Sun is Out . . .

After a couple of days of overcast and rain, the sun has appeared again.  I turned the irrigation system off yesterday, the ground is soaked.  So saved a few dimes of electricity and a few gallons of ground water.  I will turn it back on in a day or two.  I have a leak to fix.

The Texas lakes are all recharged.  We got about three inches of rain and other areas got as much as seven or more inches.  So the run off has charged all the lakes and there was a threat of flash floods.

Here in Texas we lost a family to the raging waters.  I do not know if the driver mistook a turn and drove off the road into raging waters or was swept off the road by raging waters.  It kill the mother and two children and the husband was found clinging to a tree some distance from his automobile.  The two children were found in the car and the wife further down stream.  It was a very tragic event, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I walked around and noted the plants have enjoyed all the extra water and are perked up.  Part of front yard was ravaged by Chinch bugs and is not recovering.  It is yet too cool for the Chinch bug and this go round I have a lot of poison (Malathion) for them.  I will spray it when it gets dry as a preventive action.

Judie has gone around with her Round Up and sprayed the weeds in the cracks of the concrete.  No weed goes with out a shot of Round Up and they are indeed drying up.

I will soon have to fire up the lawn tractor.  She has hired a lawn service since she thinks my arm is not sufficiently recovered to cut the grass.  I will charge up the battery and get an oil filter to prepare the mower for action.  The blades are plenty sharp and ready to go.  I will air up the tires too.  It is time to get one more season out of the mower and then maybe I will give up.  I just can not bring myself to pay $50 to cut the grass.

I have go behind these guys and fix things.  They trigger one water leak and mowed down one sapling in a wire cage.  I had to straighten out the wire cage and put flags on it.   So far they have not done it twice and the poor little sapling is recovering with a new shoot.

These guys mean well but just rush around way to swiftly.  They want to cut and go, move on to the next customer.  They need adult management.

Well the sun is out and I see some plants coming back.  That kind of wets my appetite to get some yard work done.

I Finally Got It To Work . . . .

A while back I bought a WiFi booster via Amazon Prime.  It was a nifty device.  You plugged it in in the den next to the AT&T modem and it learned all the signals and the correct little lights blinked on off until finally the right ones were left lit.  That meant it was working.

I them moved into the kitchen and tested it against my lap top and found the signal was much stronger and lap top worked faster.  That was as advertised.  

Judie is wearing a heart monitor and among other things it connects to the Internet automatically.  But the signal in the bed room was not strong enough and it did not connect in that room.  So I moved the booster into the bedroom and sure enough, the monitor connected up with whatever it connects to.

So I bought another booster to replace the one that was now in the bed room.  But it was not exactly the same make and model as the one in the bed room.  In fact it was much more complicated to set up.

The one in the bed room just sat there and figured out what was what and went to work.  The new one had to be "set up" correctly to work.  I tried following the instructions provided with the booster but it seemed like they were written by a Chinese computer expert with lots of acronyms not spelled out so you did not know what was what.  It just did not have that automatic feature like the older booster has.

I finally did a Google search and found some instructions in American writing and followed those instructions.  Basically I had to use the lap top, hook up a Ethernet cable between the lap top and the booster.  Then using that computer web browser to connect with the manufacturer and the instructions on the regular computer, I hooked up the cable and sure enough got things rolling.  I noted that the new booster only had two lights instead of four that were on the older booster version.  And sure enough I got the proper light indicating a signal working just fine at long last.

Then I moved the booster back into the living room, plugged it in and watched it.  The power light flashed a few times and then went steady and after about a minute the signal light lit up, went off, blinked a few times and then came back on with a strong light.  I am guessing that meant a good signal. And the signal light remained on meaning it was connected and doing its boosting as it was supposed to do.

I then fired up the lap top in the kitchen area and I immediately noted a much faster response using the Internet.  So now I know I had a good signal.  I confirmed the lap top was running faster and better now with the booster working like it should.

But it took me a couple of weeks to finally figure out how to set the thing up.  Once I broke the code on passwords, etc., it was a piece of cake.  But no one explained what pass word to use when with what process or step.  The pass word they were looking for is one off the AT&T modem whivh is just a 10 digit number.   I do not refer to that number as a pass word but rather as the "Modem Code."  Now I know better.

I would not be surprised now that I could get a signal across the street in my neighbors house since both boosters are working.  The booster improves the signal power (that is range) and speeds up the data transfer at the same time.  It does make a difference.

New Hearing Aids . . .

I asked for and got an appointment with the Audiology Clinic at the Veterans Administration (VA) clinic in Fort Worth.  And to my good fortune I got the same young lady that examined me some five or six years ago.  We did a quick test, basically the same test I originally had back when I first got hearing aids.

She told me my hearing had not change much but probably my hearing aids were failing, or wearing out.  No matter, some where along the way I had those hearings repaired when both receivers came off.  She told me I should have brought the repaired hearing aids in to have them recalibrated or tuned up. This I did not know thus have suffered for the last three years with subpar performance of the devices.

So she ordered up new set of hearing aids for me.  This time I also got a Blue Tooth television set up.  That allows me to listen to the TV through my hearing aids.  That is really neat and I find I can turn the TV sound almost off and still hear what is going on.  Before with the subpar old hearing aids I still had the volume up pretty high.  Now I can hear though the hearing aids and the sound can be set way down as to not bother anybody else.

I can also answer my telephone via the hearing aids even to the point I can use the hearing aid on the left side to reject a call or even hang up on a call.  And of course I can communicate through the hearing aids to the phone.  If you think about it, hearing aids have a microphone so it can be used to talk to a caller via hearing aid to the cell phone.  So the phone can stay on your belt or be elsewhere and I can still answer the call.  That is a really neat feature too.

The new hearing aids are much more sensitive and I hear much better.  I really do hear all the clicks and clacks of typing on a key board, or the change jingling in my pocket.  The hearings aids also have programs to work jointly, focusing on the someone talking to you or even suppresses road noises while riding in a car.  All of that is programmed into the operation of the devices.  All of that in a tiny little container sitting behind my ear and with a terminal in my ear (called a receiver).  These are Receiver In Canal (RIC) devices.

I find the VA gives first class hearing equipment.  Mine are Phonak brand (Swiss Made like a fine mechanical watch) and top of the line devices.  I looked up the prices, of course these are prices everyone gets charged and was astounded at how expensive they were.  I am sure the VA buys them in bulk and gets a better price but even so they are quite costly.

I do have a service connected disability for hearing but it is rated at zero.  Getting compensation of hearing loss means you really have severe hearing impairment.  I can hear but I do not hear much above 4,000 cycles.  This is known as telephone hearing because that is about the fidelity of our telephones.  So while I do not collect any compensation I do get hearing aids and I am thankful as they are pretty expensive devices.

Any how I did not know how much I had been missing.  And all that sound is catching up to me again.  Some things are really painful to hear amplified like water coming out a kitchen sink faucet.  Man, that is very irritating especially if I am standing over sink and running the water.  At distance it is not so bad but up close it almost hurts it is so harsh.

It is good to be hearing again!

Pain Doctor , , ,

Well I had an appointment with the pain doctor yesterday to address my right arm.  I have radiculopathy which literally means I have disk problem in my neck that pinches the nerve and impacts my arm.  It is not just pain and numbness, it is a loss of dexterity and mobility.  I am losing range of motion.

First the nurse put me through her routine including a pee in the cup routine.  They do that because they deal in opioids a lot.  So I was not excited about it, just something you have to do.  My BP was up and I attribute that to finally getting to see the doctor but doing so means you have to go through a bunch of BS to get to that point.

The next person was a PA and he put me through his paces.  He had learned I had Peripheral Neuropathy (PN) which is a result of my Type II Diabetes (an auto immune disease).  Diabetes attacks nerves and especially nerve ends in your extremities.  And the VA has assessed that and awarded me a Service Condition which among other things carries with it a monthly stipend.  The fact that I have it is not a big deal to me and it really does not impact me a great deal.  Yes, I have lost some sensation in my feet and hands but that condition has not changed since I have gotten my Diabetes under control.  And I generally pay close attention to the Diabetes.  As a result its onslaught to attacking my nervous system has if not abated has remained relatively unchanged.  Basically, it does not bother me anymore as I know what it is and that I can not do anything about it.  The PA was intent on trying to get me to take Gabapentin and I was not having anything to do with it.

Then the doctor popped in to see me.  His news was disheartening in that neck conditions were really bad.  The joints at 5/6 and 5/7 were really bad especially on the right side.  I knew that it was bad just not how bad.  I had looked at the MRI and even I could see there were issues at those joints in my neck (or if you will my upper spine).  The discs were bulging out and the shots would pump up the disc and relieve the pressure on my nerves.   I had been though this before except it was just 5/6 joint giving me issues.  He did not even mention Gabapentin or my PN at all.

I had my left shoulder replaced in September last year and had to wear this humongous sling for at least a month.  I attributed my neck problems to the wearing of the sling.  The doctor agreed with me.
Now I am scheduled for a "procedure" and that treatment will be shots in the neck.  It appears that the process has become refined and improved.  So now I have to go to minor surgery for the treatment.  The doctor said it was so bad I should expect at least three shots to treat it.  That means three different times in the minor surgery for me.  He said I should expect it to take at least that many times to get things back into place so to speak.

In the last month or so, the pain has abated but I know it can flare up immediately.  More so I want to get my dexterity back again.  There was no comment about that but I am sure I will regain some degree of range of motion.

No Fritzes . . .

Fritz is the name I gave to our resident fence lizard.  He was a real laid back guy.  We later had a Mrs. Fritz but she was not so laid back, she was very skittish.  And then we had a bunch of them all over the yard.  Our cricket population went to near zero.

But so far with arrival of Spring I have not seen a Fritz in the yard or their other favorite spot, my garage.  We used to see them run across the window screens.  But so far we have not seen nary a one around the yard.

I think perhaps they have moved on as there seems to be no crickets for then to feast on.  I am guessing they have so decimated the population of crickets that there is not enough food for them to survive on.  Oh, I'm sure there are other insects they may eat but even so, there are no Fritzes running around anymore.

Or maybe I am just premature in thinking they are gone.  I do not know.  We will keep a watch for them.  Maybe they are in your yard now.