Flood Friday

There comes a time when you realise your most brilliant blog posts will never be finished. I expect this is for very good reasons, so here are a few to clear from my draft folder. Don't expect a post from me tomorrow. I've shot myself in the foot now and have nothing prepared in advance.

Older Person Tech Stuff

I rather like being an older person, in my sixth decade. I am not so keen on my physical deterioration that comes with old age but I think I have lived in wonderful changing times.

There are some really significant changes that happened in my early years. Here is a bit of list.

Flush toilets. Ok, they had been around for a long time already but we did not have them. At school our toilets were known as drop toilets. Yes, what went into the toilet went into a big hole below. At the rear was an access cover and ours had been pulled aside. What a delight that was for boys. We could give the mixture a good stir with a long stick and chase each other around trying to hit one another with the stick.

Party line telephones where you could listen to your neighbours' conversations by picking up the phone, and none of this dialling or pushing buttons. A quick spin of the handle and the operator would then do all the hard work. In a nearby larger town, all they had to do was pick up the phone for an operator to answer and connect them (the phone was never properly dusted on cleaning day. Work it out). Now, I can text. Who wants to talk on the phone. I can save the text unsent and edit it later. If I replying to a text, I have time to think, unlike on the phone.

All the answers to questions that arose were in books, specifically encyclopaedias.  Britannia was the best and the most comprehensive. Can you believe that when we bought our first computer, we also paid for an encyclopaedia on cd. Comptons comes to mind. Unfortunately is was a one use cd. You put its contents on your hard drive and cd was then unusable. Such ignorance on our part. I also think we paid for, or was included,  a movie database cd, but I can't remember the name now. It certainly wasn't IMDB.

The list is very long. I don't usually give up on something new and high tech if I think it is a function that will be useful to me, be it a computer, a phone, a car or anything else. Among friends similar to my age, I am the tech guru, but I know I am not. I just know more than they do, which is not a great deal.

I don't mind it when people say, 'oh, I can't be bothered with computers', unless it is a cover for not using them because they don't know how to. Believe me, after getting on for two decades of computer use, they are so easy to use now. They just work. This was not always the case. Installing a new program was fraught. Who ever sees the blue screen of death nowadays?

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I was going to write about the Australian magpie, but when searching for who had taken good photos, I found Elephant's Child has already posted about them. Never mind. You can look at her post here for photos and text too, but I reckon I can find a better clip to hear and see them warbling. It is truly a delightful sound to wake to.

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Ice?

I could not possibly confess to having ever taken any mood altering substances apart from alcohol. I believe many of the recreational drugs are quite good, and that is why people use them. People who have never taken recreational drugs will probably be hitting the close button now. What they need to understand is the magic of drugs. Recreational drugs can be really bad for you if they are misused or abused or if the drug is  addictive. But the good feelings and happiness and understanding of the world that can come from drug taking cannot be denied. The problem is that these drug feelings are not real life. They are fine for a bit of fun, but they cannot be a day to day part of your life.

Apparently there are many in Australia who are addicted the drug ice. What is ice?

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As a younger gay male, my doctor was always bothering me about tests for sexually transmitted diseases. Now he bothers me about blood pressure and cholesterol tests. He asked me how much alcohol I drank. I replied, one glass of wine before dinner. I know doctors usually double the answer. Little does he know.

Sister's partner Bone Doctor is no longer a specialist but a general practitioner, specialising in sports medicine outside her GP work.

Tell me, Bone Doctor, what do you think when a patient replies to your question about how much they drink?

Eat, drink or smoke, I triple it and depending on their health, I may multiply it by many times. You can put on your best face, but we know.

Most interesting BD. Thanks.

Meanwhile I attended R's doctor because he is accomplished at skin problems and inside my nose I had a sore that was not healing. I go for the worst option first. My nose was rotting away from cancer. No, doctor said. It is ok. He prescribed an anti bacterial cream, designed for the nose with a high melting point and some stickiness.

I almost went back to see him because my top lip split open, kind of inside and it was not healing. I applied the nose cream to it for a few days and after a total of time two weeks, it has healed, so it not my imagined lip cancer.

On my upper arm I have a small but severe bruise.  Oh, maybe it is a melanoma. I put my glasses on and took a good look. It is yellowing around the outside, a clear indication that it is just a bruise. But I have no memory of how it happened.

Last night I whacked my knee on a cupboard. Ouch, I said. This morning I realised it is bruised and grazed and I guess it will take a couple of weeks to heal.

This longer healing process that seems to come with older age is not good. My cells are not repairing themselves like they used to. I am not liking this at all.

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Father's father's name was Walter. For some reason Father called him Charlie. I asked Mother why once. She said that was the name Father used for his father on building sites. So we called him Grandpop Charlie. I am his only grandchild who remembers him. He was ok, and quite kindly to his grandchild who he rarely saw, the son of 'that stuck up bitch from the teetotal family' who his son married. They were his wife's words, Father's step mother. His first wife was, as long term readers may remember, was The Bolter, who bolted to Sydney's Balmain with a lad somewhat her junior to whom she was teaching music.

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There are many versions of Melbourne but my Melbourne is vast, from the inner area where I live, to what was the middle area where I work, but might not be considered as middle now, to the vast outer areas where most people live.

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I am not too bad at trivia, until the quiz drifts to classical music or sports. I know a little about a lot but I don't have any expertise in any area. I consider that to be a character failing but I don't care. It is how I am and I amuse myself.

Sister and myself were sitting on our balcony while chewing the cud and she asked me about a building in view. I knew something about it. She asked me about another building. I knew something about it. Etc etc. What I knew were anecdotes. I really wish I had a focus in life, something I could hone in on and become an expert about, but that is not me. I love learning about stuffs, but most of it goes in one ear and out the other.

Sometimes something will get blocked and retained along the way between my ears. These are anecdotes and I know rather a lot of them. I just never have the detail that others seem to retain.

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The Learnin'

I listened to something somewhere. I can't remember the when or where. A chap was talking about teaching using modern methods involving technology.

The reporter was asked about her geographical knowledge of South America. I didn't think my knowledge was too bad, but then some quite obscure countries were mentioned. I couldn't quite place Surinam. Oh, that is in South America, but while I have a rough idea, I don't know exactly where. In fact, I don't know at all, and neither did the reporter.

The reporter played away on the computer at a specific game like puzzle and was shown a map of South America and she had to locate each country. The 'game's' inventor promised her that after 15 minutes of playing the computer game, she would know the exact location of every South American country on a map and would not forget them, and I believe him. I can see it will work.

Little Jo does something on our computer called Reading Eggs. From what I observed, it is a repetitive thing that goes on until she chooses the correct selections. It is under the auspices of our ABC, so I trust it. It is a similar thing. The knowledge for what Little Jo is doing and the knowledge of South America will be firmly implanted. It is simple repetition until you get it right.

In the late 20th century it was named repetitive or rote learning

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I have a serious driving fault. I am impatient. Not all the time, but certainly when I am travelling to and from work and when I am using the payway/freeway to Mother's.

I curse you who travel along Dandenong Road in fine weather at 40 km/h when the limit is 70 km/h.

I curse you who pulls up behind a right turning car and then I behind you pull up behind you, thinking you would not be stupid enough to pull up behind a right turning car and you would go to the left of the car turning right.

I curse you who pulls in front of me on a freeway when I have the cruise control set and then slow down, forcing me to turn the cruise off and slow down.

I curse you who plays with your phone while at red lights and I need to give you a toot of the horn to alert you to the green light. Half the horn sounding heard below the Highrise is from people alerting others that a traffic light has turned green.

I curse you when your are slow to move when there is a green arrow and cause me to miss the turning green arrow. In fact in that situation, I could shoot you. It is not hard. Green arrow, foot off brake and accelerate.

I curse you when you sit on the outside freeway lane travelling at 90 km/h.

I curse you when you stop in the middle of nowhere and bring a heap of cars to a stop to allow a person fit enough on their feet to cross the road.

I curse you when you stop at a green light in the city to let pedestrians to continue to illegally cross the street. Give them a blast of the horn and get them out of the way smartly.

I curse you when you stop in the middle of an intersection and can't go further forward because of a bank up of cars, and then of course block the opposing road traffic when their traffic light turns green.

I curse you cyclists who ride at speed along footpaths.

I curse you trucks using the Domain tunnel and sit in the right hand lane, which is fine until the climb out of the tunnel begins and

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Pie Face Boone (to annoy my brother I used to call the tv show Daniel Boone that name)

school holidays rain child friction.