Testing Is a Good Thing

Nope, I’m not writing about the scandal of Atlanta teachers cheating on test scores to make themselves and their classes look better. What I’m writing about is about personal testing of one’s limits. All too often we skate by through life without seeing where we are and what we can really achieve.

That’s actually quite a broad topic, so for the sake of brevity it will be narrowed down to one example. A personal one at that.

In a recent post, I mentioned how my times in Yahoo crossword puzzles had been doubled while I had the respiratory infection. While the puzzles are being used to sharpen my rusty word skills, they serve another purpose as well. That is to see how well my brain is functioning that day. Cognition is something heavily affected by CFS and while I can usually tell how well I’m doing there, it isn’t always the case. So a more objective test on a daily basis is helpful to see how I’m doing and assist me when I’m waffling about how alert I’m being.

Previously, I’d been using a game called Audiosurf on the Steam game service to judge how well my physical reflexes (and to a lesser degree, alertness) were doing on a given day. Having fallen out of that habit, today is the first day of reinstituting that test alongside the crossword puzzles. It is a fun game, especially since I only play on Mono Pro setting to avoid real aggravation. Since it also uses music from the player’s personal collection to generate the “roads”, the soundtrack is always good.

Testing my capabilities each day helps me assess and allocate my energy for the day. Energy management is a must with CFS. Overextending causes lengthy setbacks which require far too much down time to recover from. While unavoidable in general, limiting the severity increases what you can do in the long term.

Today was a fairly good day on both tests with the mind sharp enough and the reflexes at my normal level. Those mistakes were rust from not playing in a long time, I tell you!

The Sounds of Silence

“He’s dead, Jim.”

That was what flashed through my mind around 9 PM last night as it became clear that my external backup hard drive hadn’t just failed, but had done so in spectacular fashion. Despite an array of utilities I have, the thing won’t cough up any data whatsoever. Not even a low level format is possible.

I’ve had drives fail over the years in every possible way except bursting into flames or exploding. But none so completely. It looks like the power outages on Friday night killed it, since I suffered a BIOS corruption on our media center PC too. That was easily fixed.

So the hard drive I rely on to protect my most important data has shuffled off the mortal coil. Oh the irony. At the moment, I can’t afford a new one so I’ll have to buy a refurbished one at this rate. Of course, it was well out of warranty. Irritating.

Oh and for the record, it was a Western Digital 500 MB MyBook. WD drives and I have had an excessive failure rate compared to other brands. Perhaps I should find another brand.

Happy Independence Day!

It is a good thing to remember how this country was founded and the immense sacrifices made by our founding fathers. Many who signed the Declaration of Independence ended up losing everything during the Revolutionary War and I wonder how many today would take that kind of risk. Sadly, this is not a time of optimism or hope in the United States with the future looking quite bleak. But at least for a day, we should set aside our differences and despair to celebrate the grand experiment that began in the late 1700’s.

On a more local note, I was glad to see a lot of people turn out for the annual La Crosse Ward “picnic”/cherry pit spitting contest. No, I didn’t compete because I was out of spit, as usual. Elder Tataipu won convincingly with a 42 foot spit, easily outdistancing everyone else. Score one for the full time missionary from Hawaii!

I’m wobbly from the weekend, it has been an endurance run. Saturday night I ended up in charge of the fireworks again and that was exhausting, though fun. We probably spooked every critter in the Yucatan valley with our light and sound show. There are leftovers, so we’ll be well prepared for next year.

A Mighty Wind

With the 100 degree weather yesterday came a break from the misery late in the evening. The only problem is the break also broke trees. The National Weather Service summary has a list of all the damage reported from the high winds that swept through. The animations show a faint bow echo ahead of the rain and that’s where the worst of the winds were for us. When it hit, I thought the air conditioner was going to be shoved into my room it was shaking so much. In fact, it has never shaken during any storm. Power was out for several hours starting at 10:30 PM. With the heat and humidity in the house it made for uncomfortable sleeping.

Things were far worse in other places in Minnesota and Wisconsin, so I can’t complain. Not exactly a good start to the Independence Day celebrations.

Photos of our rather unimpressive damage:

Scattered branches and twigs litter nearly all of the West  and front yards.

How these branches missed the antenna, I don’t know. Not that it made much difference when the power went out.

The maple tree out back has taken a beating this year. The big limb drooping is damage from the earlier storm that spawned a tornado in La Crosse.

Biggest damage was to this Asian Elm which was slated for being cut down anyway. While a lovely tree, it has wet wood, a bacterial infection that can spread to other trees. That dark stain on the right side is from water continuously being pushed out through its vascular system.

Amazingly, most of the branches in the East yard came from trees in the West yard. The cottenwood and oak trees were the main victims.

Health 7-1-2011

We are having a mini heat wave, it will be 100 F with a heat index of 106 or better.  I’m trying to both clean and take it easy, which isn’t working out too well. I wonder why?

Still dizzy and congested, but ever so slowly improving. Only had to get up once last night during a coughing fit, which was short and productive. At least I can breath again!

Lately, I’ve been doing crossword puzzles on Yahoo games to keep my mind going and to gauge how well it is working on a given day. Normal time is 11-15 minutes for me but during the worst of this bug it has been 20-35 minutes – roughly double. I wish to note that these crossword puzzles are not exactly the most challenging out there and I’m appalled by even my best times.

Did not sleep well last night due to the coughing fit and back pain. The pain flare up surprised me and it wasn’t until thunder and lightning showed up that I understood the cause. Nothing quite like being a human barometer.

The Shutdown

The big news in Minnesota is the state government shutdown due to an inability to get a budget passed. As I expected, the media is backing Governor Dayton and one of the main line of attacks is hammering on incessantly about the closure of state parks during the popular camping season of the 4th of July weekend. All very predictable and probably very effective in swaying public sentiment. Portraying the Republicans as only cutting spending when they actually presented an increase in spending is all part of the dishonest game.

I have to give credit to the state Republican leadership who didn’t cave in despite knowing this was exactly what Dayton wanted, contrary to his protestations to reporters. The surprising thing is how many Republicans I know who didn’t think the shutdown would happen. When a reversed version of this happened while Pawlenty was in office in 2005, the Democrats used it to great advantage to vilify the Republican party and it was believed it contributed to the rout of the GOP in 2006. Of course Dayton was going to return to that playbook!

In the end, there is a high probability that doing the right thing on holding back spending will damage Republican chances statewide in 2012. The power of the media is still great and that can’t be ignored. For all the talk of how the new methods of communication like Twitter and Facebook have changed things, the old partisan media is still where most people get their information. However, there is a lot going on nationally that will effect the local races, especially the economy. That keeps things unpredictable for the moment.

Frankly, I don’t think the public has the intestinal fortitude to deal with the extensive cuts that are really required and we will see Minnesota and the nation collapse into economic ruins. Cynical pandering and class warfare are already being used to buttress the Left’s insane devotion to Keynesian economics. Spending when you have no savings will never get a person, a state, or a nation out of debt. So all of that stimulus into the economy just made things worse and yes, both political parties are to blame for it. You would have thought the lessons of the 1970’s would have been remembered.

Dark times are ahead, far darker than most expect because it is a systemic problem with how our government “works.” People look to the demonstrations and riots in Europe while wondering if it can happen here. It can and could get much worse with the Left’s history of violence.

I would like to be wrong about this.

C–Control Anime

Found another thinking person’s anime that just wrapped up.  C – Control: The Money of Soul and Possibility is something I was going to avoid, but checked out on a whim. At first blush it appeared to be a Pokemon style fighting show, but turned out to be an exploration of economic and philosophical theories instead. Oh there are fights, called “deals,” in it but they aren’t always shown and aren’t the main focus. Instead, expect a lot of dialogue and character development combined with moral dilemmas.

The plot is about an impoverished and miserly college student in Japan who is sucked into participating in a parallel world called the Financial District. Fights are fought on a regular basis and the money from there can be used in the real world. It is a slow starting show but once he gets his “asset”, Mashu, things really pick up. I will note the show confused quite a few otaku’s online who managed to completely misinterpret the finale and what happened.

The fight moves being named after economic jargon has to be one of the most amusing things about the series. Not for kids at all, it is another TV-14 due to violence and one unnecessary bit of fan service in episode 8 that is censored. If this ever gets licensed in the U.S., I’ll be buying it and rare is the anime I’m willing to buy.

Check out  C-Control at Hulu.com.