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Take a walk on the mild side.
July 2009 - Posts
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Eclipses are fascinating. Just imagine, when an eclipse occurs, there is a giant shadow that crosses over the earth, and that shadow is caused by another object in the solar system. I think that the most awesome eclipse is a total eclipse of the sun. That is when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun occluding the sun completely on a portion of the Earth. If we are lucky enough to be in the narrow strip where the umbra occurs, it feels like a science fiction movie, in broad daylight, all of a sudden there is no sunlight. To make it even better, we get to see the moon crossing slowly in front of the sun’s disc and then, when the moon continues its motion, we get to watch the sunlight return. There was a solar eclipse about a week ago. Unfortunately for us, it was only visible in Asia.
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I watched a documentary called Sound and Fury a year ago. It made be quite angry at the time and I still get angry about it whenever I think of it. The documentary is about two families deciding about getting a cochlear implant for their deaf children. There are two adult brothers - one is deaf, the other can hear. The hearing brother married a hearing woman whose parents were deaf. The hearing brother and his hearing wife had two sons - one could hear, the other was deaf. The hearing couple, both of whom had grown up in households with deaf people, made the decision to get a cochlear implant for their deaf son while he was still a baby. After the baby woke up from the surgery, the surgeon made a noise near the child and the child immediately turned his head to locate the noise. The parents gasped in relief that the surgery had worked. The deaf brother had married a deaf woman and they had a deaf daughter that was about 5 years old. When the hearing brother was looking into the cochlear implant for his son, the deaf brother also looked into it for his daughter. It turned out that the deaf mother was a candidate for a cochlear implant, but the doctor did not recommend it for her because of her age. Her brain would not adapt well to suddenly being able to hear; none of it would make sense. The deaf parents let the 5-year-old play with other children that had a cochlear implant. They could hear and were not learning sign language so she was not able to communicate with them. All of the relatives were interviewed about whether the deaf couple should get the cochlear implant for their daughter. The hearing relatives thought that the parents should get the cochlear implant for their daughter and the deaf relatives thought that they should not. The deaf parents decided NOT to get the implant for their daughter. They didn't want her to "miss out on the beautiful deaf culture". A deaf grandmother of the child was afraid that a hearing grandchild would laugh at her. I think that was really the key for all of them. The deaf parents were afraid of the ramifications of raising a hearing child. Some of the hearing relatives accused the deaf parents of abusing their daughter and that they were condemning her to a life of deafness that wasn't necessary. They pointed out that if the child couldn't see well, the parents would surely get her glasses, if she broke her leg, the parents would get that fixed. At the very end of the movie, the deaf mother and the deaf daughter were sitting on the couch together and the mother was listing the reasons against getting the cochlear implant and she ended with "and that's why we decided not to do it". The little girl looked at her puzzled and said, "YOU decided." The mother gently "corrected" her daughter and said, "WE decided."
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I drive a Dodge Caravan and I like it for several reasons. It is big enough to carry everything that we need to carry, the seats are removable, it has every creature comfort that a person would want, and it gets decent gas mileage. My husband finds something more to like about it every time he gets in it. Like the fact that he can get a full sheet of plywood in the back – and close the rear hatch. Or, being able to get ten-foot long two-by-fours in the van without anything sticking out of the windows, etc. Lately, however, I have been thinking about the Honda Fit. It gets better mileage than the van and the seats fold down so that we could get quite a bit of cargo inside it. It will not be able to haul any lumber, but maybe my husband will not need any more wood for a while.
This past weekend my husband auditioned a drummer for his band. They had not previously met. A local restaurant was chosen for the audition and all of us met there on Sunday. I was pleasantly surprised when the drummer arrived; he was driving a Fit. As he started to unload his instruments I engaged him in conversation about his car. I told him of my interest and, after removing all of his equipment, he handed me the keys and said for me to take a test drive. I drove it around for a short while to get the feel of it; how odd I thought it was that a person whom I met only two minutes before would trust a stranger with his car. His trust was well placed however; I brought the car back in perfect condition and parked. It was a very nice ride, and it gets (he says) about thirty-four miles to the gallon of gas.
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I had a web form full of update panels. There were many sections that the users would update individually. I chose to do partial postbacks to save the whole page having to re-load every time. Unfortunately, the users couldn't tell when they had clicked on a button that something was actually taking place. I decided to display an animated gif whenever they clicked an update button or selected a record to edit. When the partial postback was completed, the image would disappear and the text "Changes have been saved" would appear. Displaying the "Changes have been saved" was easily done with a literal control inside each update panel. The text was filled in with the server-side script and it appeared beside the Save button the user had clicked. The animated gif was more challenging. I only wanted to put one image on the page, but each section would need to be able to access it. The solution turned out to be easier than I anticipated. I used the AjaxControlToolkit AlwaysVisibleControlExtended for the placement of the animated gif and some client-side javascript to turn the display of the image on and off.
Below is the code for the placement of the animated gif. Inside the panel, I have a div with an ID of "divProcessing" and the display style is set to none.
< asp:Panel ID="pnlProcessing" runat="server" Width="52" Height="52" style="z-index: 1;">
<div id="divProcessing" style="display:none;">
<img src="../images/processing.gif" alt="Processing..." width="52" height="52" /> </div>
</asp:Panel>
<cc1:AlwaysVisibleControlExtender ID="avProcessing" runat="server"
TargetControlID="pnlProcessing"
VerticalSide="Top" VerticalOffset="193"
HorizontalSide="Center" HorizontalOffset="531"
ScrollEffectDuration=".1" />
I added some javascript to the page for showing or hiding the divProcessing.
< script type="text/javascript">
function Processing(StyleDisplay) {
document.getElementById('divProcessing').style.display = StyleDisplay;
}
pageLoad = function() {
Processing('none');
}
</script>
The animated gif is displayed by the save buttons calling the javascript function Processing using OnClientClick="javascript:Processing('');"
When the partial postback has been completed, the javascript function pageLoad is called automatically which hides the animated gif. Any function noted as pageLoad is called whenever the page loads, from an initial load, a postback, or a partial postback.
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This morning was like most other
mornings – except that it was rather hot in the house. Our
thermometer is always set to the same temperature range so it was odd
that the air conditioner didn’t automatically correct the air
temperature to the preset level. A little poking and prodding with
the controls, a few (well, quite a few) choice words from my husband,
and no more than ten minutes later, we discovered the horror of all
horrors: the air conditioner was broken! Immediately my mind took a
tailspin back in time. I felt as if I were transported back into the
Stone Ages. You know, living in a cave, bats hanging everywhere,
cooking dinosaur burgers over a roaring fire, stifling heat, my
leopard skin shorts getting too tight, having to use poison ivy
leaves in the privy, well, you get the idea. How can one exist
without air conditioning!?
Then I took a deep breath and regained
myself. “I know”, said I, “We will call the air conditioning
man and he will come to fix the air conditioner and then all will be
well again.” I dug out the phone book, looked up the section on air
conditioning repair, and called one of the people on the first page.
I tried to let one of the ads jump out at me, but I did not feel any
pizzazz coming from any of the selections so I just picked one that
was fairly close to us and – I dialed the number. A man with a
reassuring voice answered the phone and I spun my tale of woe. He
said he would come to see the problem in under an hour. I was elated;
my husband was skeptical. According to my husband, repairmen never
come when they say they will. Sometimes you have to call several
times to get someone to repair your broken device. We decided to give
the man the hour that he stated on the phone. When the hour had
transpired, the phone rang and the repairman said that they were just
then leaving the shop. (My husband was right.) We decided to give him
one additional hour to show up before looking in the phone book for
another repairman. Finally, as the hour allotted was at its end, the
man showed up and he went right to work on the problem. He installed
about four electrical parts, added some Freon, and we had a
functioning air conditioner. Yippee! No more nightmares concerning
dinosaur burgers or poison ivy, we are living in the modern world
again.
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I was having lunch the other day with an older
couple. I know them quite well and they are comfortable with telling me
anything that comes to their minds. They really aren’t that old, but
they act like they are in their nineties; although they have twenty years
before reaching that lofty age. Nonetheless, our lunch came to table, we
started eating, and they started talking. The subject of conversation centered
on a friend of theirs who is much older and who has trouble with being
incontinent. Okay, I feel that most anything is fair game for conversation, but
we were eating! Their attention to detail on the matter was – oh, what
word am I looking for – gross! I had to hear about every little mishap
that the poor fellow suffered, his soiling of clothes, furniture, and bedding,
his seeming indifference to making work for others, and his inability to gain
control of his bodily functions.
Why do people think it is necessary to talk so much about
the subject of incontinence? Are they worried that it is going to happen to
them? Are they tacitly saying that: “There but by the grace of God, go I”? Are
they concerned that the affliction might be contagious? It is probably all of
these things plus other fears that may lurk in their minds. For me, I prefer
talking about almost anything else.
To gain a little more insight into the subject, I discussed
the matter with a leading expert in the field of Gerontology, Dr. Richard
Marsella. He has had many years of training in the subject of Aging, and he has
worked closely with the older population. Gerontology is the study of the
behavior of old people. Dr. Marsella suggests that the reason(s) that people
talk so much about the subject of incontinence is that they fear the
embarrassment that accompanies the malady, they see it as an inevitable
consequence of aging, aging portends death, and these people don’t have
anything else of interest in their lives but to talk about someone else’s
misfortune. Our society’s disdain for discomfort, especially concerning the
lower regions of the body, heralds immediate fear of anything that brings our
attention to said lower regions; not to mention the malodorous features of the
condition lest our eyesight fail us.
Conversation during eating is an endeavor requiring careful
thought; not many subjects qualify for good digestion. Gossiping with intent to
show disrespect for the perils of another certainly has no place at the table.
Maybe the next time I have a meal with this loquacious older couple I will set
the mood with talk of pretty flowers, or maybe a comment on the high quality of
the food that we will enjoy. Bon Appetite!
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Last night we watched a couple documentaries on the
healthcare systems of different countries, including our own system here in the
United States. Both of the documentaries confirmed our worst fears about our
lack of a good healthcare system. All of the other advanced countries in the
world (France, England, Japan, Taiwan, France, and others) have good, workable systems
that seem to put the patients and their health problems first, and money last. In
the United States money comes first and care, if you can get it, comes last.
According to the films the health insurance companies (like Vista, Cigna, and
others) are only interested in making money from premiums and in not
paying insurance claims. There were numerous examples from this country that
show the lack of concern here at home for people, and the great care that is
ubiquitous abroad. There was one instance where a young adult developed
cervical cancer; her insurance company turned her down even though she had up
to date coverage. Desperate to find someone to help her, she crossed the border
into Canada, found a friend there, and went to a clinic where she was accepted
for treatment. Total cost to her: none.
The people who produced the documentaries traveled to
several different countries to find out exactly what is and is not true with
their healthcare systems. In both Europe and Asia the producers found that the
doctors and hospitals are government run and the medical personnel are paid a
very good salary to keep people healthy. In fact, if the patients in a doctor's
care show improvement in preventive care (such as quitting smoking, exercising,
lowering sugar levels, etc.) then that doctor will get a bonus; there is an
incentive to keep people healthy. By contrast here in the United States,
doctors are encouraged to keep people on pharmaceuticals because our government
has been "bought" by the people who produce the pills. In addition, the common
person with an insurance plan will have to fight to get the plan to pay a
covered item. There are even "hit men" that are employed by the insurance
companies to search a person's records and health history to find something
that they can use to deny paying a claim. There were a few people interviewed
that reported that their family member died because the hospitals, doctors, and
insurance companies refused to treat them.
What can we do? First, we must have a government that is not
corrupt (we don't have one), next we need medical personnel who have gone into
the profession with a genuine desire to help people (most of our medical people
are too interested in their golf scores and making huge sums of money for
themselves), then we need a population that will respect an honest healthcare
system. That is, if a person is not really sick, then don't bother the doctor
with useless and frivolous complaints. Also, there is a quaint custom that my
husband remembers from his childhood. It is called "house calls" wherein a
medical person will come to your home to administer care. Just think about
this, with one doctor going to private homes that is a whole bunch of people
not going to emergency rooms. There are many horror stories about emergency
rooms - don't get me started!
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