Tom's Diary

Today’s Activities

• Shower.  DONE.
• Cat duty.   DONE.
• Do 4 loads of laundry.  IN PROGRESS.

Log

07:55 AM: I’m up. Another gray day, but it’s a little warmer and brighter than it’s been the past several days.   Maybe we’ll see some sun this morning.

08:00 AM: Read more of the   Happiness Now   book overnight; went to sleep to chapter seven this time.

09:00 AM: Facebooked for an hour.  Up to 182 friends now.  Hopefully, some of those folks are visiting my blogs as well, as I periodically post links to them on Facebook.

10:03 AM: [Emmy] called to say that her Internet radio is not working; it’s not connecting to any stations.  In fact, she does not even get the station selection list that always appears when you first turn on the radio.  So I had her go to her computer and try to browse the Internet.  That’s not working either, as she get numerous “cannot display page” messages when she tries to visit her home page (Google).  So we rebooted her computer.  No go.  Then, we rebooted her access point / switch.  Still no go.  She’s now rebooting her cable modem.  If that does not fix the issue, she’ll have to call her cable company to see if there’s an outage in her area.

02:15 PM: iPodded, read the   Happiness Now   book, dusted the bedroom, and took the   weekly system backups.  Today’s repeater song: The LP version of Una Paloma Blanca   by the   George Baker Selection.  Though nearly thirty-five years old, I enjoy hearing this light-hearted and brisk song as much as the first time, back in ninth grade.

03:15 PM: I was bored.  So I watched again yesterday’s episode of   The Young and the Restless;  I’d saved it for [Emmy] for when she comes tomorrow, because she missed it live, due to a doctors appointment.  Now, it’s nap time.

04:30 PM: I’m awake once again.

08:30 PM: Did laundry, and vacuumed the bedroom, hall, and stairs.  I noticed while sorting clothes for the wash that a few of my sweatshirts bore stains; mostly from olive oil I suspect; I just love sardines and anchovies, packed in extra virgin olive oil, and sometimes, yes, I get sloppy.  But that does not come out in the usual wash.  So I treated the patches with Lestoil. Hopefully, they’ll disappear.  If not, then there we have three more sweatshirts for recycling.  Well, at least you can get a decent, new sweatshirt for under $8 if you look around.   So losing a few here and there isn’t so bad.  I remember as a software engineer, spending close to $50 for a decorated sports team sweatshirt.  No more of that!  I worked so hard, just to spend too much for stuff it now seems.  If I’d have only known about the $8 sweatshirts fifteen years ago and just how many dollars one could save with a bit of careful shopping, this would have drastically changed my career path.  If I’d have been more thrifty, the need to make lots of money would have lessened, and I might as a result have enjoyed more leisure time, and not felt so much like I had to stay ahead in the rat race, and then the let-down on those occasions when I did not keep up.    Yep, simple and thrifty.  That’s my motto today.  Becoming more poor made me richer too.  Odd.

11:10 PM: Talked with [Emmy].  She was in the midst of packing for her trip here tomorrow.  She’ll stay for a couple weeks, then back home for just over a week, and then she’s visiting her parents in eastern PA.  A busy month for her coming up.

11:15 PM: Put away some laundry.  When I made the bed though, I noticed that the mattress protector is peeling.  So it’s probably not waterproof anymore.  I’ll pick up a new one at Wal Mart this week.

11:45 PM: Filled Mom’s med trays for the next three weeks.

12:30 AM: iPodded and Facebooked while waiting for the laundry to finish.  Then, made the bed.  Oh, I’m just so domestic today that I can almost picture the apron tied around my waist.  But the bow must be in front, as I never learned how to tie bows on my back side. 

02:00 AM: Finished up the laundry, and now, I’m starting bed.  So, catch you here again tomorrow.  Take care.

Tom Hesley

Received Mail and Shipments

• Mom’s auto insurance premium notice.
• The 2010-06 edition of Promo Only’s Urban Radio music series.

Related Posts

• Book: Happiness Now
• Diary Revisions: 2010-05-15
• Facebook Tid Bits: 2010-05-15
• Today’s Diet: 2010-05-15
• Weekly Backups: 2010-05-15
• Weight Loss: 2010

Documents Revised Over The Past 24 Hours

• Weekly Backups: 2010-05-15
• Today’s Business: 2010-05-15
• Today’s Diet: 2010-05-15
• Facebook Tid Bits: 2010-05-15
• Today’s Business: 2010-05-14

Revised Post Count: 5

Tom Hesley

Weekly backups of all my blog sites completed.

• Databases size: 12.0 MB.  That’s down 2400 KB from 14.4 MB last week.  The record size, set last week is 14.4 MB.  It’s down this time because I removed around 500 obsolete post revisions and numerous spammer accounts,making smaller but learner and faster databases. 
• Total data backed up: 83.6 MB.  That’s up  2000 KB from 81.6 MB last week.  Note that this figure includes all databases, site code, static pages, and log files. The record amount of total data saved in a weekly backup is  84.9 MB. 

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Today’s Business: 2010-05-08

I keep this food diary to stay aware of just how many calories I’m eating daily, with the hope that it decreases the likelihood that I’ll overeat.    It seems to work, so here we go with another day…

Today, I consumed the following items:

• Herbal tea and diet caffeine-free Pepsi  throughout the day. 0 calories.
• 12:00 PM: 1 bowl of Kashi cereal with skim milk.  600 calories.
• 03:00 PM: 2 roast beef sandwiches.  900 calories.
• 03:15 PM: Candy.  600 calories.
• 07:00 PM: 1 bowl of Kashi cereal with skim milk.  600 calories.

Total calories: 2700.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Other Food Diary Entries
• Today’s Business: 2010-05-15
• Weight Loss: 2010

08:37 AM: I’ve just viewed this video from C-SPAN. Eric Holder was clearly unprepaired for this meeting. Yes, in his position as US attorney general, he should have read the AZ law (particularly given how short it is), before articulating the federal position on it. Hopefully, he and his staff will read it before going forward with any action against AZ.

08:39 AM: I’m in the middle of reading the law myself,  So far, I’ve found no big concerns.  Yet I’m troubled by the whole pre-emptiive nature of it, and how the police can detain someone just because they believe that they could be an illegal alien (probable cause); not because the person has actually done anything wrong.  Suspicion alone is never a good reason to go after someone; though to protect the flying public, we must put up with it to maximize safety in the skies, I admit.

08:59 AM: I’m concerned that there might be a prevailing atmosphere of biggotry in AZ against Hispanics, and the Tucson business yesterday about the stoppage of ethnic studies substantiated that fear.  So though the AZ immigration law indeed contains provisions to curb bigotry-motivated detainments, I’m not sure that this will be enough.  I feel that this legislation encourages a culture that lacks due diligence before it forms an opinion; implying that it’s okay to detain anyone who looks like an illegal alien, just because they LOOK the part.  The law also seems to rely on the “good judgment” of the police for its proper enforcement (that people will not be detained without sufficient cause).  But I’m not so trusting.  Without a clearly defined procedure for deducing and then detaining these people, I believe that there’s too much “wiggle room” in the law for abuse.  But I’ll keep reading the law and see if it assures me at all to the contrary.

04:56 PM: A just legal system takes a lot of paper, yes.  However, cops really must document their tracks well, because history shows what happens when they do not; unchecked power is nearly always a bad thing.  I have no problem with detaining illegals once they’ve actually been caught committing another offense, or even if the police know FOR SURE that a person is an illegal and then detain him.   To be sure, people coming across the border without due process is undoubtedly a huge problem in AZ, CA, TX, NM, Etc. But the way to get them is not to have the police root them out by arresting people they think MIGHT be here illegally.  Rather, get these intruders when they apply for work, appear at an ER, or when they apply for public services like schooling, utilities, unemployment, and such.   Yes, our country treats illegals in the most civilized fashion, I agree.  I just want to be sure that it stays that way.

11:30 PM: This really boils down to how much we each value individual rights verses the safety of society.  Since I don’t live as close to the problem as you, I don’t share the urgency you have about stopping this.  So, I’m unwilling to support taking the severe step of detaining people just on suspicion that they’re illegal aliens.  IMHO, the police should have much more to go on than just a hunch, in order to justify holding someone for further interrogation.  We already have to put up with this search and seizures stuff in our airports.  Must we also now deal with it at our borders?  Our views our likely too implacable to ever come to an agreement about how to handle the immigration problem.  I just hope that AZ, in its desperation to straighten this out, does not become a “rogue state.” 

01:05 AM: A day of domesticity; four loads of laundry, dusting, and vacuuming up here. Filled Mom’s med trays, put toys away in the bedroom, then read for a couple hours, Facebooked, and debated a bit, and took in some CNN. I so enjoy their middle-of-the-road style reporting. Later, I helped a friend with an Internet outage. But all her equipment checked out okay. It turned out to be a neighborhood-wide system failure. Seems like Comcast has lots of those in her area. Pecked out a thousand words today as well. A pretty good day too, because the sun came out strongly for the first time in several days.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Today’s Business: 2010-05-15