10 October 2010 Good for something after all

This blog became useful today beyond being a means of generalized bitching, complaining, and kvetching. The good folks at the local VA hospital sent me a postcard announcing their schedule for influenza immunizations. They also requested that, if I had already received my annual vaccination, I call or fax them the date, place, and other information. I typed out the information and realized that the paperwork provided me by Krogers was so faint – multiple copies – that the date of immunization was not legible.

I recall mentioning the event in my blog. A short search retrieved the date I needed and I faxed it off to VA. Someone else may have received a copy, too. The all-in-one printer/fax/copier’s memory seemed to have another number in hold. Since we fax something, perhaps twice a year, it is a lesson in humility every time we try to recall the process.

Someone now knows where I live and that I’m a VA patient who stopped at Krogers.

I’m exploring the problem of Flash cookies now. These little bits of tracking software can actually be dropped onto a computer from a website the computer has never accessed. I’m not at all happy to discover that. I make it a point not to read ads that come up disguised as search results. I make it a point to avoid websites that require flash.

This is day three of update, rebuild, restore, and see what is missing. The latest discovery is that my incremental backups have not been saved since Thursday evening. Any document, spreadsheet, picture, music, or other such file added to the hard drive or modified in some form, is to be written to an external hard drive. Many of my settings, contacts, bookmarks, and other operating files were cross-decked from my backup drive. Currently I’m running a new incremental program that will hopefully correct that problem. The initial backup will take a couple of hours.

Dinner last night was Pho, a Vietnamese beef noodle soup that can be constructed in endless varieties. We had it with pan-seared bean curd, pan-grilled shrimp, rice noodles, mint, lime, and cilantro last night. Gloria is more willing to muck around with recipes than I am. She added Shitake mushrooms to hers, giving it some further chewy components and a bit more Japanese character. I tend to be more rigid if I’m trying to copy a recipe from a different culture. I generally either plan ahead and buy all the ingredients I need for the dish or manage it without some ingredients rather than to cross cultural traditions. Gloria will add whatever sounds good or interesting to her at the moment. Both of us can crank out excellent meals, and do.

Tonight will be a reprise of last night, south east Asian soups. I’m going to fix a Thai hot and sour for Gloria, adding some bean thread noodles and some oysters, along with leftover tofu from last night. I’ll make another pho for me with the same additions.