zipperbear | Reading

I've been using NasalCrom for several months, and it's an amazing drug. I've had severe allergies my entire life, and I'm certain they played a part in the 2 sinus surgeries that I've already had, thanks to sinus polyps that my overactive sinuses eventually generate which leads to blocked airways and high fevers due to infection. The allergies and the associated sinus troubles are not a real concern any more, thanks to Nasalcrom.

My thanks to wispywillow for mentioning it last summer. In searching for that post, I see that furr_a_bruin mentioned it back in 2011 too, although apparently I never gave it a proper try back then. That's a shame, because it works wonders.

I still can't figure out how it works. It's not a histamine/anti-histamine kind of drug. It's a mast cell stabilizer drug. I don't know much about MCAS (mast cell activation syndrome), but it's related to that. The best analogy I can find is that NasalCrom orders these cells to "Calm down!", so they don't respond with histamine reactions when your immune system tells them that you are exposed to allergens. So, you're still allergic to stuff, but... nothing happens.

That's my experience too. Taking only NasalCrom and nothing else, I can still develop an itchy nose plus a few sneezes. What changes, though, is that my sinuses fail to explode with mucus production. I also take generic fluticasone propionate (sometimes known as Flonase), which is a steroid to reduce inflammation. It's a drug commonly used to deal with asthma, allergies, and nasal polyps like I have a long history of developing. Together, I can even leave my window open at night if I want to, and I don't have to regret it in the morning. At most, I can sometimes tell that my sinuses might be ever-so-slightly swollen or sensitive, like they're on alert because they know allergens are present, but there are no debilitating symptoms that go with it. NasalCrom does the heavy lifting, while the fluticasone softens the few remaining issues.

Together, I'm hopeful that I won't have to deal with polyps blocking my sinuses due to overactive tissues reacting to airborne allergens. If I have no more polyps, then I have no recurring sinus blockage and raging high temperatures, and with no dangerous high temps over 39.5C/103.1F, then I'll have no need for a 3rd sinus surgery. It's a wonder drug, targeted specifically at my sinus tissue. I'm certain it's better for my body than eating pills that affect my whole body, just so I can survive another few hours with strong symptoms.

nosrednayduj

Valerie's church organized a very small protest. Apparently they are going to do these every Wednesday at 5 PM for an hour, perhaps with different themes. Don't know if I'm going to go every week. There were about 25 people there.

Yesterday's theme was immigrants. Mostly people honked in a supportive way. There was one pedestrian who started yelling about Laken Riley, which I'd not heard of. So we got our phones and looked it up, and apparently this person was murdered by an undocumented immigrant, and now there's a whole congressional act about detaining undocumented immigrants if they have been charged with any type of minor crime. I'm like, you're more likely to be murdered by a good old-fashioned white boy, but statistics don't make good press.

There is going to be some big nationwide thing on June 14 protesting the whole Trump making himself out to be a king thing, and it turns out it's going to coincide with Boston Pride. Should be fun!

nosrednayduj

I've had it in mind to give blood for little while, since it's been about five months. But there's always some reason that it's inconvenient, e.g. when my housemates had Covid, I didn't want to do it for a little while after that.

Anyway, I decided to get serious about looking at blood drives, and there was a very convenient one, 1.2 miles from my house. But, then it turned out that I also wanted to get my measles vaccine updated, because I had it before 1968, and people with that vaccine had a lower quality one, and there's outbreaks everywhere and I'm like "how good is my 60-year-old vaccine anyway". Plus I wanted to get my spring Covid booster before I went traveling in the summer, so I was trying to figure out when I was going to do that because you can't give blood for another month after you've had your vaccinations.

So there was this long email conversation with my doctor about whether I was eligible for the measles vaccine and whether they could do it and scheduling (their online thing wasn't working), and they just scheduled me for half an hour before my upcoming mammogram. Which was one day before the convenient blood drive.

Oh well, I said, and I signed up for an earlier, less conveniently located blood drive to which bicycling would not make sense.

Earlier I had learned you do better on the hemoglobin test if your hands are warm. Ken lent me his battery-powered gloves for the drive there. Worked great! Then, the phlebotomist was kind of an artist. She slipped that needle into my vein incredibly quickly and nearly painlessly. Unfortunately, apparently she got the edge of the needle near a valve in the vein, and thus there was some fiddling to keep my blood actually flowing. But, there was success in the end. The fiddling ended up with some bruising on the inside of my elbow, but that doesn't hurt and will go away.

And then yesterday I got myself stabbed in both upper arms, he said that I could do both vaccinations at the same time as long as I did them in different arms. I have had less side effects from the Covid vaccination than earlier times, but perhaps I had the side effects in the middle of the night? I don't know. Sometimes I've only just been very tired and not gotten a fever. I did not set my alarm this morning and only woke up half an hour later than I normally would. Anyway I felt fine today.

So presumably I will be protected on my trip to California in early July. Not that California has been having measles outbreaks, but you never know when your airplane will be diverted to some place in Texas (though my flights are scheduled to be nonstop).

mellowtigger

I'm off work for my "weekend" now. I am, however, on-call for potential overtime during the next 6 days, because I volunteered my name on the list.

I didn't watch either livestream, because it was busy at work this evening. As I type this message, the Board of Trustees already issued their vote on the closure of several university campuses in Pennsylvania. The President of the university also ended a livestream discussion about these profound changes. There is a special phone queue setup for handling calls about this issue. Who attends that campus closure line? Why, it's IT Support, of course, you silly goose.

If it gets too busy for regular staffing levels, they'll call in people to help out. I've turned on the ringer on my smart phone, so I can respond if I'm called to report for duty.

I hope it's dull. I hope there's no increase. It's rational that they're trying to be prepared. I'm just not in the mood to get yelled at, even though all of us are always (not just for this event) empowered to immediately hang up on anybody who is verbally abusive, which is a wonderful policy that I appreciate immensely.

Here is the roadmap for the closures. The data is solidly behind these closures. They did a good job on the recommendations here (PDF file, 15.8MB, 143 pages). I hope all of this phone preparation is completely unnecessary. I don't want to get called in for overtime.

mellowtigger

When, after almost 2 years, I finally created a workstation for myself downstairs at a proper work table, I also moved my gaming computer from that area to my bedroom upstairs. I switched from wired ethernet to wifi. The wifi, however, started failing me almost immediately at the gaming computer alone. Bandwidth was horrible, then my first wifi network stopped connecting at this computer, then the second wifi network started failing too. The wifi was fine on my phone and Chromecast. It was the antenna at my old tower computer that was bad.

I went searching through records, and I originally ordered this wifi adapter (TP-LINK TL-WN881ND 300Mbps) back in 2016. Okay, fair enough. That's a long time for a wifi device to keep working. So, I ordered this wifi adapter (TP-LINK Archer TX55E AX3000) to replace it. It arrived today, and I put it in my gaming computer after work.

My original wifi immediately connected, and bandwidth score went from about 3.5 Mbps download to this very nice 273 Mbps download. Let's just call it a round 100X improvement (it's more like 78X) and move on. :)

The days of monkeying with Linux drivers are past us, for the most part. I plugged this PCI card in, and it just worked.

mellowtigger

There are labels that I gladly accept and others that I reject.

For instance:

I am not a Democrat. Not since Bernie got sidelined the first time.
I am a progressive. Meaning I want continuing improvements in response to new empirical knowledge.
I am #antifa. And you should be too.
I am not an anarchist.

I should explain that last label, given my longstanding criticism of so many things here in the USA. I want great changes in government and economic structures, yes, but I still want structures. Anarchism has the debatably-laudable goal of making individuals each responsible for all outcomes. It plans to accomplish that goal, thanks to elimination of all hierarchy as a form of coercion. Afterwards, individuals and their choices would be all that matters.

I've recommended the book "The Nature of Economies" by Jane Jacobs many times over the years. It uses easy ecological metaphors to teach ideas that are more complex. I propose a biological metaphor for understanding proposed anarchy. Show me the creature that was formerly a multicellular organism of specialized cells (requiring hierarchy of its own sort) that later backtracked to eliminate that specialization, where each cell becomes master of itself and must negotiate with other cells as equals. Show me how evolution has proved that simplification strategy as more adaptable than advanced specializations, then I'll believe that anarchism is viable at our level too. It seems at first glance, at least, that Mother Nature prefers constant change and reorganization, not mere simplification.

"You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists."
- G.K. Chesterton

I still believe in the beauty of complex systems, and I still believe in the possibility of their actually serving the long-term needs of constituent components.

mellowtigger

Today's theme song is just mood music for background play. No words, just soft jazz music and the image of an otter as barista at a coffee shop.

Watch on YouTube

Why this choice today? It was shared amongst coworkers on Friday, and I just learned of it today. My supervisor also sent me a message that May 15 Friday was my 2-year anniversary at work, but I was away as part of my "weekend" schedule at the time, returning today as my "Monday". This song is meant to help provide a calming counterbalance to what I've complained for 2 years is a highly stressful job position. As evidence of this stress, I learned today that the guy I trained in October for this job is moving back to his old job. So, after half a year he decided that his former department was better for him. I'm sorry that he didn't want to stick around, but at least he's still staying with the university.

Click to read an itemized example of why this job is stressful...

Why is this job so unusual, so stressful? It's different from any tech job I've had before. People call a phone number, expecting to get the experts in whatever topic they selected. Instead, they get me. Questions that I might have to answer at a moment's notice:

"I'm a customs officer at airport [x]. Please connect me (not during regular work hours) to the Designated School Official who can provide I-20 confirmation. No, I can't wait for a callback. I need to stay on the line to maintain the authentic connection. If I can't confirm, then I'll send the student back to their country of origin." (I wrote documentation for my coworkers on this rare but high-stress phone call.)
"How do I install and/or purchase software title [x] on this computer?" (The answer is different for every software title and every department or computer, resulting in permutation explosion on not-well-documented processes.)
"Someone has been sending me email, but I don't see them. What's wrong? No, I don't know if I'm using new Outlook, classic Outlook, or web Outlook. I just click this button. How do I tell which browser I'm using?"
"Hi, I'm UPS delivery. Where should I drop off this package (after regular work hours) for person [x]?"
"Please connect me to the coach of the sports team [x]. I don't know why you can't do that. What's so hard to find their number?"
"Why is TicketMaster not getting me my football tickets?" (Usually, this problem results from somebody requesting tickets before they were even assigned their university email, so TicketMaster has wrong email information.)
"I'm not computer literate, can you help me fix my multifactor authentication?"
"I can't get into building [x]. Who can let me in (after regular work hours on a weekend)?"
"Why is the Microsoft portal insisting that I install Copilot right now and not letting me just view my email?"
"I submitted my course assignment in Canvas, but now I'm getting a zero because my work is not there! What happened to it?" (We're the support team for a product that we never use unless we get a ticket for it.)
"I got a new phone, and now I can't login for class, I can't get into my dorm room, and I can't pay for food on campus. Help!"
"My Adobe Acrobat interface is messed up, not looking like it should. How do I get the old interface back?" (We're the support team for a product that we don't even have licenses to run.)
"I uploaded an image to Copilot, to make it generate accessibility captions, but the image shows up as black so I get no text from it. What's wrong?" (We're the support team, I think?, for a product that nobody knows how to use.)
"How do I export my list of subscribers from Listserv?" (We're the support team for a decades-old product that we don't use unless we get a ticket for it.)
It's always interesting getting stuck between an overbearing parent and a child who doesn't want the parent to access their information, while the parent demands we help them access the student information. Paying bills and seeing grades are different systems with different permissions, and either way there's not a lot I can do to help (but sometimes yes), even though people call us first.
While answering the phone line, I might simultaneously get a webpage chat wanting immediate attention, and I need to at least click a button to acknowledge incoming emailed tickets too. Fast-paced context-switching destroys productivity, you say? Surely not! ;)

Basically, we're the 311 information line for a city (over 100,000 students, faculty, and staff). At some point, we get every question... including wrong calls meant for a similarly-named university or a related-to-the-university healthcare system. We get calls meant for other departments but come to us first. We get calls for areas with VIP lists who want different treatment. It's permutation explosion for everything, no perfect documentation for it, and callers reached me expecting to find the expert on whatever topic is at hand, so they get frustrated when I hesitate.

So, I've mentioned for 2 years how stressed out I get, I'm losing my trainee to his old job soon, and coworkers shared this nice stress-relieving music for jazzy vibes.

Enjoy the music. Peace. :)

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zipperbear

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Page generated May. 31st, 2025 03:23 pm

Who has time for a journal?

Reading

NasalCrom

tiny protest, #8

Vampire visit and vaccination

it will be an interesting week

upgrading wifi

I am not an anarchist

theme song: Otter's Cozy Cafe Vibes

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March 2022

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