felt bad and anxious all the time. Worry and fretting about what would happen if I got to where I was laid up and couldn't do anything. What if the past year was finally showing its wear and tear.
     I guess the event did make up my mind to see my doctor about it all. I need a physical or check up anyway. I haven't had a chest xray in decades, not since I wreaked the baja in 1981 and that was just to see if anything was broken. So I thought I'll get my doctor to order one and maybe one of the stress test things too. That's tomorrow.
     This past week was better than normal. I actually felt good, less worry but still letting myself get tense and have to make a conscious effort to relieve that.
     Beside all of that, it's becoming more apparent that I miss not having more time for my own life. It's been 7 years since I would have my 3 days a week to be on my own, those Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays when I would go out to eat supper instead of going over to Mom's. That was when I wreaked the red Toyota on Jewell Street. Ever since then I've not had any evenings for myself, execpt a few occassionally.
     And then I've come to realize that I've caught Mom's depression after all these years and decades. I'm just never happy anymore. Maybe a laugh or happy thought for a minute or two, probably once a season or something like that.
     I dwell more and more on what my life was suppose to have been, or what I imagine it should have been.

3:05p EST
     So I had to stop and go do the Sunday lunch from Ingles thing and pick up some other stuff too.
     Now I've already been down to Easley and Walmart to get a new shade for the blue bathroom. The only thing I found was one that is suppose to be adjustable and I don't know if it will work out either. I looked at their air conditionerst too while there, but I didn't get one. It's always that doubt about getting just the right thing what will work out, or even if Mom wants another one for the front bedroom.
     So now I'm going to continue with what's happened this past month.
     I did get the porch cleaned of the pollen, the second time was yesterday, I had done it about 3 weeks before the first time. I used a towel left in the truck and wiped most everthing and then mopped the porch with it too. I backed Mom's car out and washed it off with the watering hose and the carport too. I saw this afternoon the pollen already started to accummulate again. But anyway it's been cleaned.
     This will be the second week I didn't cut the grass, it is crunching already when you walk on it. So I let that go again.
     I did use the white truck to haul the wisterier limbs over to my house, that was last week. So that's all the yard work I've done.
     I really dont know what to make of the heart thing. I can do stuff like yard work and feel ok, or just walk around when it's out of rytheme and just feel odd. It's not like a pain that puts you on the ground like a heart attack. There is that tense feeling but I come to live with it I guess. Anytime I have to make some decision I'll get tensed up. That's the way it's been for a long time now.
     I've even thought more how after thirty or forty years some people have lived out their working careers. Me, I've just drifted along, letting whatever happens push me along it some direction or another. But it's not that either, it's always the same direction, stay here around Pickens, work the convenient jobs and not bother with moving somewhere else. That's been it, a career of just hanging around Pickens and not even doing much to make a name for myself here even.
     Life's just gone by and I've not got much of anything to show for it.
     So that's enough. Not really, I've got to upload this file, make a copy for the carry around computer, bath, get my stuff together, go on back to Mom's house, start another week of doing the same things I've done the last 65 or 100 weeks, and the same things I'll be doing for the next 65 or 100 weeks.

Thursday, May 10, 2001

5:30a EST
     The visit to the doctor was 10:00 in the morning till 12:10 or so. It was the usual waiting in the outside room and examination room. The actual talking with the doctor and testing lasted about 40 minutes. I told him about the recent events with the heart going out of rytheme. Was it this kind of thump-thump? Or this thump-di-thump? But anyway, he had an EKG done, one of the new fangled 15 second test kind. It took longer for the nurse to get all the stick-on electrical contacts connected than the test. It was in the late '70s or early '80s when the last one was done and that was using one of them long, paper tape recorder.
     Ok, so the results ... benign premature ventricular contractions and a slow 50 beats per minute when laying down. It means one part of my heart is contracting before the other part. It's the usual suspects too, caffine, nictone, stress, lack of sleep so on and so forth. It's suppose to not be of a concern till the beats get down into the 40s and that's for older people too. So anyway, that's the heart story.
     He wrote up a request for an x-ray and I did that later in the afternoon. That was at the hospital as an out-patient thing. It didn't take long even though I didn't make an appointment. I was going to call the doctor's office today to find out the results. But when I went over to my house to check on things and the mail, they had sent out a note Tuesday. "Your chest x-ray was normal." So there's suppose to be nothing growing on the lungs or anywhere else, yet. And the heart wasn't enlarged either.
     But I'm not sure what to make of one thing. After the nurse did the EKG she told me to take off the stick on things so I did that. At the hospital for the x-ray I took off my shirt and the young lady did the x-rays. And then later that evening when I was cleaning up before bed, I found two more of those stick-on things on my side. They had metal foil of some kind on them. So I guess normal x-rays means having two squarish bright spots show up.
     The doctor talked about taking niacin and asprin to raise the levels of one kind of coholistors and keep the blood thin. So I started doing that on Tuesday. Of course it's was the usual thing about finish quiting smoking and getting real exercise.
     Now the last two nights I have woke up at 1:10 and 12:10, just 3 or 4 hours sleep. I just lay there with my mind wide awake for 3 or 4 hours. Then maybe I go into a dream state for a short while. So now I'm back to not getting sleep. And the previous few days, maybe a week or more, I had been sleeping well too.
     It's all just so messed up. I get my health checked out so I don't have to wonder about it. Now I can't sleep again. I really think it has something to do with taking niacin and probably have to get adjusted to it.
     Well, it's after 6:00 now and I'll get on with my usual morning routine. Get to see how the lack of sleep affects the heartrate today too maybe.

Friday, May 18, 2001

5:15a EST
     Time for the Weekly Journal Entry News.
     Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, died in California of a heartattack while exercising. I still believe the answer was suppose to be Fortitude, not Forty-two.
     The week has gone fairly well, it's just gotten hot and the bedroom stays warm most of the night. I've been waking up and dozing back off more now. But that will change back to just waking up and staying awake soon enough.
     One of Mom's cousins or half-cousins died this week too. She had a stroke earlier and didn't recover from it. She was one of Jim Hayes's daughters, Aurie's half sister.
     Still working on real design problems. Still have to share the software and hardkey with Earl. They'll never buy the extra licenses and software. Just get by the same way engineering is done, make do engineering.
     Made some pictures of the roses and plants around Mom's house a couple of weeks ago. I got them up on the website now.
     I guess that's all.

Monday, May 28, 2001

8:20a EST
     It's the Memorial Day weekend and holiday, even though it isn't the 30th yet like it use to be. It was suppose to be a good 4 days of doing a bit more of what I wanted to do. Or at least not think about work for 4 days. But that's not going to happen.
     I was working on another part of a tool design Friday afternoon, trying to get ahead a bit. I had gotten with another designer so he could help me find the right part, we did that Thursday. So I imported the part into another software application and started to assembly the other parts I already had. That's when I learned the parts don't fit together.
     I went ahead and did what I could with what I had to work with. Then I learned the some of the UG geometery wouldn't mesh. It the same type of problem Earl had worked with on another part.
     Toward the end of the day I got an email while kind-of staring at the screen wonder whatelse to try and make things work like they should. Another engineering basically said the previous work I had done was wrong. I guess there no need to go into the details. I had realized weeks ago there would be trouble later on, but I went ahead and did everything exactly like he had wanted, used his loads, his geometery. But it just never clicked with him that the loads were too high.
     I kind-of like this. The equations called for a value, coefficient of friction, and there's three ways to determine a value like that for engineering. Make a guess, look in a reference, or measure it and correlate the math model with test data by using it. So I did the last one and came up with one value. He used another. And that's with I think the loads should be lower. Or at least that's my opinion. So anyway.
     You know how my mind works, it latches onto to something and just won't let go. I've been thinking about all that most of the weekend and at nights. Wondering how it will all play out. After two days and a bit of time this morning, I've decide I just don't care anymore about the work or business or company. Nothing has changed down there except the name over the front door during the past 10 years. I've got more personal and family things to use my worring and fretting time over than that job. So that's what I'm going to do.
     ....
     Sometime last week or the week before this computer started getting really slow with the internet connections and page loading. The last thing I did that would have had an effect on that was erase the cookies from all those sites I've been going to. I even tried to get rid of the index but that file was locked and would let me do anything with it. So now the ms explorer just gets slower and slower till it just stops. I can see the computer cycles getting locked up in some loop, the mouse jerks across the screen just like there's a for-next or do-loop without any doevents statement in it.
     It's also the same problem I had on the desktop at home too and I ended up haveing another disk put it in. It all related to some of them websites just force new browsers to open when you try to close or exit from their site. It's also probably cause the ssss are doing there big brother thing too, seen what sites I'm going to now. I think this time I'll really scrap most any files on the disk, the pape stats, pictures, and stuff. I'll just back up the Journal files and let everything else go. I'll just re-format the disk and start all over with loading software.
     ....
     Frances is suppose to be in Greer now. She graduated last Sunday, drove to her mother's house by Friday, and be in Greer last night. So she might get to come over and see her grandmother today.
     That's all. I'll see if this will upload to the website. Oh yeah, most of the pages at the website haven't been visited in months. There were only 3 or 4 people who follow along in this Journal, but now I think there's maybe 1 or 2. I would take them all down again like I did in 1999, but why bother. I'll just leave them there till yahoo decides to shut down them all.

Wednesday, June 6, 2001

4:50a EST
     Yesterday at noontime I got to Mom's house to eat lunch, about time to leave and go back to work she mentions the air conditioner had been making a noise, that's why the windows were open and it was already 80 degrees outside. So I look at it and the fan won't even start, but it did a few tries later and it sounded like it was hitting something. So there's nothing else I know to do except go get another one. It was 14 years old anyway.
     I went back to work long enough to tell the boss I had to see about getting another unit and put it in. Then I went on down to Easley to Walmart and got a new one and drove on back to Mom's house. I spent the rest of the afternoon taking the old one out, cleaning the windows and put the new one back in.
     When I got the other new one for the front bedroom I thought about getting two then, but I didn't. Typical, I should have and could have had them both installed and wouldn't have had to think about when the old one would quit working.
     That problem at work from holiday weekend and that week, I finally found out what went wrong, I made an assumation that the meshing software was doing what it lead me to believe it was doing. But it wasn't. It was putting in mulitpiles of the force loads I thought I was entering. Typical again, do a problem, check all the things you're not sure of and suspect could be wrong, ignore the things you assume are right but aren't.
     I really don't like engineering.
     Frances has been here a few days and has gone to look for apartments this week. She's been staying over at Greer and I take care of Jake the cat.
     So that's this week's Journal entry. Oh, yeah, the browser is still slow and gets hung up in some do nothing loop and stalls out. Maybe it'll work long enough to get this file uploaded.