One of the joys of owning and using a Windows based computer is protecting it against the constant onslaught of viruses, worms, exploits, and malware. The ThinkPad came with a (surprisingly) short trial subscription to Symantic. When I started getting notices about the end of the trial at 60 days I began looking around for other software to use.
Through a magazine article I was aware of Microsoft’s ‘OneCare’ beta and thought I’d give that a try. It combines virus protection, spyware protection, and some basic system performance tuning and maintenance functions in one spot. The beta is free until the end of April and if you sign up for a year prior to May it’s only $19.95.
Downloading and installing the package was rather cumbersome. In typical myopic Microsoft thinking the install process would only work with IE. I actually had to dig down into my Program Files folder to find the executable for IE, as I had removed it from the desktop, quick start menu, and start menu. You have to use a Microsoft passport id to sign-up for the beta, and all future dealings with Microsoft regarding OneCare go through that id.
Once installed OneCare acts a bit like Zone Alarm in that it notifies you of outbound connections as well as inbound ones. By and large it has been unobtrusive and easy to configure. Digging through the advanced settings I was able to add the necessary ports for Synergy and Tivo Desktop to work. It even schedules backups of your data.
After using it for a couple of weeks I was ready to buy. Clicking on the “purchase now” button in the software triggers a web page in my default browser. Once again I had to dig up IE and transfer the URL in order to play. The OneCare site insists on treating you like you haven’t got the software. You have to sign in, and then run an Active-X component to test your system. In three attempts over the past two days I have been unsuccessful in getting past this step. Basically their site refuses to work and it is preventing them from collecting my $19.95. Even using the “help” feature was a bust. All it would allow me to do was sign in and sign out repeatedly. I did finally manage to send an email to their support group stating my problem and the error code I was getting. Depending upon their response I may be at the computer store this afternoon picking up a copy of Zone Alarm.
Update: I got a response from Microsoft OneCare support. It consists of four major sections comprising nineteen (19!) steps for me to take to complete the purchase. In effect they want me to delete all my IE cookies, reset the security levels on IE, disable third-party extensions in IE, un-install OneCare, and then re-install it using the purchase option. All to give them $20.
Unbelievable.
The rest of the software world lets you convert beta or trial editions to fully functioning software by going to a site, entering your credit card information, waiting for an email, and pasting the serial number into the software. I guess making money the easy way was too difficult for the id10ts at Microsoft World Domination HQ.
After returning home yesterday from seeing my parents I had a major bout of the blues, with a heaping side helping of rage. I am certainly grateful that I have been able to visit my mom several times since her prognosis was changed to terminal in February, and I wouldn’t give this time up for any reason; however, it is brutally hard to be trapped waiting for the end to arrive.
My anger last night was in part at her for smoking for sixty years. We all have addictive personalities and sometimes it is harder than others to avoid the pitfalls our addictions carry with them. My mother felt that since both of her parents smoked and neither of them had lung disease or cancer that she would get away with it too. That her gamble failed fills me with sorrow for I know it cuts her life short. It also angers me as her life is now cut needlessly short.
What is so difficult about the swirling mess of emotions I am feeling now is not knowing what will set me off. It isn’t big things like work or paying bills, but rather little things like getting a web site to load, or having the balky Tivo remote not work when I go to use it. I think that facing the imminent death of a loved one leaves you out of control on so many levels that you look for, consciously or unconsciously, little things to dominate to regain some semblance of control. When those little things don’t work out as you planned, all hell breaks loose.
After I vented for about thirty minutes (breaking the kitchen trash can lid in the process) I cried for another half hour before coming down. Between the long two-day drive, and the dumping of so much high energy emotion I was wiped out. Shortly after 8:00 I was in bed, and by 9:00 I was asleep. This morning I feel better physically, but I’m still kind of numb emotionally.
Seeing my mom this weekend was wonderful and bittersweet. her vitality is greatly diminished, and she is sleeping a lot now. The medical staff warned her and my dad that she would sleep more and more as the end got closer. Also that the amount of pain she would experience would increase. While her pain level is creeping higher it isn’t debilitating yet.
I know that the past fourteen or fifteen months have taken a real toll on my father as he has had to single-handedly tend to the house and care for my mom. Home health care is coming several times a week, but he has stepped up and taken care of everything possible. The affection and concern I see in him when he assists her, or makes her a smoothie, is touching and very real. I am proud of my dad for the grit and character he is showing as he watches helplessly from the sidelines as his wife of forty-five years dies.
While I was there the two of us went the funeral home to see what options they had to offer. My mom has given him some indication of the music she like at the service, and he wanted to compare the chapel at the funeral home to the sanctuary at their church. No firm decisions were made yet, but my dad was able to ask several questions and have them answered, which I know helps him.
My mom and I had a couple more good conversations, filled with tears and laughter. As I was leaving there this morning she held my hands and told me that she didn’t want me to make a heroic effort o come to her bedside when she is dying. With it being such a long drive she doesn’t want me to take any chances. As she said, “I don’t want anything to happen to you.” Even now as I write this the love and caring in her voice and eyes leaves me crying.
Originally my plan was to return there every weekend until she dies, but the length of the trip and the time it takes is wearing me down. This week I am going to monitor her decline through my dad over the phone, and late in the week I’ll decided whether to return in seven days, or fourteen.
Last evening I took a short stroll around my apartment complex, mostly to burn off some nervous energy. At some point during my walk I glanced up at the night sky and discovered that the stars no longer have full-circle halos around them. Instead there is more of a crescent shaped halo.
In fact covering first one eye and then the other I discovered that the crescents are asymmetrical. For each eye the curve of the crescent is towards my nose. The right eye sees what appears to be a series of speckles in the sky where the star should be, slight bowed to the left from top to bottom. Whereas my left eye sees the star with a curved line of light bent slightly to the right bisecting it. I am pleased by this as I think it means the incision is finally healing completely, leaving only a portion of the cornea disturbed. Maybe once I see lights at night with no halos I’ll be able to see the computer screen clearly as well.
Next week I have the first follow-up exam since the day after my surgery. I’ll be curious to see what they have to say about my progress, and what their reaction to my upset regarding the lack of the one visual range I was most eager to gain, arm’s length.
Whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not, each of us has a finite number of days here on Earth. The metaphysics of reincarnation aside we all will come to the end sooner or later. For my mother the end is now sooner. She herself told me in an email last weekend that she felt her days were numbered. My father tells me she is eating less and sleeping more. Oxygen is required for all but the most idle of activities, and her blood counts have been too low two weeks running for any chemotherapy.
For the weekend I am traveling to Decatur to see my mom one more time. Maybe for the last time. Even with the impact of Michele’s death still reverberating in my life, and with the reality of what death means figure in my thoughts, it is hard to believe that my mom is really going to die. Intellectually I understand what is happening and I can quantify the awful eventuality headed my way. Emotionally I can’t yet grasp what is coming. Someday soon I’ll travel to Decatur to attend her funeral, and then I won’t be able to talk to her again. She’ll never again make turkey stuffing with Bell’s Poultry Seasoning, or tell me about a new author, or share for the millionth time a story from her childhood.
Last summer, after Michele’s mother died, she found it very difficult to put into words what it truly meant. Mothers are such a part of their children, intertwined and yet separate. I am my own man, and I am my mother’s son. In the weeks the followed Michele’s death I experience some disassociation with part of my personality. I felt cut off from the bits of my personality that she brought to the fore. Most of those have returned to me, but I know a part of me is forever gone. the coming days will see me lose touch with another set of my personality aspects. Once again I will have to travel through my grief to recover myself. The man who will emerge on the other side will be forever altered by the loss.
As I look towards the future my thoughts include questions about whether I’ll ever be in another relationship. Obviously I am in no shape now to entertain such an undertaking, but someday I will be, and I wonder what that day holds for me. As I ponder that future self it occurs to me that one step I must complete is rediscovering my true self image.
Each of us has an image in his or her head of who and what they are. Our physical, mental, and emotional internal images may have little or no resemblance to our outward appearance, acumen, or lucidity. (Just look at all the anorexia sufferers if you don’t believe me.) What’s more, I believe, our internal self image becomes dependent in part on the affirmations we receive from those around us. Certainly the most powerful influence in anyone’s life is their chosen partner. Initially, in my relationship with Michele, she saw me differently than I saw myself. Over time I learned to see me through her eyes, as it were, and grew to appreciate that image of me. I saw her true beauty and as she incorporated it into her self image her appeal only increased. She saw in me things I couldn’t see on my own and over time I incorporated those aspects in to my self image.
Without her here to reenforce my self image I am starting to rediscover how I must appear to everyone else. Perhaps the assumption of how your loved one sees you to the exclusion of reality is what is really meant by “love is blind.” Now, I’m not saying that what she saw isn’t true, or is in any way wrong. However, I am aware that no one will ever see me quite that way again. As I examine myself and consider my future I realize that part of the journey will be to craft a new self image that aligns more closely with who I am now.
Ultimately who I am today, and who I will become tomorrow is up to me. No matter how strongly I may wish to see myself as someone else does, my truth is mine alone. My physicality, thoughts, and feelings can certainly be colored by an awareness of what people around me see; in the end however the man I become is up to me, and me alone.
Last September I participated in a meme about OS X applications. Ever since then the comment I placed on the originating site has garnered me perhaps four or eight visits a week. All of that changed on Monday.
In the last 48 hours my little site, way out on the tail of the power law curve of the World Wide Web, has had almost 300 visitors from that one comment. 159 on Monday, 101 Tuesday, and 37 today. 300 visitors is roughly what I get in two weeks normally.
One of the books I’m currently reading, Linked, talks about the distribution of links and sites on the WWW, and points out that it isn’t a even playing field. A very few sites have most of the inbound links (sites that link to them), while a vast majority of sites and few, if any, incoming links. In other words, the graph of sites vs. incoming links is shaped by a power law, and not the usual bell-shaped curve. My experience this week and shown me what the power of just one incoming link can mean in terms of traffic to my site. As in the “real” world, it isn’t what you know as much as it is who you know. Or, who knows you.
After twenty-seven weeks and one day I finally couldn’t go through the motions any more. Usually on a week day I wake up between 4:30 and 5:00 am without using an alarm clock. Today I didn’t wake up until nearly 7:00 am. After taking a shower and getting dressed for work I just couldn’t bring myself to leave the apartment. I fiddled around with little chores and eventually managed to get my things out to the car. Once I did leave I only managed to get to the highway before turning around and heading back home.
I need a day for me. A day when I am “supposed” to do one thing but let myself not do anything. Weekends are nice and all, but allowing myself to stay home on a Tuesday for no reason other than I don’t want to go to work is good medicine. Call it a mental health day. Call it playing hooky. Call it whatever you want; I needed a day where I blew off responsibilities and just said FTW.
The coming weeks and months are going to be difficult, professionally, personally, spiritually, and emotionally. Today is a bit of in-country R&R before the next big offensive.
For some months now I have been debating whether to get a new cellphone or not. My current phone is several years old, and while it still works, I am suffering from tech-envy as it doesn’t play games, support bluetooth, or take pictures. Moreover, it is at least one transmission standard out of date, if not two, making it increasingly difficult to use.
Last week my father acquired a cellphone from Cingular largely to allow him some freedom of movement in the final days in my mom’s life. Running errands or just getting away from it all will be easier with a line of communication at their disposal. He choose Cingular since that is my carrier and in-network calls are free. Having seen a Sony-Ericsson model I really liked late last year in Best Buy, and with assurances from a co-worker that his Cingular reception inside our building has improved considerably, I decided to get a new phone.
Being a big dopey at times I managed to get two new phones within a matter of hours last Friday. On the Cingular “upgrade your phone” site the Sony-Ericsson W600i was listed for $299. With a two-year service agreement and through an online order I would get an immediate $100 discount plus a $100 mail in rebate. The cost for the phone then would be $99. Cool. At Amazon the same phone lists for $199, and their incentives included a $50 Cingular rebate plus a $150 Amazon rebate. In other words the phone was free from Amazon. So I ordered the phone from Amazon and started counting the days until delivery.
Friday afternoon I got an email from Amazon indicating that my new service with Cingular had been established and my new phone number would be 913..*. Oops. I’ve already got a phone number, I don’t need or want a new one. Calling Cingular Customer Service I learned that number portability has some limits. Namely, phones sold at discount prices for new service can’t have numbers from existing service transferred to them.
Since I was getting a better deal from Amazon, and since I expressed my unhappiness to the service representative, they did agree to credit my account $50 and waive the one-time setup fee, an additional $36 savings. This made the Cingular deal only $12 more than the Amazon one, and I got to keep my current cellphone number. So I placed the second phone order Friday afternoon.
So now I have two UPS tracking numbers, and two packages due to arrive tomorrow, each containing an identical phone to the other. The plan is to immediately return under the “buyers remorse” clause the Amazon phone and only activate the Cingular one.
The moral (or marble for you Eddie Izzard fans) of the story is: read all the fine print, or you too can spend $415 in one day one two identical phones from two sources just so you can send one back and wait for a refund.
The HBO movie 61* is about the summer of 1961 when Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris chased after Babe Ruth’s 60 home run record. Mantle was the favorite while fans and the press considered Maris an interloper. The movie is a wonderful baseball story, especially in light of the questions around drug usage by today’s greatest hitters.
If the record set in 1961 had an asterisk behind it for over thirty years, then the records being set today should have at least that much.
Rating: One of the best baseball movies I’ve seen