Off to Wisconsin . . .

We are driving to Wisconsin to visit our grand children (and their parents).  It is not too far, about 900 miles or so up through Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and then into Wisconsin.  Madison, the destination, is not to far into Wisconsin, and a very pleasant place to visit.  It is moderately cosmopolitan city being both a state capital and home of the University of Wisconsin.  It has two grand lakes, one huge and one not so big.  Quite a beautiful place.

On the way back we will detour and go into Iowa to visit our friends who moved there from Ruidoso, NM.  What a change in climate and location for them, from the desert and mountains to the plains and corn fields.  It will be good to see them, they have stopped by to see us many times, so it is our turn to visit.

Then we will dash down I-35 back to Weatherford and the heat.  But the new route back will be a change and thus a bit more fun to see the country side from a different direction.  We will be traveling literally down the middle of the great USA.

We will be driving in relative comfort in the "whale."  The whale is a big silver Lincoln Navigator.  It is big and floats down the road, hence its name - the whale.  Nice and cool in side, plenty of room and even has air conditioned seats.   With satellite radio we can listen to uninterrupted talk radio, or music of our choice.  While the whale consumes more gasoline it has a bigger gas tank, so we will stop in our usual spots to lunch and refuel on the way up.  The way down will be for the most part an all new route for us.

We are looking forward to a cool respite but not sure what we will get up there in the frozen Narth.  It can get really warm at times but that big lake tends to keep Madison comfortable.   Hard to believe that in winter both lakes freeze over.  Sailing in the summer and ice fishing in the winter.

Windows 10

I signed up for Windows 10 and it is in their terms "reserved" and will down load in the background.  That they have to know what kind of computer I have.  I suppose that is test to see if my computer can handle it.

I am pretty sure it can as it is relatively fast.  It has a Intel dual core processor and speed of 2.5 GHz.  I have four Gigs of RAM and perhaps 250 megabytes of space on my hard drive.  So there ought to be plenty of room for the new system.  I liked Windows 95, I had a battle loading Windows 98 but finally overcame that hurtle.  I have Windows Millennium on this machine and my lap top.  I have since converted them to Windows 7 Ultimate.  Windows 7 was and is a pretty good operating system but I am sure it will get dropped in the next six or nine months.  And the new system is free, so , , ,

I cringe at having to learn yet another system.  I liked each one in the past and I guess I will convert soon enough.  I used be a Word Perfect person but got overrun by Microsoft Word.  I have literally lost all memory of Word Perfect.  And I do not know if old applications like Quicken 6 or Word for Windows XP (I have downloaded various patches to get that to work).

So we move on ahead - again.

I Have Learned . . .

I have learned that when I get some kind of crazy response on the computer to go to Bing or Google and ask a question.  The answer is usually there somewhere.

Most recent is I kept getting a message that said the Internet Explorer was not working yet it was.  And the message of course popped up in the middle of the window being very obnoxious and persistent.  Again and again it was occurring.

So I  Googled it and sure enough I found five or six others had similar experiences.  That tells me it is not unusual and that there has to be a fix.  Sure enough there was a fix.  One had to "reset" Internet Explorer.  And there was step by step instructions from a real person from Windows.  The first procedure did not work but the second one given did indeed work and I got Internet Explorer 11 reset and the irritant disappeared.

I recently got a medical report from my Cardiologist.  And I took it apart literally phrase by phrase.  I found the most innocuous phrase was the key one and what I thought was the bad one was not bad at all.  The amazing thing was all of those phrases popped up when they were typed into Google or Bing.  There was even a phrase about the shape of the pulse shown on the EKG that indicated an issue, precursor of heart disease.  The report was from a Nuclear Stress test.

Those two search engines worked like a charm.  And yes, there was some cause for concern in the Cardiologist's report.  I now understand why he sent me off to do Computed Tomography Angiogram or CTA.  That is a non-invasive close examination of my heart and its arteries.

A CTA is a fancy name for a modern computer run X-ray machine that is coupled into a EKG.  The EKG tells the X-ray machine when the heart is resting and the X-ray machine takes pictures of the heart and the surrounding arteries that feed the heart muscle.  And the CTA takes very narrow pictures, like one 256th of an inch width.  This is very precise and non-invasive look at your (and in my case my) heart arteries.  It can detect both hard and soft plaque in your arteries.  Neither one is good.  In my case it turns out that I have Arteriosclerosis or Atherosclerosis - hardening of the arteries.  There is some blockage that ranges from 30% to 50% blockage in several locations.  At this point nothing is done except taking drugs such as Metoprolol (Beta Blocker), baby sized Aspirin (blood thinner and known preventer of heart attacks), Analapril (Ace Inhibitor for blood pressure reduction) and exercise.  Nothing will remove the Calcium and in time I may end up with a Stent installed but not yet.

The material of great concern is Calcium build up that keeps the arteries from being flexible.  I have so far good blood flow but definite hardening of arteries.  Since our blood carries at all times 1% or more Calcium, it will continue be it ever so slow (I hope).  There also seems to be an ever so slight build up of Calcium on the left ventricle heart valve (not unexpected with all the other Calcium build up).  The blood flow numbers are in the satisfactory range but not that great.

So I read the reports in detail, and checked all the details.  I would not have had such access without a computer and being linked to the Internet.  And I have acquired more words for my vocabulary like "Stenosis" which means narrowing.  So if one hears he or she has stenosis, then you know you are getting plaque build up around the heart (not good).

My risk for a heart attack increases.  Of course something will eventually kill us all.  Perhaps a fatal heart attack is better than a prolonged cancer event.  No matter, we do not get out of this world alive, some ways of departing are better than others.

And perhaps my curiosity and the Internet are not such good things for me to explore.  Hmmmm.

August is Here . . .

Aside from the Texas unbearable heat, August is here.  School kids gearing up for school start, tax sale coming up soon for them to reequip themselves.

Grass is growing at a respectable rate, and watering must be done or the grass will burn up.  We are after all in a semi-desert climate here.  We get spring rains (sometimes) but summer is dry and parched.  The farmers made a huge hay crop this year with the early and frequent rains.  Lakes are full but are starting down again.  Part of that is evaporation and part is due to no rain to refill them and of course the people are using the water.  That is what most of the lakes are for, giant water reservoirs for our ever growing population.

I notice a lot of house starts this year, so part of the economy is back, Texas has done well with gas wells attracting out of state-ers to do the work.  That makes the population go up and keeps the economy going strong.  The rest of the country is not doing as well as we are here.  All of that drives up the price of houses and the local tax assessors delight in the increased value and up our property taxes.  My taxes are frozen and yet they raised them.  Not sure about all of that but you can not fight city hall.

And near the end of the month we make our annual trek to Madison, WI to see the grandkids and their parents.  Short visit.  Supposed to have a crawfish boil p there, their crawfish come in later than ours with their cooler climate.  Until recently, they did not have clue as to what to do with crawfish but enough of them spent some time in Louisiana and learned to enjoy them.   So they are gradually catching on to the freshwater delicacy.

I can see the at boil now, where a young couple from Wisconsin will take three or four of the crawfish and eat them.   And they will declare them wonderful and be done with it.  Too messy to fool with and really it is fish bait.  While the true aficionados will gobble down four or five pounds of them.  They will look on with awe and wonder.

Then September is upon  us and football season fires up for real.  It will still be hot but we will find a cool place to watch the games. 

Geaux Tigers!

At Last . . .

At last I was able to get Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate to run games again.  No not any special games, uploads and that sort, just the games that comes with the software.

I do not know how I got it to come back.  I tried all the tricks, downloading KB files form Microsoft that had fixes in them, turning the games on and off several times.  Rebooting again and again and installing more fixes to the software.

I had had a virus attack and had to resort to reload of the Windows 7 Ultimate software.  I lost a lot of stuff but had a lot of stuff backed up.  So I have all my old files, just got to reload them here and there.  Back ups work!

But in the process somewhere along the way Microsoft decided I did not need the games.  I found that they had issued a KB file, a fix if you will that they later had to unfix.  It literally turned off the games and other stuff.  So I saw all the discussion on that here and there.  I was unable to find the errant KB file and that seemed to indicate the fix had found it and eradicated it.  The discussion said that would happen, that the errant file would just disappear (of course I never found it in the updates, and there are about 90 to 100 updates, fixes, etc. to get the system back where it was before).

All the pundits said the games were there,  And they were.  They have appeared and I have used Solitaire again.  I play Klondike exclusively, not the other games at all.

What is irritating is that the formats have changed a bit here and there.  I have a copy of XP Office, and the package reloads even though it is XP software. Microsoft sends out a host of changes and makes it compatible with current software.  I suspect the same basic stuff is used, just some compatibility updates are changed.  Then you go through a bunch of updates.  But when you open the software to use it the format or appearance has changed somewhat.  I am sure some of that is in self configuration that I can change but that is a ton of work.

I use a Logitech mouse and key board.  Logitcch software conflicts with Windows but the key board and the mouse work just fine.  So I had to get rid of those files.  That conflict is gone.

Since I have updated, reloaded my virus checker, I have captured no less than two Trojan Horse applications.  And some how another virus checker appeared, 360 and it has caught a couple of problems too. 

So be aware crap is floating around everywhere all the time.  I now delete all address for forwarding mail.  It seems that is a favorite spot for viruses to hide.  Anyway, back to operating and still fixing.

More on Annuity . . .

Our little annuity is a joint annuity, not common, indeed rare is a problem in and of itself.  So we had to do the paper work all over again because Judie is the primary and I am the secondary on the annuity.  It has got to be in the right order or the insurance company does not accept it.

Then the original annuity insurance company wanted a certain form filled out.  But they would not give it to us.  T. Rowe Price, the overlay for the variable annuity said no such form is needed.  Security Benefits, the annuity primary insurance company, said you have the form filed out, but we will not talk to you, you can only talk to T. Rowe Price.  I call that a "Catch 22."

The new annuity insurance company helped us out, they had the secretive form.  They sent it to me and I printed it out.  But not before the computer decided it could not talk to the printer any more.  I had to reload the printer to the computer (and in fact it is now loaded twice).

The form sent us was an *,xps form.  I had to save it to the computer, pull it up in Microsoft Word to print it out.  That was a task in an of itself.  But we got it done.

Boy, annuity insurance companies are worse than banks.  They just do not want to give you your money.  The are PITA.

Anatomy of a VA Claim . . .

The Veterans Department has changed again.  I suppose change is a good thing but I am not so sure.

Before current procedure, one using one's SSN and Military serial number (which is your SSN), you filed your claim with the help of a Service Volunteer Organization (SVO) with the VA.  SVO's maintain offices in the VA facility and do face to face time with the VA staff.  There are a number of them, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), and so on.  I am a life member of DAV and thus use their services.  And it is all free.

Well the VA has changed again.  Now one must file a VA form 21-526EZ.  It is a ten page form, six pages of how to fill it out and even that is not enough.  Then there is four pages to filled in.  The nice thing is that most of it can be filled in on line and printed out.  That makes it neat.

But you must sign it and have two witnesses to your signature.  So that is a burden finding someone to witness your signature.  Simple yes, finding someone is another matter.  You can not use your own family as a witness.  So you have to hunt up a neighbor willing to do the chore.  That adds a day or two delay in getting that form up to speed. 

Then you have to fill out the particular form for which you are making a claim.  In my case that is VA form 21-0960A-1 and get your doctor to sign it.  That usually entails a doctors appointment (not an uncostly event) but the good news is the doctors are cooperative.  The doctors have all been beaten to death by Obamacare and VA to comply.  There are laws you know.

Then you have to collect up the supporting documents, test reports, medical reports etc.  Even though you do that and place all the cogent documents together and ship everything off to the VA, you will get a follow up letter from the VA asking for more information.  Standard procedure.

Presuming you send enough data to the VA they may or may not chose to do a Compensation and Pension examination.  Most of the time the VA uses an independent contractor to do the examination.  Sometimes it is specialized like audio examination.  And sometimes the VA elects to do the exam themselves, you never know which will occur.  And sometimes your data is in and of its self sufficient to preclude further examination.

I do not know what will happen in my case.  I have a Cardiologist that has diagnosed me with Atherosclerosis (hardening of the heart arteries).  The VA can not deny such a diagnosis.  And since I have included the Computing Tomography Angiogram report and the Cardiologist's own Nuclear Stress test, the VA may request I go off and do a further examination.  But they can not deny the facts of the present data and diagnosis.  Thank goodness I have Medicare and Tricare for Life or I would have been out of pocket a ton of money for the examinations and doctors visits.

So I will get the VA form 21-526EZ witnessed, place it and the other forms and  documents in an envelop and ship it off to the DAV at Waco VA Regional Office.  I am sure the DAV will look it over and them move it on to the VA for action.

Then we begin the count down of getting adjudication of the claim.  My hearing claim was relatively simple and took about three months.  I was given a rating of 10% for my Tinnitus but when that was added into the existing group of Service Connected Disabilities, it did not make a change to my over all rating of 90%.  I do not know the out come of the potential rating, if it is 10%, probably no change in my overall rating.  However, if the VA determines my new Service Connected Disability is 30%, them the ball game changes, I will probably be elevated to the rating of 100%.

We shall see what happens.