Reading

Entry tags:

dreamwidth,
html

HTML tags: PRE, KBD, and DETAILS

For easier searching later, I decided to make a brief post today just about some HTML tags that I use.

For pre-formatted text, I discovered in yesterday's post that long lines of powershell code were not wrapping to new lines. I eventually got it working as intended by formatting the HTML tags like this:

<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Text goes here. blah blah blah.</pre>

I wonder, though, if I should switch to monospace font for computer code? In the past, there was the TT (teletype) tag, but apparently that's another technology that has been deprecated. Here's an example of the new KBD (keyboard) code instead. I don't know. It looks exactly the same to me, except for the change in vertical spacing. I'll stick with PRE instead, I guess. I could use KBD inline within a paragraph if needed.
<kbd>this is a test. blah blah blah.</kbd>

Far more frequently, however, I use the HTML tag to display a little sideways-arrow which users need to click to "open up" a section of text. Using this tag liberally helps keep long posts from flooding other peoples' blog feeds. Readers can choose whether or not to read the long diatribes (or see the large pictures) in the main part of the blog post. Here is the code I use to accomplish that feat:

<details>
<summary>Click the arrow to read the blah blah blah...</summary>
All of the usual blog content goes here.
</details>

There. Now I can find these tag details again when I click the HTML tag on my blog. Bread crumbs to help a failing memory.

Entry tags:

powershell,
work

RIP Get-EventLog

Today at work, I wanted/needed a faster way to collect particular events in the Microsoft Windows event logs. I had the obvious way to collect them from the gui, but I needed something better. I decided to try powershell.

Click to read the powershell code and follow the small adventure...

I had no idea beforehand that the log source name in the gui is different from the one accessed by powershell. It took some googling to figure out the right mix of parameters and clauses, but it worked. Sort of. Here's the code I came up with:

Get-EventLog -LogName System -Source Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General -After (Get-Date).AddDays(-10) | Where-Object { $_.EventID -eq 1 -and $_.CategoryNumber -eq 5 } | Out-GridView

It definitely found the appropriate events from the log. It did not, however, provide the appropriate message about the reason for the log entry. Instead of the rational reason that the gui showed me, this script was telling me:

Possible detection of CVE: 2025-11-15T20:31:07.5402125Z
This Event is generated when an attempt to exploit a known vulnerability (2025-11-15T20:31:07.5402125Z) is detected.

Whoa. That sounds bad/dangerous. After digging into other properties of the software object I was given, I finally noticed the purple note in the official Microsoft documentation that this command has been deprecated! Argh! I was probably getting CVE-similarity notices because I was still using this deprecated 32-bit command. I am old, and what I formerly knew is now contraindicated. *laugh*

I switched to the new powershell command, and it again took me a while and several consultations with Google to hammer out the new (and actually better) command:

Get-WinEvent -FilterHashTable @{ProviderName='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General'; Id=1; StartTime=(Get-Date).AddDays(-10)} | Where-Object { $_.Message -match 'Change Reason:.*time zone.*' } | Select-Object TimeCreated, Message | Out-GridView

Finally! This new powershell command shows the correct reason for the log entry and the directory path to the program that produced it. That's exactly what I needed. Yay, although I'm clearly out of practice with powershell. After collecting data, I opened a ticket to have our next tier of IT take a look at my computer and find why this particular event keeps showing up. Something is changing my timezone (to the wrong timezone) throughout the day, even after I manually change it back to the correct timezone.

Entry tags:

trips

Montana-bound

I am going on an extremely random trip. Ken is going to a conference at the University of Montana in Missoula. My cousin lives in Bozeman. So I'm going to go see her!

The weather is not going to be great. Originally I had thought I would drive to her house, but that was before I learned that the Continental Divide is between Missoula in Bozeman, and sometimes it snows in the pass. NOAA says "chance of snow", but I'm going to have some dorky rental car, and I don't really want to get stuck in the snow. My cousin says that they don't require chains for passenger cars, but I'm concerned that "they would've been a good idea". So we are going to meet in Butte.

Butte is an old mining town (there's a folk song about it (well, mining in general) by Judy Fjell, with the refrain, "scattered ashes in the sky, and scars on the ground"), and there is a mining museum that is unfortunately closed the days I can go. Despite the ecological impact of mining, it sounded pretty cool. So we might end up at the local branch of the University of Montana's geology museum, where the pictures look nice of various mineral displays, and maybe the actual museum will also be nice. I like rocks.

We're leaving tomorrow, and Ken and I will figure something out to do in Missoula Sunday. 20% chance of rain, so maybe we will go hiking. There's an abandoned mine in the hills of Missoula which is a not very strenuous hike (I am not a strenuous hiker, especially when I don't get to bring hiking poles because you can't put them in your carry-on), and maybe we will saunter up to it and take a look, but not go very far in. It seems like, from the pictures, that you could in fact go in. Also, we have discovered that there are Hot Springs. Maybe we will have a soak.

Or, maybe we will just be hanging out in the Denver airport waiting for air traffic control. Shouldn't that be done by now? It's really not clear.

We return home Wednesday late. Unless we spend another day in the Denver airport.

Entry tags:

health

done!

It is done. Yay!

They found one large polyp. I'm not worried, because all previous intestinal polyps tested fine afterward. I've been doing GI exams since my 30s, thanks to a decade of diarrhea back then. That long problem was cured thanks to a last-minute choice from a doctor to give me metronidazole before another GI exam. I still celebrate metronidazole day occasionally: 2024, 2022, 2013, and the original prescription date of 2012.

I'm back home thanks to a former landlord (I don't think he's on Dreamwidth?) picking me up at the hospital entrance to drive me home. I've already started eating my usual first post-exam meal of Greek yogurt with dry oats. If that sits well for the next hour or two, then I'll expand to the usual range of stuff. :)

I got about 2 hours of sleep last night, having taken the magnesium citrate at 12:30am for the 6:30am arrival time. Food first, I think, then sleep.

Entry tags:

health

GI exam prep

I've lost count of how many times that I've needed to go to the restroom today. I don't even start the chemical preparations until tomorrow. This is just my second day of So Very Much Water with low fiber diet.

Yesterday, on the first day of this regimen, I got through work and ended the shift needing bathroom breaks every 30 minutes. I'm short on sleep now, after needing to get up 4 times last night too. Today, I worked 1.5 hours before giving up. The bathroom recurrence time shrank from 30 minutes to 20 minutes, then 15 minutes. I gave up after 1.5 hours, and I just called it a sick day and logged off.

I'm eating even less today while still drinking So Very Much Water. I switched from pants to robe, making those bathroom trips even easier. *laugh* I do my final cleanse routine on Thursday evening. I show up at 6:30am on Friday morning for the GI exam.

As usual, I'll be glad to eat regular food again as soon as it's done. And stop drinking so much water.

Entry tags:

astronomy

aurora

Hey, Minneapolis. Go outside tonight. Actually, nearly everyone should give it a try. The spaceweather forecast was for this storm to produce aurora to latitudes down to Minneapolis, but there are reports of people catching photos of it all the way down to Texas.

Open up your smartphone camera in night vision mode. Look everywhere. Look northeast, look overhead, look southeast.

There's beautiful aurora everywhere!

Is that even a narrow band of orange that I see between the green and red areas? That's just amazing.

I scared a rabbit at my front doorstep when I walked outside to take this photo. It scared me right back when it darted away.

Entry tags:

politics

Action #17

Valerie knew about an action in nearby town organized by Indivisible Mansfield and Beyond, so I joined her. This was not a big crowd, but a small number of activists standing on the road with coordinated signs. The theme was "signs of fascism", and they had us line the road about 30 feet apart so that the cars could drive by and read all of the signs and then at the end it said "our grandparents fought fascism" and "what will you do".

Burma Shave.

Tomorrow there will be another "random people hold random signs" action in our town, and I might go at the beginning for action #18. A friend of mine is getting married in the afternoon and the timing is tight. Or I might decide that one action in a weekend is enough.

Entry tags:

health

a brief medical update

I'm supposed to get a long overdue gastrointestinal (GI) exam on Friday morning next week in the wee early hours, before dawn. I already bought all of the things I need for the "cleansing" beforehand, except for the magnesium citrate solution. There wasn't any at the Cub (grocery) pharmacy. There wasn't any available online at CVS or Walgreens. I called this morning to ask the GI team at the hospital what I should do. They said they would send a prescription order for it to the Cub pharmacy. I said that it wasn't on the shelf, because I already was there physically and looked. Apparently these days, pharmacies keep magnesium citrate in stock behind the counter. Sure enough, I picked up the prescribed solution at the grocery this afternoon. The pharmacy even handed it to me "at no cost". That's right, zero.

I have no idea what's going on with that zero cost. Even my monthly blood pressure medication cost $0.16 at the counter, definitely but barely above zero. I even asked the lady at the checkout counter for my groceries, showing her my bottle with the prescription label on it. "They said it was zero cost?" "Yes, that's what they said." "Then it really is. I don't need to ring it up."

Does anyone know if magnesium citrate is an ingredient in some kind of unhealthy or illegal street recipe for some other drug? Why would nobody have stock for it, but it's still available by prescription, when it's clearly a non-prescription product?

Entirely separately, while checking online to find the GI team's phone number to ask about the missing magnesium citrate, I found that I had a bill for my sleep study a few weeks ago. That bill amounts to $2,013.00.

*cough*

My parents left a nice gift check for me during their visit, so I don't have to dip into my savings to cover the cost, but it's certainly a lot more than I was expecting to pay. And I still have the GI exam in a few days. And I still need to get my dental guard replaced, which is a custom fit thing.

At some point, USA costs become so prohibitive that medical tourism becomes a necessity. Take an airplane to a clinic in another country, get the work done, and immediately fly back. Still cheaper than healthcare in the USA.

Entry tags:

Minnesota Rusco is gone, thanks to BlackRock

As always for Moody Monday, there are so many topics but so little time.

1) I'm glad I brought the two historians to your attention a few days ago. Their most recent video is a real gem, with several moments of memorable quotes.

2) The money crisis, with so very many Americans ("richest country on the planet") unable to afford food, is a lot even to try to comprehend.

3) The one single issue I want to explore more thoroughly, though, is a problem demonstrating itself here in Minnesota. I offer anti-capitalism rants occasionally, and here's another one. As many people have said before, "private equity ruins everything it touches".

Minnesota Rusco is the company that I used, once in 2019 and again in 2024, to install new windows in my century-old home. This company was in operation since 1955 (famous locally for this musical jingle in their television advertisements), but they closed suddenly in 2025 a few days ago. Even people in the company didn't know it was going to happen. This YouTube video, from roofers here in the Twin Cities, describes the situation from a local industry perspective. As this news page from University of Minnesota explains, they were bought out from the former owners in 2022, sold to Renovo Home Partners in Dallas TX... which itself became owned in 2024 by BlackRock TCP Capital Corp of New York.

Yes, that BlackRock. It sure seems like all of those companies with the "BlackRock" name are in a financially incestuous relationship with each other, everything some subsidiary of the original, with this story getting into tedious details of the financial dealings of the company. BlackRock is also now a majority owner of a power company here in Minnesota. Our legislature approved that sale, as if nothing could go wrong with that arrangement. Ugh.

You already know how opposed I am to the concept of making wealth the point of living. With everything else going sour in the USA, we still idly watch as capitalists extend control into every part of daily life, from home repairs to power infrastructure. I really need to buy solar panels. Between Trump tariffs driving up costs of Minnesota electricity to whatever capitalists are about to do to force additional scarcity (which drives up value for investors), I just need my own independent power source. I feel like we can't have a nice society, because we bow to the gods of wealth.