Tom's Diary

Today’s Activities

• Cat duty.  DONE.
• Dispense Mom’s meds. DONE.
• Shower. DONE.
• Get Mom’s tax papers together.  IN PROGRESS.

Log

08:00 AM: I’m up. My weight is the same as yesterday; 174.0 Lbs.

11:05 AM: Posted the   Duplicate Songs on iPod   piece.

11:30 AM: Posted the   Update: 2010-02-18   piece.

01:10 PM: For the 2009 tax preparation effort, I put into a single table all of Mom’s medical expenses from 2009, that we paid from her checking account.  Next, I’ll go through all the receipts and add any of those that we did not pay by check.

02:05 PM: Watched today’s episode of   The Young and the Restless    on the DVR.

03:40 PM: All medical receipts have been factored into Mom’s total medical expenses for 2009.  Now, I just have to add everything up in the table and send that value off to the tax preparer.

05:15 PM: Submitted the   Tom’s Love Quest   blog to ten popular search engines; so far, I’ve submitted this to approximately thirty engines out of a list of two hundred which I obtained from my hosting provider.  I’m interested in increasing the traffic to my sites.  So I’ll probably spend an hour or so each day submitting my sites, until I get through this list.  The traffic is much higher than it was six months ago, but still not yet high enough. 

08:00 PM: Sister Christine called to check up on Mom, to allow me to vent, and to wish me well on my trip this weekend.  That was nice.

09:00 PM: Watched the  2010-02-14 through 2010-02-18 episodes of the  NBC’s Nightly News   show on the DVR.

10:40 PM: Talked with   [Emmy].

10:50 PM: Categorized lots of posts throughout today on the   Tom’s Love Quest   blog; now only 117 left to process.

11:25 PM: Fiddled around on facebook, but now, I’m headed to bed.  Have a great night, and I’ll post more fresh stuff tomorrow morning.    Take care.

Received Mail and Shipments

•  Nothing received today.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Duplicate Songs on iPod
• Mom’s Status: 2010-02-18
• Today’s Diet: 2010-02-18
• Update: 2010-02-18

Today, I either added or modified the following posts in  the   Tom’s Diary   blog for improved brevity, clarity, categorization, decreased spelling errors, appearance,  and search-ability:

Tom Hesley

Dear sister Mary Ann,

Congratulations!  Yes, you mentioned that you were considering applying for that radiology job the last time you were here.  I’m glad you got the position.

Yep, raising children puts demands on careers, I suspect.  J  Hopefully now, you’ll have enough money to meet the needs of your girls as well as their athletic desires.

Well, you seem to enjoy cooking.  So your weekend coming up should be fun.

I am looking forward to a break, but am a bit concerned about Mom’s meds.  There won’t be someone here all the time, although we are covered in the early mornings and early evenings (Joann) and the weekends (Debbie).  Still though, at lunch time and at bed time, Mom will have to take her meds on her own.  Hopefully, she doesn’t screw things up.  I thought of having Joann set out the noon dose when she’s here in the morning, and then the bedtime dose when she comes in the evenings.  That should work, as long as Mom doesn’t misplace them.  She’s getting worse in that regard.  Last night, she threw out her med cup (glass), with a pair of her good earrings in it.  So you and the girls will really have to watch out for this while I’m gone. 

At Carmen’s we’re going to go shopping a few times and really stock her up on the non perishables.  Plus, she has some computer issues she wants me to investigate, and we have this accessible Internet radio for her to try.  Hopefully, it speaks enough that she’ll be able to enjoy it without being able to see it.

Give me a call later today, or tomorrow.  Tomorrow however, Mom has an eye doctor appointment in the morning.  So if you want to get me tomorrow, calling after around 2:00 PM would be best.

Later. 

Tom

Are you syncing your whole library to your iPod, or just selected playlists? If selected playlists, one or more of your lists might mention the same song. This can cause duplicates on the iPod if you have multiple copies of the song in your iTunes library (same song but different file name or location), and more than one of those copies is mentioned across the playlists you’re syncing. 

 

Of course, now that I think of it, this can happen when you’re syncing your whole library, for the same reason; duplicate songs but each having a different title, or artist, or both.

You could, instead of syncing your whole library, create a playlist that you’ve verified has no dups in it, and then sync just that playlist to the iPod.  Of course with this technique, you’d have to be sure somehow that any recording you add to it does not duplicate another that is already in the playlist; not an easy task.  See below.

Or, you could compare the durations of files that you think are duplicates.  If they’re the same, they may in fact be doubles; but not necessarily so. Thus, you wouldn’t want to just blindly delete files that appear identical based just on their sizes.

Finally, you might try a bit-by-bit comparison between the files.  This would certainly find duplicates that have exactly the same volume and exactly the same audio patterns.  But often, duplicate song files are not processed the same way across different albums; some are equalized or compressed / expanded, while others are “de-hissed,” mixed slightly differently, and so on.  These processes mathematically alter the files and thus, can make their bit streams appear very different from one another when in fact, they both contain the same song. 

Unfortunately, short of knowing both files very well, there’s no sure way to know you have definite dups.  So unless this is causing you excruciating angst, I’d not bother with figuring it out.  You could end up deleting music that you thought was duplicated, only to learn later that it was not. 

Yes, the problem of de-duping music files gets really messy, really quickly.

Related Posts

• Today’s Business: 2010-02-18

Today, I consumed the following items:

• Peppermint & spearmint tea and diet caffeine-free Pepsi throughout the day. 0 calories.
• 01:00 PM: 2 slices of provolone cheese.  160 calories.
• 01:00 PM: 2 cups organic skim milk.  160 calories.
• 01:00 PM: 3 cups Cheerios.  300 calories.
• 01:00 PM: 1 cup raisins.  520 calories.
• 01:15 PM: 1/2 cup rice pudding.  60 calories.
• 02:00 PM: Multivitamin.  0 calories.
• 03:40 PM: 1 cup apple cider.  200 calories.
• 06:00 PM: 1.5 cups oat meal.  450 calories.
• 06:00 PM: Mozzarella cheese.  200 calories.
• 09:00 PM: 4 slices of muenster cheese.   320 calories.

Total calories: 2370.

Tom

Related Posts

• Today’s Business: 2010-02-18
• Weight Loss: 2010

Pending Appointments And Issues

1. 2010-02-19 @ 11:00 AM:  Friday: Appointment with her eye doctor to check the progress of the clearing up of the blood in her right eye.
2. 2010-03-12 @ 1:15 PM: Friday: PCP appointment to see if the edema has gone down. 
3. 2010-04-14 @ 11:10 AM: Wednesday: Appointment with orthopedist for the next quarterly checkup on the progress of healing of her charcot foot. 

Log

09:00 AM Dispensed Mom’s morning meds.

01:45 PM: She covered her lunch with 17 units of log insulin.

01:50 PM: Dispensed Mom’s lunch-time meds.

05:25 PM: Blood sugar: 217.  Covered with 18 units of log insulin.

05:25 PM: Dispensed Mom’s evening meds.

10:45 PM: Blood sugar: 118.  Good.

10:47 PM: Dispensed Mom’s night-time meds.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Today’s Business: 2010-02-18