Blog/October 2021/Oct 22nd

October 22nd

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Apologies to those of you who, last week, were bothered by my grammatical construction: “the battery needs replaced”. I’ve always said “needs replaced” rather than “needs to be replaced”, and didn’t realize it was a dialect thing. I found out that it originates with the Scots, and wherever there’s a large population of Scots in the US, that construct is prominent. So having parents from western PA sealed my grammatical fate. Suck it up, bigots!

I had a busy week: running around to different doctors, getting various exams, filling some prescriptions. I’ll be pleased to avoid doctors’ offices in the near term, but alas! that’s probably not in the cards.

The orthopedist has seen me three times in the past two months for my “tennis elbow”. After he had given me the cortisone shot last time, the problem went away for a while, but returned like a bad penny. This time around, he dumped all his treatments on me at once: anti-inflammatory medication, physiotherapy, an elbow-strap, an ultrasound, and an X-ray. Whew!

I’ve also had a (literal) pain in the neck (throat, actually), for a few months, so my GP wanted an ultrasound of that area. I was able to get an appointment for this past Thursday for that. The appointment for the elbow ultrasound was for the end of November — not very timely. So when I went for the throat-ultrasound, I asked if they could give me an appointment for the elbow; they said they could do both at the same time. That they did, and I don’t have to wait until December for some resolution. Sometimes you just need to ask!

Esther has a trip to the down-under-side planned for a few weeks from now. She’ll be in the Land of Gauchos for a month, during which time she’ll help her brothers sort out family business and hopefully also be able to enjoy herself. Mom and I will carry on stoically, awaiting her return with bated breath. I will, at least…

What’s happening?

• Such a brave and stunning world! The US Dept. of Health and Human Services announced that Rachel Levine is “its first-ever female four-star admiral”. Of course, M. Levine isn’t actually female; but hey, women of the world, unite!
• At the University of Edinburgh, they’re contemplating courses without “Alice” and “Bob”, in an attempt to “decolonize” the informatics curriculum for the sake of “inclusivity”. They first should decolonize themselves by removing their heads from their colons.
• Holly on the authoritarian illness plaguing society.
• Microsoft officially deprecates UWP. I’m quite pleased I steadfastly resisted the occasional calls to support UWP in 8th.
• The back-story of the “Let’s go Brandon!” meme, and why it’s not going away.
• An interesting long-form interview with Bari Weiss.

I was also busy with various work related things. Meeting with a client, and discussing and planning how to proceed. I also spent quite a bit of time doing various security-related fixes to 8th, as well as optimizing some code which someone very snarkily pointed out was not very optimal.

We’ve entered the perfect season: not too warm during the day, cool in the evenings. The forecast is for more of the same for at least the coming week. Perfect!

This shabbat we’ll dine upon:
homemade ḥalla, stuffed veggies, roasted potatoes, rice, imam bayildi, various salatim, and brownies.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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